ANKARA (Xinhua) – Turkey has reduced its foreign dependency in the defense industry from around 80 percent to some 20 percent in the past two decades, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says.

“The number of the defense projects, which was merely 62 in 2002, has today surpassed 750,” Erdogan said at the delivery ceremony of new Altay tanks to the Turkish Armed Forces for tests in the northwestern Sakarya province. Turkey has set a goal of an “independent defense industry”, he said. The country’s budget for defense projects was 5.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2002, now it has reached 75 billion U.S. dollars, including the ones in the bidding process, the Turkish president explained.