Recep Tayyip Erdogan strongly condemned Canada’s decision to stop the export of drone technologies to the country in a recent conversation with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, suggesting that it goes against the nature of the NATO alliance, the president’s office has stated.
“During the call, President Tayyip Erdogan said Canada’s suspension of the export of some military goods to Turkey due to the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict is against the spirit of the alliance”, Erdogan’s office said.
Aside from discussing issues of defence industry cooperation, the heads of the two states also touched upon bilateral relations and trade, the presidential office added.
The tensions between Ankara and Ottawa over the suspension of the sale of drone-related technologies started after Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne announced the move on 5 October.
The order came in light of a report by the Canadian arms control group Project Ploughshares, which claimed that videos of aerial strikes in Karabakh distributed by the Defence Ministry of Azerbaijan suggests the use of the imaging and targeting systems produced by a subsidiary of Canadian firm L3Harris Technologies.
Turkey criticized Canada’s decision to suspend drone tech exports and called on the country to avoid resorting to a “policy of double standards” dictated by the “influence of anti-Turkish groups”.
