Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Military Might A Domestic Economy Explanation of Turkish Foreign Policy
Military Might A Domestic Economy Explanation of Turkish Foreign Policy
Sabri Ciftci
To cite this article: Sabri Ciftci (2023) Military might: a domestic economy explanation of
Turkish foreign policy, Turkish Studies, 24:5, 764-787, DOI: 10.1080/14683849.2023.2196020
ABSTRACT
Turkish foreign policy has taken a military turn in recent years. Turkey is now
a major arms exporter, it hosts military bases in its neighborhood and
beyond, and has engaged in conflicts in Syria and Libya. Scholars have
highlighted identity and international system theories to explain the
military assertiveness in Turkish foreign policy. This study proposes a
domestic economy explanation. It argues that national wealth, a take-off in
defence industry, and an alliance of conservative bourgeoisie and political
Islamists are the primary drivers of the military turn in foreign policy.
Analysis of Turkish economic development and historical trajectories of
economic and bureaucratic wings of the defence industry shows that
complex business-politics interactions and commercial interests of defence
companies propel military assertiveness. This domestic economy
framework supplements insights from the identity and international
system theories to significantly add to our understanding of the military
turn in Turkish foreign policy.
Introduction
Some observers attribute the decisive victory of Azerbaijan in the 2020
Azerbaijan-Armenia war to Bayraktar-TB2s, a class of Turkish unmanned
aerial vehicles (or drones).1 Azerbaijan is not Turkey’s only customer, as
more than two dozen countries have bought or expressed interest in
acquiring these weapons. Turkish drones are also featured in the
Russia-Ukraine war, supposedly giving an edge to Ukraine.2 Turkey’s
growing weapons arsenal includes an air defence system (Hisar), several
missile systems (Atmaca, Gökdoğan, and Bozdoğan), the Atak helicopter,
armored combat vehicles, a national warship (Milgem), naval war systems,
and more recently an unmanned fighter jet (Kızılelma), among others.
CONTACT Sabri Ciftci [email protected] Department of Political Science, Kansas State University,
802 Mid-Campus Dr.-S, 216 Calvin Hall, Manhattan, KS 66506, USA
© 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
TURKISH STUDIES 765
Turkey became the world’s fourteenth largest arms exporter during the
2015–2020 period,3 extending its reach to Africa and Asia. Relatedly,
Turkey stretched its military muscle in the conflicts in Libya and Iraq,
carried out multiple cross-border operations into Syria, established mili-
tary bases/training camps in Qatar and Somalia, and added to its military
presence in Cyprus, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan.4 Furthermore, the
Turkish navy made an impressive showing in the Eastern Mediterranean
during an international crisis, creating new tensions with its NATO
allies.5 This last incident marks a strategic shift in the breadth of
Turkish foreign policy at the intersection of maritime interests, security,
and energy exploration, a vision propagated as the Blue Homeland doc-
trine.6 Clearly, Turkish foreign policy has taken a new turn, most
visibly seen in its military assertiveness.7
There is no dearth of scholarship explaining the general trends in Turkish
foreign policy,8 yet the field lacks systematic accounts of recent military
assertiveness. This study aims to fill this gap by leveraging a domestic
economy explanation against identity and international system theories.
Some scholars have already employed political economy approaches to
explain Turkey’s foreign policy behavior.9 This study differs from these
accounts by investigating, specifically, the economic determinants of military
assertiveness in foreign policy.
This study employs process tracing of Turkish economic development
and growth of defence industries to reveal the mechanisms triggering
military assertiveness in foreign policy. The analysis shows that rapid
growth of Turkish economy and emergence of a new business class set
the stage for a take-off in the defence industry. Given this background,
an alliance of the devout bourgeoisie and political Islamists, public-
private partnerships rewarding partisan loyalists in crony ways, and the
growing weight of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in
defence manufacturing all played a role in the expansion of military capa-
bilities. This process propelled the demonstration of Turkish military
might in various international theaters. Such demonstrative policy
proved to be an efficient strategy conducive to the commercial interests
of the defence companies that found new markets for their products. It
also benefited the political Islamists who consolidated their religious-con-
servative base through the appeal of military assertiveness in foreign
policy.
