Turkey and Britain: from enemies to allies, 1914–1939

ABSTRACT

The relationship between Turkey and Britain shifted dramatically in the first three decades of the twentieth century, with the one-time diplomatic defender of Ottoman integrity emerging as its most formidable foe during the First World War and War of Independence. Despite this history of enmity, Turco–British relations entered a period of remarkable recovery in the years after 1923 as potential areas of conflict, such as the status of Mosul province and militarisation and access to the Dardanelles and Bosphorus, were resolved. Nevertheless, recriminations with their origins in this crucial period of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and foundation of the Turkish Republic lingered, sustaining suspicions over British intentions towards Turkey and its neighbours up until the present. Perhaps surprisingly, the UK–Turkey relationship has remained notably cordial in the midst of growing diplomatic hostility between Turkey and its Nato partners over the past two years. In a special issue of Middle Eastern Studies, historians re-examine diplomatic, economic, cultural, and intellectual connections between the two countries during the period 1914–1939, advancing historical scholarship on this crucial relationship through the use of sources from Turkey, Britain, and further afield.

KEYWORDS:

• Turkey
• Britain
• diplomacy
• Empire
• Anglo–Turkish relations
• League of Nations
• Atatürk
• archives
• historiography

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See for example, A. Erdemir and M. Tahiroglu, ‘Turkey's Drift from the West’, 17 August 2017, https://warontherocks.com/2017/08/turkeys-drift-from-the-west-from-transactionalism-to-hostility/; ‘Another Big Step Towards the Turkey–EU Divorce’, American Interest, 27 April 2017, https://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/04/26/another-big-step-towards-the-turkey-eu-divorce/; Marc Pierini, Turkey's Impending Estrangement from the West, 12 December 2016, http://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/66408.

2. House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, ‘The UK's Relations with Turkey’, Tenth Report of Session 2016–17, 21 March 2017, HC 615, p.8, https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmfaff/615/615.pdf.

3. See A. Oktar, aka H. Yahya, Üst Akil: İngiliz Derin Devletin İçyüzü (Istanbul: Araştırma Yayıncılık, 2017).

4. H. Yahya, Üst Akil: İngiliz Derin Devletin İçyüzü (Istanbul: Araştırma Yayıncılık, 2017), p.14.

5. C. Aydin, ‘Between Occidentalism and the Global Left: Islamist Critiques of the West in Turkey’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East Vol.26 (2006), p.447.

6. M. Kovic, Disraeli and the Eastern Question (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p.55.

7. S. McMeekin, The Russian Origins of the First World War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), p.123.

8. M. Aksakal, The Ottoman Road to War in 1914: The Ottoman Empire and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp.155–6.

9. U. Kocabaşoğlu and M. Berge, Bolşevik İhtilalı ve Osmanlılar (Istanbul: İletişim, 2006), p.112.

10. M. Sitki Bilgin and S. Morewood, ‘Turkey's Reliance on Britain: British Political and Diplomatic Support for Turkey against Soviet Demands, 1943–47’, Middle Eastern Studies Vol.40 (2004), p.26.

11. Details of British intelligence in operations in Istanbul can be found in J. Ferris, ‘Far too Dangerous a Gamble? British Intelligence and Policy During the Chanak Crisis, September–October 1922’, in Erik Goldstein and B. J. C. McKercher (eds.), Power and Stability: British Foreign Policy, 1865–1965 (London: Frank Cass, 2003), pp.145–7.

12. For an example of such popular-historical blogging on the topic, see http://belgelerlegercektarih.com/2012/12/10/m-kemal-ataturkun-ingiliz-istihbarati-ile-gizli-iliskisi-desifre-oldu/.

13. S. Demirci, ‘The Lausanne Conference: The Evolution of Turkish and British Diplomatic Strategies, 1922–1923’ (PhD thesis, London School of Economics, 1997), p.125.

14. T.P. Graf and P.W. Firges, Introduction in T.P. Graf, P.W. Firges, Christian Roth, and G. Tulasoğlu (eds.), Well-Connected Domains: Towards an Entangled Ottoman History (Leiden: Brill, 2014), p.3.

15. N. Danforth, ‘Turkey's New Maps are Reclaiming the Ottoman Empire’, Foreign Policy, 23 October 2016. http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/10/23/turkeys-religious-nationalists-want-ottoman-borders-iraq-erdogan/.

