An additional burden on the economy has been the Turkish defense industry, which for decades has been unable to create a meaningful and qualified workforce nor has it developed high military technology.
A recently released report by the country's defense procurement agency reported that the share of Turkey's arms equipment that is domestically produced has reached 58 percent. That figure, released in a report titled "Performance Report 2009" and posted on the Web site of the Undersecretariat for the Defense Industry (SSM), however, falls short of being convincing due to its vagueness in terms of the quality of military products produced in the country.
The share of domestically produced military technology in Turkey stood between 20 percent and 25 percent until 2004, the year that Ankara made a major shift to boost its ailing defense industry, placing emphasis on increasing local production of military technology. Until then, Turkey had been dependant on foreign countries for around 80 percent of its military technology.
Since then, Ankara set a target of increasing the share of its military equipment that was domestically produced to 50 percent by 2010. The latest announcement shows that Turkey met this target a year before planned.
When we look at those figures, it seems that Turkey has performed a miracle in four years' time in increasing its domestic production of defense technology from around 20 percent to 58 percent. But the question remains of what that 58 percent domestic share contains, i.e., critical technology or lower-level military systems that will continue to leave Turkey dependant on other countries for high-tech products.
Taking into consideration the still insufficient level of resources earmarked for research and development (R&D) projects for both civilian and military purposes in Turkey, the quality of the domestically produced products said to make up 58 percent of Turkey's military equipment is understood to still be inadequate.
For example, local Aselsan developed the electro optical payload (Aselfir300T) that prevents the Israeli Heron unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from reaching a desired altitude of 30,000 feet due to its high weight of 120 kilograms. This has allegedly prompted Turkey to abandon its plans to install Aselfir300T systems on Israeli Herons in order to hasten their delivery to the Turkish military.
This alone tells us that producing high-tech products is not that easy.
However, the Turkish decision, back in 2004, to put an emphasis on domestic production and decrease Turkish dependence on foreign military technology was 100 percent right, but it came late.
The underlying problem in the figures revealed is the extent to which they reflect the realities on ground, i.e., the quality of military technology produced. Is there a mechanism through which such government figures can be authenticated? There exists no mechanism through which the informed public can question defense expenditures and the official figures released on defense procurement. So questions such as "What does this 58 percent domestic production share correspond to?" become fair to ask.
Serious defects in the democratic governance of Turkey hinder any attempt to learn more about the exact figures earmarked for defense since the extra-budgetary sources for defense are kept secret even from public institutions, including the Court of Auditors.
Added to that problem is decision-makers' failure to make cuts in defense spending, which is already high, at a time when the country is going through a serious economic crisis. Leading countries in defense technology, such as Britain and the US, have already announced defense cuts as part of their attempt to cope with the global economic crisis. Still, those cuts do not seriously affect those countries' security concerns.
Whereas Parliament announced cuts in the overall 2009 budget in critical areas such as education and health upon a request made by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the defense budget remained the same.
Parliament approved a motion on Dec. 25 to cut spending in the 2009 budget ahead of a new stand-by deal with the IMF, said press reports at the time. Thus, the spending of some ministries, including agriculture, justice, education, health and transportation along with the General Directorate of Highways and State Waterworks Authority, were cut by 10 to 16.5 percent, meaning the government agreed to cut around YTL 3.061 billion ($2 billion according to the exchange rate at the time) of spending planned for 2009 at the request of the IMF.
Evaluating this budget cut, it can be understood that the IMF did not press Turkey for cuts in its military budget though in 2001, when Turkey faced its biggest economic crisis ever, cuts were made in the defense budget, too, upon an IMF request.
According to Süleyman Yaşar, a columnist from the Taraf daily, the IMF is well aware of the benefit it would have done Turkey if it had demanded Ankara reduce its defense spending.
"But it did not. Because, countries like Germany, Britain, the US and France are the major arms suppliers. If Turkey reduces its purchase of arms, those countries' balance of payments would be affected," Yaşar said (Taraf, Feb. 16).
If Turkey had a functioning democracy, it should have taken the right measures, such as making cuts in its already high defense spending, as a means of easing the burden of the economic crisis, independent from IMF pressure.
