Why Is the Turkish Defence Industry Growing in the Balkans? Scale, Donations and Five Empty Rows

Six of the eleven countries on the Balkan peninsula operate Turkish defence equipment. What they have in common is not the size of their budgets but the smallness of them. In the Gulf the answer to “why Turkish?” was access. In the Balkans the answer sits elsewhere: in a small army’s need to acquire an alliance-standard capability quickly and with limited money.

This file reads the Turkish defence line in the Balkans in a single table. Romania’s armoured-vehicle decision was examined in the fifth file of this series and is not repeated here; Romania appears only through its TB2 row. The focus is five buyers — Kosovo, Albania, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia — and five empty rows: Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Greece and Slovenia. As in the Gulf file, the empty rows count as evidence. The Turkish original is here.

Who bought what, and who did not

The table contains only contracts, deliveries and donations verified through public sources. Where a price was not disclosed, no press figure was substituted; donations and sales are marked separately.

The first thing the table says is scale. The largest single contract in the Balkans is Romania’s 18-aircraft package, and even that sits below Kuwait’s deal in the Gulf. The other four buyers took between three and six aircraft. The second thing is variety: commercial sale, donation and production transfer sit side by side in one region. The third is how many rows are empty — five of eleven — and that one of them, Serbia, was once a prospective buyer.

The decisive variable: scale

In earlier files price was rarely at the centre of the decision. Gulf buyers had money; in Africa price mattered but mine protection and delivery speed decided. The Balkans change the equation. Most armies in the region number eight to ten thousand; North Macedonia’s 2025 defence budget is about $388 million and Kosovo’s entire force is around five thousand. For an army of that size a six-aircraft UCAV fleet is a measurable share of the budget.

The one contract with a known price

Most Balkan TB2 contracts have no disclosed value. The single known figure is Croatia’s: six aircraft, a command-and-control station, simulators, spares for 4,000 flight hours and training for 67.01 million euros excluding VAT. That number sets the regional scale. Poland’s 2021 contract was $270 million for 24 aircraft; Croatia’s per-aircraft figure sits in the same band. Romania’s 18-aircraft package came to about $321 million including munitions, logistics and training.

The other end of the region provides the comparison. Serbia signed a $335 million package with Israel’s Elbit Systems in January 2025 covering Hermes 900 drones, PULS rocket launchers, missiles and electronic warfare, with deliveries expected to run until mid-2028. The two packages do not contain the same items — Serbia’s includes artillery and EW — so they cannot be compared line by line. But the difference in magnitude stands on its own: what Croatia paid for six combat-proven UCAVs is less than a quarter of Serbia’s first Israeli package.

Delivery speed: the region’s second criterion

A buyer with a small budget has a second priority: time. Kosovo’s late-2022 order was delivered in summer 2023; Croatia signed in November 2024 and paraded its first aircraft in Zagreb in August 2025. Those lead times — see the TB2 delivery record — sit in the same band as Estonia’s twelve-month armoured-vehicle delivery and confirm the recurring finding of this series: where transfer stays shallow, delivery stays fast. None of the Balkan buyers — Kosovo’s ammunition line apart — asked for an industrial share; all of them received aircraft within a year.

What were the alternatives?

Balkan armies had four lines to choose from in the armed-drone class. The US line — the MQ-9 family — stayed out of reach for armies of this size on unit cost and congressional approval time; the access problem described in the Gulf file shows up here as a cost problem. The Chinese line did not arise for NATO members and candidates on political and inventory grounds; the TB2–Wing Loong comparison explains why the two export models diverge. The Israeli line became Serbia’s choice, with the outcome above: higher price, longer schedule and an export version sold mostly unarmed. The Turkish line was the fourth option, first tested in the region by Kosovo.

The armoured-vehicle picture is more mixed. North Macedonia, having transferred its tank fleet to Ukraine, bought wheeled armour from the United States (Stryker, JLTV); the Turkish line there stayed at donations. Kosovo chose Otokar Cobra and BMC Vuran; Bosnia received Kirpi II by donation. Turkey’s armoured-vehicle range gives the region product breadth, but the Balkan armour line is nowhere near the scale of Africa or the Baltics; the Serbian and Romanian fit studies on this site show what remains open.

