These NATO countries are not spending their fair share on defense

[Baybars Han]

Like I said many times before, unfortunately we are spending gigantic amounts of money for our defence/military but we're simply hiding the true figures.

There is actually not one single foreign scientific source that classifies the official Turkish numbers as reliable. You can find estimations which are more than three times higher than the official figures.

There is no doubt. We are spending much more money. This is obvious. How else can you have the second largest military forces in the Nato with several operations ongoing at the same time in totally different regions?

I would guess we're spending round about 30 billion USD every year (including spending for R&D).

Because we have conscripts. We don't pay wages to every soldier like the other nations which means we can have a larger force for less money.

 

[KediKesenFare3]

That my friend, is as much as a hoax as the story of one maroon beret being able to take out 2000 American troops.

And that's another one, no offense. I can agree that there had been some times that our defense spending was higher than the recorded data, but that was also nothing drastical.

For instance, GlobalSecurity.org is a very reliable military think tank source.

Sipri for 2011

Official Turkish data from Bütce ve Mali Kontrol Genel Müdürlügü [BUMKO] for 2011:

(Historic) exchange rate USD/TRY 31.12.2011 was 1,8358 TRY.

-> Official military spending figure in USD for 2011: ~ 9,27 billion USD

--> This won't wash.

Never believe the official data. Of course, methodology is very important in such cases and it will influence the outcome to some extent. But the difference between professional estimations and the provided official data is simply to huge.

Either we're hiding our real figures or we simply "calculate" seriously different than the rest of the world.

Because we have conscripts. We don't pay wages to every soldier like the other nations which means we can have a larger force for less money.

Yes and no.

@all
Read this, it's extremely informative:

Turkey - Military Spending

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported the level of military spending in 2014 in Turkey was in 15th place in the world, at $22.6 billion.

Turkey’s defense spending stood at 29.4 billion Turkish Liras, or $13.2 billion, Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz said 08 November 2014. He was responding to a question from an opposition party leader, the Nationalist Movement Party’s Ankara deputy Ozcan Yeniceri, who asked how much Turkey had spent on its defense budget since 2002. Yilmaz said Turkey spent about 1.71 percent of its Gross Domestic Product, or the GDP on defense in 2014. Turkey used to spend 3.5 percent of its GDP on defense in 2002.

According to the minister, Turkey’s military expenditure per capita in 2013 was 474 Turkish Liras or $213. He also said Turkey’s defense exports stood at $1.4 billion in 2014, while its imports amounted to $1.3 billion. The 2014 defense budget accounted for 3.7 percent of the overall state budget. About half of the country’s defense budget went to personnel spending such as salaries, benefits and pension payments to retired Turkish Army personnel.

The dates for projects that will make Turkey a regional power and add strength to the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) in counter-terrorism were finalized in March 2012. According to the strategic plan prepared by the Turkish Undersecretariat of Defense Industry:

1. the first indigenous helicopter ATAK will be ready in 2013.
2. the design for a Turkish war jet would be completed by end-2014.
3. the unmanned aerial vehicle ANKA will be ready for the TSK by end-2014.
4. the feasibility work for an original submarine is expected to be completed by 2015.
5. the training plane, Hurkus, will be manufactured by end-2015 in Turkey.
6. the prototype of national tank Altay will be ready by end-2015.
7. the first warship under the MILGEM-S project will be ready in 2016
8. Turkey will manufacture and send an observation satellite to space by end-2016.

The Turkish Undersecretariat of Defense Industry is making plans to open five defense industry contact offices in the Middle East, Far East, United States, Caucasus-Central Asia, and EU-NATO regions to boost sales in the near future.

The majority of the SSM budget is being met from sources transferred from the Defence Industry Support Fund (DISF), which is totally independent from the MoND budget and is one of the most important financial resources for TAF projects. The DISF figures for 2010 have been recently disclosed by MoND M. Vecdi GÖNÜL, who stated that during 2010, for the funding of defence projects carried out by the SSM, a total of US$1.8 Billion had been transferred from the DISF and over US$674 Million from the MoND budget. According to GÖNÜL, the DISF achieved US$138 Million in revenues in 2010 and had a total of US$3.96 Billion worth of assets from the Treasury.

In 2009, Turkey spent about $10 billion of its central budget on military expenditures, not including the Undersecretariat for the Defense Industry (SSM) fund. Using a more generally applicable definition of military spending and a comparable exchange rate, Turkey's military spending was about $14 billion in 2009. Since military service is a compulsory service, the true cost of personnel is not included in these calculations. If the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) employed professional soldiers, Turkey's military spending would be much higher. If the opportunity costs of conscription were calculated, the result would certainly point to enormous budgets.

Turkey was one of the fifteen countries with the highest military expenditure in 2006 (in purchasing power parity dollar terms). Although Europeanization reforms that have been carried out in Turkey since 2001 strengthened the Parliament's oversight functions, the defence budget is still not totally transparent. Due to the existence of extra-budgetary funds, such as the Defence Industry Support Fund, which has been used for major arms procurement projects, the exact size of the military's budget is still unknown. The known defence budget was 19.66 billion YTL for 2008, amounting to 8,8 percent of the total fiscal budget and 2,74 percent of the GNP.20 According to the SIPRI statistics, Turkey's military expenditures were 18,013 million YTL and 20,585 million YTL respectively in 2007 and 2008, corresponding to 2.1 percent of the GDP in 2007.
(...)

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/europe/tu-budget.htm

 

[what]

https://twitter.com/x/status/830524752452317184

 

[Louiq XIV]

Old issue , many western European countries don't really have any major threat since the Soviet union collapsed. Russia is not that strong anymore to poses major threat unlike before, reason only eastern European/Baltic states and Scandinavian countries to a lesser extent still consider Russia as a major threat, hence their high defence spending compared to western Europe.
So it's difficult to justify such high amounts of spending to our public who would rather we spent it on social programs/healthcare etc which is what western European countries have been prioritising anyway . So the situation will remain the same for a while until these nations face a big enough threat to justify such spending.

Agreed. And I would add that this 2% things is the worst way to handle a defence budget because it does not quantify past budget efforts nor current level of capabilities.

A country needs to define the level of military power needed as a function of the challenging threats. From that expenditures are scheduled and ultimately the defence budget is defined.