Projects of this magintude have ballooning costs when it comes to serial production; cooperation and sharing of production load and costs will be necessary, and this cooperation will be with close and friendly nations like Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh hopefully. People here who talk as if they are experts on the industrial base and human capital potential of these countries without being able to name a city in them, sound very much like the Greek chauvinists who have no idea about capabilities of Turkey and companies like TUSAŞ, TEİ, KALE or ASELSAN and their history of cooperation with the likes of General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Rolls Royce, etc. and the wealth of experience from technicians brought up in numerous quality technical schools in the country which have an organic bond with our industry and the fact that these companies have been making industry grade fine parts and assembling the likes of f16s and f110 engines for decades. Just like they have no clue about Turkey's history and industrial base and capacities, you have no clue about Malaysia, Indonesia and Pakistan; educate yourself then you will not have childish claims that these 200 million strong nations have nothing to contribute in terms of production capacities or human capital. Stupid.
Maybe we should look at some cold hard numbers for each country you mention rather than simply assert "industrial base" and "human capital potential" in any more personally imputed direction.
Things like international patent grants per year and intellectual property receipt (and scale this for per capita)...and compare that to Turkiye to get a rough idea of where things stand in realised RnD qualitative tier. Defence sector capacity would correlate to this in the end as in the end it illustrates if there is actual reverence and development of intellectualism and progress over anti-intellectual and anti-progress that many developing countries suffer from (some even idolize this over-conservative stasis).
One of the three final countries you mention is especially behind on IP results per capita.
In any case as others have pointed out, if others (more geopolitically amenable) human capital and industrial base were competitive (and they could bring something to the table that made sense in either comparative or absolute advantage way vis a vis Turkiye)..... surely they would have recognised that and joined TR (or gotten TR to join a program of theirs) at a far earlier juncture to gain the best optimal leverage in a 5th generation a/c project?
All said and done, and with the results on hand of others actual interest and raw capability analysis, I figure Turkish project management and decision makers know quite well there is a long road ahead but that there are vital subsystems that simply no other country in Muslim world can provide better, faster and more matured way than Turkiye itself can do.
Customers/clients down road are different matter to risk/reward of actual technology/workshare that goes into something like a TFX.
You have to understand Turkiye unique industrial and research partnership with the West for example, the duration of its depth and scale and the role this plays combined with Turkish higher focus over protracted time in crucial areas of RnD and application that produce certain cold hard numbers and matured results thus far.
It is this that provides sound basis for actual potential to take forward compared to words and feelings and only Turkiye itself can gauge what is risk/reward here in possible delegation/cooperation with any others. What might sound good in say the media but what will it expose (behind the scenes) too early riskily for too little reward etc. These things all have to be well known in principle and application in the final equation.
The coming few years will illustrate more on this anyway in TFX specifically, as there are a whole host of things TR needs to develop for TFX in a core intrinsic way.
