Debate Over Turkish Defense Budget Highlights Government's Shortcoming

Turkish opposition deputies gave a relatively strong performance compared to previous years in a recent debate that took place in a commission in Parliament over the Turkish defense budget for fiscal year 2015. In comparison, however, the government fell short of coming up with satisfactory answers to the opposition deputies' questions on issues related to defense expenditure.
On Nov. 13, the budgets of the Ministry of Defense and the Undersecretariat for the Defense Industry (SSM), a state-owned arms procurement agency, were debated in Parliament's Planning and Budgetary Commission (PBK). Turkey's defense and security budgets will rise in 2015, reflecting increased “security-first” policies both domestically and externally.
Turkey's combined defense and security budgets have seen a roughly TL 2.5 billion ($1.1 billion) increase for fiscal year 2015 compared with the previous year, reaching around TL 52.5 billion. This represents about 11.1 percent of the total budget of TL 472.9 billion. However, the figures disclosed for defense and security do not include extra-budgetary resources earmarked for these sectors. The majority of these are not accounted for, including a fund created for arms procurement by the SSM. Funding assigned to the Ministry of Defense has risen by around 4 percent to TL 22.7 billion in 2015, up from TL 21.8 billion in fiscal year 2014.
Defense Minister İsmet Yılmaz said the defense budget was 1.74 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). However, some opposition deputies recalled during the PBK meeting that Turkey's defense expenditures as a percentage of GDP already stand at around 2.3 percent when items such as the salaries of retired military personnel and village guards are included, thus ranking ninth in the world. The lack of direct parliamentary oversight of the defense and security budgets makes it difficult to identify the full figures earmarked for these sectors, which are generally higher than the figures disclosed by the Ministry of Finance.
According to the minutes of the defense budget debate that have been posted on Parliament's website, here are some of the points made by opposition deputies:
Aydın Ayaydın, a deputy from the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), stressed the need for the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) to implement its planned reorganization and restructuring in a timely manner, which he said had already been delayed. Taking into consideration the risky security situation in Turkey's environs -- for example, the ongoing civil war in neighboring Syria -- Turkey urgently needs to complete the TSK's restructuring, he added. Yet the TSK earlier announced that its full reorganization -- to become smaller but more mobile and efficient, with high firepower capabilities -- will be completed in 2033. Ayaydın also recalled that the TSK's reorganization should include a transition to an all-professional force, involving a gradual elimination of the conscription system.
A recent report released by the presidential palace when former President Abdullah Gül was in office underlined the need for the TSK to become smaller but more effective to prepare for 21st-century challenges such as asymmetric warfare, cyber warfare and energy security.
Yılmaz told the commission that the TSK has 622,932 active military personnel, including the Gendarmerie General Command (JGK) and the Coast Guard Command (SGK), while around 35 percent of this figure is composed of professionals.
Of the 622,932 personnel, 100,000 are noncommissioned officers (NCOs), 40,000 are officers, 23,000 are specialized gendarmes and 56,000 are specialized privates. Contracted privates number 3,600 and the remainder of the TSK personnel is made up of conscripts.
The plight of the NCOs as well as the specialized privates within the TSK in terms of salaries and job guarantees and the increased number of suicides, mainly among conscripts, was among the topics raised by opposition deputies. Some opposition deputies, including Mehmet Günal from the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), questioned the rationale behind the plans to partially affiliate the JGK to the Interior Ministry. However, the criticism was made from the wrong angle and failed to realize the necessity of Turkey bringing this paramilitary force under civilian control at least for the sake of establishing a unified border management system to be implemented by professional units.
Some of the opposition deputies also criticized the government for targeting the Hizmet movement -- inspired by Islamic scholar Fetullah Gülen -- without evidence.
Günal blamed the government for profiling the opposition in general as well as for initiating psychological warfare against opposing views.
Günal and CHP deputy Müslim Sari pressed Defense Minister Yılmaz to clarify exactly what has been happening concerning Turkey's highly controversial long-range missile talks with China, given that Ankara also declared that it has simultaneously been negotiating with French-Italian partnership Eurosam for the same project, worth about $4 billion. Günal, together with some other opposition deputies, accused the government of manipulating military procurement projects and contracting them to pro-government companies. In this respect they questioned the rationale behind canceling the Milgem naval project last year in the midst of negotiations with Koç Holding, a group which the government criticized for supporting anti-government Gezi Park protesters last year.
Hasip Kaplan, a deputy from the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), complained about the failure to discuss in-depth details of the Defense Ministry's budget, which he said is quite important. Since the government made amendments to the Law on the Court of Accounts, external oversight over public expenditures and in particular military expenditure has been very limited. Against this background, Kaplan said, deputies do not know the resources allocated for arms procurement.
He urged the need for subordinating the TSK to the Ministry of Defense while criticizing the TSK for being inaccessible, even to deputies.
Mustafa Moroğlu, a deputy from the CHP, quoted a report by the Court of Accounts as saying that the budgets of the Ministry of Defense and the SSM were not spent in a transparent fashion. In addition, he said, the report revealed irregularities in the spending of the budgets of both the SSM and the Ministry of Defense. Quoting from the same Court of Accounts report, he asked Yılmaz to explain the reasons behind the irregularities concerning the spending of about TL 60 billion by the SSM.
In the interests of justice, a number of opposition deputies did their best to discuss the problems over the monitoring of the defense budget, about whose unaccountable status -- among other things -- they complained, while the government has dragged its feet in making any commitments to this end.

LALE KEMAL (Cihan/Today's Zaman)