In a stride toward bolstering its defense capabilities and reducing external dependency, Türkiye is marking a decadelong campaign of innovation and development in aviation technologies.

The quest to ensure self-sufficiency marked by the launch of a range of manned and unmanned platforms was crowned with a flight of the nation's first homegrown fighter jet, KAAN, which took to the skies for the first time last week.

"Türkiye is writing an epic in the field of the defense industry," President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Sunday, stressing the fact that Turkish drones are today safeguarding the skies of 34 different countries.

The unmanned combat aerial vehicles have transformed Türkiye into a major global supplier and became integral to Erdoğan's vision of a self-reliant defense industry, spanning from drones to fighter jets and warships.

"Behind the increasing reputation in foreign policy lies a strong defense industry; as dependence on foreign countries in the defense industry decreased, our effectiveness in the international arena has increased," Erdoğan told a gathering in southern Adana province.

KAAN, the fifth-generation warplane, is the ninth domestically developed aircraft Türkiye launched in the last decade alone.

"Take one more look at the sky," said Haluk Görgün, head of the Presidency of Defense Industry (SSB), on the social media platform X, attaching a video of domestic aircraft that have made their first flights in recent years.

The video showcases the training aircraft Hürküş, which was developed by the Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI).

The platform conducted its inaugural flight in late August 2013, gained critical capabilities over the years, and achieved export successes with further iterations.

It was followed by drone magnate Baykar's famed Bayraktar TB2 unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV).

The platform performed its first flight in late April 2014.

The drones have since helped swing conflicts in multiple countries, such as Azerbaijan and Libya, and lastly in Ukraine, where they played a pivotal role in countering Russian forces early into Moscow's invasion.

Bayraktar TB2 has been sold to more than 30 countries to date, including NATO and EU member states.

TAI's Aksungur followed and took to the skies for the first time on March 20, 2019, boasting a capacity to perform uninterrupted multirole intelligence, surveillance, recon, and attack missions, as well as its capacity to equip high payloads.

Akıncı UCAV, the larger sibling of TB2 and Türkiye's most advanced and sophisticated drone, took off in early December 2019.

It has since achieved a record in flight altitude for Türkiye and multiple export deals, including the biggest defense contract in the country's history that was agreed with Saudi Arabia last year.

Its developer, Baykar, is Türkiye's biggest defense exporter, having made sales worth nearly $1.8 billion in 2023, out of the country's total of $5.5 billion.

The company also launched the fifth-generation unmanned fighter jet, Kızılelma, which performed its first flight in mid-December 2022. Its mass production is expected to start this year.

Backed by an artificial intelligence (AI) system, Kızılelma represents a significant expansion of capabilities for slow-moving reconnaissance and missile-carrying drones. It promises to increase the existing platforms' top speed and carrying capacity.

Powered by a jet engine, Kızılelma shows similar exterior features to fifth-generation fighter jets. In addition to conventional drone missions, it can conduct air-to-air engagements.

Next came the Hürjet, Türkiye's first domestically produced jet-powered training and light attack aircraft.

It took to the skies for the first time on April 25, 2023, boasting an upper altitude limit of 45,000 feet, at a 1.4 Mach speed.

The vehicle continues to be developed with new variants, such as light attack, jet trainer and acrobatic demonstration.

Next in the line was Baykar's latest platform, Bayraktar TB3, tailored for the country's newly commissioned aircraft carrier.

A short-runway-capable version of Bayraktar TB2, the UCAV performed its inaugural flight in late October last year.

Equipped with the domestic PD-170 engine developed by TAI Engine Industries (TEI), it is the first of its kind.

It boasts the ability to fold its wings and is capable of landing and taking off from a ship, such as the homegrown combat ship TCG Anadolu, also dubbed the world's first drone carrier.

It is expected to be able to stay in the air longer, climb to higher altitudes, and carry more weapons than the TB2.

The latest addition to the homegrown drone fleet was Anka-3, the country's first flying-wing, deep-strike unmanned aerial vehicle.

The first vertical tailless drone with a turbofan engine took to the skies for the first time on Dec. 28, 2023.

As a new-generation UAV platform, the Anka-3 will be capable of performing different missions, such as reconnaissance, surveillance, and intelligence, with air-ground munitions, air-to-air ammunition, and radar systems.

It will be able to perform many tasks such as operation and communication relay together with other friendly elements.

Dubbed as Türkiye's most ambitious technology project ever, the fifth-generation warplane KAAN made its first flight on Wednesday.

The project was launched in 2016.

The jet will make Türkiye one of the few countries with the infrastructure and technology to produce a fifth-generation combat aircraft.

It is sought to replace the aging F-16 fleet in the inventory of the Air Forces Command, which is planned to be phased out starting in the 2030s.

Described by pilots as "an aircraft computer," KAAN will incorporate the most up-to-date capabilities with its AI intelligence and neural network, allowing the aircraft to perform air-to-air combat with new-generation weapons and precision strikes from internal weapon mounts at supersonic speed.

Türkiye aims to use domestically produced engines on KAAN in serial production, which is expected to start in 2028.

The profound transformation in Türkiye's defense industry has been spurred by a score of Western embargoes.

Over the last 20 years, the drive has aimed at reducing external dependency on Western arms through innovative engineering initiatives and domestically developed technologies.

It prompted the development of a range of homegrown air, land, and marine platforms, eventually helping lower Türkiye's foreign dependency on defense from around 80% in the early 2000s to about 20% today.

The ground covered since 2002 has reached a level where Türkiye exports more than 230 defense products to about 170 countries.

Its aviation industry is one of the key builders of aircraft structures and equipment and a provider of maintenance-repair services for the world's leading platform manufacturers.