Turkey Completes First Fully Domestic Military Airworthiness Certification with Hürkus-II Trainer

Turkey has, for the first time, carried out a complete military type-certification process for an indigenously developed aircraft using entirely national personnel, according to an announcement from the country’s Presidency of Defense Industries (SSB). The certificate confirms that the Hürkus-II trainer aircraft meets airworthiness and safety standards verified under international norms.

The program required engineers to work across 12 distinct certification disciplines. Officials detailed the scale of the effort: 1,790 certification requirements were verified, roughly 950 evidence documents underwent technical review, and 153 certification tests were completed.

Hürkus-II is the second iteration of a turboprop trainer built by TUSAŞ (Turkish Aerospace Industries) to meet the Turkish Air Force’s basic training needs. Compared with the original Hürkus, the second-generation aircraft carries an updated airframe and a revised avionics architecture, and is designed to support both elementary flight instruction and weapons-training syllabuses for military pilot candidates.

SSB President Haluk Görgün framed the certificate as a broader industrial milestone rather than solely an aircraft milestone. In his comments, he emphasized that Turkey is developing not just platforms but also the technical authority, methodologies, and certification culture needed to validate them independently. The agency described the effort as the first such military type-certification completed in-country for a domestically developed air platform in line with international standards.

Broader industrial context

According to the SSB, the certification experience is expected to carry forward into other national aviation programs — most notably KAAN, Turkey’s indigenously developed manned fighter aircraft, which remains in development. Building in-house expertise in design verification, testing, and type certification is presented by officials as a foundation for future air-platform programs.

Independent certification capability is a recurring theme across the global defence industrial base, where primes and smaller suppliers alike rely on recognized airworthiness regimes to qualify platforms for military customers. For investors tracking the listed defence landscape, developments such as this illustrate how national certification ecosystems can affect which companies are eligible to supply domestic air programs — a dynamic also relevant to U.S.-listed defence firms like National Presto Industries (NPK), which operates in the Aerospace & Defense sector alongside its housewares business. NPK shares recently traded at $144.01, down 1.72% from the prior close of $146.52, with a market capitalization of approximately $1.06 billion.

Görgün’s statement and the SSB announcement position the Hürkus-II certificate as a procedural precedent: a documented, repeatable framework for verifying future Turkish-designed aircraft against international certification standards.

What to watch

• Progress updates on the KAAN fighter program, where certification experience from the Hürkus-II effort may be applied.
• Any Turkish Air Force announcements on Hürkus-II fleet entry into training service.
• Future SSB statements on additional domestically certified air platforms.

Source: original release