The defense industry is not just concerned with weapons and war. This is because what we call the defense industry is a field where humanity protects, shares and manages existing things. As such, development constitutes the basic dynamic of this sector. The communication technologies that we use today, including computers and the Internet, are products of the defense industry, which is an innovative area by its very nature. This being the case, social developments in all areas and technology, particularly defense industry technology, stimulate each other. For instance, as an engineering masterpiece, a composite bow had a significant role in the enlargement of the Ottoman Empire. As has always been said, the composite bow, together with cannon ball technology, which was used during the conquest of Constantinople, indicates that the development was not achieved with brute force.

Throughout this period, the Ottoman Empire created a distinctive and unique civilization thanks to geniuses like Mimar Sinan. With the Industrial Revolution, the West started to build the superiority that it has reached today. The Crimean War of 1853 was a war where weapons, military engineering and transportation technologies, which were the products of the Industrial Revolution, were tested. At the same time, this is the beginning of the financial downfall that dragged the Ottoman Empire to the Ottoman Public Debt Administration.

It is possible to argue that the defense industry is the essence and the highest level of a society's overall technological accumulation. It also indicates the future, in that if you have started to close the gap in your defense industry, you can unabatedly progress in this field. Today, developing countries should develop technology-intensive defense industries to close developmental differences between them and developed countries. Here, it is important that eastern countries that have high technology use it independently and in line with their own interests.

The defense industry, high technology and innovation created in this field play a large part in new eastern development. The east's development of its own defense industry is also a major step toward the achievement of world peace and a new multiple world system - détente. As such, it is very important that developing countries carry out free trade agreements as well as technology and technology-intensive capital transfers between each other.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is scheduled to visit Japan next week. Just like the visit he paid to the country early in 2014, this visit will be an opportunity to strengthen bilateral economic relations and ink new agreements in a number of fields, particularly in technology. It should be underlined that Erdoğan and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe, both of whom are resolute about taking bilateral relations to the best level ever, have many common grounds and intimate relations.

With Abe's will, Japan has been implementing a new strategy in economic policies independently from the U.S. and the U.K. for the first time since World War II. The Western media underestimates these economic policies and calls them "Abenomics," arguing that they will fail. Interestingly enough, the same media produced the concept of "Erdoğanomics" to refer to Erdoğan's economic policies, implying that Turkey is heading toward a closed and autarchic economy. However, what happens in Turkey and what Erdoğan upholds is the complete opposite of this argument. The core of my objection to such assertions is that post-World War II contours, Turkey and Japan, cannot radically digress from the economic policies that are determined under the leadership of the U.S. That is why disinformation about both Erdoğan and Abe, which has been initiated by the Western media, has been continuing for a long time.

Japan has started to export its technology independently of the West, particularly of the U.S., and it makes technology-based capital cooperation a major step to shift the "old" economic paradigm in the world. Considering that Abe said Japan would export capital to Turkey in high technology-intensive areas during his visit to Turkey for the inauguration of Marmaray in October 2013, Erdoğan's upcoming visit to Japan is of great strategic significance. Additionally, efforts made by the two countries to establish a Turkish-Japanese university should be considered as an important development in this regard. The steps that Turkey takes in the defense industry will go further thanks to this kind of cooperation.

In 2014, the Turkish defense industry imported $1.648 billion worth of hi-tech products, and made $30 per kilogram on average. Also, it exported the ATAK helicopter for $10,000 per kilogram. The High-Tech Port by MÜSİAD, a defense industry fair that is organized by the Independent Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association (MÜSİAD) and will be held in Doha in the upcoming days, will unfold Turkey's power in the defense industry.