Türkiye plans a 229 percent rise in defence spending across the 2027-2029 programme

Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz said on Sunday that Türkiye will raise defence spending by 229 percent under the Medium-Term Program for 2027 to 2029. He presented the plan at the Presidential Complex in Ankara. The sentence he used was plain. The country wants to develop its own defence technology, meet its own needs and sell products with high added value. In that context, he said, defence spending rises 229 percent.

The Official Gazette later carried the programme and the 2027 appropriation ceilings. The Defence Ministry ceiling for 2027 is 1.533 trillion lira. The 2026 budget for the ministry was 822.9 billion lira. That year-to-year step is about 86 percent. The 229 percent figure is the three-year path Yilmaz described, not the single-year jump. Defence is the largest increase among the seven priority lines in the programme. Social housing is listed at 150 percent, mineral exploration at 139 percent, industrial infrastructure at 54 percent, railways at 49 percent, health at 43 percent and food supply security at 42 percent.

The same document cut the 2026 growth forecast from 3.8 percent to 3.3 percent and raised the year-end inflation forecast from 16 percent to 28.4 percent. Growth is then supposed to climb to 4.2 percent in 2027, 4.6 percent in 2028 and 5 percent in 2029. Inflation is supposed to fall to 16 percent, then 9 percent, then 8 percent. Yilmaz said inflation had already come down from a peak of 75.5 percent in May 2024. The new inflation print for 2026 is still a miss against the old target. The defence rise is being booked in that same programme.

SIPRI put Türkiye's military spending at $30 billion in 2025. The 229 percent claim is a lira path inside a domestic budget, not a dollar path against that SIPRI number. Currency moves will change the dollar reading. What the programme does lock in is a political choice: defence, housing and mines get the steepest slopes while the growth forecast for this year is trimmed.

Turkish specialist outlets have already mapped the extra money onto named projects. Mass production of the TF-KAAN fighter, first deliveries of the Kizilelma unmanned combat aircraft, and more than ten Altay tanks for the land forces are the three that keep appearing. Those programmes have slipped before. A ceiling in the Official Gazette does not by itself cut first steel. It does tell the Treasury which ministries win the argument when the pie is sliced.

Yilmaz tied security to development. He said budget resources will go to strategic needs. The programme also names semiconductors, health technology, artificial intelligence, critical minerals, nuclear and hydrogen, and kit for energy and mining. Mineral Research and Exploration spending is slated to rise 139 percent. Organised agricultural zones rise 103 percent. Irrigation rises 42 percent. The defence line is the headline because 229 percent is the number that travels.

Türkiye has spent a decade selling drones and building a domestic small-arms and shipyard base. KAAN and Altay are the expensive next rung. A 229 percent rise over three years is how a government tells those programmes they will not be the first items cut if inflation stays sticky. It is also how it tells NATO partners and regional rivals that the industrial policy and the force design are the same policy. The test is the 2027 outturn against the 1.533 trillion lira ceiling, and whether KAAN and Kizilelma move from display flights to serial numbers.