Turkey increasing its arms imports

The Turkish newspaper Milliyet states that during the last couple of years Turkey has spent USD 1.25 billion on buying arms abroad. Turkey is also an exporter of arms. In 2009 for instance it exported arms worth around USD 56 million, its main customers being Azerbaijan, Georgia and Pakistan.

In 2009 Turkey elaborated a new plan for modernising its armed forces, which involves the country spending around USD 150 billion on this over the next 25-30 years. The Turkish armed forces are the second biggest in NATO, with more than 600,000 personnel, including conscripts.

Annually Turkey spends 3 billion on purchasing arms and it has recently established serious partnership relations with Russia, negotiating over and probably buying certain missile systems from Russia.