A little over a year ago there was an agreement to transfer XK2 tank technology and sell KT-1 trainers to Turkey. Per the Turkish Daily News, it appears that the deal for the tank technology has been signed today. Corresponding KT article here. It appears that the next generation Turkish tank won’t be a direct copy of the XK2, but will also incorporate K1A1 technology and pre existing Turkish technology as well.
This will be Korea’s second largest arms export deal after a $1-billion license over the K-9 self-propelled howitzer, which was also with Turkey.
This is likely not the last time Korea and Turkey cooperate on the exchange of military hardware and technology. There appears to be a broad agreement between the two countries to build a “technological alliance.” However, perhaps one can question if Korea should join hands too closely with a country know for this and this.
{ 42 comments… read them below or add one }
“However, one can’t be too sure if Korea should join hands too closely with a country know for this and this.”
WTF? All of NATO joins hands closely with Turkey.
Oh, sorry. We’re not talking about NATO, are we? That was a tu quoque comment of the highest order.
Is that why France (a non-NATO nation) did this?
Sadly, Koreans don’t seem to care about the human rights abuses of others.
Korea’s odd rash of anti-Semitism is just one example, though its also strangely uncontroversial ban on the Dalai Lama is probably a better one.
But really, if a large portion of South Korea is willing to turn a blind eye to what Kim Jong-il is doing now, why would they bother to care what Ataturk did almost 100 years ago?
France isn’t part of NATO?
Yes, but with typical French-like provisions…
“France rejoined NATO’s Military Committee in 1995, and since that time has intensified working relations with the military structure. France did not, however, rejoined the integrated military command and no non-French NATO troops are allowed to be based on its soil. The policies of current French President Nicolas Sarkozy have resulted in a major reform of France’s military position, culminating in a pledge in June 2008 to rejoin the military command of NATO while maintaining an independent nuclear deterrent.”
Per Wiki.
Turkish technology??? Like the technology in THIS film???
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7069307816427160377
Read somewhere that Israel of all countries also tows the Turkish government line in regard to the Armenian genocide. They apparently do this,as they need to have a strong diplomatic relationship with Turkey, not sure why.
I think it’s ’cause the Arabs still fear the Turks…
But that is suprising, given their own recent history…
As WangKon mentioned we are and are not a member of NATO. General de Gaulle kicked da Yanks out in the 60s, which left us which large, unused US bases, some of them still there and largely “ghost bases” like Neuvy-Paillou. The economy of some cities dipped after the US left — but some companies like Harry’s had by then developed well enough to withstand the loss.
Harry’s is an interesting example. Based in Chateauroux, a dull city where a large US base once was, they started making, in the country of “baguette”, soft, white, US-style bread to sell to the base. And guess what? The locals liked it so much, it’s now part of the culture, and if you told young people “Harry’s bread” was born out of the US presence in France, they’d probably wouldn’t believe it, and then choke on their soft bread
Remember the Turks are the guys who try to convince the world they are Europeans, while selling themselves as the gateway into Iraq and the Middle East…
What do the French have against the Turks? Large Armenian population in France?
#5,
Right, because we all know that there are thousands upon thousands of non-American NATO forces stationed all over the US.
” if you told young people “Harry’s bread” was born out of the US presence in France, they’d probably wouldn’t believe it, and then choke on their soft bread ”
Pshaw. Contrary to what Americans think, the French consumers are very much pro-American.
Mmm…trouble with my browser. So, here goes once again…
#5,
…and there are thousands upon thousands of foreign NATO troops stationed all over the US.
#11,
Mainly the same reason some Americans have a problem with Arabs: racism.
PS. One of the most famous Frenchmen in Hollywood is actually Turk (by birth).
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001409/
WangKon936, actually it’s the contrary. There is a huge population of Turks all around Western Europe, France including. I’ve seen them in Alsace making really BIG weddings, blocking the whole traffic, making incredible noise and terrifying the locals by waving sheets of Turkish flags (which makes me wonder – why make a wedding look like a war manifestation?).
A Korean-Turkish alliance looks more like the Chinese affair with Sudan and Burma. But at least Chinese reap some benefits of it.
Sell them tanks and weaponry, ok, but a “technological alliance” sounds funny.
It’s just trade after all.
Let’s not be too harsh with Koreans, as a matter of fact we all trade with dictators once in a while. And if Korean tanks are used against Kurdish civilians (as usual), then it’s not Koreans fault, since they Turkey could buy them from another place as well.
