Aren't there significant restrictions on defense sector workers going to work for other countries, I know for the US there are significant restrictions if you try to take a position in a foreign country, even an allied country, not sure about the german laws, but they might have something similar. Plus these defense companies guard their trade secrets and intellectual property like hawks, would MTU and RENK really allow a dual citizen access to proprietary tech and would they really allow defections of engineers to other countries? Defense sector is always going to be valued for production, they might do EVs but Tank and military vehicles for the most part will always be ICE for the foreseeable future. Also its not like the Koreans couldn't hire similar engineers, i can't imagine there being stricter restrictions on South Korea than Turkey, yet we still saw South Korea struggling with the transmission, the engine they did fine, the transmission seems to be something they struggled with.
I thought the plan was for the first mass production batch to be with German powerpack then eventually down the road increase indigenization? Or did you mean that they should have started with a Turkish powerpack for the very beginning, and no German powerpack, b/c there are downsides and risks to this development strategy as well, just like there are risks with the "Ship of Theseus" type strategy. For example look at the delays/failure of the Tejas project b/c of the struggles to develop an engine, they only got the project back on track after decoupling the engine from the rest of the platform. TB2 was the same way, its rapid production was based on off the shelf purchases of the camera, and engine, which they eventually replaced with domestic alternatives.