Turkey and France sign a defence roadmap and set a first meeting before the end of 2026

Turkey and France have signed a roadmap for defence and security cooperation. The Turkish Defence Ministry announced it on Thursday, at the weekly briefing held at the Gölcük Naval Shipyard in Kocaeli, on the yard's 100th anniversary.

The ministry said the roadmap is meant to put the relationship on a more regular footing. The listed heads are hybrid threats, intelligence sharing, air defence, and joint projects between defence firms. Regular security consultations are part of the text. So is work on interoperability between the two defence systems. Training and capacity-building in third countries are included, with regional stability given as the reason.

Military contact, in the ministry's account, covers joint training, exchanges of personnel between academies, port visits, and exercises by land, sea and air forces. On industry, Ankara and Paris said they want joint projects, sharing of technology and information, and more contact between companies. Bilateral defence meetings are to alternate between Ankara and Paris. The first is scheduled for the last quarter of 2026.

No contract value was published. No weapon system was named. The operable dates are the Thursday announcement and the meeting window of October to December 2026. The operable places are Ankara, Paris, and the third countries where coordinated training is envisaged but not listed.

The briefing was not only about France. Rear Admiral Zeki Aktürk, the ministry spokesman, used the same session to criticise Israeli military activity in southern Syria. He cited raids, detentions, border crossings, and air and artillery strikes. That criticism is a separate line from the French roadmap. It came from the same podium, on the same day, in a yard marking 100 years.

Gölcük is the main Turkish naval shipyard on the Sea of Marmara, east of Istanbul. Holding the announcement there ties a political roadmap to a fleet site. France and Turkey have spent years on opposite sides of arguments over the eastern Mediterranean, Syria and defence exports. A roadmap that schedules a first formal defence meeting before the end of 2026 is a procedural commitment. The test will be whether that meeting happens, and whether any named exercise or port visit follows it.

Air defence is the most specific military field in the list. Turkey has built and bought its own systems, including the S-400 purchase from Russia that strained its NATO ties, and domestic projects that Ankara has offered to partners. The roadmap does not say France will join any of those projects. It says air defence is inside the cooperation the two ministries just signed. Intelligence sharing and hybrid threats sit beside it, which points at drones, electronic attack and maritime surveillance as much as at missiles.

Third-country training is the clause with the widest geographic reach. It allows the two staffs to work together outside both territories. No country was named on Thursday. African and Middle Eastern missions are the obvious candidates given where both militaries already train partners. Until a country is named, the clause is a permission, not a deployment.

The first alternating meeting, due by 31 December 2026, is the near deadline. If it is held in Ankara, the French delegation will be on Turkish ground for a defence session that the roadmap says should then move to Paris. If it slips past the quarter, the Thursday announcement will have set a date the ministries missed. That is the accountability the text actually creates.

Gölcük's centenary gave the ministry a stage. The yard builds and maintains the fleet that would host any French port visit the roadmap contemplates. A visit is not scheduled. The yard anniversary and the French signature simply shared a Thursday. Readers of the briefing have both: a 100-year naval site, and a first defence meeting that must happen before the year ends if the roadmap's own calendar holds.