Turkey Ranked 15th in Military Expenditure

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) published its annual report on military expenditure.

The Global Peace and Justice Coalition (Global BAK) executive committee member Nilüfer Uğur Dalay reported that the worldwide military expenditure reached to $ 1629 billion in 2010. Dalay mentioned that the military expenditure is 2.6 percent of the world gross national product (GNP). In other words, each world citizen devotes annually 236 dollars to military expenditure.

The annual report containing data on the final figures regarding 2010 showed that military expenditure increased by 1.3 percent compared to 2009; compared to 2001 it increased by 50 percent.

The military expenditure of U.S. Increased by 81 percent at this period.

The budget cannot be supervised

According to SIPRI data, U.S was the first country in military expenditure with 698 billion dollars; the rest of the world made 931 billion dollars in military expenditure.

On the ranking of countries based on the total military expenditure, China was the second, United Kingdom was the third country. The estimated military expenditure of China was 119 billion dollars and UK's was 59,6 billion dollars.

The rest of the ranking are as follows: France 59.3,; Russia (estimated) 58.7; Japan 54.5; Saudi Arabia 45.2, Germany (est.) 45.2, India 41.3; Italy 37, Brazil 33.5, South Korea 27.6 ; Australia 24; Canada (est.) 22.8; Turkey 17.5 billion dollars.

Based on 2009 USD, Turkey's military expenditure is $ 15. 634 billion and based on 2010 USD, it's $ 17.509 billion.

"Given the inflation figures, the military expenditure had fallen to 3 % compared to 2009" says Dalay. Turkey's military expenditure share in GDP was 3% in 2001 and it decreased to 2,4 % in 2010.

Dalay says "Today there are 511.000 soldiers at Turkish Armed Forces and 387.700 people are ready for mobilization. These figures underline that Turkish army is the second biggest army of NATO after US army."

Dalay indicated that there was no transparency for military expenditure in Turkey and this budget and the nature of the arms expenditure cannot be audited by the Court and it is not known by non-governmental organizations.

"The military expenditure budget is within the budgets of the Ministry of Defense, Turkish Armed Forces, the Gendarmerie and the Interior Ministry of the Coast Guard and Organization budgets.

"In addition, petroleum, tobacco and liquor taxes, funded from the budget for military expenditures should be evaluated in the Defense Industry Support Fund.That support fund created in 1986 has 2.3 billion TL (1.5 billion dollars) budget. On the other hand Turkish Armed Forces Foundation is also funded by the Treasury."

2011 estimations

According to SIPRI estimations for 2011, U.S. decreased its budget by 1.2% last year. The U.S estimated annual expenditure in 2011 is 711 billion dollars. In Europe that was effected by the financial crisis like U.S, the military expenditure only increased by 0,2 % and it is 407 billion dollars.

Click here to access to SIPRI data.