President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on October 28 sparked a storm of criticism after claiming that Turkey “could not even produce a sewing needle” 25 years ago.

Opposition politicians and critics said the statement amounted to a dismissal of decades of pre-Erdogan industrial development.

Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) have ruled Turkey for nearly 23 years.

Turkey’s leader made the remarks during an inauguration ceremony held for Turkish contractor BMC’s new battle tank, the Altay, and next-generation armoured vehicle production facility in Ankara. The event took place a day before the 102nd anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Turkey.

“Let me take you back 20 to 25 years. Could we produce a sewing needle in our country back then? I’m not even talking about weapons. But now, thank God, Turkey is producing its own weapons. We couldn’t produce even 20 percent of our defence needs then, but now we’ve reached 80 percent,” Erdogan was quoted as saying by Turkish Minute.

Some critics pointed out that Turkey has been manufacturing sewing needles since the 1950s. Istanbul-based Atli Needle and Machinery Company, founded in 1951, produced the country’s first domestically made sewing needles, they said.

Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy chairman Yanki Bagcioglu, a former rear admiral, observed that Turkey had been building naval vessels decades before the AKP came to power.

“The country’s current technological capability is built on decades of effort. … While trying to glorify one era for political purposes, one should not belittle the earlier periods that laid the foundations for today,” he added.

Leader of the small opposition IYI Party, Musavat Dervisoglu, tweeted that aircraft factories, sugar factories, textile mills, iron and steel plants, shipyards, paper and cement factories, tobacco factories, power plants, dams, weapons factories and chlorine plants were all established within the first 15 years of the Turkish Republic.

Dervisoglu added that “we weren’t living in caves before the AKP came to power”.