Merve Seren

The existing body of research on defense spending contains two main theses that appear in the much-debated discourse of “guns versus butter.” The first major theoretical issue that has dominated the field for many years concerns ‘security.’ In order to keep the country safe, primacy should be given to security within the grand strategy. The other argument gives priority to ‘butter,’ since defense spending is considered as a wasteful and inefficient investment. Apart from these major arguments, scholars have also long debated the long-term political, military, economic, commercial, diplomatic, social and cultural consequences of reducing versus increasing military spending. In light of these debates in the literature, this paper attempts to show that the prioritization of defense spending during the AK Party era is specifically the outcome of a political preference—a pragmatic shift in the political landscape from idealism to realism.