The Balkan version of the Turkish package

In the Gulf we counted four components: record, munitions, licence and a production share. The first three apply unchanged in the Balkans; the fourth exists only in Kosovo. Two regional components are added: the donation pattern and an in-alliance reference.

The donation pattern

The 32 Kirpi II and two TB2s going to Bosnia and Herzegovina are not a sale but a military-assistance package agreed in Antalya in April 2025 by the two defence ministers. The first four vehicles and two aircraft were handed over on 29 June 2025; Aselsan’s Kangal counter-drone system followed the same route in May 2025. The drones, communications and night-vision equipment delivered to North Macedonia on 30 August 2024 were donations too. This is the first time the pattern appears in the series and it has two consequences: no burden on the recipient’s budget, and no price to compare. It also enlarges the product’s regional reference: Bosnia’s army now sits among the European users of the Kirpi family.

An in-alliance reference

Albania’s three TB2s were shown on 4 March 2024 at Kucova, opened that day as NATO’s first tactical air base in the Western Balkans — the first regional case of a Turkish system stationed at an alliance facility. Romania and Croatia are NATO members; North Macedonia joined in 2020. The element the Poland file called “the first in-alliance reference” is now spread across four Balkan countries, and the interoperability question is answered in advance for every subsequent buyer.

Munitions and subsystems

Munitions are inside every Balkan contract. Albania’s covers laser-guided munitions; Croatia’s an initial weapons set. As in the Gulf, munitions from the same contract remove a separate approval cycle. Kosovo’s armoured vehicles carry Aselsan Sarp turrets and Roketsan OMTAS anti-tank missiles, so the Kosovo line gathers the products of four Turkish companies in one inventory; the Skydagger FPV line added a further layer in October 2025.

Five years of change

The timeline shows a line that began with a small vehicle contract in 2021 and spread to four countries between 2023 and 2025. The turning point is 2023: Kosovo’s delivery, Romania’s large contract and Serbia’s decision to shelve its plan all fall in the same year.

Three patterns: sale, donation, production

One region, three relationship types — the land-and-air version of the four contract patterns found in the naval file.

Kosovo: the deepest relationship in the region

Kosovo is both the first and the broadest Balkan buyer on the Turkish line. A BMC Vuran contract reported in 2021 became visible at the Kosovo Security Force inventory ceremony in May 2023: Vurans with Aselsan’s Alkar 120 mm mortar, Cobras with Sarp turrets and OMTAS. Five TB2s arrived in July 2023; FPV drones followed in October 2025. The real threshold is 16 December 2024: Prime Minister Kurti and MKE general manager Ilhami Keles signed for a plant producing NATO-standard ammunition, delivered turnkey with machinery, staff training, maintenance and test equipment and run as a Kosovo public enterprise. In Kurti’s words, “we have purchased what Turkey produces, and now it is time to produce together.” On this series’ six-step scale that is step three, and the only example in the Balkans — a small-scale version of the production-line exports seen on the European ammunition line.

Croatia and Albania: the standard package

Both bought ready systems and asked for no industrial share. The detail of Croatia’s contract shows what a “standard Turkish UCAV package” looks like for the region: six aircraft split between two command centres, Baykar technicians in-country for the two-year warranty, spares sized to 4,000 flight hours. Croatia is replacing Soviet-era artillery with South Korea’s Chunmoo in the same period; the Turkish line is only the drone leg of that modernisation. In Albania the TB2 was defined for civil tasks as well — border surveillance, police operations, wildfire tracking — an example of a MALE platform used for many purposes in a small country.

Bosnia and North Macedonia: the limits of donation

In both countries the line was built on donations and, for now, stays there. When the 32-vehicle Kirpi II package is complete, a significant part of Bosnia’s armoured fleet will be Turkish-built; the two TB2s came with a training package. Press reports in autumn 2024 spoke of a six-TB2 purchase, but that line is not officially confirmed and is kept apart from the two donated aircraft. In North Macedonia the Military Cooperation Framework Agreement signed by Defence Minister Misajlovski at SAHA EXPO on 23 October 2024 gives training and industrial cooperation a legal basis; the Baykar file has been at the level of interest since 2023, with no contract.

Why is Serbia not on the list?