Wangkon, you’re forgetting that in Korea (but not in the West), Turkey is known for this:
http://www.tallarmeniantale.com/korean.htm
The Turks were arguably the finest soldiers in the Korean War (perhaps shaded by the Chinese). I interviewed a Korean POW who told me that the Turks in the internment camps also had a strong sense of honor and dignity, and were highly respected by the other prisoners.
A lot of Koreans remember the Turks fondly. It’s not surprising they’ve maintained military ties.
Since when did we get a huge hate-on for the Turks?
OK, the Kurdish issue aside, Turkey is NOT a dictatorship — it is, last time I checked, the only country even approximating a secular democracy in the Muslim world, a NATO member in good standing and an important US ally since the 1950s. Isn’t it still the third-largest recipient of US military aid, after Israel and Egypt?
Now we’re comparing the Turks to the Sudanese and Burmese? WTF?
Good on the Koreans for getting this tank deal. And yes, Korea and Turkey have a long history of cooperation, both being front-line Cold War states. And as anyone who has been to the UN Cemetery in Busan knows, that cooperation has been cemented with a lot of Turkish blood.
Hey Robert,
I agree there’s no need to get a “hate-on” for Turkey, but if WangKon is going to suggest Korea not do so because of Turkey’s human rights problems, well… we’re probably going to talk about that.
True, Turkey’s not a dictatorship, but it’s not much of a democracy, either. It may be heads and tails better than most countries in the Middle East, but that’s not saying a lot. And Turkey may have shed a lot of blood for Korea, but so did Thailand and Ethiopia, and you don’t see Koreans getting misty-eyed over them.
The hard-on Koreans have for Turkey is one of the things that has interested me a lot as an American, because it makes me wonder how pro-American SK might be if it didn’t have any US troops in it. I really don’t know, but I do wonder.
“it is, last time I checked, the only country even approximating a secular democracy in the Muslim world”
India has 153 million Muslims and is a secular democracy. Are Indonesia and Malaysia secular democracies?
And despite the Queen’s status as head of the Church of England, Britain is a secular democracy.
Robert,
The current 3rd largest recipient of US foreign aid (after Israel and Egypt) is Columbia (battling the FARC and cocaine, usually at the same time). However, if we want to talk about all time receivers of aid, accounting for inflation of course, then that winner would still be South Korea. Explain that to some left-leaning Koreans sometimes, drives them batshit.
Park,
Oh no, I’m not saying that Korea should not work with Turkey due to those two issues. I guess what I’m saying is to what degree. Remember, Korea is a nation that would also like some official acknowledgment from a nation that they feel has done them wrong. Wouldn’t it be somewhat superficial for Korea to work closely to a nation that it’s thought of as Japan in the degree of its unacknowledged history?
Also, weapons that Korea sells to Turkey will be used against the PKK, which is an organization that sees itself as a freedom fighting organization. They may or may not be, but at the end of the day, Korean weapons will be used against Kurds. Something that may resemble a K-2 tank will rumble into a Kurdish town and may run over Kurdish civilians. Korean weapons will be used to kill civilians (whether or not it was intentional or unintentional by the Turks). Korea will have to be prepared for that. Maybe it won’t make a big difference. Maybe there will be a lot of apathy. I don’t know.
Economically, the relationship between Turkey and Korea makes a lot of sense. The deal with Turkey has essentially allowed Korea to recoup all their R&D costs for the K-2 tank and then some. Korea needs other avenues for growth and other markets: cars, TVs, cell phones, etc. have been saturated. Arms sales is an avenue of economic growth. Selling arms helps Korea get money to pour resources into R&D which in turn helps them develop better, more advanced weapons. Korea’s relationship with the U.S. will continue to wane, it’s only the speed of which that’s debatable. The U.S. is Korea’s greatest access to weapons technology. That access will decline. It’s just a matter of time. Korea has tough choices to make and decisions that weigh the moral implications of being a major weapons exporter may have to take a back seat in all of this.
Dimitar (#14):
WangKon936, actually it’s the contrary. There is a huge population of Turks all around Western Europe, France including.
I agree that there are many more Turks in Western Europe than Armenians – especially in Germany. However, if you go to the Rhône-Alpes in France it’s possible to find a decent-sized Armenian population. It’s sizable enough that, when Olympique Lyonnais won their first league title, at least one national paper made a reference to Armenians in the region. During my own trip there it seemed like I was meeting more Armenians than Maghrebins.
I’m sure at least a few politicians saw that bill as a good way to gain votes from an ‘overlooked’ segment of the population.
and they are also the guys who continue to deny that great technology transfer of the eighties-the turkey tang.