This study thus presents theoretically informed and evidence-based
mechanisms about the economic origins of military capabilities and their
influence on foreign policy behavior in an emerging middle power. As
such, it adds to our understanding of political economy of security and
Turkish foreign policy.
766 S. CIFTCI
Identity
Identity affects foreign policy decisions through the worldviews of political
leaders or social identities of the masses.11 In this vein, constructivist
accounts of foreign policy also highlight the role of ideational/economic
struggles to explain Turkish foreign policy preferences.12 Such struggles
matter, because they determine the conjectural salience of identities in
foreign policy.13 For example, the Kemalist worldview implies a preference
for a Western-oriented foreign policy doctrine based on the principles of
independence and non-interference.14 Islamist and nationalist identity
likely implies pivoting toward the Middle East or the Muslim world. Some
scholars explain the so-called ‘axis shift’15 and assertive foreign policy by
referring to the influence of nationalism, Islamic political identity, or a nos-
talgic longing for the Ottoman past.16
Identity theories overlap with two other approaches in the study of
Turkish foreign policy: periodization and geopolitical visions. The former
focuses on one period or introduces multiple sub-periods within a shorter
time frame17 to account for the changes in Turkish foreign policy, usually
within an ideational framework.18 For example, Öniş and Yilmaz19 introduce
three sub-periods for explaining Turkish foreign policy in the post-Cold War
era, again reverting to such ideational frames as Europeanization and soft
Euro-Asianism.20 The latter approach employs geopolitical visions, viewed
as imaginations locating one’s country within an international order accord-
ing to specific beliefs, ideas, and state identity.21 Ideological currents like
Westernism, Islamism, Turkism, and more recently Eurasianism22 are
among the frequently cited geopolitical visions in Turkish foreign policy.23
Identity theories have several implications with respect to military asser-
tiveness in Turkish foreign policy. For example, the Kemalist peace at home,
peace in world principle should preclude aggressive military action in inter-
national relations. Neo-Ottomanism, on the other hand, should be more
open to the increased use of military tools because it implies assertiveness
toward establishing the state’s grandeur in the former Ottoman territories.
By proposing distrust toward the Western security architecture or detach-
ment from NATO, Eurasianism also implies a preference for expanded mili-
tary capabilities to obtain security independence. Alternatively, such
geopolitical visions may preclude the expansion of military capabilities by
TURKISH STUDIES 767
building alliances with new actors. These approaches are insightful, but they
do not always introduce neat causal mechanisms explaining military asser-
tiveness in Turkish foreign policy.
Systemic imperatives
Assuming a deterministic relationship between international systemic
factors and unit-level decision-making, a second approach predicts that
expected foreign policy behavior will differ in bipolar and liberal inter-
national orders. This dynamic should be particularly visible in a ‘penetrated
system’ like the Middle East where direct foreign intervention and imperial-
ist economic relations have been the norm.24
A perceived security threat from Russia has always been a significant
driver of Turkish foreign policy and is contingent on the ideological con-
struction of this threat by the elites.25 For example, within the bipolar
order, Turkey closely aligned with the West to counter the Soviet threat, a
foreign policy strategy compatible with the Kemalist and Islamist visions.26
In most instances, the foreign policy elite found themselves balancing
between friends and foes, as observed in the recent balancing acts involving
Russia and China. Even under the relative stability of the NATO security
architecture, Turkish foreign policy always utilized a multidimensional bal-
ancing strategy.27
Since the 1950s, Turkey tried to position itself within a US-led liberal
international order despite periods of its declining geopolitical significance.
