With record-breaking arms exports globally, Turkey’s growing market share in the Arab monarchies holds the potential to greatly expand Ankara’s role as a security provider across the Middle East and North Africa. At the same time, Turkey faces growing competition from Israel and India, which have significantly expanded their own weapons sales to the Arab monarchies, notably the UAE and Morocco. Deepening defense cooperation in ways that Turkey has not, Israel and India have engaged in the co-development of weapons systems with Arab defense firms and have established local weapons manufacturing in the Arab world. The next phase in the competition for the MENA weapons market share, as well as the regional geopolitical clout that accompanies it, could be determined by Saudi Arabia, raising Ankara’s geopolitical stakes in securing a sizable purchase of Turkish weapons by Riyadh.
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