What would Artemis participation mean for Türkiye’s space industry and space diplomacy?

Türkiye’s space industry is no longer the limiting factor in its potential participation in Artemis Accords. Over the past two decades, Ankara has built an increasingly sophisticated space ecosystem, one that now finds itself at a strategic inflection point. If Türkiye were to engage with the Artemis Accords, now with 61 signatories after Oman signed, the decisive variables would not be engineering capacity alone, but how effectively the country aligns diplomacy, industry, and regulation under a coherent space policy framework.

That distinction matters because Türkiye now possesses the industrial and human-capital foundations required for meaningful participation. In 2024, it became only the 11th country to manufacture its own geostationary communications satellite with the launch of Türksat 6A, consolidating end-to-end capabilities across satellite design, integration, testing and operations. This milestone builds on a growing Earth observation portfolio, including RASAT, Göktürk-2, and the fully indigenous high-resolution IMECE satellite. Advancing in parallel, Türkiye is making progress in lunar mission planning and upstream launch technologies under the Lunar Mission of Türkiye, aiming for a high-impact landing in early 2027 as the first part and with a planned soft landing on the lunar surface in a subsequent phase of the mission architecture in the early 2030s, under Türkiye’s National Space Program. The Turkish Space Agency (TUA) is working with industry partners including DeltaV Space Technologies, with its domestically developed rocket, including a hybrid rocket engine, which surpassed 200 kilometers in June 2025, on spacecraft and on propulsion technologies aimed at achieving lunar orbit and surface objectives.