But in Turkey, despite several reforms made to introduce transparency in military spending as well as their auditing by the Court of Auditors on behalf of the Parliament, we have not yet felt such reforms on the ground.Yet related commissions of the Parliament have so far failed to explain to the public the reasons behind the country's increased defense budgets that has seen a 12 per cent rise over the fiscal year 2007 compared with 11.8 billion YTL for fiscal year 2006 as the Turkish Defense Minister Vecdi Gönül declared on 13 October last year. *
Nor has the Parliament debated military procurement projects, leaving them into the hands of the military and the civilian procurement agency where we have been witnessing a reemergence of conflict of interest amongst them.
The first signs of military intervention in arms procurement came during the 12 December 2006 Executive Committee meeting of the Undersecretariat of the Defense Industry (SSM), the civilian defense procurement agency, when Turkish Chief of Staff General Yaşar Büyükanıt raised his reservations against finalizing an almost $2.5 billion worth attack helicopter project which has already been in the agenda for more than 10 years now.
In democracies, some military intervention in military procurement projects should not be surprising since the military should be allowed its opinion on the arms that at the end of the day they will be using.
But in Turkey where the boundaries between the user-buyer relationships in military procurement have long been blurred, the nature of arms purchases do not always fit with military needs despite the military's heavy involvement in procurement policies. The main reason behind the blurred boundaries between the user-buyer relationships in Turkey has been the absence of the democratic control of the armed forces.
Otherwise, with the high amount of resources allocated to defense, Turkey should by now be amongst those countries selling military technology abroad instead of realizing an almost 75% of its defense needs through imports, as the SSM's Undersecretary Murad Bayar has stated on several occasions.
On the other hand, it would be unfair to blame the military alone for ill-defined military procurement policies that have been an increasing burden on the Turkish taxpayers for as long as been dependent on others for military technology, as both the Parliament and the political authorities alike have so far failed to take full control of the military procurement procedures.
On the contrary, for example, the SSM has increasingly been making the military equipment purchase harder through several policies that sometimes run contrary to the international procurement procedures.
The SSM's latest policy of seeking from the contesters certain conditions that did not match with Turkey's industrial base capacities have been intimidating many Turkish companies from contesting in the tenders, leaving the Turkish military with a limited choice in its defense purchases.
Civilian procurement policies, thus, encourage the military to fill the power vacuum.
But at the end of the day, rows between the military and the civilian procurement agency mainly affect negatively the Turkish taxpayers while hindering the maximization of the country's potential to produce high technology.
*However, when extra budgetary resources that have been allocated for defense such as the SSM fund and the budgets of the Gendarmerie General Command and the Coast Guard Command were added to the National Defense Ministry budget, the total resources allocated to defense reached 17.4 billion in 2006.
