A little-known fact that has gone largely unnoticed, since the early Nineties, has been the vital role played by Pakistan in the substantial expansion of Beijing-Ankara military-industrial collaboration over the last 17 years. Since 1985, Turkey has sent 18 military delegations comprising some 200 members while 14 Chinese military missions with about 330 representatives have visited Turkey at the same time. Sino-Turkish military-industrial cooperation began in the first half of the Nineties after Ankara’s negotiations with Washington for the joint production and technology transfer of the M-270 multiple launch rocket system (MLRS) failed.
The US had then criticised Turkey for using US-supplied weapons for human rights abuses (against the Kurds), subsequently restricting weapons sales and military technology transfers to Turkey, and cutting off grants and loans earlier offered to Turkey for US-origin weapons. It was Pakistan which then informed Turkey that China was ready to fill the void, provided Turkey was willing to cooperate with China in the so-called fight against ‘Eastern Turkestan (Xinjiang)-sponsored terrorism’, namely to restrict, monitor and prevent the activities of Uyghur national organisations and leaders, most of whom were and are still based in Turkey.
Consequently, since 1997 the Third Bureau (military attachés) of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) General Staff Second Department (dealing with military intelligence) has been operating in Turkey as one of its most important, and presumably one of the most active, stations. Also in 1997, Turkey, for the first time signed a contract with China for the procurement of 24 WS-1 302mm unguided rockets as well as 144 rockets for licenced-assembly in Turkey, to be supplied between 1998 and 2000. Turkey next began licence-producing the TR-300 rockets (or T-302, upgraded from the four-barrel WS-1B MLRS) under the
Turkish designation Kasırga (tornado). In late 1998, based on a similar contract signed with the state-owned China Precision Machinery Import-Export Corp (CPMIEC),Ankara ordered some 15 of China’s most advanced short-range surface-to-surface battlefield support missiles (SSBSM) — the 150km-range B-611 — and under Project J-600T, began license-producing an additional 200 more under a USD 300 million deal. The first such missiles — known as Yıldırım (thunderbolt), were deployed as early as 2001.
The solid-fuelled Yildirim-2 variant, featuring a 300km-range, was subsequently developed jointly by the defence industries research and development institute of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK-SAGE), Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corp (MKEK), and the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp (CASIC), while it was series-produced by Roket Sanayii ve Ticaret (Roketsan).
Chinese hand in Pakistan and Turkey’s cruise missiles
