Fuelling speculation that he is being lined up to succeed Turkish leader of two decades Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Selcuk Bayraktar, chairman of Turkish combat drone maker Baykar and a son-in-law of Erdogan, has said he may enter politics if circumstances dictate, according to the Patronlar Dunyasi business news website.

Bayraktar was reported as saying that he has never dreamt of being in politics or becoming president, but was not totally against the idea.

The 43-year-old—increasingly in the spotlight in recent years, partly thanks to the success of Baykar’s Bayraktar TB2 military drones in various conflicts—also reportedly stated that he was determined to develop Turkey’s national technology and was prepared to do whatever is necessary to achieve that goal.

“If this goal requires me to enter politics, I won’t hesitate,” said Bayraktar, also chief technology officer at Baykar, when asked if he has any plans to enter politics in the future.

Bayraktar along with Turkish naval commanders were in August invited aboard (see tweet above) the visiting USS Gerald R. Ford, the US Navy’s largest aircraft carrier, at the invitation of US Ambassador to Ankara Jeff Flake, while Flake visited the Teknofest Aerospace and Technology Festival in Ankara last week where he met with Selcuk Bayraktar and his brother Haluk, Baykar’s CEO.

Erdogan, 69, was re-elected president at the end of May for a term of office that he has said will be his last. That tenure will conclude in 2028.

Economist Timothy Ash of BlueBay Asset Management wrote on social media platform X that a photo posted by the US ambassador of himself with Selcuk Bayraktar showed that the president’s son-in-law is seen as the future in many ways.

“I think there has been a changing of respective powers of advisers around Erdogan,” Ash previously wrote in a note to investors in mid-August. “The rational/technocratic Bayraktars […] are increasingly taking a bigger role, more trusted by Erdogan and he is listening. I think they are telling truth to power… and that’s behind the policy 180 [on the economy] and key appointments.”