Forgotten Designs: The Turkish Cemal Tural APC

 

Turkey's arms industry currently offers a variety of both wheeled and tracked APC designs for sale to clients home and abroad. Many of these incorporate features such as remote weapon stations or even electric drive propulsion. Undoubtedly owing to their advanced capabilities and their proven quality, Turkish APCs have found commercial success in Georgia, Bahrain, the Philippines, Oman, the UAE and Malaysia. We previously reported on Turkey's first (truly indigenous) APC design, the Nurol Ejder 6x6 produced by Nurol Makina, which was later acquired by Georgia. While respectable in its own right, the Ejder 6x6 is actually not the first APC design to have come out of Turkey.

 

In the 1960s, Turkey set out to convert a small number of M24 Chaffee light tanks to armoured personnel carriers (APCs). The resulting vehicle became known as the 'Orgeneral Tural Kariyeri' (or the General Cemal Tural APC in English), named after Major General Cemal Tural who ordered its design. Likely as a result of their short service career, which isn't believed to have lasted for more than a few years, the Cemal Tural APC remains largely unknown outside Turkey. Its elusiveness set aside, the Tural APC is an interesting attempt at turning an otherwise outdated AFV into a useful new vehicle type.

The Turkish Army is reported to have acquired around 250 M24 Chaffee light tanks from the United States in the early 1950s. [1] While several countries would go on to keep the tank in active service for several more decades, a steady supply of U.S. armour to Turkey meant that the country could phase out more and more of its M24s and retire them to long-term storage, being replaced by modern MBTs (for the time at least) like the M48 Patton. A decision was subsequently taken to convert some of the now redundant M24s to APCs. 

 

During the 1960s, Turkey was operating large quantities of U.S. M59 APCs and was in the process of taking delivery of even larger numbers of their replacement vehicle, the M113 APC. [2] The decision to introduce a third APC design was a curious one, and might have been motivated more by an opportunity to gain experience in the design of AFVs rather than an actual operational requirement for more APCs. Interestingly, M24s upgraded by Norway and Chile continued to see service well into the 1990s, while Uruguay retired the last of its M24s only in 2019! [3]

For the conversion to an APC, the turret and the 75mm cannon inside it was removed from the M24 and an armoured cabin was installed on the rear of the tank. The infantry cabin that resulted was reportedly large enough to hold ten passengers and two crew for a total of twelve occupants. The boxy structure was fitted with a gunner station with a pintle-mounted 12.7mm M2HB heavy machine gun and two hatches farther to the rear, with infantry dismounting from either a single or two rear doors. It is unknown to what extent these modifications changed the performance of the vehicle, but the M24's original range of 160km and speed of 56km/h was likely retained if not improved on due to a reduction in weight. 

 

The bow gunner position armed with a single 7.62mm M1919 machine gun was also kept in place, which means that the Cemal Tural APC was actually better armed than the M113 APC, which only sported a single 12.7mm M2HB HMG. The fitting of new side skirts and mudguards further show that the design was anything if not a serious attempt at producing a professional AFV. Unfortunately, the Cemal Tural APC's career would prove to be an exceptionally short one, already being retired in the early seventies. Of course, with plenty of M113s available, this decision was rather understandable, with another vehicle type serving alongside complicating logistics, maintenance and operations. Luckily, one example of the Cemal Tural APC was saved from the scrapper and preserved at the Etimesgut Tank Müzesi near Ankara.

 

A single Cemal Tural APC survives at the Etimesgut Tank Müzesi near the capital Ankara. Here it serves as a reminder of past Turkish defence projects that till thus far have largely escaped attention, but that heralded the birth of Turkey's now abundantly successful defence industry. It would take several more decades before Turkey's APC and AFV designs finally took off. These designs are now in service with Turkey and several other countries abroad, set up for careers the humble Cemal Tural could unfortunately not have dreamed of.

[1] Zaloga, Steven J (2003). M24 Chaffee Light Tank 1943–85. Botley, England: Osprey Publishing. ISBN 1-84176-540-6.

Special thanks to Arda Mevlutoglu and Secret Projects.