Erdogan announces missions to the Moon amidst economic crisis

Erdogan, during the presentation of the program of the Turkish Space Agency (TUA), this Tuesday in Ankara.TURKISH PRESIDENT PRESS OFFICE / / EFE

Promising the moon is synonymous with promising the impossible.

But the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is in a position to do so: "We will reach the Moon by means of a hybrid rocket of national production that will be launched at the end of 2023, the centenary of the Republic."

As the president explained on Tuesday when unveiling the program of the Turkish Space Agency (TUA), founded by presidential order just over two years ago, Turkey will join the select club of countries that operate extraterrestrial missions.

It will serve as yet another prop of international projection for a country embarked on an increasingly expansive foreign policy, as well as to develop its own technology for civil and military use.

Ankara also intends to send a manned mission into space in the next decade.

"Space programs lead to the direct and indirect development of other fields and enhance the technological, industrial and scientific capabilities of a country," explains Arda Mevlütoglu, an expert in defense policy and aerospace technology.

“The other reason is that it symbolizes the ambitions of a country.

Achieving the objectives of an aerospace program, even if only a few, gives a lot of international prestige ”, he adds.

“For the civilization we represent to once again be the world leader, Turkey must advance in the space race (…).

We will make this nation proud to see how the red and crescent flag is sent to the moon, "Erdogan said in his speech.

In light of the moment - bad situation of the family economy and companies, university protests and drop in support in the polls - this announcement is also valid to shift the public debate towards more optimistic horizons.

The Turkish space program will have several phases.

The most hasty, in 2023, will consist of a

hard landing

, basically, crashing a rocket on the Moon.

It is what the Soviet Union and the United States did during the space race of the 1960s until the triumph of the

Apollo 8

mission

, although in the first decade of this century the European, Indian and Chinese space agencies carried out exercises Similar.

This will provide the TUA with knowledge and experience to carry out a

soft landing

in 2028 that allows scientific research.

Another objective is to put a manned mission with at least one Turkish citizen on a scientific mission into space orbit within a decade.

Although, for the space program to be a truly "national" success, one of the first steps, according to the Turkish president, will be to find a fully "Turkish" equivalent to the word astronaut.

Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the far-right MHP party and Erdogan's partner in government, has proposed the term "

cacabey"

in honor of Cacaoglu Nûreddin Cebrâil, a 13th-century emir of Anatolia who built a madrasa teaching astronomy.

And, in addition, he died fighting the Byzantines.

It is difficult to estimate the viability of a space program in such short time frames.

In fact, Erdogan acknowledged that the first lunar mission must be sent into space with the help of a third country, although he did not specify which one.

The second, no: it will be purely national.

“In terms of human resources, the current ones are not enough.

We have a lot to do on this issue, ”says Mevlütoglu.

The brain drain from the political and economic situation in recent years - or the arrest of one of the few Turks who work at NASA while on vacation in Turkey - has not done much for it.

The amount budgeted last year for the TUA, three million euros, is negligible when compared to the budget of the European Space Agency (5.7 billion), although the Minister of Technology, Mustafa Varank, has clarified that they have funds from other organizations such as the public conglomerate of military industry - which develops the rockets - or the Council for Scientific and Technological Research, which designs the satellites.

It is in these two fields that the Turkish space program can really generate remarkable technical advances.

Last month, Turkey launched its

Turkstat 5A

communications satellite

from the US and with the cooperation of Space X, with whose founder, Elon Musk, Erdogan spoke by phone to offer to collaborate in the Turkish space program.

In the second quarter of this year, another communications satellite will be sent into space with what will be five Turkish aircraft of this type in orbit.

There are three for observation and surveillance and a fourth will join next year:

IMECE

, a satellite designed and manufactured entirely by Turkey and which will offer high resolution images for civil and military use.

In 2025, a microsatellite developed by Roketsan, the state-owned artillery, rockets and missiles company, is scheduled to launch.

All these satellites are, for the moment, put into orbit from abroad, since Turkey lacks the technological capacity to do so.

However, last November, Roketsan announced that one of its probe rockets had reached 135 kilometers above sea level, surpassing the so-called Kármán line (100 km) that separates the atmosphere from outer space.

"Our next goal is, in the shortest possible period, to put a 100 kilogram payload into orbit at an altitude of 400 kilometers," said Roketsan director Murat Ikinci last October.

These milestones, in turn, will lead to advancements in Turkish military products, an industry that has developed enormously in the last decade allowing Turkey to become an exporter of advanced military technology and taking steps towards self-sufficiency in this field.

“This will probably allow further development of the military industry because there is a great intersectionality between space and military technologies”, Mevlütoglu considers: “I do not think that Turkey intends to manufacture ICBM because, unlike Iran, it does not. planned within its evaluation of strategic threats, but it could achieve the technological capacity to develop them thanks to its space program ”, he adds.