Turkey to buy Chinese missile defence system
In a contract worth US$3 billion, China Precision will help manufacture an advanced weapons system for the Western-aligned nation
China has won the bid to co-produce a multibillion long-range air and missile defence system in Turkey, in what is its largest and most advanced arms sales to a Nato country.
The winning Chinese FD-2000 system beat the Patriot, the Russian S-400 and the French-Italian Eurosam Samp-T, it was announced on Thursday.
The FD-2000 is the export designation of the HQ-9 air-defence system.
Turkey, which has the second-largest military force by personnel numbers in the Nato alliance, has no long-range missile defence system of its own, but Nato has deployed the US-built Patriot air and missile defence system there since 2012.
In January, Turkey restructured its US$4 billion surface-to-air missile programme, dubbed T-Loramids, which had originally been made as an off-the-shelf purchase consisting of radar, launchers and intercept missiles.
As a Nato member equipped with the US' Patriot defence systems, Turkey has been urged by its Western allies to remove China and Russia from its bidding list for air-defence projects because of questions over Chinese compatibility with its existing Nato-sponsored early warning architecture.