Turkey to share its homegrown COVID-19 vaccine Turkovac with all of humanity: President

Turkey will provide its domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine Turkovac to all humanity, the nation's president said in a televised interview late Friday.

Speaking to news channel A Haber, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said, "I know some of our citizens waited for our own product to get vaccinated," urging them to make appointments now to get their Turkovac shots.

Since early in the vaccine's development, Erdoğan has vowed to make the vaccine available globally, saying it will be used to benefit all humanity.

After months of development and tests, on Wednesday Turkey announced that the homegrown COVID-19 vaccine Turkovac had been approved for emergency use.

"As of today, we have become one of the nine countries producing a COVID-19 vaccine," Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said.

The vaccine will be in widespread use as of next week, Koca said.

Turkey has administered more than 128.07 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines since it launched an immunization drive this January, according to the latest official figures.

TURKEY'S RELATIONSHIP WITH AFRICA

Regarding a question concerning Turkey's future relationship with African countries, Erdoğan said when they came into power, Ankara had embassies in 12 African countries and that has grown to 49 embassies in Africa.

Expressing that African countries are in serious competition with Turkey in terms of opening embassies in Turkey at the moment, Erdoğan said; "They currently have 39 embassies in Turkey."

He said Turkey wants to increase the number of countries where it has an embassy. "We want to be all over Africa by opening embassies to almost all countries in Africa."

Erdoğan added that Turkey wants to walk with Africa on a win-win approach regarding above ground and underground treasures.

"The imperial powers exploited Africa for years," he said, adding that on the other hand, Turkey's presence in Africa is based on a win-win principle.

TURKEY'S TURKSAT 5B SATELLITE

Asked about his video call with Elon Musk last week, Erdoğan said Turkey reaped the fruits of steps taken in the past with the launch of the Turksat 5B satellite on Dec. 19, and shared the happiness with Musk.

He said two communication apparatuses of Turksat 5B were designed, produced and tested with the cooperation of Turksat and ASELSAN engineers, and a 100% domestic hardware was used in a commercial satellite for the first time.

The Turksat 6A satellite, which continues to be produced with 100% domestic system engineering and domestic facilities, will also be launched by US aerospace company SpaceX in 2023.

"Our presence in the space will be strengthened with the breakthroughs we have made in recent years, and with the qualified human resources we have trained and the infrastructures we have established. Dependency will decrease and we will even be in a position to export in this regard," he said.