The perceived threats from Islamism and Kurdish nationalism also shaped
foreign policy decisions in the post-Cold War period. In the 1990s, Turkey
carried out many military operations to counter security threats from the
Kurdish insurgency, earning the ‘Post-Cold War warrior’ title.28 This mili-
tary strategy did not align well with the peaceful Kemalist foreign relations
vision. Strengthening alliances with the European Union (EU), US, and
Israel while at the same time balancing with Russia continued to be the
main parameters of foreign policy.
With the decline of the liberal international order in the aftermath of the
Iraq War,29 Turkey faced an even more complex security matrix. The par-
ameters of this matrix include ethnic and religious terrorism, a civil war in
Syria, the rise of political Islam, internationalization of Kurdish insurgency,
and increased rivalry with regional powers due to the deepening ideological
cleavages in the Arab world. These factors were consequential in generating
new directions in Turkish foreign policy, such as strategic autonomy,30 pre-
cious loneliness,31 or the militarization of foreign policy.32
Ziya Öniş and Mustafa Kutlay offer an integrated theory combining inter-
national and domestic factors to explain the oscillations and assertiveness in
Turkish foreign policy.33 Turkey, as would be expected from a traditional
768 S. CIFTCI
disruptions altering the security calculations, in turn, could result in the use
of military might in foreign policy. This perspective provides meaningful
insights for explaining the general trends in foreign policy behavior.
However, like identity theory, it does not present convincing mechanisms
explaining the root causes of military assertiveness. In the Turkish case,
the prevalence of ambitions to establish influence beyond regional geography
and disproportionate power projection, sometimes in the lack of significant
security threats, make the military-assertive turn in foreign policy even more
puzzling. The domestic economy approach provides neater mechanisms
than both identity and international system theories. It accounts for the
interplay of commercial and political interests in the development of
defence industry and the influence of this process on the recent military
turn in Turkish foreign policy.
and states with significant economic power will have a greater tendency to
build military capabilities and project power than those lacking it.48
Domestic economic interests play a significant role in propelling foreign
policy strategies utilizing military power.49 According to Hobson’s theory
of imperialism,50 commercial interests of the capitalist class in the core led
to the use of military might to create or safeguard investments in the periph-
ery. Similarly, the notion of military-industrial complex51 implies that com-
mercial interests of private sector will bring about the use of military power
in foreign policy. Overall, research on political economy of security52 favors
domestic factors like the growth of national wealth and profit driven
business-government relations as the drivers of military assertiveness in
foreign policy.
Political economy explanations of Turkish foreign policy emphasize the
role of class struggles over control of economic and political spheres.53
Some scholars explain the seemingly contradictory actions in foreign
policy by invoking the long-term strategies of social reproduction of
classes with varying degrees of access to the economic means.54 In the
most recent juncture, the AKP’s main goal was to establish itself as the
sole political power. To that end, its leaders tried to gain electoral dominance
by any means, including the nurturing of a crony business class, democratic
backsliding, continuous growth of export markets, and projection of nation-
alist-Islamic identities in foreign policy.55 Kutlay also proposes a direct link
between domestic political economy and foreign policy activism under the
AKP rule. His explanation highlights the rise of Anatolian capital and its
integration into the global economy as the drivers of both market expansion
and assertive foreign policy.56
Together, these studies provide important insights about ‘domestic
economy-foreign policy’ nexus by highlighting the role of economic
classes and business-politics relations. The following analysis applies
this framework to explain military assertiveness in Turkish foreign
policy. To that end, it first presents data about economic growth as the
material foundation of military power-building in Turkey. Then, it
traces the history of defence industries to unpack the domestic economic
mechanisms giving way to the rise of military turn in Turkish foreign
policy. These mechanisms include the emergence of a new business
class, reconfiguration of the defence sector under an Islamist government,
and commercial and electoral dividends resulting from military assertive-
ness in foreign policy.
fell short of this target in 2019 (1.85 percent), this decision provided an
additional incentive to maintain the spike in military expenditures with
equipment spending reaching 34 percent in 2019.62 Turkish defence expen-
ditures increased from $11.78 billion in 2014 to $18.89 billion in 2020.63
Relatedly, Turkish arms sales also sharply increased in the new millennium,
moving the nation’s rank in defence exports from 42nd in 1996 to 14th in
2020 and 11th in 2021.
