Critical approach to Turkey's defense procurement behavior: 1923-2013


Tezin Türü: Doktora

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi, Uluslararası İlişkiler Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2013

Öğrenci: ÇAĞLAR KURÇ

Danışman: HÜSEYİN BAĞCI

Özet:

This research provides a critical analysis of Turkey's defense procurement behavior since 1923. The main goal behind focusing on such a long period is to find out the differences and sources of change behind the Turkey's behavior and ideas that justified certain set of behavior. However, mainstream approaches – Defense Economics, Politics of Defense and Political Economy Defense – do not provide necessary tools for such a historical analysis mainly because they are problem solving theories that operate within system that arises at certain historical moment. Furthermore, these theories, although having different focus points, operate within the liberal political economy, which assumes economics and politics are separate spheres and share various assumptions. Consequently, to address limitation of existing theories, this research adopts Gramscian historical materialism and develops Gramscian defense procurement theory. The research focuses on how hegemony is established, maintained and spread among different communities and how interaction between hegemonic structures reflect upon defense procurement behavior. Through application of such theoretical framework, the history of Turkey's defense procurement behavior is examined in three different periods (1923-1945, 1945-1980 and 1980-2013) where international structure showed different characteristics in terms of form of production, ideas and institutions as well as historical blocs and rivalry between blocs. The main argument of this research is that Turkey's defense procurement behavior is shaped the level of integration of structure in Turkey to the hegemonic structure at the international level. Consequently, defense procurement decision are taken within the boundaries of the structure.