What people don’t seem to be aware of is that the Turkish military is quite different from the rest of the country. They are still the guardians of Kemalism even as the rest of Turkey is slowly but surely sliding towards inevitable Islamic fundamentalism. I don’t think the military can stay secular indefinitely.
“India has 153 million Muslims and is a secular democracy.”
But India is a not a Muslim nation, though it should be noted that they’ve had a lot of problems with Islamic terrorism. Just like Thailand and so many other countries.
“Are Indonesia and Malaysia secular democracies?”
I don’t know if they’re democracies and I can’t be bothered to look it up, but I do know they’re not anywhere close to secular. They’re both becoming more and more Islamic every day. A country cannot simultaneously be both Islamic and secular.
# 10,
You know what’s funny? Some Turks try to convince Koreans that they some Altai connections between them.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/special/2008/07/176_4062.html
Another article about the deal here:
http://english.kbs.co.kr/news/newsview_sub.php?menu=3&key=2008073009
So the deal is $330M in technical support and $70M in components and prototypes. Since most of the deal is in human resources (it appears), the margins on this deal must be killer.
The performance of the Turkish UN contingent during the Korean war is up to dispute. I recall reading a hefty tomb on the the Korean war where the author cited one officer as being dismissive of the turkish performance. He noted that the commanding general only put them up on the line against the Chinese because of their impressive mustaches which he thought were manly. The Chinese prisoners that were originally reported to have been captured turned out to be fleeing ROK forces that the Turks did not identify correctly.
A lot of the “heroism” attributed to the Turks looks like simply mythologizing after having more half their brigade chewed up by the PVA and rendered unfit for further combat. There was a lot of logistical and communication issues that hindered the ability of the Turkish brigade to support the UN forces. If measured by the standards of an American unit, heads would have flown amidst it’s commanding officers.
Jing, and that tome is?
It may have been Clay Blair’s The Forgotten War. Not certain though, I’ve read enough Korean war histories that they tend to blur. Kunuri was not the Turkish brigade’s finest moment. A lot of the post-facto praise by media and higher ups was essentially propaganda to booster morale in light of the disaster that befell the 8th army. Those high casualty figures suffered during what is essentially a confused retreat can be characterized as a testament to bravery and endurance, more critically though, it’s also a testament to a poor performance especially in light of the material advantage enjoyed by UN forces.
Jing, weren’t the PVA pretty much shitty in combat, relying on mass suicide to interfere with another country’s unification, and to eventually make it a satelite buffer while your own Mao starved, imprisoned, and butchered millions within Red China, because he was so stupid?
inhae jun sool, I recall as in my Ban Kong gyo yuk in the Republic of Korea education system.
The way I look at it… the Turks sent soldiers during the Korean war and will probably send soldiers if Korean war II breaks out. They seem to be an important ally. I doubt PKK will send troops if DPRK start shooting artillery.
If hell breaks lose and the Turks come with Firtinas and K2 variants, it will seem like a mighty good idea to sell technology to the Turks.
Here’s Japan trivia for you guys:
Japan prohibits itself from exporting military weapons of any kind, in accordance with its pacifist constitution.
Japan- the threat to world peace and stability.
Squatch,
It was a constitution that no Japanese had a hand in crafting. It came down from the sun god from the big land to the east, MacArthur tenno.
So? It doesn’t change the fact that the Japanese follow it.
Remember what happened to Abe’s goals of amending the constitution. It went nowhere, because he really didn’t have support.
The link that Robert gave on his new thread was kind of good with respect to Japan: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20080730a1.html
Are there places to get decent döner kebab and baklava in Korea besides the shithole known as Itaewon?
Typical of WJK to blithely ignore reality in favour of the glorious minjuk. Almost every time the ROK army was matched up against the PVA, it ended up underperforming and I am being generous. Invariably whenever the Koreans were put on the front, they would route when struck and the other UN forces on their flanks would be forced to pull back and straighten the line to prevent being isolated. The U.S. had a very poor impression of Korean fighting prowress during the Korean war.
Jing,
I thought about the performance of the ROK army during the Korean War and put down my thoughts on it in a review of a book on Amazon.com.
Instead of reinventing the wheel, I’ll just directly dump the review here.
I’m glad I found this gem of a book. I’ve read more then a few Korean War books and they take a decidedly American point of view. It’s not to say that this is wrong, but it’s certainly unbalanced. Many of these other books go on to describe the ROK army as cowardly, unreliable and prone to breaking. Finally there is a Korean commander that puts the record straight.
