What I fear as a Turkish citizen is the overspending on the military. Turkey currently engages in a lot of accounting tricks to make its military spending look normal. A lot of the military facility construction and maintenance are recorded as infrastructure spending. Treatment of wounded soldiers is included in healthcare spending. The ~$16 billion defense industry support budget is not included in military spending. Budgets of the coast guard, gendarmerie, police special operations (who own attack helicopters and are currently engaging in expeditionary warfare despite being a police force on paper) are included in the budget of the ministry of interior.
Turkey currently spends ~25% of its government budget on the military. If it wants a CV by 2030, it will probably get it. But this wouldn't be a productive investment for the reasons mentioned by other members. I am conflicted in my feelings about the achievements of the Turkish defense industry. On one hand, Turkey went from not being able to manufacture armor piercing bullets to being able to detonate IEDs with indigenous lasers in 25 years. On the other hand, this was a result of mostly politically motivated excessive spending.
Well said. I am sure that every mid-power country if really decided to throw caution to the wind and start unrealistically invest in their military they could start catching up on the latest of the military tech (would take decades though)
However we need to ask ourselves, is this approach sustainable? Can the country sustain this kind of excessive expenditure for a minimum of 1-2 decades?
Instead, why not stop this money wasting and improve the economy. Why spend all these dozens of billions to build so many warships, when you could invest that money to your universities, businesses, infrastructure, digitization, trade, upgrading the industry value chain etc
See China for example. isn't China facing more danger and risk than Turkey?
Yes it is, but did it decide to go for mass military spending?
No it didnt.
Instead they are throwing money to develop their interior and build up their economy. Now that China has a gigantic economy it can afford to spend some money on the military, which mind you, is still vastly lower per GDP than its adversary the US.
I am afraid that Turkey is going the wrong way with Erdogan. He made too many diplomatic adventures and focused on the military too much while neglecting the economy. As a result, common Turning people have drastically lower quality of life, they are poorer, and ultimately have started turning against Erdogan
IMO Turkey should forget the aircraft carrier thing, and start refocusing its investments into the civilian sector.
My 2¢
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