Historically, Turkish leaders made attempts to expand the nation’s mili-
tary capabilities in response to changing international and domestic security
threats. However, these attempts failed because the surges during the 1970s
and 1990s took place amidst economic crises marked with the rising inflation
and devaluation of national currency. Economic conditions likely amplified
the weight of a trade-off between welfare and security spending. There is
indeed some evidence confirming the presence of a trade-off between the
defence and health spending between 1924 and 1996, though not in edu-
cation.64 As the military expenditures steeply increased from 2011 to 2019,
educational spending as a percentage of GDP did not decline, rather it
increased from 5.5 percent in 2011 to six percent in 2019.65 The sudden
growth in national wealth allowed a simultaneous increase in provision of
security and most other welfare goods.
Economic outlook has not always been rosy in the new millennium as
unstable relations with the EU and the Middle Eastern allies in the post-
Arab Spring period created new economic challenges.66 The vulnerability
of Turkish economy was most clearly seen in the decline of the foreign
direct investments, which, despite periodic increases, never reached peak
2007 levels and in fact declined to $7.6 billion in 2020.67 Notwithstanding
a skyrocketing deficit and a currency crisis, the Turkish economy continued
to operate within a new paradigm of expanded resource endowments. This
development provided the material base for an eventual take-off in
defence industry and the resulting military assertiveness in foreign policy.68
An international environment conducive to increasing security indepen-
dence is a necessary but insufficient condition to elicit a military turn in
foreign policy. The effect of systemic factors on the defence capacity will
be contingent on the expansion of resource endowments and their potential
in easing the concerns about the guns versus butter trade-off. For example,
the decision to divert economic resources to security goods was reversed
under budgetary constraints during the Cyprus crisis. A similar reason
might have inhibited the take-off in defence industry in the 1990s despite
the significant security challenge from the Kurdish insurgency. Therefore,
holding systemic factors and domestic security threats constant, we can
reasonably argue that the surge in national wealth in the 2000s helped the
Turkish government increase security spending without decreasing citizens’
welfare. This conclusion provides the first step of a political economy
TURKISH STUDIES 773
Drones are not sufficient on their own to give Turkey a competitive edge
in the global arms markets. Lack of such competitive power, perhaps,
underlies the use of military might and targeting of markets like the
Middle East and Africa where the low-tech products of the emerging
business classes can compete. Despite the increasing rate of nationalization
in supplier chains geared toward the subcomponents production, the indus-
try still depends on the advanced technology and the parts from foreign
actors. Such dependence is not unfamiliar to the economic and bureaucratic
wings of Turkish defence industry as a condition inhibiting a full-scale take-
off and enhanced security independence.
Furthermore, disputes with the US in various military partnerships and
the hesitancy of the British Rolls Royce company to cooperate in the pro-
duction of jet engines to power Turkish national fighter jets are clear indi-
cations that Turkish military capabilities and their use in foreign policy
still face significant limitations. After purchasing the Russian S-400 air
defence system, Turkey faced sanctions from the US, including the pause
in the F-16 modernization projects and the sale of F-35s. Ongoing economic
woes further impede a full-blown military assertiveness concerning Greece,
Syria, and other theaters. Future studies should explore the consequences of
such limitations for Turkish foreign policy.
Notes
1. The Economist. “The Technology of Seeing and Shooting Your Enemies,”
January 29, 2022. Accessed March 23, 2022. https://www.economist.com/
technology-quarterly/2022/01/29/the-technology-of-seeing-and-shooting-
your-enemies.