Yes, it was true that the ROK army at the time were not up to American Army standards, but it’s not fair to put the same expectations on them. It doesn’t take a genius to know what happens when militia goes against a heavily equipped professional army head-to-head in the open field. Militia loses every time, just look at how the British man handled continental armies in the first few years of the Revolutionary War. In 1950 the ROK army was the equivalent of a militia as it was very much under equipped, with no armor, air force and very little artillery (some 60mm and 80mm mortars and a few light 105mm pieces).
The U.S. had purposely left the ROK army under equipped and it was designed from the ground up as a lightly armed anti-guerilla force. The ROK army had a very poor junior officer corps, there was not school to train junior officers. The U.S. was too preoccupied in rebuilding Japan and sent very limited funds to South Korea. Proper equipment was not sent, no school for junior officers was established. Anyone who knows something about military matters knows that the backbone of an effective army are the junior officers, the lieutenants, captains and majors that lead the troops into the teeth of enemy fire. The North Korean Army (NKA), on the other hand, had an effective junior officer corps because many of the veterans were anti-Japanese guerilla fighters. Furthermore, the Russians supplied NKA with T-34 tanks, YAK fighter bombers, 155mm artillery, etc. Heavy artillery, tanks and close air support gave the NKA heavy offensive power.
It is not mentioned very often, but American trooped faired NO BETTER against the NKA during the first few months of the war. 24th ID troops ran from their positions when their antiquated WWII era bazookas just scratched the paint off NKA T-34s. It was carrier based air power that saved the Americans from being overrun.
General Paik tells stories of desperate battles, where ROK soldiers wrapped satchel charges around their bodies and threw themselves in suicide missions onto NKA tanks. ROK soldiers did the best they could with the weapons and training they had on hand. General Paik provides a fair and often underappreciated reason for why ROK units faired badly in the early part of the Korean War. As far as I’m concerned, any student of the Korean War cannot consider himself a expert unless he’s read Paik’s book. It is wrong to not put into consideration the viewpoint of the nation that contributed the most manpower and had the most casualties of all the UN forces. No Korean War library can be considered complete without this book (how many Korea War books have a glowing foreword by Mathew B. Ridgeway himself, huh?).
General Paik Sun Yup was the 29 year old commander of the ROK 1st division. The 1st ROK division had the distinction of the only ROK unit that never retreated from their positions without orders. It was also the only ROK unit that was attached to a U.S. Army Corp for the duration of the war and given tasks expected of a regular U.S. infantry division. General Paik was adamant about the fact that given the proper artillery, armor and air support, the 1st ROK division always performed as well, if not better then any regular U.S. infantry division. The 1st ROK also had the distinction of being the first UN unit to enter Pyongyang, beating several better equipped U.S. units in the race to the NK capital.
so, Jing, were you a communist Chinese who came to the US, or were you a Kuomintang Chinese who came to the US, or are you a 3rd world Chinese from Hong Kong or Malay, or Indonesia, or Korea, or Singapore who came to the US?
I find it interesting that you Chinese have suddenly switched over to proclaim ownership in the greater People’s Republic of China, although your ancestors may actually have fled it or fought against it. This is also a reason why you all should be kept our of US military research facilities. You’ve built a reputation of copying and stealing military and industrial technology, with no shame whatsoever.
PRC is a Nationalist, Socialist, Militant, and Human Rights Abusing, Industrial country. (I demand world recognition for my keen observation, by the way)
Just like Germany was.
Bottom line is, ROK troops provided the bulk of the fighting force and they actually held the line, (unlike the Southern Vietnamese or the current Iraqis), thus they are quite an honorable force (although the rich never fought, unless they were Japanese era officers carrying over)
Your Chinese troops are documented to have sufferred greater than a 2:1 loss versus the American troops.
That’s shitty quality fighting, and you basically responded to advanced equipment of the US, with the ability to bear greater human casualties.
Your own Chinese people should raid Mao Zedong’s manoleum and desecrate it. He’s a Stalin, a Hitler, and Pol Pot, and a piece of shit.
Interesting article about the Turkish MBT program and South Korean tech transfer.
http://jamestown.org/edm/article.php?article_id=2373297
My favorate quote?
“Turkey will have the full rights over the final product including export licenses. It was, however, noted by Chief of Staff Yasar Buyukanit that South Korea inserted a clause in the contract prohibiting the export of the tank to North Korea, Japan and China (Milliyet, August 1).”
Huh? North Korea and China I understand, but also Japan?
But you share their delusion that Japan is a potential threat. Not surprising at all.
squatch,
You misunderstand me. However, I don’t feel the need to explain myself if you are going to cling to such mentally lazy assumptions.
Well, I hope it’s a misunderstanding.
You must log in to post a comment.