Türkiye plans a 229 percent rise in defence spending across 2027 to 2029

Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz said on 6 September that Türkiye will raise defence spending by 229 percent over the next three years. He spoke in Ankara while presenting the Medium-Term Program that covers 2027 to 2029. Defence is the largest increase among seven priority lines in that paper.

Yilmaz's sentence was that Türkiye should develop its own technology and produce high added value in the defence industry. The 229 percent figure sits next to smaller planned rises: social housing 150 percent, mining exploration 139 percent, industrial infrastructure 54 percent, railways 49 percent, health 43 percent and food supply security 42 percent. Defence24, citing Envanter Medya, said the extra money is meant to support mass production of the TF-KAAN fighter, first deliveries of the Kizilelma unmanned combat aircraft and more than ten Altay tanks.

The fiscal paper around the guns

The same program cut the 2026 growth forecast from 3.8 percent to 3.3 percent and raised the 2026 inflation forecast from 16 percent to 28.4 percent. Growth is then written as 4.2 percent in 2027, 4.6 percent in 2028 and 5 percent in 2029. Inflation is written as 16 percent in 2027, 9 percent in 2028 and 8 percent in 2029. Yilmaz said inflation had already turned down from a peak of 75.5 percent in May 2024.

Those two halves of the document pull against each other. A state that is still printing an inflation rate of 28.4 percent for this year is also promising the steepest spending rise in the defence column. SIPRI put Turkish military spending at $30 billion in 2025, 18th in the world, up 7.2 percent on the year. SIPRI tied that earlier rise to operations in Iraq, Somalia and Syria and to investment in the domestic industry. The new 229 percent figure is a three-year cumulative target toward 2029, not a single-year jump of that size.

What the industry is being asked to deliver

TF-KAAN is the national fighter prototype. Kizilelma is the unmanned fighter that has been shown at air shows and in test flights. Altay is the main battle tank that has spent years in development. Putting those three names next to a 229 percent spending line is how Ankara tells factories and foreign suppliers that the order book is supposed to thicken.

It is also a message to NATO partners and to neighbours. Türkiye already sells drones and other systems abroad. A larger domestic budget is meant to keep the design work at home rather than on a licensed line. Whether the Treasury can fund that ambition while inflation is still in the high twenties is the part the Medium-Term Program does not settle. It only writes the percentages.

Yilmaz presented a road map, not a signed appropriations bill. The test will be the 2027 budget that has to carry the first slice of the 229 percent, and whether KAAN, Kizilelma and Altay move from prototypes and small batches into the numbers the defence press has attached to the speech.