# MKE launches subsidiary in Egypt

- Link: https://www.military.africa/2026/09/mke-launches-first-company-in-egypt/
- Published: 2026-09-23T10:46:36+01:00
- Author: Israel Chukwuma

Turkey’s state defense manufacturer, Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation(
MKE), has opened its first company in [Africa](https://www.military.africa/2026/03/turkey-positions-itself-as-africas-security-partner/),
a Cairo-based subsidiary called Zafer (meaning Victory), MKE General Manager Ilhami
Keles announced on 8 September 2026 at the El Alamein International Airshow in Egypt.

Keles told the Anadolu Agency that Zafer is registered entirely under Egyptian law,
with MKE holding all of its shares. The company will run MKE’s commercial activities
in Egypt and act as the legal partner for joint ventures with Egyptian firms. It
mirrors a similar legal entity MKE already runs in Azerbaijan, its only other foreign
subsidiary.

![Tolga El Alamein MKE](https://www.military.africa/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Tolga_El_Alamein_2026_MKE-
1024x803.jpg)

The Tolga system on display at the 2026 El Alamein International Air Show. Photo:
MKE

MKE, a Turkish state-owned firm with roots tracing back centuries, makes munitions,
artillery ammunition, small arms and air defense hardware. Keles said Zafer will
help MKE use Egypt as more than a customer, positioning it as a manufacturing and
export base reaching into wider Africa and the Gulf. “Egypt can produce military
vehicles”, he said, according to Anadolu. “We are moving forward with joint production
integrating Egypt’s capabilities with our turret and command-and-control systems,
as well as our hard-kill and soft-kill solutions”.

At the same airshow, Keles said MKE views Egypt less as a “market” and more as a
country with which it can do joint business, pointing to the shared political and
historical ties between the two nations. He also noted that MKE signed a separate
contract at a defense exhibition in Sarajevo shortly before traveling to El Alamein;
A sign the company is pursuing similar legal-entity arrangements elsewhere as it
expands beyond Turkey and Azerbaijan.

The Egypt launch builds on a framework defense agreement signed in February 2026,
when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met Egyptian President Abdel Fattah 
el-Sisi in Cairo. Turkish media put that contract’s value at roughly[ $350 million](https://www.military.africa/2026/02/egypt-turkey-signs-350-arms-and-joint-production-deal/),
including about $130 million for MKE’s Tolga short-range air defense system and 
the remainder for local production of artillery and small-arms ammunition, including
a planned 155mm shell factory.

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Tolga is the centerpiece of what MKE is now selling into Egypt. It is a layered 
short-range air defense system (SHORAD) built to counter drones, cruise missiles,
and other low-flying threats. A mobile radar, electro-optical sensors, and an electronic
jammer form the outer layer, detecting and disrupting drone navigation and communication
links out to roughly 3 km. If a target keeps closing, the system switches to kinetic
defense: a 35mm cannon effective to about 3,000 meters, a 20mm gun to 1,000 meters,
and 12.7mm turrets for anything inside 300 meters. All 3calibers fire MKE’s own 
programmable fragmentation rounds, timed to burst near the target. MKE said it has
integrated a laser weapon and its ENFAL-17 missile. In a live-fire trial on 17 July
2026, the company reported a 100 % success rate across 7 scenarios in front of about
150 military observers.

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MKE’s Middle East and Africa regional manager, Ersin Kandur, said earlier this year
that demand for air defense systems from Gulf states had risen since fighting started,
involving Iran, with particular interest in the Tolga line. Turkey also sold Tolga
to Qatar earlier in 2026. For Egypt, officials have described the initial sale as
a symbolic first step meant to introduce the system into the country’s inventory
before wider joint production begins. The system’s radar component, known as Gokboru,
is an AESA (active electronically scanned array) unit that MKE says can track more
than 200 targets at once across a 360-degree field, feeding data to a command-and-
control center that can run the system manually, semi-autonomously or fully autonomously.

The Zafer venture fits a broader pattern of defense-industrial convergence between
Ankara and Cairo since the two governments restored full [diplomatic ties](https://www.military.africa/2024/02/turkey-greenlights-drone-sale-to-egypt-as-diplomatic-relations-improve/)
in 2024, following roughly a decade of estrangement after Egypt’s 2013 change of
government. Since then, the countries have layered on agreements covering unmanned
systems: A March 2025 deal to produce [unmanned ground vehicles ](https://www.military.africa/2025/03/havelsan-partners-with-egypts-kader-on-unmanned-ground-vehicle-project/)
and drones in Cairo; an August 2025 agreement on vertical takeoff and landing drones;
and a [partnership](https://www.military.africa/2025/08/turkish-havelsan-and-egypts-aoi-embark-on-joint-uav-production/)
between Turkish firm Havelsan and Egypt’s Arab Organization for Industrialization,
signed later that same month. Turkey is also clearing a way for Egypt to join its
[KAAN fifth-generation](https://www.military.africa/2025/08/egypt-approved-to-join-turkeys-5th-gen-kaan-stealth-program/)
fighter program, a move that would give Cairo a stake in next-generation airpower
development alongside Ankara.

2024 saw the company’s annual revenue breach the $1 billion mark for the first time,
growing to just under $1.5 billion in 2025.

MKE operates eight locations in Türkiye, comprising ten factories and three additional
facilities, and has built a commercial presence in the Balkans, the Middle East,
North Africa and Central Asia through various defence contracts and joint ventures.
It is actively pursuing new ventures in North America and Southeast Asia.

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“We are trying to expand both our production network, our network of contacts and
our market around the world with these capabilities. The current international environment
is also very conducive to this, and we intend to make use of it,” Keleş told Anadolu.

For MKE, the practical value of Zafer is legal and logistical rather than symbolic.
An Egyptian-registered company lets the firm sign local contracts, hold assets, 
and structure joint production lines without routing every deal through Ankara, 
the same model it uses in Baku. For Egypt, the arrangement offers access to Turkish
turret, command-and-control, and counter-drone technology while building domestic
ammunition capacity, an appeal made sharper by how central drone warfare has become
in current conflicts, giving Egypt an incentive to build domestic capacity rather
than rely on imports.

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