Measuring the extent of defence expenditures: The Turkish case with Turkish data

Abstract

The procurement expenditures financed by the Defence Industry Fund, the main administering body of the Turkish modernization program since 1983, have been an overlooked issue. A comparative discussion is attempted on the extent of defence expenditures during 1980-1997 with national data, using various ratios of defence expenditures in the literature (e.g. wrt NI, GDP, total budget expenditures, health plus education expenditures) and accounting for the Fund expenditures. The main outcome is that starting in 1986, the defence allocations of Turkey are systematically underestimated with conventional measures based on budget data. It is also demonstrated that the direction of the arming trend is sensitive to underlying data.