Outgoing President Gül urges gov’t to allow Parliament scrutiny over defense expenditure

A comprehensive report prepared by the Presidency has urged the government to permit the Parliament to exert scrutiny over defense expenditures and exercise adequate democratic control over defense policies.

Written by a team of civilian and military experts upon the instructions of President Abdullah Gül, the “Defense Report” is regarded as a first of its kind and contains not only the shortcomings of the current state of the army and defense management but also suggestions for correcting them.

“While Turkey has been undertaking deep reforms in all fields, I regard the ignoring of the field of defense as a deficiency. It’s obvious that we can no longer delay comprehensive defense reform in light of regional developments and of an increasingly complicated and uncertain international security environment,” Gül said in the preface to the report. Gül will hand over the presidency on Aug. 28 to President-elect Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

One of the most important points underlined in the report is the public impression about the lack of control of defense expenditures although Turkey’s Court of Accounts is legally tasked with scrutinizing public expenditures. “In order to break this impression, the Court of Accounts should inform the public about its control of defense expenditures and should report them without any exception,” said the report.  

The report also underlined that the reports prepared by the Court of Accounts were not being investigated by an expert commission at Parliament and called on the government to remove obstacles before establishing an expert commission under Parliament’s roof.

“In order to allow the Parliament to fulfill this task, obstacles...