The Turkish defense giant ASELSAN, which finished last year with sound financial results, managed to continue growing in the first months of 2020 despite negative global conditions over the spread of the pandemic, receiving more than $320 million (TL 2.1 billion) in new orders.

Company Chairman Haluk Görgün said on Thursday in a press release issued on the Public Disclosure Platform (KAP) that the company "continued its growth trend in the first three months of 2020 without losing momentum. "

ASELSAN will keep supporting its production power and research and development activities with strong financial results in 2020, as it did in 2019, Görgün noted.

He stressed that the novel coronavirus pandemic reveals the "fragility of the production and supply chains on a global scale" adding, "ASELSAN has designed the supply system by predicting possible crisis scenarios."

Today's success is the result of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s nationalization and localization efforts, which he started in the early 2000s, he said.

Görgün noted that more than 5,000 of ASELSAN’s suppliers are now domestic companies and "the share of those companies' productions in ASELSAN products has reached very high levels."

He went further, saying that limited material purchases from Far Eastern countries can also be replaced at home very quickly, minimizing any disruptions in the supply chain, adding that the ASELSAN works with reserve inventory in critical materials due to the strategic nature of its products.

"Our production will not be affected by possible supply-related problems in the near future," he concluded.

ASELSAN, which is the largest defense contractor in Turkey, is among the top 100 defense companies in the world.