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Baykar Makina Sanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş.
Baykar designs and builds drones, especially armed ones, and sells them mostly to Turkey and to other countries' militaries.
Baykar is a Turkish drone maker. Its most famous product is the Bayraktar TB2, a slow-flying, propeller-driven drone that carries small bombs and missiles. Militaries use it for surveillance and for striking targets on the ground. The company also makes bigger, faster jet-powered drones, and it is working on a fighter-like unmanned aircraft that can take off and land on a short runway at sea.
The customer is almost always a government or its armed forces. A country buys the drones, the ground control stations that fly them, the sensors, and the training and spare parts that keep them flying. Customers choose Baykar for a blunt reason: the TB2 is cheap compared with a fighter jet, it is proven in real combat, and it has embarrassed much bigger and more expensive air-defense systems. That reputation turned a small family firm into one of the world's best-known drone makers. The company is private, run by the Bayraktar family. Selçuk Bayraktar, an engineer trained partly in the United States, is the public face and chief technology officer, and he is also President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's son-in-law. That connection is part of the story and part of the criticism: Baykar grew fast at a time when the Turkish government was pushing hard to build a domestic defense industry, and it won large state orders. Supporters point to the drones' combat record; critics point to the family ties. Both are true, and both matter for understanding the business.
Baykar's rise has been dramatic and export-driven. The TB2 became famous after it was used effectively in conflicts in Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Ukraine, where it helped knock out Russian armor and air defenses early in the war. That fame brought a wave of foreign buyers and made drones one of Turkey's fastest-growing export industries. The risk is built into the business: governments can cancel orders, sanctions can cut off parts, and the battlefield keeps changing as electronic warfare and better air defenses make slow drones easier to shoot down. That is exactly why Baykar keeps pushing toward faster, stealthier, jet-powered aircraft.
Saved answer · last researched 10 Nov 2026