Despite the fall of colonialism after the Second World War, imperialism has continued with various derivatives of capital exports in a much more complex manner. Today, one of these derivatives manifests itself in the form of farming by renting/purchasing agricultural land in a foreign country.
The US, China and the major countries of the EU are primarily farming land in various countries, mostly in Africa. Turkish capital has also joined this trend due to its new expansionist position.
Under the Soviet Union, Ukraine became the world's largest agricultural research laboratory and experienced a revolution in agricultural productivity. Today, the size of arable land in Ukraine is estimated at around 100 million hectares. Before the war, 10% of the world's wheat, 13% of barley, 15% of corn and nearly 50% of sunflower exports came from Ukraine. We will need this information when we talk about the "grain corridor". Countries like China and Saudi Arabia have leased large tracts of agricultural land from Ukraine. As for Turkey, just before the war, some 40 companies were operating on 25-30 thousand hectares.
Moreover, the most important export of capital from Turkey was in the construction sector, and Ukraine had become a major hub for Turkish construction companies.
However, the most important sector related to Turkey's role in the war was the military and arms trade. The tense situation between Ukraine and Russia did not start in 2022, but long before. The military relations that had developed between Turkey and Ukraine before 2022 continued with the war.
First of all, in the low-intensity war in Donbass and Luhansk, the UCAVs and small arms supplied by Turkey were instrumental and Ukraine became a market for Turkish arms monopolies. But there was another reason why Turkey oriented towards Ukraine.
Before the Second World War, Turkey had a planned and nationalist economy and was rapidly developing on the path of industrial development. However, after the war, when it came under US hegemony, the direction and pace of industrialization was disrupted. Due to this imperialist intervention, Turkey was unable to produce engines until recently. On the other hand, the military industry, which has developed rapidly in the last 15 years, needed engines for tanks, warships and UCAVs. They wanted to transfer technology, not just to import engines. For this reason, Turkish capital turned its eyes to Ukraine with its engine factories left over from the Soviet Union. Ukraine, on the other hand, was eager for mutual technology transfer and thus a military alliance was born.
During the visit of Zelensky, who was elected as the President of Ukraine as a functionary of Euro- Atlantic bloc, to Turkey in October 2020, a military cooperation agreement was signed between the two countries. The use of Turkish UCAVs during the Karabakh war had led to a covert embargo against Turkey by Euro-Atlantic bloc. Thus, Turkey turned to Ukraine for intermediate products in arms production.
In 2022, just 3 weeks before the war, Erdoğan visited Ukraine, a cooperation agreement on high technology, aviation and space was signed and it was decided that Baykar was to build a drone factory in Ukraine. [4]
When the war started, the Ukrainian army was already utilizing a lot of equipment of Turkish origin. Which equipment was sold to Ukraine was generally kept secret from the Turkish public, and we only learned as much as was reported in the Ukrainian or Russian press. One example is the use of radios produced by Aselsan, a Turkish technology company, by Ukrainian infantry and armored units. There has also been some mention of Turkish-Ukrainian co-production of anti-tank missile launch systems. In the maritime sector, naval ships have also started to be produced by Turkey for Ukraine. In 2021, a corvette was launched at the Istanbul Shipyard Command. [5] It was also reported that composite helmets and ballistic vests imported from Turkey for Ukrainian army soldiers provided a psychological advantage over the Russian army at the beginning of the war. [6]
However, the most important item in the arms trade was UCAVs. It is not possible to know the exact number as it is kept secret, but according to the press, around 50 UCAVs were supplied by Turkey. UCAVs played an important role in the beginning of the war. Just before the war, when the Ukrainian army was provocatively attacking Luhansk and Donbass, Russia was offended by the sharing of an image of a Turkish UCAV destroying a Russian cannon. [7] The Turkish side responded to Russia's complaints by saying that the company selling the UCAVs was private and that they could not interfere. In reality, the state and arms monopolies were intertwined and it was not clear who was managing the process.
The sinking of the Moscow, the flagship of the Russian Navy in the Black Sea, was also claimed to be the result of UCAVs supplied from Turkey. While these UCAVs were occupying the radars of the battleship Moscow, they are said to have been shot down with Neptune missiles. [8]
On the other hand, while Euro-Atlantic bloc is sending young people to the front to die, it has also poured so many weapons into Ukraine that Turkey's arms exports to Ukraine have been overshadowed. It is not easy to estimate the current level of arms supplies from Turkey due to the greater secrecy of information under wartime conditions.
As for the supply of engines from Ukraine, the engine factories used in the production of UCAVs, ammunition and combat helicopters were repeatedly bombed by Russia during the war. Therefore, the import of Ukrainian engines for Turkey's arms industry may have been interrupted.