Turkey's defense spending and procurement under the AKP

Late last month I was browsing through the Turkish daily English language newspaper the Hurriyet, looking for a an Op-Ed to sacrifice and dissect as part of an exercise for an International Affairs seminar I'm taking. Surely, I came across an Op-Ed called "Enemy-less" Turkey.

In his article, author Burak Bekdil looks at at Turkey’s reduction of its security blacklist. The official enemy list, once comprised of any state supporting Armenia, Greece and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, is now reduced to virtually zero and proportionally reflects the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP’s, “zero-problems-with-neighbors” policy.

Mr. Bekdil points out however, that despite this policy, defense spending and procurement decisions have been continuously disproportional.

My critique of Mr. Bekdil's analysis was published in the Hurriyet on November 4th as a Letter to the Editor. Here's a preview:

Mr. Bekdil’s analysis falls into two traps: first, by taking Turkey’s “established security concept” only on the basis of what the government vocalizes through speech, and, second, by asserting that defense budgets “must” be coherent with a publicized security strategy.

States were once vocal about their security concerns to the international community during the cold war, but security agendas have become more complex matters. States often cannot share their security concerns without adding to insecurity. After a long history marked by an aggressive security agenda and failure at pulling away from its eastern neighborhood through the EU, Turkey realizes this. Although the zero-problem policy signals a new approach, the security situation itself didn’t change much. The AKP simply re-framed its external security concept to exclude usage of the negative and personifying attribute “enemy”. Turkey, so long as it has interests in northern Cyprus, is a stakeholder in NATO’s collective security strategy, and has disputes with the PKK, will have direct security concerns. The volatility of the Middle East also leaves it with infinite indirect security threats. The AKP’s branding of the zero-problem policy is more of an instrument; it’s a way of achieving the end-goal that it proclaims – that is, economic and diplomatic partnership and influence. It recognizes that voicing suspicion of states or fear of aggression can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If a state has strong defensive capability, as Turkey does, what can it expect from denouncing state X as suspicious, other than being prisoner to its security dilemma?

If having my critique published didn't catch me off guard, Mr. Bekdil's subsequent publication "Smart defense spending is always possible"certainly did.

In “Enemy-less Turkey,” published in this column on Oct. 26, I intended to contend – and probably failed – to present what is essentially a visible inconsistency between the government’s recently-sealed security threat whitepaper and its choices
of armaments. I merely hoped to express my failure to understand any military spending that exclusively targets some of the countries that have been removed from Turkey’s list of potential threats.

Allow me to quote a few lines from “Enemy-less Turkey:”

**Insert redundant re-publication of previous article here**

Then this newspaper published a letter to the editor on Nov. 4 from Sarah Maksoud of Carleton University, Ottawa. Ms. Maksoud argued that: “…The trend of inconsistency between security context and defense spending reaches across various states and governments; it is neither specific to the AKP [Justice and Development Party], nor is it a mark of hypocrisy.” Thank you, too, Ms Maksoud.

My thoughts on this were left in the comment section beneath the article.

In any case, the debate on Turkey's defense spending and procurement can be considered timely, more so now with Turkey's military alliances outside NATO stirring trouble in the aftermath of the Lisbon summit. The question of Turkey's security concept and allegiances is resonating ever louder.