Can Türkiye Supply Europe’s Ammunition? What EU Rules Allow

Partly, and not in the way most European procurement offices assume. Türkiye’s two largest ammunition makers booked roughly $4.42 billion in defence revenue in 2025 between them — more than ROKETSAN — and Türkiye has spare capacity in exactly the categories Europe is short of. But a European programme manager cannot simply place an order for Turkish shells with EU money. Turkish firms sit outside the €150 billion SAFE loan instrument, and EDIP’s content rules cap non-EU components at 35 per cent. So the trade that is actually happening is different: Europe is buying Turkish production capability, and buying Turkish output through factories registered inside the Union.

How big Türkiye’s ammunition industry actually is

The clearest public measure arrived on 31 August 2026, when Defense News published its Top 100 list. Five Turkish companies made it, and two of them are ammunition houses. ARCA Defense entered the list for the first time at 53rd place, with defence revenue of $3 billion in 2025 against $653.2 million the year before — a 4.6-fold increase. MKE, the state ordnance corporation, ranked 81st on $1.42 billion.

Put those two together and Türkiye’s ammunition sector out-earned ROKETSAN, which ranked 64th on $2.37 billion. That is not the shape most outside observers expect from a defence industry whose public profile is built on drones.

Two caveats belong here. ARCA is privately held and does not publish audited accounts; its own communications describe the figure as export volume, and Defense News works from company-supplied revenue. And a single year of 4.6-fold growth is a data point, not a trend line. A buyer doing due diligence should ask to see the order book, not the ranking.

Why EU money cannot buy a Turkish shell

This is the part that gets lost in the general enthusiasm about Turkish industrial capacity, and it is the first thing a European buyer needs to understand.

The Council adopted the SAFE regulation on 27 May 2025: €150 billion in loans to member states for joint defence procurement, with the first disbursements landing in 2026. SAFE requires that at least 65 per cent of the value of a procured system originates in the EU, an EEA-EFTA state or Ukraine. Third countries can be brought inside that circle, but only through a prior security and defence partnership concluded with the Union under Article 218 of the Treaty. Türkiye has not concluded one. Greece and the Republic of Cyprus have linked any such agreement to the Cyprus question and to the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean disputes, and no administrative arrangement bringing Turkish industry inside SAFE has been confirmed.

The European Defence Industry Programme tightens the same screw. The Council gave final approval on 8 December 2025 and the regulation entered into force on 30 December 2025, with €1.5 billion running to 2027. EDIP Article 10(3) states that the cost of components originating outside the EU or associated countries must not exceed 35 per cent of the estimated component cost of the end product. Article 10(5) adds a design-autonomy test: beneficiaries must be able to decide freely on the definition, adaptation and evolution of the product design, without restrictions imposed by non-associated third countries.

What these rules do not do is stop a member state spending its own money. Romania, Estonia, Poland, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Croatia and Albania have all signed national contracts for Turkish equipment, as our survey of which NATO members operate Turkish defence systems sets out. The constraint is specific: it bites on EU-financed and EU-subsidised procurement, which is where most of the new European money is.

Route one: build the factory inside the Union

On 21 April 2026 the Estonian Centre for Defence Investments announced that Arca Baltics Operations, a subsidiary of ARCA Defense, would build an ammunition factory in the North Kiviõli defence industry park in Ida-Viru County, north-east Estonia. The investment is put at €300 million (about $350 million), the site at 141 hectares, and production at 155 mm artillery ammunition including extended-range variants, 60 mm, 80 mm and 120 mm mortar rounds, and 122 mm rockets. Production is planned from 2028, with roughly 1,000 jobs.

The Estonian debate around it is instructive, and worth reading before anyone treats the plant as a settled win. Estonian public broadcaster ERR reported that the company will initially produce for export only, and that parliamentarians and officials raised substantive questions. Meelis Kiili of the Riigikogu’s national defence committee noted that the M107 shell ARCA would start with has a short range; Indrek Sirp, a defence ministry adviser, said the Estonian Defence Forces buy 30–40 km ammunition and that ARCA plans to produce it. ERR also reported scrutiny of the background of the company’s chief executive in connection with a past US investigation. No finding against the company has been reported, and exports from the plant will need Estonian Strategic Goods Commission approval — but a procurement office will find all of this, and is better served reading it here.

The open legal question is whether output from an EU-registered, Turkish-controlled plant satisfies SAFE and EDIP. Registration in Estonia is the easy part. The design-autonomy test in EDIP Article 10(5) is the harder one, and it has not been publicly tested against a case like this. Nobody should assume the answer.