2. Maya Carlin, “How the Turkish-Made TB2 Drone Gave Ukraine the Edge
Against Russia,” Business Insider, September 18, 2022. Accessed January 10,
2023. https://www.businessinsider.com/how-turkish-baykar-tb2-drone-gave-
ukraine-edge-against-russia-2022-9.
3. SIPRI “SIPRI Arms Transfer Database.”
4. Hacaoglu, “Mapping the Turkish.”
5. Grigoriadis, “The European Union.”
6. The Blue Homeland Doctrine proposes that Turkey should aggressively
protect its interests and use unilateral military force if necessary in extended
maritime borders in the Mediterranean and beyond. See Gingeras, “Blue
Homeland.”
7. In this study, I use military turn, rise of the military might, and military asser-
tiveness interchangeably to describe the use of military capabilities in Turkish
foreign policy.
8. For broad historical accounts of Turkish foreign policy, see Hale, Turkish
Foreign Policy; Aydin, Turkish Foreign Policy; and Oran, Türk Dış Politikası.
9. Kirişci, “The Transformation”; Kutlay, “Economy”; Hoffmann and Cemgil,
“The (Un)making.” Especially see Yalvaç, “Approaches,” for a novel approach
780 S. CIFTCI
75. These companies are consistently ranked among the top contenders according
to SIPRI and Turkish ISO-500 industrial index. See Akça and Özden, “A Pol-
itical-Economic Map.”
76. The history of defence history presented here is based on the information pro-
vided on the website of Presidency of Defence Industries at https://www.ssb.
gov.tr/Website/contentList.aspx?PageID=39&LangID=2.
77. Johnson, MITI.
78. SIPRI, “SIPRI Arms Transfers.”
79. Akça and Özden, “A Political-Economic Map.”
80. Demir, “Transformation,” 37.
81. See SASAD’s report, “2021 Performans Raporu,” for more details. Available at
https://www.sasad.org.tr/uploaded/Sasad-Performans-Raporu-2021.pdf,
accessed 25 October 2022.
82. For TİM reports see https://tim.org.tr/tr/default.
83. Daily Sabah, “Baykar Becomes Top Exporter in Turkey’s Defense, Aerospace
Sector,” June 15, 2022. Accessed March 13, 2023. https://www.dailysabah.com/
business/defense/baykar-becomes-top-exporter-in-turkeys-defense-
aerospace-sector.
84. Bugra, State and Business.
85. Buğra, “Politics”; and Buğra and Savaşkan, New Capitalism; Hoffmann and
Cemgil, “The Unmaking”; and Yalvaç, “Approaches.”
86. Buğra and Savaşkan, New Capitalism, and Yavuz, Islamic Political Identity.
87. Yavuz, Islamic Political Identity.
88. Buğra, “Politics.”
89. Ibid.; and Yavuz. Islamic Political Identity.
90. Buğra and Savaşkan, New Capitalism.
91. Demir, “Transformation.”
92. Sancak sold 49.9 percent of the BMC to the Qatar Army with a huge profit
margin and another 25 percent to a relative of Erdoğan. Getting most of its
revenue from the public funds, BMC was also awarded the Altay Tank
Project, the first phase of which was previously given to Otokar, a Koç subsidi-
ary. Although Otokar completed the first phase, its offer was declined by the
SSB and the whole project was given to BMC which is yet to deliver the
product. See Akça and Özden, “A Political-Economic Map,” 66; and Özgür,
“Koç’tan Sancak’a.”
93. Topal, “Türk Savunma Sanayiinin”; and Akça and Özden, “A Political-Econ-
omic Map,” 75–77.
94. Of 3,189 ASELSAN suppliers, 2716 were local SMEs. See Akça and Özden, “A
Political-Economic Map,” 66; and Özgür, “Koç’tan Sancak’a.”
