Turkish companies have signed nearly $8 billion in export contracts during the first three days of a major defense trade show, a senior official said on Friday.

Officials had expected that volume to be reached during the whole SAHA 2026 fair, which started on Tuesday and runs through Saturday.

The expo serves as a primary platform for showcasing Türkiye's domestic defense capabilities and has, over the years, seen billions of dollars added to the country's defense exports.

"At SAHA 2026, as a country, we achieved a historic record," Haluk Bayraktar, chair of the SAHA Istanbul, Europe's largest defense, aviation, and space industry cluster, said.

"In the first three days of the fair, our companies signed nearly $8 billion in export contracts," Bayraktar wrote on the social media platform X.

In recent years, NATO member Türkiye significantly ramped up its defense industry production.

It has injected billions of dollars to transform from a nation heavily reliant on equipment from abroad to one that is a major exporter and where homegrown systems now meet almost all of its defense industry needs.

For much of the past two decades, Ankara has expressed frustration over its Western allies' failure to provide adequate defense systems against missile threats despite Türkiye being a major NATO member.

The country currently exports more than 230 defense systems to 185 countries.

Türkiye's defense exports rose about 48% year-over-year in 2025 to a record of more than $10 billion. The goal is to lift the full-year figure to $11 billion, placing Türkiye among the world's top 10 biggest defense exporters, according to officials.

Contracts signed in the first four months of this year approached $7 billion, according to authorities.