16. S.B. Gülmez, ‘Do Diplomats Matter in Foreign Policy? Sir Percy Loraine and the Turkish–British Rapprochement in the 1930s’, Foreign Policy Analysis, 29 September 2017. doi:10.1093/fpa/orx006.

17. Anne Bostanci and John Dubber, ‘Remember the World as well as the War’, p.30. https://www.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/remember-the-world-as-well-as-the-war-report.pdf.

18. For a discussion of historiographical debates and their relevance to contemporary Turkish politics, see E.J. Zürcher, The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building: From the Ottoman Empire to Atatürk's Turkey (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010), p.4.

19. For a useful overview of publications up until 2012, see A. Mikhail and C.M. Philliou, ‘The Ottoman Empire and the Imperial Turn’, Comparative Studies in Society and History Vol.54 (2012), pp.721–45.

20. J. Heller, British Policy Towards the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1914 (London: Psychology Press, 1983), p.164.

21. A.D. Pasha, Memoirs of a Turkish Statesman, 1913–1919 (New York: George H. Doran Co., 1922); M.K. Pasha, A Speech Delivered by Ghazi Mustapha Kemal, President of the Turkish Republic, October 1927 (Leipzig: K.F. Koehler Verlag, 1929); H.E. Adivar, The Turkish Ordeal (New York: Century Co., 1928); cited in P.C. Helmreich, From Paris to Sèvres: The Partition of the Ottoman Empire at the Peace Conference of 1919–1920 (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1974), pp. 349–68. The same limited number of works are cited by David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (New York: Holt McDougal, 2009), p.569.

22. R. Gingeras, Fall of the Sultanate: The Great War and the End of the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1922 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, 1914–1920 (London, Allen Lane, 2015).

23. A.L. Macfie, The End of the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1923 (London, 1998); Kristian Ulrichsen, The First World War in the Middle East (London, 2014).

24. J.G. Darwin, ‘The Chanak Crisis and the British Cabinet’, History Vol.65 (1980), pp.32–48; D. Walder, The Chanak Affair (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1969).

25. B. Millman, The Ill-Made Alliance: Anglo–Turkish Relations, 1934–1940 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1998); S. Deringil, Turkish Foreign Policy During the Second World War: An ‘Active’ Neutrality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

26. Millman, The Ill-Made Alliance, pp.6–7.

27. B. Amit, Kemalist Turkey and the Middle East: International Relations in the Inter-War Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); E. Boyar, Ottomans, Turks and the Balkans: Empire Lost, Relations Altered (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007).

28. Such is the case in Edinburgh, Cambridge, Manchester. Exeter is an exception.

29. M. Bilgin, Britain and Turkey in the Middle East: Politics and Influence in the Early Cold War Era (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007), pp.4–5.

30. For example, Gotthard Jaeschke, Kurtuluş Savaşı ile İlgili İngiliz Belgeleri (Ankara: TTK Yayınları, 1991); Bilal Şimşir, İngiliz Belgelerinde Atatürk, 1919–1938 (Ankara: TTK Yayınları, 1984).

31. S. Sonyel., Kurtuluş Savaşı Günlerinde İngiliz İstihbarat Servisi'nin Türkiye'deki Eylemleri (Ankara: TTK, 1995), p.3.

32. For details, see http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C7509.

33. G. Berridge, British Diplomacy in Turkey, 1583 to the Present: A Study in the Evolution of the Resident Embassy (Leiden: Brill, 2009), pp.292–3.

34. K.F. Schull, Prisons in the Late Ottoman Empire: Microcosms of Modernity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); A. Rubin, Ottoman Nizamiye Courts: Law and Modernity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); A. Aktar, Varlık vergisi ve ‘Türkleştirme’ politikaları (Istanbul: İlitişim, 2000).

35. A. Aktar, ‘Who Sank the Battleship Bouvet on 18 March 1915? The Problems of Imported Historiography in Turkey’, War and Society Vol.3 (2017), p.1.

36. C. Kılınçarslan, ‘Garo Paylan Dişişleri Bakanlığı Arşivinin Durumu Sordu’, 6 April 2017. https://bianet.org/bianet/tarih/185217-garo-paylan-disisleri-bakanligi-arsivinin-durumunu-sordu.

37. Berridge, British Diplomacy in Turkey, p.224.

38. At present, the Turkish State Archives will only issue access to digitised documents for the duration of the period of validity of the researcher's Turkey visa or residence permit, limiting the possibility of working on Ottoman sources remotely.