95. Akça and Özden, “A Political-Economic Map.”
96. Özgür, “Koç’tan Sancak’a.”
97. Bekdil, “Turkish Defense Exports.”
98. Bekdil, “Turkey’s Defense Industry.”
99. Zaks, “Relationships.”
100. Kutlay and Öniş, “Understanding Oscillations.”
101. Yavuz, “The Motives.”
102. Yalvaç, “Approaches.”
103. Hoffmann and Cemgil, “The Unmaking.”
104. Mehmetcik and Çelik, “The Militarization.”
TURKISH STUDIES 783
105. Horowitz, The Diffusion. It should also be stated that unstable relations with
Israel was a turning point for the decision to focus on drone production.
Since Turkey heavily relied on Israeli drones (Herons) in its fight against the
PKK, the worsening of relations provided an impetus to reduce dependency
in this area. See “Turkey’s Giant Leap: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles,” Israel
Defense, August 16, 2020. Accessed March 13, 2023, https://www.
israeldefense.co.il/en/node/44696.
Acknowledgements
The Author would like to thank Nilgün Önder and the panel participants at the
2022 International Studies Association annual meeting for their valuable comments;
Fredrich Schuller for his research assistance; and the experts affiliated with the Pre-
sidency of Defense Industries for their insights.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes on contributor
Sabri Ciftci is a Professor of Political Science and the Michael W. Suleiman Chair at
Kansas State University. He is the author of Islam, Justice, and Democracy (Temple
University Press) and co-author of Beyond Piety and Politics (Indiana University
Press). He has widely published about religion and politics, Islam and democracy,
and Middle Eastern and Turkish politics in Comparative Political Studies, Political
Research Quarterly, Foreign Policy Analysis, and Democratization.
ORCID
Sabri Ciftci http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3669-6620
Bibliography
Akça, Ismet, and Barış Alp Özden. “A Political-Economic Map of the Turkish
Defense Industry.” Heinrich Böll Stiftung (Istanbul), December 2021. Accessed
June 10, 2022. https://tr.boell.org/en/2022/05/23/political-economic-map-
turkish-defense-industry.
Akkoyunlu, Karabekir. “The Five Phases of Turkey’s Foreign Policy under the AKP.”
Social Research: An International Quarterly 88, no. 2 (2021): 243–270.
Aktürk, Şener. “The Fourth Style of Politics: Eurasianism as a Pro-Russian
Rethinking of Turkey’s Geopolitical Identity.” Turkish Studies 16, no. 1 (2015):
54–79.
Altug, Sumru, Alpay Filiztekin, and Şevket Pamuk. “Sources of Long-Term
Economic Growth for Turkey, 1880–2005.” European Review of Economic
History 12, no. 3 (2008): 393–430.
Altunışık, Meliha Benli. “Worldviews and Turkish Foreign Policy in the Middle
East.” New Perspectives on Turkey 40 (2009): 169–192.
784 S. CIFTCI
Yavuz, M. Hakan. Islamic Political Identity in Turkey. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2003.
Yavuz, M. Hakan. Nostalgia for the Empire: The Politics of Neo-Ottomanism.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.
Yavuz, M. Hakan. “The Motives Behind the AKP’s Foreign Policy: Neo-Ottomanism
and Strategic Autonomy.” Turkish Studies, 23, no. 5 (2022): 659–680.
Yeşiltaş, Murat. “The Transformation of the Geopolitical Vision in Turkish Foreign
Policy.” Turkish Studies 14, no. 4 (2013): 661–687.
Yıldırım, Jülide, and Selami Sezgin. “Defence, Education and Health Expenditures in
Turkey, 1924–96.” Journal of Peace Research 39, no. 5 (2002): 569–580.
Zaks, Sherry. “Relationships Among Rivals (RAR): A Framework for Analyzing
Contending Hypotheses in Process Tracing.” Political Analysis 25, no. 3 (2017):
344–362.