The Bayraktar TB2 drone has become a byword. The reason is that the combat drone from Turkey has become one of Ukraine's mainstays against Russia. This is the figure of its founder, Selcuk Bayraktar, who is the son-in-law of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Bayraktar TB2 is made by Turkey-based company Baykar, founded in the 1980s by Ezdemir Bayraktar. They only focused on making drones in 2005 when Turkey wanted to strengthen the local defense industry.
Now, Baykar is mostly run by Ezdemir's son, Selcuk Bayraktar and his brother Haluk. Selcuk, who is 42 years old, is the Chief Technology Officer and Haluk is the CEO.
Selcuk pursued higher education in the United States, to be precise at the University of Pennsylvania and the elite campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Later, Selcuk married Sumeyye Erdogan, the youngest of Erdogan's four children.
They officially established a household in 2016 and have been blessed with a child. Sumeyye served as an advisor to Erdogan in 2013, when his father was still Prime Minister. He graduated from the London School of Economics.
Selcuk himself is an expert in unmanned aerial vehicle technology. After studying in America, he returned to Turkey in 2007. Under his leadership as CTO, Baykar developed the now increasingly sophisticated Bayraktar.
Not only drones, Selcuk Bayraktar in 2021 announced plans to build an unmanned Turkish fighter jet that is targeted to fly for the first time in 2023.
Selcuk said that he was happy that Bayraktar TB2 was successfully deployed in various battlefields such as in Syria and now Ukraine. He was openly opposed to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
"It was an illegal invasion so TB2 helped honorable people in Ukraine to defend their country," he said.
"The Bayraktar TB2 did what it was supposed to do, which was to destroy some of the most advanced anti-aircraft and artillery systems and combat vehicles. So the whole world became a customer," Selcuk said.
In the future, he wants to further develop Bayraktar technology. Currently, a more advanced Bayraktar TB3 is being created. In addition, his ambition is to create a flying taxi.
"If we look further ahead, we are working on dorne taxis. For that, we need to develop a higher level of autonomous technology, which is basically AI, to revolutionize how people travel in cities," he said.