President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been speaking at TEKNOFEST's edition in Turkey's southeast. Turkish media treated his appearance as breaking news, with reporters waiting on each statement as it landed. TEKNOFEST has grown into the country's flagship technology and aviation festival, pulling in crowds of students and families to whichever host city takes a turn. The programme typically features drone demonstrations and student engineering competitions. Erdoğan has used past appearances to talk up domestic defence technology and the young engineers behind it. Holding the festival in the southeast also carries a political message about development reaching that part of the country. Details of his remarks were still coming out as outlets rushed to publish the first excerpts.