Turkey

Turkey was the only major participant in the First World War which managed to avoid fighting in the Second. It was the experience of 1914–18 which helped to determine its policy. Virtually all the political and military leaders of Turkey during 1939–45 had direct personal experiences of the disasters of the earlier struggle, which had finally destroyed the Ottoman Empire, and they were determined not to repeat them. They were also aware that, by 1939, their armed forces were woefully out of date: in any serious encounter with either the Allied or the Axis forces, they would be faced with the severe risk of defeat. Domestically, Ismet Inönü, who had succeeded Kemal Ataturk, as president on the latter's death (1881–1938), maintained an authoritarian single-party regime. Since Inönü and his advisers all seem to have been in favour of de facto neutrality, there was no serious internal challenge to this policy.

Neutrality was certainly the most sensible policy for Turkey, but it was not easy to maintain. Historically, its main enemy had been Russia, but, in 1925 the two countries had signed a Treaty of Friendship, renewed in 1935, which appeared to neutralize the potential threat from the north. During the 1930s, Turkey's main concern was the threat to Balkan security posed by the ambitions of Italy. By 1939, France and the UK were also becoming worried by the threat to their own interests in the eastern Mediterranean, and began to look for an alliance with Turkey. The Turks were happy to reach arrangements which would provide themselves with assistance if they were attacked by Italy or Germany, but did not want to be dragged into the war for the sake of the Allies.

In May 1939, Turkey and the UK issued a joint declaration stating that they would aid one another in the event of an act of aggression leading to war in the Mediterranean. Following an agreement with France which resulted in the transfer of the disputed province of Alexandretta from Syria to Turkey, the Turkish and French governments issued a similar declaration in June 1939. Soon afterwards, however, Turkey received a rude shock from the signature of the Nazi–Soviet Pact of August 1939, which created the serious danger that Hitler and Stalin might combine against it. Accordingly, the Turkish foreign minister, Şükrü Saraçog̈lu, visited Moscow in September 1939 for what turned out to be a fruitless attempt to negotiate mutual security arrangements. Faced with this failure, Turkey returned to negotiations with France and the UK. In October 1939, the three governments signed a tripartite treaty providing that the two countries would aid Turkey if it were attacked by another European power. If there were an act of aggression leading to war in the Mediterranean area involving France and the UK, then Turkey would assist them, but would be exempted from any action in the case of a war between its two allies and the USSR.

Once the war had begun in Europe, Turkey entered a period of grave danger which lasted until June 1941. Italy's entry into the war in June 1940 began the battle for the Mediterranean. The collapse of France meant that the UK was unable to aid Turkey; however, it also meant that the British recognized that there was no point in obliging the Turks to fulfil their commitments under the tripartite treaty. Subsequently, the German occupation of the Balkans in April 1941 brought the war to the frontiers of Turkey. Faced with the danger of a Nazi attack on Istanbul and the straits, and with British concurrence, Turkey signed a Treaty of Territorial Integrity and Friendship with Germany on 18 June 1941.

Four days after the signature of the German–Turkish Pact, Hitler invaded the USSR (see BARBAROSSA). This opened a second phase in the war for Turkey, since it virtually removed the danger that either Germany or the USSR would attack her, at least in the near future. However, Inönü strongly resisted efforts by Franz von Papen, the German ambassador in Ankara, to bring Turkey into the war on Germany's side.

The second phase ended in the autumn of 1942, as the battle of El Alamein and Soviet resistance at Stalingrad indicated that the Allies were likely to win the war eventually. Until 1943 the UK, the USSR, and later the USA were prepared to accept Turkey's de facto neutrality, since the USSR was naturally preoccupied by the German invasion, and the other Allies were as yet in no position to launch a counter-offensive in Europe. Once the turning-point was passed, these concerns ceased to apply. Churchill, in particular, was keen to bring Turkey into the war, so as to attack Germany from the Balkans. However, his ‘soft underbelly’ strategy was not fully supported by the USA, which was anxious not to divert resources away from the west. Turkey came under very strong pressure to join the Allies in the war in February 1943, when Churchill visited Inönü at Adana, and again at the Cairo conference in the following December (see SEXTANT). The Turks insisted on, and received, increased quantities of Allied war matériel, but dragged their feet over implementing their undertakings of 1939. By 1944, relations between Ankara and the Allies (the UK and the USSR in particular) had reached a low point. Turkey officially declared war on Germany on 23 February 1945, but only to establish its status as a founder member of the United Nations (see San Francisco conference).

In the meantime, Stalin reacted to Turkey's non-belligerence by demanding political and territorial concessions. In June 1945, Moscow insisted that the Turkish–Soviet Friendship Treaty could not be renewed unless Soviet bases were established in the straits, and the provinces of Kars and Ardahan, on Turkey's eastern frontier, were ceded to the USSR. Hence, as the Second World War turned into the Cold War, a new threat opened up for Turkey, and the main lines of her post-war foreign policy were determined.

William Hale

Bibliography

Ataöv, T. , Turkish Foreign Policy, 1939–1945 (Ankara, 1965).
Deringil, S. , Turkish Foreign Policy during the Second World War (Cambridge, 1989).
Weisband, E. , Turkish Foreign Policy, 1943–1945: Small State Diplomacy and Great Power Politics (Princeton, 1973).