Route two: sell the plant, not the round

The larger and less visible business is capital equipment. Repkon, a Turkish metal-forming specialist, builds the machinery that makes ammunition — shell-body forming lines and, since its acquisition of Bowas (with operations in Austria, Italy and Switzerland), explosive-filling and explosives-production plant as well. That combination is unusual: very few firms anywhere sell both halves of an ammunition factory.

The European contracts are real and dated. In July 2025 Norway’s Nammo contracted Repkon to supply the filling line for Denmark’s restarted ammunition production at the Elling plant, covering TNT, IMX-101 and IMX-104 fills. Repkon has also announced a turnkey 155 mm explosive-filling facility for an unnamed German ammunition manufacturer, expected to be operational in early 2027 and bundled with a shell purchase order. The company lists further lines in Spain and Ukraine, and in the United States it won a $435 million US Army contract in November 2024 for a TNT plant at Graham, Kentucky, with a $108.7 million modification in May 2025.

This route sits outside the 65 per cent content rules entirely, because what is being sold is plant and services rather than a munition. It is also the route with the clearest evidence that it works — and the clearest evidence that it can go wrong. A Department of Defense Inspector General report dated 10 July 2026 found that the General Dynamics-operated projectile metal parts facility at Mesquite, Texas, built around Repkon-supplied lines, had as of March 2026 produced no projectile parts meeting contract specification; The War Zone reported the equipment was being replaced. We set out that case and the wider pattern in our study of where Turkish defence companies actually own plants abroad.

The bottleneck is chemistry, not steel

Europe’s shell problem was never mainly about forging steel bodies. It is about propellant and explosive fill, and above all about nitrocellulose. Rheinmetall’s chief executive Armin Papperger said in 2024 that European nitrocellulose producers sourced more than 70 per cent of their cotton linters — the short cotton-seed fibres from which nitrocellulose is made — from China. The Wall Street Journal has estimated that European nitrocellulose capacity would need to more than double, to roughly 20,000 tonnes a year, to meet projected demand.

Türkiye is one of the few NATO members that grows cotton at scale, processes it domestically and already nitrates it. MKE’s powder factory at Kırıkkale makes several types of nitrocellulose and propellant. The new Hüseyin Kâhya Energetic Materials Factory, also at Kırıkkale and part of MKE’s 2023–2027 investment programme, was scheduled to begin production in 2026 and will make nitrocellulose, gunpowder, rocket fuel, concentrated nitric acid and solid TNT; the Turkish defence ministry says it will roughly triple national capacity in those categories.

State it plainly: no export of that output to Europe has been announced. The factory was built to cut Türkiye’s own import dependence, which our assessment of how independent Turkish defence production really is treats as the country’s standing weak point. Whether any of it is offered abroad is a decision that has not yet been taken in public.

Turkish ammunition industry footprint in Europe, September 2026

What a European buyer actually gets

Three things distinguish the Turkish offer from the incumbent European one, and each has a cost attached.

Schedule. Turkish suppliers have repeatedly quoted and met shorter lead times than western European primes, which is the same reason Romania and Estonia bought Turkish armoured vehicles. In ammunition the equivalent is plant commissioning time rather than shell delivery: the Danish and German filling lines are on roughly two-year build cycles.

Turnkey scope. Repkon’s Bowas acquisition means one contract can cover metal parts, filling and explosives manufacture. For a government that wants sovereign capacity rather than a supply contract, that is a genuinely different product from buying shells from Rheinmetall or Nammo — and it is why those firms are customers rather than only competitors.

Price and terms. Turkish ammunition pricing is not published, and neither is the value of the Repkon German or Danish contracts. Any buyer will have to establish this bilaterally. The pattern in adjacent Turkish sectors, examined in our analysis of what a buyer actually gets from Turkish defence offsets, is aggressive on technology transfer and local content.

The limitations, stated plainly

Türkiye cannot solve Europe’s ammunition problem, and no honest reading of the evidence says otherwise.

Türkiye’s own consumption and stockpile rebuild come first; MKE’s new energetics plant was justified domestically. ARCA’s Estonian output does not exist until 2028 and starts with a shell whose range Estonian officers have publicly questioned. Repkon’s European contracts build other people’s capacity, not Turkish sales volume, and one high-profile reference has failed its specification. No EU member state has publicly announced a large purchase of finished Turkish artillery ammunition. And the political gate — SAFE association — is not controlled by industry on either side; it sits with EU member governments, two of which have unresolved bilateral disputes with Ankara.

