ANKARA: Turkey will spend up to an additional $5 billion to buy new weapons next year, Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek said on Thursday, adding Ankara would fund the modernisation of its military through tax revenues, not borrowing. Last week the government proposed a draft law to the parliament to allocate an additional 8 billion lira ($2.2 billion) of existing tax revenues towards the military modernisation. But Simsek, the government minister charged with oversight of the economy, on Thursday said spending on new weapons could be more than twice that amount. “Next year, the resources we will transfer to the defence fund to buy new weapons will cost Turkey an additional 17-18 billion lira ($4.8-$5 billion),” he told broadcaster NTV in an interview, adding that the government would rely on tax income for the funding.
The wide-ranging draft law, which also includes proposed tax hikes, has drawn backlash from the public, particularly over sharply higher taxes on passenger cars. Parliament is due to discuss the draft law on Thursday. The spike in proposed defence spending comes as Turkey fights a three-decade insurgency in its largely Kurdish southeast and as the military conducts drills with Iraqi counterparts on the border with northern Iraq. Ankara fears that last week’s Kurdish referendum on independence in northern Iraq will inflame separatist tension among its own Kurdish population. Separately, Simsek also said he saw inflation falling to single digits in the first quarter of next year.
