Otokar Akrep Police.

Despite this record's slug, the vehicle is not an Akrep. The Akrep is Otokar's smaller armoured reconnaissance car; what is photographed here is the Otokar APV, the firm's armoured personnel vehicle, and its ancestry runs straight back to Belfast. Short Brothers' enclosed, turretless Armoured Personnel Vehicle line ran SB.301 to SB.401 to the coil-sprung S55, and Otokar — which held a Land Rover agreement to assemble One-Ten vehicles from CKD kits with locally produced components — built the S55 under licence as the ZPT, Zırhlı Personel Taşıyıcı. Otokar's designer demonstrated a prototype in Turkish Thrace around 1988; photographs show the type operational by 1992 and still in service in 2019.

The Turkish government then procured the vehicle in large numbers for both military and police use, in large part for the campaign against the PKK in the south-east. The body is, in the words of the reference, an angular and slightly taller long-wheelbase Land Rover: driver and commander in front, up to six more behind, and two vision blocks in each rear body side that drop to give firing ports.

The vehicle in this record wears the white-and-blue livery of the Turkish National Police rather than military green — POLİS along the flanks and tailgate, the emergency number 155, and the call sign S15 on the nose and rear quarter. Mesh screens cover the windscreen and side glazing, a hatch and periscopes sit on the roof, and a winch is mounted low on the front bumper. It was photographed beside the Golden Horn at Istanbul on 6 May 2016.

Exports went to Persian Gulf and North African customers, though Otokar's confidentiality agreements have kept most user lists out of print, so no reliable per-country figures exist.