Against that: Turkish capacity is real, growing fast, priced competitively and, unusually, sold in the form Europe most lacks. For readers who want the Turkish-language industry view of the same shift, Envanter Medya’s analysis of why European manufacturers are buying Turkish ammunition know-how rather than Turkish shells covers the industrial side in detail.

What comes next

Three things are worth watching. First, whether an EU–Türkiye security and defence partnership is concluded; that single instrument would change the commercial picture more than any factory. Second, whether the Estonian plant’s output is accepted as EU content when the first SAFE- or EDIP-funded order tests it. Third, whether MKE’s Kırıkkale energetics output is ever offered for export — nitrocellulose, not shells, is where Türkiye’s scarcity value actually sits. Türkiye’s own export ledger, which reached $11 billion in defence and aerospace with 83 per cent local content, will show it when it happens.

FAQ

Can EU countries buy Turkish artillery ammunition?

Yes, with national budgets. No EU member state has publicly announced a large contract for finished Turkish artillery ammunition, but nothing in national law prevents it. What is blocked is EU-financed procurement: Türkiye has no SAFE association agreement, and EDIP caps non-associated-country components at 35 per cent of component cost.

Why is Türkiye excluded from SAFE?

SAFE allows third-country participation only after a security and defence partnership is concluded with the EU under Article 218 TFEU. Türkiye has not concluded one. Greece and the Republic of Cyprus have linked any agreement to the Cyprus question and to Aegean and eastern Mediterranean disputes.

Which Turkish companies make artillery ammunition?

MKE, the state-owned ordnance corporation, and ARCA Defense, a private producer at Sungurlu in Çorum. Repkon is a third, different case: it supplies the production machinery and filling plant rather than the ammunition itself. MKE also makes the propellants, and its URAN and BORAN mobile howitzers put it on both sides of the gun-and-round pairing.

How much is the Turkish ammunition industry worth?

In the Defense News Top 100 published on 31 August 2026, ARCA Defense placed 53rd with $3 billion of 2025 defence revenue and MKE 81st with $1.42 billion — $4.42 billion combined. ARCA’s figure is a 4.6-fold rise on $653.2 million in 2024 and is company-reported, not audited publicly.

Is Türkiye building an ammunition factory in the EU?

Yes. Arca Baltics Operations, a subsidiary of ARCA Defense, is to build a €300 million plant at North Kiviõli in Estonia, announced by the Estonian Centre for Defence Investments on 21 April 2026, with production planned from 2028 and initially for export.

What is Europe’s real ammunition bottleneck?

Explosive filling capacity, propellant, and the nitrocellulose behind it. Rheinmetall’s chief executive said in 2024 that more than 70 per cent of European cotton linters came from China. Steel shell bodies were never the hard part.

Does Türkiye sell ammunition to Ukraine?

Turkish companies have supplied equipment for Ukrainian production — Repkon states it has provided rocket-production machinery — and Ukraine is an associated country for EU content purposes. Direct Turkish government-approved ammunition transfers to Ukraine are not itemised in published Turkish export data.

Sources

• Defense News Top 100, 2026 edition, as reported by Anadolu Agency, “5 Turkish firms rank in global top 100 defense list”, 31 August 2026
• Council of the European Union, “SAFE: Council adopts €150 billion boost for joint procurement on European security and defence”, 27 May 2025
• Council of the European Union, “European Defence Industry Programme: Council gives final approval”, 8 December 2025; EDIP Regulation Articles 10(3) and 10(5)
• Estonian Centre for Defence Investments, announcement on the Arca Baltics Operations ammunition plant, 21 April 2026
• ERR (Estonian Public Broadcasting), reporting on ARCA’s Estonian factory, the export-only start and parliamentary scrutiny
• Janes, “Turkish ammunition producers plan production boost as Europe tries to increase supply”
• Anadolu Agency, “Turkish, Norwegian defense firms to establish ammunition filling facility for Denmark”, July 2025; Nammo statements on the Elling plant
• Repkon corporate announcements on the German filling facility, the Bowas acquisition and the US Army Kentucky TNT contract
• US Department of Defense Office of Inspector General report on the Mesquite, Texas projectile metal parts facility, 10 July 2026
• Hürriyet Daily News, “Europe’s ammunition drive hits cotton supply bottleneck”, 19 August 2026, citing Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger and Wall Street Journal capacity estimates
• MKE product catalogue and investment programme disclosures, mke.gov.tr
• International Institute for Strategic Studies, “The SAFE Regulation and Its Implications for Non-EU Defence Suppliers”, December 2025