Türkiye Exports Counter-Drone Machine Gun to Azerbaijan
Turkish defence firm SYS began overseas shipments of its helicopter-mounted CANiK M3 FALCON counter-drone gun to Azerbaijan — over 40 units across 20+ helicopters — and Pakistan, with chair Zafer Aral also announcing a $50 million Kosovo armoured-vehicle deal at the SAHA 2026 fair in Istanbul. Togg announced a partnership with CATL to co-develop a B-segment EV chassis with three models, the first slated for mass production in 2027. Istanbul police arrested 11 suspected Daesh members tied to social-media propaganda, part of the sweep that followed the April 7 Israeli Consulate attack.
Türkiye's industrial day on May 7 ran on three tracks that all point the same way: a country positioning itself as a counter-drone, EV and security exporter rather than a price-taker on each.
The headline came from the SAHA 2026 International Defence and Aerospace Exhibition in Istanbul, where Turkish defence firm Samsun Yurt Savunma (SYS) said it had begun overseas shipments of the CANiK M3 FALCON, a 12.7x99 mm heavy machine gun adapted for helicopter mounting and designed to destroy Shahed-type loitering munitions in flight. SYS chair Zafer Aral told Anadolu the company was sending more than 40 FALCONs to Azerbaijan for integration into over 20 helicopters, with first shipments also dispatched to Pakistan. The weapon reaches 1,200 rounds per minute and is paired with the radar-cued tactic of having helicopters take off and intercept Shahed-class drones, which fly at about 250 km/h and so are within helicopter speed. Aral said tests for fitting the system to Türkiye's domestic Gökbey helicopter were completed in Konya alongside Aselsan, and that prospective customers from the Gulf to the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Africa are actively in contact with the firm.
At the same fair SYS also signed a deal worth more than $50 million with Kosovo to arm 100 of the Balkan country's existing armoured vehicles with turrets and 30x113 mm cannons. SYS is showing alongside a wider "integrated defence ecosystem" with UNIROBOTICS that links TRAKON remote-controlled weapon stations, CANiK heavy machine guns and the VENOM LR medium-calibre cannon system into a single Distributed Mobile Layered Air Defence Architecture. Aral framed the proposition as a low-cost, exportable counter to the new battlefield: "Wars are now being fought with low-cost unmanned land, sea, and air vehicles and the most effective weapons these vehicles can carry."
On the civilian-industrial side, Türkiye's electric-vehicle maker Togg said it had partnered with Chinese battery giant CATL to jointly develop a chassis platform for a new B-segment family. The two companies will co-develop three models on the same platform, with the first slated for mass production in 2027 and successive models due to reach Turkish customers gradually from the middle of next year. The deal slots into Türkiye's pattern of pairing domestic OEM ambition with Chinese supply-chain depth, rather than choosing between Western and Eastern partners.
The day's domestic security story sat on the same arc. Turkish police arrested 11 suspected Daesh members in simultaneous raids across Istanbul; authorities said the detainees were involved in Daesh propaganda on social media. The operation forms part of a nationwide sweep following the April 7 attack near the Israeli Consulate in Istanbul, an incident that has driven a steady cadence of urban-counterterror operations through the spring.