It is highly natural that defence companies concentrate on their area of expertise and leave the rest to the “civilian” sector. This time, we spoke with Davut Yılmaz, General Manager of STM (Defense Technologies Engineering and Trade Inc.), to share the vision of a company, whose name begins with “defence” and which broadened its horizons following its birth under the wings of this sector’s undersecretariat. Under the leadership of Yılmaz, STM seeks to change our approach to business.
C4Defence: Since STM bears the signature of the Undersecretariat for Defence Industries (STM), nobody would be surprised when STM manufactures defence products. However, it also offers major products for the civilian sector today. How does STM make use of the power based on the accumulation of knowledge, human resources and connections derived from the defence sector?
Davut Yılmaz: Until recently, our major customer has been the Undersecretariat for Defence Industries. Taking into account the changing dynamics in and around Turkey, we changed our strategy in 2015. We can classify the reasons behind this change into three: First of all; SSM changed its approach to project distribution.
