Italy wants to build first Turkish fighter jet plane
ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News
Gianpaolo Scarante talks to İpek Yezdani, a Daily News reporter at the Venice Palace in Istanbul. DAILY NEWS photo, Emrah GÜREL
Italy has given a proposal to Turkey to build the first Turkish national fighter jet in the country, according to Italian Ambassador to Turkey Gianpaolo Scarante.“There is a proposal for a project. We would like to participate in a very important program to create a national fighter for Turkey. It is in the phase of evaluation of the studies right now, but we have the proposal,” Scarante told the Hürriyet Daily News in a recent interview at the Venice Palace in Istanbul.
“The most important fighter in the world now is Eurofighter system. We would like to share with Turkey in order to cooperate to realize this important aim to have a national Turkish jet,” he said
Scarante said since beginning cooperation with Turkey, Italy has decided to transfer technology to Turkey and delocalize the production in order to bring the industrial capability to the country.
‘We want to share our technology’
“Our attitude is to cooperate in technology transfer in order to establish an industrial cooperation. So we do not only want to sell products, objects, systems, etc., but also to share technology and build together in order to improve the technology and the capability in the country,” he said.
Scarante said this was proved with the production of the attack helicopter Agusta in Turkey.
“Now Agusta is being built in Turkey; so if Italy wants to buy an attack helicopter, we need to buy it from Turkey,” he added.
Italian Defense Minister to visit Turkey
Sacarante said Italian Minister of Defense Giampaolo Di Paola will be visiting Turkey in two weeks time. Italy and Turkey held “defense industry days” in Italian capital Rome from Jan. 26 to 28, where Italian and Turkish companies discussed business opportunities in meetings held in the Center for High Defense Studies (CASD).
More than 30 Italian companies including Finmeccanica and leading Turkish companies such as Aselsan, TAI, Roketsan and Havelsan attended the meetings. Sacarante said the aim of the “Italy-Turkey defense days” was to support the cooperation between the two countries in the field of defense.
[HH] Long history of cooperation
“There are a lot of cooperation projects in the defense sector between Italy and Turkey. We have a very long history of cooperation. For the time being, we have a very good cooperation in satellite industry,” he said. Cooperation extended to air traffic control systems and the main control system control was being built in Ankara, he added.
Italy and Turkey have the same vision of the problems regarding the Arab spring countries, he said.
“Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata made his first foreign visit to Turkey just 15 days after he was appointed, and is constantly in contact with Davutoğlu regarding the developments in the region.”
Italy also has close contact with Turkey for evaluation of the situation in Syria day by day and “creation of a buffer zone is also being discussed between allies,” Sacarante said.
“We have to have a stable, democratic Syria and stop the violence there. We’re in favor of all the measures that can lead to consensus on the Syrian issue.”
