Turkey has started mass production of its Altay “national tank”, a defence official said on May 28.

"We have started the mass production of our national tank. There are countries that want to work with us on this internationally, and we are continuing our negotiations with them," Haluk Gorgun, head of the Presidency of Defense Industries (SSB), told public broadcaster TRT Haber.

The project to produce Turkey’s first domestically-made main battle tank began taking shape around 25 years ago.

Designed by Otokar, the Altay is based on the South Korean K2 Black Panther and is produced, under the auspices of the SSB, by Turkey’s BMC Defence under design assistance and technology by Hyundai Rotem. It is named in honour of Army General Fahrettin Altay, a commander in the final stage of the Turkish War of Independence.

Prolonged delays hit the Altay project in 2018—the programme was relying on German 1,500 hp MTU engines and RENK transmissions, but because of a German federal arms embargo applied to Turkey due to its involvement in the Syria Civil War, such reliance became infeasible.

Eventually, BMC Power, a subsidiary of BMC, replaced MTU as engine subcontractor for a 1,500 hp engine. BMC Power is the designer and manufacturer of the serial production BATU V12 1,500 hp engine.

In March 2021, BMC announced that it planned to import a Korean power pack, which combines a Doosan Infracore (now HD Hyundai Infracore) DV27K engine and SNT Dynamics EST15K transmission, and complete the performance testing of the Altay tank.

The Altay is operated by a crew of four and has dimensions of 7.3 metres in length, 3.9 metres in width and 2.6 metres in height.