Turkish entrepreneur Selçuk Bayraktar produces a popular combat drone and is married to Erdoğan’s youngest daughter. Will his successor soon be inherited?
Selçuk Bayraktar stands with his hands folded in reverence on the edge of a pile of rubble in Kahramanmaraş. He looks directly into the camera lens in front of him, meaningful piano sounds rise from the off, a short cut to a proudly fluttering Turkish flag. In the next few seconds, Bayraktar is seen in slow motion talking to grieving women, shaking hands with firefighters, and stomping through newly built neighborhoods. According to the embassy, he helped out in Turkey’s earthquake zone like no one else. Donations in kind, financial aid, real estate projects. Good video material for almost three million followers each on Instagram and X.
This is how a president poses. Or?
Selçuk Bayraktar is not even formally a politician. With his brother he runs a company called Baykar, which used to produce car parts and now produces combat drones. As of this year he is Turkey’s largest taxpayer. But perhaps the most important detail: In 2016, he married Sümeyye Erdoğan, the youngest daughter of the actual head of state, in a conference center on a lagoon in the Sea of Marmara. And all of this – wealth, military power, family ties – is connected because: Bayraktar could actually one day be at the head of Turkey. From First Son-in-Law to Hereditary President.
A certain Erdoğan fatigue has set in
Of course, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan still resides in the gigantic 300-room palace in Ankara, and will probably do so until 2028. But the end of this reign is casting its first shadows. Erdoğan is now 70 years old. He looks battered and therefore beatable. At a time when an economic crisis has left the population breathless, his nationalist policies have worn thin. “After 23 years in power, a certain level of Erdoğan fatigue has set in,” says Yaşar Aydın from the Center for Applied Turkish Studies (CATS) at the Science and Politics Foundation star.
The latest sign of this is the local elections at the end of March, in which Erdoğan’s ruling party AKP was punished and some town halls were lost to the largest opposition party CHP. Political scientist Aydın speaks of a “reminder”. And it probably says, in a fairly prominent place: Looking for a potential successor: Selçuk Bayraktar?
Erdoğan doesn’t seem to have much choice anyway. He has always kept intra-party competition small in recent years. He himself was the fixed star; nothing should be able to shine next to or below him. Erdoğan therefore mainly sent pale candidates into the race for the local elections. “Within the AKP, no one is posing as a successor. There is no second man, not even a third, fourth or fifth,” says Aydın. If one name comes out of the party cadre, it is that of Hakan Fidan, the current foreign minister and Ex-secret service chief.
Erdoğan’s own children also seem unable to fill their father’s shoes. Son Bilal became embroiled in corruption allegations and is considered a dolt. Son Burak, the firstborn, is a shipowner and somewhat of an outsider in the family. The two daughters Sümeyye and Esra were hardly developed politically. And son-in-law number two, Berat Albayrak, who was once considered Erdoğan-to-be, has recently been burned by his short time as finance minister.
So that leaves Selçuk Bayraktar, who has been circulating as a successor for several months. “I can imagine this for various reasons,” says researcher Aydın. “Erdoğan is afraid for his future. He needs a successor he can trust. Bayraktar would be someone like that.”
Accent-free English, gelled hair, aviator sunglasses: Bayraktar symbolizes the rise of his country
The 44-year-old is also popular with the people, almost a star. The English is almost accent-free, the black hair is styled straight up like your own career, the appearances in a flight jacket and aviator sunglasses. A dynamic and successful entrepreneur, at the same time a devout Muslim. Many Turks see him as the personified rise of their country into a high-tech nation.
Bayraktar comes from a wealthy Istanbul engineering family. When he was still young, he worked on radio-controlled model airplanes in his father’s company, an automotive supplier. Some he hid under his bed. Toys soon became combat equipment. Bayraktar conducted research into autonomously flying drones and helicopters at elite American universities. He spent his semester break with the Turkish military. The title of his master’s thesis: “Aggressive landing maneuvers of unmanned drones”.
Pompous celebration: In 2016, Selçuk Bayraktar married President Erdoğan’s youngest daughter Sümeyye. 6,000 guests came.
© AFP /Turkish Presidential Press Office
Today he is the technical director of the family business and is responsible for Turkey’s biggest export hit: Bayraktar TB2, with a wingspan of twelve meters and can be equipped with laser-controlled mini-bombs. Experts also call them the “Kalashnikov of combat drones”, not a high-flyer, but reliable and very cheap compared to the American and Israeli competition.
The low price makes the TB2 attractive for warmongering developing countries – and therefore the perfect propaganda machine for Erdoğan, who likes to see his country as a middle power between Europe, Africa and the Arab region. For him, military strength means global influence. In more than two decades of Erdoğan, the Turkish defense industry grew tenfold. And the son-in-law plays a big part in this.
Turkey has already concluded supply contracts for Bayraktar’s drones with over 30 countries. These include NATO states such as Poland and Romania, but above all also countries such as Turkmenistan, Qatar, Morocco, Chad and Djibouti. In Nigeria, the drone deals gave Erdoğan access to liquefied natural gas. In Ethiopia he had schools run by the hated and exiled oppositionist Gülen closed for the export of TB2. “Arms trade always has a diplomatic dimension. Erdoğan benefits from this company. He has also given it a lot of support and polished up. It’s a give and take,” says expert Aydın.
The New Yorker once headlined: “The Turkish drone that changed the nature of warfare.” The Turkish army has been successfully using the TB2 for years in its brutal fight against the Kurds – in Iraq, Syria and the southeast of its own country. Thanks to their help, their ally Azerbaijan also won the war against Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
And in Ukraine the name Bayraktar has already achieved cult status. A song was named after the whirring fighting machine and its developer, just like a lemur in the Kiev Zoo. Especially in the early phase of the Russian war of aggression, when Putin was marching towards the Ukrainian capital, the Turkish drones were an effective means against enemy armored vehicles. Selçuk Bayraktar is now the proud recipient of a Ukrainian Order of Merit.
Erdoğan still has one more trick to stay in power
The gunman has recently represented Turkey abroad more and more often. He now gives speeches and takes part in solidarity demonstrations for the Palestinians. Before that, he had hardly appeared in day-to-day political business. Is anyone taking a stand? Or will Erdoğan continue for longer?
The constitution only provides for two terms for the president. Erdoğan’s time would therefore have expired in 2028. Before the local elections, he said: “Within the framework of the law, these elections are my last.” But the potentate has often scaled the framework outward, especially through a constitutional change in 2017.
Yaşar Aydın doesn’t believe that he will once again stretch the supreme law in his favor: “He doesn’t have the necessary two-thirds majority in parliament.” But Erdoğan would still have a second trick to artificially extend his term of office: namely, if parliament called new elections. “If he succeeds in recovering economically within two years, then he could take this step,” says Aydın.
And if not, would Bayraktar be ready? Translated, his name means “standard bearer”. Would he represent the crescent and star to the world not only in a military but also in a political sense?
The engineer is still devoting himself to his aircraft. The TB2 has received a successor model called Akıncı. Saudi Arabia has already purchased a large number of units worth three billion US dollars. Erdoğan speaks of the “largest export contract” in Turkish arms history. At the same time, work is underway at Baykar’s headquarters on an unmanned combat aircraft and space rockets. Selçuk Bayraktar is a man of big projects. When he was recently asked in an interview whether he would say yes if his father-in-law named him as his successor, he replied: “If it’s necessary, I won’t shy away.”