Rise in security expenditures turns Turkey into police state

A decrease in Turkey's military spending has increased the share of social protection expenditures, according to an expert group. Instead, there has been a rise in domestic security expenditures. ‘This show that Turkey is becoming a security state,' says Nurhan Yentürk from the Public Expenditures Monitoring Platform Turkey should reduce its military spending in order to increase social protection expenditures, which fall far behind the level of developed countries, according to an expert group.

Turkey witnessed a rise in social protection expenditures in the first half of 2000s, which increased the share of social protection spending, said Nurhan Yentürk, a spokesperson for the Public Expenditures Monitoring Platform. However, there are no expectations of further reduction in military spending while there has been a sharp increase in domestic security expenditures, indicating that Turkey is becoming a security state, Yentürk recently told the Hürriyet Daily News.

Tell us first about the Public Expenditures Monitoring Platform.

We first got together as 30 NGOs to monitor public spending in 2010. But when we saw the importance of the outcome not only for the NGOs but the public as well as the parliamentarians, we decided to become a platform and share our findings with lawmakers. We now have more than 50 NGOs in the platform. Those which would like to become a member need to take training on how to monitor public spending which we provide for free. We have independent financing; we don't accept foreign funding.

What motivated the initiative?

Istanbul Bilgi University's NGO training and research center was established in 2003. The NGOs told us they were not informed about public expenditures in...