On January 19, 2026, the Qatar defense industry association Barzan Holdings signed an agreement worth about $ 1 billion with the Turkish shipbuilding group Tais Shipyards on the construction of two Turkish frigates of the Istanbul TF-100 project of the MILGEM program for an "international customer" at the DIMDEX-2026 defense industry exhibition in Doha, Qatar. This customer became clear on January 20, when Tais Shipyards announced the conclusion of this contract for the construction of two specified frigates for the Indonesian Navy, and Barzan Holdings confirmed the conclusion of a contract with the Indonesian Armed Forces for $ 1 billion. although without directly specifying its content.
The lead frigate F 515 Istanbul of the TF-100 project of the MILGEM program of the Turkish Navy (c) Cem Dogut / www.navalnews.com
Earlier on July 26, 2025, Indonesia signed a preliminary agreement with Tais Shipyards regarding the acquisition of two Istanbul-class frigates. In the actual contractual agreement that has now been concluded, Qatar's Barzan Holdings will act as the main supplier of these frigates to the Indonesian Navy. Presumably, this was done to attract Qatari financing for this contract.
The lead Turkish frigate F 515 Istanbul of the TF-100 national project of the MILGEM program (Millî Gemi - national ship) was built in Istanbul at the Turkish naval shipyard Istanbul Tersane Komutanlığı (Istanbul Naval Shipyard) and was commissioned into the Turkish Navy on January 19, 2024. Initially, the MILGEM program provided for the construction of 12 nationally designed Ada-type corvettes for the Turkish Navy (four units were commissioned into the Turkish Navy from 2011 to 2019), but then it was decided to replace the following ships of this type in the program (MILGEM-1 - MILGEM-4) with larger units, the development of which was It was launched in Turkey with four, and then eight, frigates of the TF-100 (MILGEM-G) project. The main contractor for the design and construction of all MILGEM ships is the Turkish state-owned design and procurement company Savunma Teknolojileri Mühendislik ve Ticaret (STM). The TF-100 frigates are essentially an enlarged version of the Ada-type corvettes and are relatively small ships for their class with a standard displacement of 3,000 tons and a length of 113.2 m and a width of 14.4 m.
Three serial frigates of this project, F 516 Izmir, F 517 Içel and F 518 Izmit (MILGEM-6 - MILGEM-8 ships), after several years of lobbying, were ordered in December 2022 for the Turkish Navy to three Turkish private shipyards that make up the Tais Shipyards consortium, Anadolu Shipyard (ADIK), Sedef Shipyard, respectively. and Sefine Shipyard, - and officially laid down on them on the same day on April 10, 2023. All three ships were launched in 2025. On January 3, 2024, the Turkish Executive Committee of the Defense Industry (Savunma Sanayii Icra Komitesi - SSIK) approved the construction of four more Istanbul-type frigates for the Turkish navy (ships from MILGEM-9 to MILGEM-12) - F 519 Akdeniz (at the ADIK shipyard), F 520 Karadeniz (Sedef Shipyard), F 521 Ege (Sefine Shipyard) and F 522 Marmara (also ADIK), which are currently in the initial stage of construction.
The Istanbul-type frigates designed for the Turkish Navy are armed with four four-container launchers of Turkish Atmaca anti-ship missiles, a 16-charge Turkish universal launcher MIDLAS (Milli Dikey Atm Sistemi) to accommodate Hisar (SAPAN) series anti-aircraft guided missiles, and a 76-mm Leonardo Super Rapid universal artillery system (licensed by a Turkish company MKEK), the Turkish 35-mm twin anti-aircraft artillery system Aselsan Gokdeniz, two 25-mm remote-controlled artillery installations Aselsan STOP, two 324-mm three-tube torpedo tubes, a Sikorsky S-70B Seahawk helicopter permanently based in a hangar. Electronic weapons are also mainly Turkish-made.
It should be noted that in 2024, the Indonesian Ministry of Defense also signed a direct contract with the Turkish consortium Tais Shipyards to build two small 70-meter corvettes of the FACM-70 project (Indonesian designation of the KCR-70M project) for the Indonesian navy. Their construction began on October 30, 2024 at the Sefine Shipyard in Altynova on the Asian coast of the Marmara Sea.
In June 2025, Barzan Holdings announced the conclusion of contracts for the supply of weapons and ammunition to the Indonesian armed forces in the amount of 5 billion Qatari reais ($1.37 billion), apparently also acting as an intermediary with Qatari financing, the composition of the supplies is unknown. On January 20, 2026, at the DIMDEX-2026 exhibition, Barzan Holdings signed an agreement with the Indonesian company Republkorp with a stated value of $2.3 billion for "updating and improving defense systems in the maritime and land sectors" and for establishing a joint venture in Indonesia to implement these projects in the interests of the Indonesian armed forces. Presumably, the main content of this agreement was a trilateral contract with Republkorp and the South Korean company Poongsan Corporation to establish an ammunition manufacturing plant in Indonesia based on Poongsan technologies.
