Aselsan & Roketsan: Turkey's Defense Electronics and Missiles

Aselsan: Turkey's Listed Electronics Champion

Aselsan Elektronik Sanayi ve Ticaret is Turkey's largest defense-electronics manufacturer and one of the most valuable companies on Borsa Istanbul. Founded in the 1970s to reduce dependence on foreign communications gear, it now spans radar and electronic warfare, secure communications, avionics, optronics, fire-control systems and air-defense components. It is majority-controlled by the Turkish Armed Forces Foundation but has a meaningful free float, which is what gives it a real, tradable market price.

Unlike private peers, Aselsan's scale can be read directly from the market. That makes it the clearest financial window into Turkey's defense boom: as the country pushed indigenization and exports climbed, investors re-rated the stock, and it became a heavyweight component of the Istanbul index. Its electronics are embedded across virtually every major Turkish weapon system, giving it broad, recurring exposure to the sector's growth.

Aselsan Market Cap and Revenue

In mid-2026, market-data aggregators put Aselsan's capitalization at roughly 1.7 to 1.9 trillion Turkish lira, equivalent to approximately $35 billion at prevailing exchange rates. Because the lira has been volatile, the dollar value and the lira value can diverge sharply, so both must be read with an as-of date. On revenue, Aselsan reported about 180 billion lira for 2025, up roughly 15 percent from around 157 billion lira the year before — though high inflation flatters the lira growth rate relative to real or dollar terms.

⚠ Figures are approximate, rounded and based on public market-data aggregators (source: market cap, source: ASELS overview). Lira values move daily and with the exchange rate. Not investment advice.

Roketsan: The Private Missile House

Roketsan is Turkey's principal missile and rocket manufacturer, established in 1988 specifically to build a national missile-technology base. Crucially, it is not exchange-listed. It is a joint-stock company owned by a state-linked consortium: the Turkish Armed Forces Foundation holds a majority, with Aselsan and the state engineering group MKE each holding sizeable minority stakes and a state bank and Havelsan owning the rest. With no ticker and no public market cap, Roketsan's value must be framed qualitatively through its product range, contracts and strategic role.

Its portfolio is broad and increasingly capable: guided rockets, anti-tank missiles such as UMTAS and OMTAS, the Cirit laser-guided rocket, the Atmaca anti-ship cruise missile, the SOM air-launched cruise missile family, and ballistic missiles including Bora and the longer-range Tayfun. Roketsan also develops air-defense interceptors and has publicly unveiled hypersonic-missile work. It has opened new production facilities, delivered missiles to the Turkish armed forces, and stated ambitions to enter the ranks of the world's top defense exporters through co-production deals with Gulf and Asian partners.

Their Role in Turkey's Defense Ecosystem

Aselsan and Roketsan are complementary rather than competing. Aselsan provides the electronic nervous system — radars, electronic warfare suites, communications, optronics and fire control — while Roketsan provides the kinetic payload, the rockets and missiles those systems guide. The two are even financially linked, since Aselsan holds a minority stake in Roketsan, reinforcing how integrated the Turkish defense base has become.

This pairing is what lets Turkey field largely indigenous, end-to-end weapon systems instead of assembling foreign parts. Platform makers such as Baykar and Turkish Aerospace Industries supply the airframes and vehicles; Aselsan supplies the sensors and processing; Roketsan supplies the munitions. The result is a vertically coherent ecosystem that has reduced Turkey's exposure to export restrictions from traditional Western suppliers and turned defense into a strategic export industry, with national defense exports reported around $10 billion in 2025.

For analysts, the division also shapes how each firm should be assessed. Aselsan, as a listed company, can be valued on its market cap and reported revenue. Roketsan, as a state-linked private entity, has to be judged on contracts, capability and export traction. Lumping them together as "Turkish defense" obscures that one is a transparent traded asset and the other is a strategic state instrument.

Indirect Ukraine Relevance

Neither company has the household-name profile that the Bayraktar TB2 earned in Ukraine, and their direct involvement is mostly indirect and partly opaque. Aselsan electronics and Roketsan munitions are integrated into Turkish platforms and weapons that sit within the broader ecosystem relevant to Ukraine, and the war sharply increased global appetite for affordable, combat-credible Turkish defense products. That demand benefits the whole Turkish supply chain, including both firms.

Because specific transfers and integrations are not always publicly confirmed, the honest framing is ecosystem relevance rather than documented direct supply. The Ukraine war's larger effect on Aselsan and Roketsan has been to validate the Turkish model — indigenous, exportable and relatively cheap — and to accelerate the orders and re-rating that flow from it. As with all the figures on this page, treat market-cap, revenue and export numbers as approximate, dated snapshots, and consult the linked sources for current values.

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