In recent years, with its relations with both the U.S. and Europe on a downward spiral, Turkey has sought to highlight its capability to produce domestically-built military hardware. It has done so by showcasing its ability to design and produce drones, both reconnaissance and armed variants, and has plans to build its own fifth generation fighter jet, the TAI TFX, as well as its own main battle tank, the Altay.

“We no longer buy them (drones) from America or Israel. Our F-16s hit the targets identified by our drones. We will completely remove terror from the agenda of this country,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently declared, referring to Turkey's ongoing campaign against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Iraqi Kurdistan. In May, in the run up to the elections, the Erodgan also declared that Turkey “will continue to produce our own weapons and become a global power. We will increase our defence industry values like our Altay tank, ATAK helicopter, drones, armed drones.”

“Turkey's goal is to have 100 percent indigenously-made land, air, and sea defence systems,” he added.

While Turkey remains a long way off from being equipped with mostly indigenous built weapon systems – like the militaries of the United States, Russia or France are – it has still made significant progress and is certainly not completely dependent on foreign exporters for weapons systems and spare parts.

Turkey's Bayraktar Tactical Block (BTB2) drones, which Erdogan alluded to, are reportedly one of the most advanced of its kinds in the world and have, on hundreds of occasions, successfully designated targets for Turkey's F-16s, gunships and artillery and even struck targets with its own munitions, a significant achievement.

For Erdogan Turkey's drone program is also arguably a family business. The technical director of Turkey's Baykar Makina drone producer, Selçuk Bayraktar, married Erdogan's daughter two years ago. Last January a photo of Erdogan's own son, Bilal, in a drone control room during the Afrin operation was published on social media by Selçuk and subsequently denounced as inappropriate by the Turkish opposition.

Outside of his family circle, 25 percent of BMC, the manufacturer of the Turkish military’s armoured vehicles, is reportedly owned by Turkish business tycoon Ethem Sancak. Sancak once went so far as to say that upon becoming “acquainted” with the Turkish president he “saw that divine love is possible between two men.”

Putting aside Erdogan's personal connections to his country's arms industry it is clear that Turkey has an increasingly formidable ability to produce its own weapon systems.

"The Turkish defence industry has made considerable progress in the past decade and the country is now using domestically produced or manufactured weapons in major conflicts abroad," Aaron Stein, a Turkish analyst at the Atlantic Council think-tank, told Ahval News. "There are still bottle necks and the rhetoric from the AKP far outpaces reality, in terms of how 'independent' Turkey really is from foreign suppliers, but that shouldn't distract from the progress made."

A relative rarity in the Middle East, which consists primarily of oil-rich rentier states that rely almost entirely on imports, modern Turkey has actually proven quite adept at manufacturing various things. As the historian Norman Stone once observed: "When the country started off, in 1923, you could not even have a table made, unless by an Armenian carpenter, because the legs wobbled, the Turks not knowing how to warp wood. Now, they make F-16s."

Ankara wants to demonstrate that it can do more than produce F-16s under license. During its operation in Syria's northwestern Kurdish Afrin region earlier this year Turkey's state-run news agencies Anadolu and Daily Sabah (along with the ultra-right-wing Yeni Safak) enthusiastically pointed out that Turkish-made weapons systems were being deployed against Turkey's Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) adversary. Everything from T-155 self-propelled artillery guns and Kirpi (“Hedgehog”) mine-resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles to T129 ATAK helicopter gunships.