New Anatolian, Turkey
May 13 2006
Copter tender rests on Armenian card
Evren Deger – The New Anatolian / Ankara
Turkey’s drawn-out decision to purchase combat helicopters will be
shaped by the play of the Armenian card in the French Parliament,
which recently proposed a bill threatening prison terms for people
who question the controversial Armenian genocide claims.
The fate of the estimated $2 billion Attack and Tactical
Reconnaissance Helicopter (ATAK) tender, which began last year and is
expected to be finalized by June, will be affected by the vote set to
take place in the French Parliament on Thursday.
Four companies have submitted proposals for the tender that seeks 91
helicopters (30 firm, 20 additional and 41 optional).
The firms that submitted their request for proposal documents to the
Defense Industry Undersecretariat were Italian Agusta, French
Eurocopter, Russian Rosoboronexport and South African Denel Aviation.
The models proposed are Eurocopter’s Tiger, Agusta’s A129 Mangusta,
Rosoboronexport’s MI-28 Havoc and Denel Aviation’s CSH-2 Rooivalk.
>From among these four models, interest has only been shown in the
French and South African options.
According to defense industry observers, the final decision, which
will be made in June, will be shaped by the French Parliament’s
decision on the Armenian bill.
Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer sent a message to his French
counterpart Jacques Chirac this week warning passage of the bill
could have serious consequences.
Should the French Parliament pass the bill in question, the likely
winner of the tender will be South Africa’s Denel Aviation. The same
defense circles said that the South African model has a phenomenal
success rate after passing many technical tests.
ARABASLIK: History of ATAK tender
It has been 10 years since the ATAK project was initiated in 1996. In
the first tender opened that year, there were no results to come out
of contract meetings to discuss U.S. firm Bell Textron’s King Kobra
model and Russian firm Kamov’s Erdogan model. The Defense Industry
Executive Committee canceled the tender in May 2004 and it has since
entered another phase.
Two companies from both the U.S. and Europe, as well as one company
each from Russia and South Africa, were invited to take part in the
tender. The American firms, however, withdrew last summer over a
clause in the tender granting the approval of the administrative
specifications from the beginning of the tender.
Following the withdrawal and delays in proposals from other firms,
especially the South African offer, the deadline for submissions was
extended from last June last year to Sept. 13.
The deadline was later again pushed back to Nov. 8 in order to give
other companies, including those in the current four, the opportunity
to to make an offer.