TURKEY’S ARMY IS NATO’S SECOND LARGEST

According to NATO figures, there are a total 3.5 million soldiers in the 28-member alliance.

While the largest army of a NATO nation belongs to the United States with one million, 427 thousand soldiers, Turkey comes in second with 495,000 members of the Turkish Armed Forces' approximate 720,000 personnel are counted within the NATO framework.

Turkey is followed by France with 227,000, Germany with 205,000, England and Italy with 192,000 each, Spain with 127,000, Greece with 124,000 and Poland with 100,000 soldiers.

NATO's soldier force in Europe alone is 2,027,000, while the number of soldiers in North America is 1,487,000. As a result, Turkey's soldiers account for approximately one fourth of NATO's European forces.

The United States take a distant lead in terms of military spending, The combined total of the remaining 27 members states' spending does not even equate to half the amount the United States spends on their military.

In 2011, the United States spent 731.9 billion dollars on their military. England came in second with 63.6 billion dollars. France was third with 53.4 billion dollars. Germany followed with 48.1 billion dollars worth of military spending, followed by Italy with 30.2 billion dollars and Canada with 23.7 billion dollars. Turkey came in seventh with 14.5 billion dollars in military spending. Turkey was followed by Spain with 14 billion dollars spent on the military, following by Holland with 11.3 billion dollars and Poland finishing off the top ten with 8.9 billion dollars.