ULAK Wants Turkish 4.5G and 5G Base Stations Inside Military Networks

Most of Türkiye’s military communications story is told in terms of radios, datalinks and satellites. ULAK Haberleşme adds a different layer: the cellular base station itself. The Ankara company built its name on 4.5G equipment that now sits on Turkish operator networks, and it is increasingly pitching the same technology to defence users who need a private mobile network that does not depend on anyone else’s towers.

What is ULAK Haberleşme?

ULAK Haberleşme A.Ş. is a telecommunications equipment maker based in Ankara. According to the company’s own website, it was established on 20 April 2017 by SSTEK, the Defence Industry Technologies holding company. Today ASELSAN holds 61 percent, SSTEK 38.7 percent and HAVELSAN 0.3 percent. That ownership chain puts it firmly inside the Turkish defence-industrial family, and ASELSAN in particular.

The company’s origin is the national 4.5G base station effort, a Presidency of Defence Industries (SSB) programme in which ASELSAN acted as prime contractor with the support of dozens of domestic firms. Press coverage from 2019 put the number of participating companies at more than a hundred, including Netaş and Argela. ULAK was the vehicle created to turn that development work into a product line.

How did a base station programme end up in defence?

The 4G/LTE development project was always a defence-industry undertaking, even though its first customers were civilian. Turkcell received the first deliveries; Türk Telekom and Vodafone followed. In August 2019, press reports said around 1,500 stations had been delivered and roughly half were already installed, with early sites including the Presidential Complex, the telecom regulator BTK’s headquarters and the METU Technopolis in Ankara.

The reasoning was less about market share than about supply security. A country that cannot build its own base stations depends on foreign vendors for the one piece of equipment that carries almost all mobile traffic. Türkiye was described at the time as one of only a handful of countries able to produce base stations domestically, a claim ULAK repeats today.

Scale has grown since. ULAK says it completed delivery of 834 base stations under the Universal Service Project run by the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, and Turkish trade press has reported roughly 3,000 to 3,100 ULAK stations in service. Türk Telekom said at Mobile World Congress in 2024 that it was working with ULAK on 4.5G expansion and 5G development, and called the project Türkiye’s first domestic base station effort. Six provinces, among them Artvin, Bayburt, Giresun, Gümüşhane, Rize and Ardahan, were reported as served by ULAK equipment only for 4.5G.

What does ULAK offer a military user?

The appeal is a self-contained network. A mobile private network built on 4.5G or 5G gives a unit voice, data and video over standard handsets and devices, on spectrum and a core network that the operator controls end to end. That is useful on a base, a port, a firing range or a deployed site where nobody wants traffic running through a commercial carrier.

ULAK markets this under public safety, disaster and tactical headings, and has described a portable base station that can be mounted on different vehicles and set up where coverage is missing. The company’s published product range also covers core networks and software-defined networking (SD-WAN, SD-DC), which matter as much as the radios when an organisation wants to own the whole stack.

It is worth keeping this in proportion. A cellular network is not a replacement for tactical radios or the datalinks that carry targeting and fires data. Those systems, covered in our piece on Türkiye’s tactical data links, are built around different priorities: jam resistance, low latency across moving nodes and strict waveform control. Private LTE and 5G fit better as a high-capacity layer for headquarters, logistics, camps and fixed or semi-fixed sites.

The UYGAR pod puts a base station on a drone

ULAK’s most direct defence product is UYGAR, a communication pod that lets an unmanned aircraft act as a flying 4.5G base station. According to reports, the project was assigned to ULAK by the SSB, and the pod was tested successfully on a TUSAŞ ANKA drone after field trials on the ground. The ANKA is a long-standing platform in Turkish service; the type’s user base is outlined in our guide to ANKA operators.

Reported figures for the pod include coverage of about 2 square kilometres at altitude, with a range of 2 to 5 square kilometres depending on flight height, and capacity of around 1,200 registered users. These numbers come from press coverage of the test, not from an independent evaluation, and should be read as a development-stage claim. The same reporting said the radio, core network and antenna were designed domestically over roughly two years.

The use cases are straightforward. A drone overhead can restore connectivity to troops where terrestrial coverage is missing or has been knocked out, and the same pod can serve earthquake and flood zones. UYGAR was displayed at TEKNOFEST, and ULAK has said it began drawing international interest. Company management described the system as at an early stage of commercialisation, with scaled production and export plans, potentially with TUSAŞ.

Who is ULAK partnering with?

At IDEF 2025, ULAK and Netaş signed a cooperation protocol on domestic wireless access. The plan combines ULAK’s 4.5G and 5G base stations with Netaş’s radio access and defence communications experience, aiming for secure, low-latency systems for both civil and military users. The stated target customers are public institutions, defence-industry organisations and operators. The protocol is a statement of intent; no delivery or contract value was published in the coverage reviewed.

Around the same time ULAK signed with Teknopark Istanbul to deploy domestic private 5G across the technology park for smart-campus uses. In March 2026, ULAK’s website announced a 6G development partnership with Turkcell and a collaboration agreement with ASPİLSAN Energy, the battery maker, without detail on the scope.

On exports, regional press has reported ULAK base stations in Tajikistan, Niger and Sudan, with Africa and Central Asia named as target regions. The company itself says its technology has been commercialised in more than three countries with four operators. Those export statements are the company’s and press accounts; no values were disclosed.

Where does ULAK fit alongside military satcom?

Terrestrial cellular and satellite links solve different problems. Satcom reaches ships, remote outposts and aircraft; a base station gives high-capacity local coverage. A deployed force will want both, with Türkiye’s military satellite communication capacity covering the long haul and a ULAK-style private network serving the local footprint. Command software then ties the layers together, a subject we examine in Turkish command-and-control systems.

The open questions are practical ones. Which military 5G profiles will the armed forces certify? How will private networks be secured and hardened for field use? And can a company whose volume still comes mostly from civil operators carry a defence-grade support chain? ULAK’s ASELSAN ownership gives it a defence customer path; what remains to be seen is how quickly protocols like the Netaş agreement and a product like UYGAR turn into fielded, contracted systems.