By Richard Weitz (vol. 4, no. 11 of the Turkey Analyst)

Turkey’s recent decision to spend billions of dollars buying U.S.-made helicopters underscores the continuing significance of Turkish-American defense industrial ties. Sikorsky Aircraft beat out rival European firms to persuade the Defense Industry Executive Committee, Turkey's highest decision-making body on defense procurement, to select the U.S.-based company as its supplier of next-generation utility helicopters. Defense experts predict that Turkey might buy as many as 600 of the Turkish version of the S-70 Black Hawk International offered by Sikorsky at a cost of more than $20 billion. Turkish Aerospace Industries and other Turkish firms will co-produce the helicopter. 

By Halil M. Karaveli (vol. 4, no. 10 of the Turkey Analyst)

There is a grim irony to the fact that while the AKP’s 2007 victory represented a defeat for the military, victory four years later requires that the ideology – Turkish nationalism – that upholds militarism not be challenged.  The AKP’s appeasement of Turkish nationalism lays bare the limits of how far Turkey’s democratization can be extended. Meanwhile, the army’s unprovoked offensive against Kurdish guerillas in the southeast of the country reveals how the manipulation of the Kurdish issue serves as a lever for perpetuating the power of the military.

By Peter G. Laurens (vol. 4, no. 10 of the Turkey Analyst)

Less than a month from now, Turkish citizens will go to the polls to cast their votes in the Republic’s seventeenth general election.  Economic problems are often the catalyst for political change worldwide and in Turkey this is no exception, but in the country at present there is precious little bad economic news for opposition parties to exploit in attempting to weaken the ruling party’s chances at victory.