DYNAMICS AFFECTING ARMS PROCUREMENT IN THE MIDDLE EAST: RECIPIENTS AND SUPPLIERS IN THE ARAB SPRING

Arms procurement that has an important role in the analysis of the Middle East politics is influenced by a number of factors. Threat perceptions that vary over the time are the foremost among these factors. When these threat perceptions are considered together with the fact that many countries in the region do not have sophisticated domestic procurement capabilities, relationship between the arms procurement and supplier become even more important. This study aims to analyze the factors affecting the arms procurement efforts in the Middle East in the recent period in order to investigate whether the armament activities and the suppliers are affected by these factors or not. As a result, the pre-existing threat perceptions in the Middle Eastern countries have been diversified by the Arab Spring process and thus, balancing or struggling with these threats have increasingly become more complex. The challenges that have emerged or become evident with the Arab Spring can be explained as the rise of popular movements, the increasing sectarian and ethnic polarization, the radicalization, the armed and/or transnational non-state actors, weapons possessed by these actors, involvement of the regional and especially the non-regional forces in the crises and the increase in oil prices. For the regional countries, the quality as much as the quantity of the weapons and especially the source of them are gaining importance in struggling with the conventional threats on the one hand, while in balancing the newly-emerging challenges on the other.