Although it is a known fact that confined masonry construction has many advantages over unreinforced masonry construction, its application has been very limited in Turkish construction practice. One of the reasons for this issue is that the seismic regulations in Turkey do not explicitly enforce or even encourage the use of confined masonry structural systems. Now, being on the verge of releasing a new version of the Turkish seismic code, it seems to be an appropriate time to adapt confined masonry to the Turkish construction practice. This study intents to reveal why such attempts are necessary by comparing the behaviour of unreinforced and confined masonry on the component (wall) scale. In the first phase of the study, a rigorous literature survey is conducted on the available laboratory tests regarding unreinforced and confined masonry walls. Then idealized tri-linear capacity curves are proposed following the recommendations of Tomazevic (1999) with three performance points. The empirical formulations in literature related to these performance points are investigated and the ones with closest values to the experimental behaviour are selected to represent the idealized behaviour of unreinforced and confined masonry walls. This idealized analytical information is used to conduct a parametric study for the comparison of the behaviour of these two different types of masonry walls. The parameters used in this analytical study are the basic geometrical and mechanical properties of masonry walls. The results of the parametric study reveal the superior behaviour of confined masonry walls over unreinforced masonry walls.