Back to news

January 9, 2019 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

Turkish ‘brain drain’: Why are defense industry officials ditching their jobs in Turkey for work abroad?

By:

ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey's procurement authorities are working to identify why some of the industry's most talented individuals are migrating to Western countries — an exodus that could stall several indigenous programs.

Turkey's procurement authority, the Presidency of Defence Industries — also known as SSB and which directly reports to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — conducted a survey to better understand the migration.

A parliamentary motion revealed that in recent months a total of 272 defense industryofficials, mostly senior engineers, fled Turkey for new jobs abroad, with the Netherlands, the United States and Germany topping the list, respectively. Other recipient countries are Britain, Canada, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Poland, France, Finland, Japan, Thailand, Qatar, Switzerland and Ireland, according to the SSB's internal study.

The companies affected by the exodus are state-controlled entities: defense electronics specialist Aselsan, Turkey's largest defense firm; military software concern Havelsan; missile-maker Roketsan; defense technologies firm STM; Turkish Aerospace Industries; and SDT.

Findings among those who left and responded to the survey include:

  • 41 percent are in the 26-30 age group. “This highlights a trend among the relatively young professionals to seek new opportunities abroad,” one SSB official noted.
  • 40 percent have graduate degrees; 54 percent have postgraduate degrees; and 6 percent have doctorates or higher degrees.
  • 59 percent have more than four years of experience in the Turkish industry.
  • The largest group among those who left (26 percent) cited “limited chance of promotion and professional progress” as the primary reason to seek jobs in foreign companies. Other reasons cited include lack of equal opportunities in promotion (14 percent); low salaries (10 percent); and discrimination, mobbing and injustice at work (10 percent).
  • 60 percent said they found jobs at foreign defense companies after they applied for vacancies.
  • 61 percent are engineers and 21 percent are industry researchers.

Among the respondents' expectations before they would consider returning to Turkish jobs were higher salaries, better working conditions, full use of annual leave, professional management and support from top management for further academic work.

They also want the political situation in Turkey to normalize and for employees to win social rights in line with European Union standards. They also want to guarantee there won't be employee discrimination according to political beliefs, life styles and religious faith. They added that mobbing should stop and that employees be offered equal opportunities.

A recent article in The New York Times, citing the Turkish Statistical Institute, said more than a quarter-million Turks emigrated in 2017, an increase of 42 percent over 2016, when nearly 178,000 citizens left the country. The number of Turks applying for asylum worldwide jumped by 10,000 in 2017 to more than 33,000.

“The flight of people, talent and capital is being driven by a powerful combination of factors that have come to define life under Mr. Erdogan and that his opponents increasingly despair is here to stay," according to The New York Times. "They include fear of political persecution, terrorism, a deepening distrust of the judiciary and the arbitrariness of the rule of law, and a deteriorating business climate, accelerated by worries that Mr. Erdogan is unsoundly manipulating management of the economy to benefit himself and his inner circle.”

One senior engineer who left his Turkish company for a job with a non-Turkish, European business told Defense News: “I know several colleagues who want to leave but have not yet found the right jobs. I expect the brain drain to gain pace in the next years, depending on Western companies' capacity to employ more Turkish talent.”

https://www.defensenews.com/industry/2019/01/08/turkish-brain-drain-why-are-defense-industry-officials-ditching-their-jobs-in-turkey-for-work-abroad

On the same subject

  • 10 Biggest DoD Contract Awards for July 2022

    August 3, 2022 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security, Other Defence

    10 Biggest DoD Contract Awards for July 2022

    The 10 biggest contracts in July totaled $16,472,333,580, coming in at $10 billion less than June 2022 contracts.

  • An aerospace startup just won a contract to develop an Air Force One jet that can travel at Mach 5. Here's an early look at the engine that could rocket from New York to Paris in 90 minutes.

    August 7, 2020 | International, Aerospace

    An aerospace startup just won a contract to develop an Air Force One jet that can travel at Mach 5. Here's an early look at the engine that could rocket from New York to Paris in 90 minutes.

    David Slotnick 19 hours ago The Air Force One of the future might be getting a major speed boost. An aerospace company called Hermeus on Thursday announced a contract with the US Air Force and the Presidential and Executive Airlift Directorate to develop a hypersonic aircraft for the presidential fleet. While the next Air Force One, a modified 747-8, is due to be delivered by Boeing next year, the Hermeus contract looks toward its eventual replacement. Hermeus said it won the contract after designing, building, and successfully testing a prototype of an engine capable of propelling an airplane to Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound — about 3,300 mph. Mach 5 represents the delineation between supersonic and hypersonic speeds. The company completed those tests in March, Aviation Week reported. Hermeus plans to build a demonstrator vehicle over the next five years, with commercial aircraft envisioned in about a decade, Skyler Shuford, its cofounder and chief operating officer, said in 2019. A press release announcing the Air Force contract said part of the project would focus on integrating Air Force requirements into the airplane's designs. Hermeus emerged last year, announcing plans to develop a Mach 5 aircraft that could fly from New York to Paris in about 90 minutes. Ars Technica reported in May 2019 that the company raised an initial round of funding, led by Khosla Ventures, which it used to develop the prototype. Hermeus said it would use a turbine-based combined-cycle engine for the propulsion system, according to the report. The company's cofounders are alumni of SpaceX, Blue Origin, and the aerospace company Generation Orbit. At the time, Hermeus said it planned to use mostly existing technology and materials to achieve hypersonic travel. "We can make a vehicle fly that fast with today's technology," Glenn Case, a cofounder and the chief technology officer, said in a video published this spring. "We aren't getting into anything too miraculous," Shuford told Ars Technica last year. "We want to do engineering, not science." As of Thursday, the company listed about 10 open positions, including for airframe and propulsion engineers. https://www.businessinsider.com/hypersonic-air-force-one-hermeus-mach-5-2020-8

  • Safran buys AI firm Preligens for 220 million euros

    September 3, 2024 | International, Aerospace

    Safran buys AI firm Preligens for 220 million euros

All news