Serbia is the most instructive verified negative. Belgrade showed interest in the TB2 from late 2020; President Vucic said he had asked President Erdogan for the system, and talks continued in 2022. After Turkey sold TB2s to Kosovo, Vucic said in 2023 that Serbia had cancelled the planned purchase. The decision was not technical: the platform’s performance, price and delivery schedule were never in dispute. Serbia then turned to the Israeli line for the same class, at the price and on the schedule reported above, and the joint drone plant with Elbit was scheduled to open in September 2026.

This row tests the file’s thesis. If the Turkish package is attractive in the Balkans on price and speed, why did a country that saw the same attraction not buy? The answer lies in a political context that this series does not present as the main driver. Serbia shows that the limit of the Turkish line in the region is the relationship, not the product. The Montenegro, Bulgaria, Greece and Slovenia rows are different: no known talks about Turkish systems; Montenegro meets its naval need through France’s Kership, Bulgaria and Greece their air and naval needs through US and European lines. The Black Sea military balance is covered separately.

EM-PFI assessment

Because this is a regional file, the score assesses the Balkan line as a whole, not one country’s decision. Romania’s own score in file five was 82; Kosovo on its own would score higher for production transfer, North Macedonia lower.

The breakdown confirms the backbone of the series once more: near full marks on cost and delivery, lowest marks on technology transfer and local production. Balkan buyers chose speed; only Kosovo asked for depth. Indonesia made the opposite choice, and both are consistent at their own scale.

Risks and limits

This section exists to make the file usable, not to weaken the product.

The view from the alliance

For a reader who follows NATO, the Balkan line answers a question the alliance has struggled with for a decade: how its smallest members acquire the unmanned strike capability that larger allies take for granted. The US line has never been priced for an army of five thousand. European MALE programmes remain years away from export. What Albania, Croatia and Romania have done is fill that gap with an allied product that is already combat-proven, arrives within a year and is stationed, in Albania’s case, on a NATO base. The same logic runs through the list of the most-used UCAVs: the type that spreads is the one a small budget can afford.

The second alliance-level point is industrial. Kosovo’s ammunition plant and the MKE–PGZ air-defence memorandum in Poland belong to the same trend: Turkish manufacturers exporting production capacity into NATO’s eastern and southern flank at a time when the alliance is asking members to rebuild stocks. For the Balkans that trend is still one plant on paper. Whether it becomes a pattern is the question the next two years will answer.

Balkan buyers chose the Turkish defence industry to acquire alliance-standard capability quickly on a small budget. The package answered with the Gulf’s four components plus two regional ones — the donation pattern and the in-alliance reference. The line built in five countries is limited, as Serbia shows, by relationships rather than by product. Its growth depends on two variables: whether donations convert into commercial support contracts, and whether Kosovo’s plant opens. Both are forecasts; this file recorded only what was signed and delivered. Regional profiles are available for Serbia, with fit studies on electronic warfare and border security; the full series sits on the Turkish defence exports hub.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and method

• Croatian Ministry of Defence (MORH) — TB2 contract, 21 November 2024; Zagreb parade, August 2025
• Office of the Prime Minister of Kosovo — TB2 delivery (16 July 2023), MKE ammunition plant agreement (16 December 2024); Kosovo Security Force inventory ceremony (May 2023)
• Albanian Ministry of Defence and manufacturer statements — TB2 contract (20 December 2022), Kucova base opening (4 March 2024)
• Romanian Ministry of National Defence and Baykar — TB2 contract (April 2023), first system (June 2024)
• Bosnia and Herzegovina and Turkish Ministries of Defence — Kirpi II and TB2 handover (29 June 2025), Kangal donation (May 2025)
• North Macedonian Ministry of Defence — donation ceremony (30 August 2024), SAHA EXPO framework agreement (23 October 2024)
• Office of the President of Serbia — TB2 plan shelved (2023); Elbit Systems contract (January 2025)
• International defence press — press-based items for undisclosed values, marked in the text

Method note. Orders and deliveries, sales and donations, official statements and press reports are kept apart. No figure was written for a contract whose value was not disclosed. The Serbia row rests on official statements only; political context is not presented as the main driver. Forward-looking sentences are marked as forecasts or assessments. EM-PFI is Envanter Medya’s editorial assessment, not an official index.