New Turkish Rifle for Anti Terror Units

This post is also available in: עברית (Hebrew)

The Turkish anti terror units will soon be equipped with the locally developed Mehmetcik assault rifle.

Mehmetcik will replace 500,000 aging G3 rifles used in the Turkish military. It will be used by both regular infantry and Special Forces. According to Defense News state-run ammunition specialist MKE has started a pilot production of a batch of 200 Mehmetcik rifles, one procurement official said.

Under a 2009 contract with the country’s procurement agency, the Undersecretariat for Defense Industries, MKE started to develop a light, efficient and modular rifle.

iHLS – Israel Homeland Security

The new rifle is a modified version of the German Heckler & Koch HK 416. It is an 8-pound, 5.56mm weapon with mounting rails for scopes and a hand grip forward of the magazine. It uses 30-round magazines.

Israeli sources that before the Turkish -Israeli relations were disrupted Ankara was considering equipping its force with Israeli made weapons.