A Political Economy of Turkey's Defence Industry
How does a country build a competitive defence industry while its wider economy contends with high inflation, import dependence and currency volatility? This is the puzzle IMEG member Melike Bozkurt takes up in a new article co-authored with H. Emrah Karaoguz. Titled “Defying the Odds: A Political Economy Analysis of Turkey’s Defence Industry within the Systemic Vulnerability Framework”, it appears open access in the Journal of Economic Policy Reform.
Turkey is widely regarded as a case of relative failure in state-led development, yet its defence sector has yielded surprising economic, military and political gains. The article reads this as a pocket of efficiency emerging in an otherwise weak institutional environment: the product of global, international, regional and domestic vulnerabilities pressing on Turkish policymakers at once and driving them towards an export-oriented strategy under conditions of high systemic vulnerability.
Extending the systemic vulnerability framework, the article shows that neither International Political Economy (IPE) nor Comparative Political Economy (CPE) explains the outcome on its own. An account centred solely on IPE cannot capture how external pressures were politically mobilised at home, just as a purely CPE account cannot explain why those domestic pressures intensified in the post-2008 conjuncture. The Turkish defence case thus points towards a more integrative approach, one that gives equal analytical weight to IPE and CPE determinants. Such an approach offers insight into how non-hegemonic powers can leverage their vulnerabilities to assert agency within an increasingly multipolar yet uncertain global order.
The gains, however, come with structural limits. The defence sector remains relatively detached from Turkey’s broader economic and industrial landscape, and its long-term sustainability remains an open question. The historical account of Turkey’s defence industry offers a cautionary reminder: waves of momentum can fade once the pressures that accelerate them ease. For other non-hegemonic powers, the lesson may be less about what high systemic vulnerability can produce than about how long it lasts.
The article is part of a special issue titled “Bridging Comparative and International Political Economy for the Study of Industrial Policy beyond the Hegemons”, edited by Fulya Apaydin, Merve Sancak and Andreas Nölke, and can be read in full here.
