Turkey selects Navantia's Juan Carlos LHD design as winner of its LPD tender

Landing Platform Dock Project
According to SSM, the Landing Platform Dock Project (LPD)’s main purpose is the acqusition of one Landing Platform Dock in order to meet the operational requirements of Turkish Naval Forces. The scope of the procurement is for:
- 1 LPD and
- Four Landing Craft Mechanics (LCM)
- Twenty seven Amphibious Assault Vehicles (AAV),
- Two Landing Craft Personnel Vehicles (LCVP),
- One Commander Boat
- One RHIB (Rubber Hull Inflated Boat) will be acquired

One of the requirement was for a Privately Owned Turkish Shipyard to be main contractor, also responsible for design, construction, integration and tests and final performance.

The other proposals which were rejected were:
RMK Marine Shipyard offering its own indigenous design and Desan shipyard offering a design based on South Korea's Dokdo class. At the early stage of the tender a Chinese company submitted its design proposal but then backed away.

Juan Carlos class LHD
The multi-purpose Strategic Projection Ship "Juan Carlos I" is the largest naval unit ever built in Spain. Her NATO denomination is LHD (Landing Helicopter Dock). In June 2007, Australia announced it would purchase and build two ships of the same design to become the Canberra-class landing helicopter docks.

The ship has been designed for 4 mission profiles:
- Amphibious ship transporting a Marine Corps Force for landings and land support operations.
- Force projection ship transporting Army forces to any theatre of operations.
- Aircraft-carrier
- Non-combatant operations: humanitarian aid, evacuation from crisis zones and hospital-ship in catastrophe areas.

The crew consists of 261 people: 30 officers, 49 NCOs, 59 leading seamen and 123 ratings.