President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, speaking at the opening of the 77th International Astronautical Congress (IAC 2026) in Antalya — hosted by Türkiye for the first time with representatives from 111 countries — said: “We will not stray from our goal until we make Türkiye one of the strong and respected actors of the global space ecosystem.”

Erdoğan said Türkiye is one of the few countries that designs, develops, produces, tests and operates its own satellites, and that production, assembly and integration of the roughly 3.5-ton lunar spacecraft had been completed, with system-level environmental tests under way. He also said construction had begun on a spaceport in Somalia.

“Weaponizing space and turning it into a tool of an arms race is utterly wrong. Moreover, it is dangerous,” Erdoğan said, adding: “Space is not loot to be seized by whoever gets there first.” Referring to TEKNOFEST, he said more than 730,000 teams from 81 provinces and 97 countries had applied to the technology festival.