The Determinants of Turkish Foreign Policy, and Turkey's European Vocation

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Notes

Mustafa Aydın, ‘Determinants of Turkish Foreign Policy: Historical Framework and Traditional Inputs’, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 35, no 4 (Oct. 1999), p. 152.

Mustafa Aydın, ‘Turkey and Central Asia; Challenges of Change’, Central Asian Survey, Vol. 15, no 2 (1996), pp. 157–77; and Sükrü Sina Gürel and Yoshihura Kimura, Turkey in a Changing World (Tokyo: Institute of Developing Economies, 1993).

See Milliyet, August 7, 2001, pp. 1 and 16.

For different, and sometimes contradictory, explanations of Turkish foreign policy see David Barchard, ‘Turkey and Europe’, Turkish Review Quarterly Digest, Vol. 3, no. 17 (1989); Walter F. Weiker, ‘Turkey, the Middle East and Islam’, Middle East Review, Special Issue on Turkey, Vol. 17, no. 3 (1985); Dankwart A. Rustow, ‘Turkey's Liberal Revolution’, Middle East Review, Vol. 17, no. 3 (1985); Feroz Ahmad, ‘Islamic Reassertion in Turkey’, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 10, no. 2 (1988); Ola Tunander, ‘A New Ottoman Empire? The Choice for Turkey: Euro-Asian Center versus National Fortress’, Security Dialogue, Vol. 26, no. 4 (1995); Andrew Mango, ‘Turkey in Winter’, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 31 (1995); S. Hunter, Turkey at the Crossroads: Islamic Past or European Future?, CEPS Paper no. 63 (Brussels: CEPS, 1995).

Kjell Goldman, Change and Stability In Foreign Policy; The Problems and Possibilities of Détente (New York: Harvester and Wheatsheaf, 1988), p. 3^.

Joseph Frankel, The Making of Foreign Policy; An Analysis of Decision Making (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 1.

These variables are discussed at greater length within the Turkish context in Mustafa Aydın, ‘Foreign Policy Formation and the Interaction between Domestic and International Environments: A Study of Change in Turkish Foreign Policy, 1980–1991’, unpublished PhD Thesis, Lancaster University, UK, 1994.

Dankwart Rustow, Turkey, America's Forgotten Ally (New York, London: Council on Foreign Relations, 1989), p. 84.

Ali Karaosmanoğlu, ‘The Evolution of the National Security Culture and the Military in Turkey’, Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 54, no. 1 (Fall 2000), p. 199.

For definition of ‘homogeneity’ in the Turkish context, see Stephen D. Salamonee, ‘The Dialectics of Turkish National Identity: Ethnic Boundary Maintenance and State Ideology – Part Two’, East European Quarterly, Vol. 23, no. 2 (June 1989), pp. 225–48.

In early 1920, Sheikh-ul-Islam issued a fetva encouraging the killings of rebels as a religious duty. Accordingly, Mustafa Kemal and other nationalist leaders were court martialed in Istanbul and condemned to death, in absentia. Also irregular troops, the ‘Army of the Caliphate’ were organised to fight the nationalists. For more detailed analysis of the early nationalist struggle against ‘internal opposition’ see, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Nutuk (The Speech, delivered in Oct. 1927), Vol. I (Ankara: TTK, 1981); Doğu Ergil, Social History of the Turkish National Struggle, 1919–22: The Unfinished Revolution (Lahore, Pakistan: Sind Sagar Academy, 1977), pp. 10–95.

Atatürk, Nutuk, p. 59.

Fredrich Frey, The Turkish Political Elite (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1965); Leslie Ross and Noralov P. Ross, Managers of Modernisation; Organisations and Elites in Turkey, 1950–1969 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971).

Karaosmanoğlu, ‘The Evolution of the National Security Culture and the Military in Turkey’, pp. 200 and 204–7.

Morgan Philips Prise, A History of Turkey; From Empire to Republic (London: Allen & Unwin, 1961), p. 44.

Thomas Naff, ‘The Ottoman Empire and the European States System’ in Hedley Bull and Adam Watson (eds.), The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), p. 143. Emphases added.

For analysis of the impact of the West in Ottoman Empire see Arnold Toynbee and Kenneth Kirkwood, The Modern World; A Survey of Historical Forces, Vol. VI: Turkey (London: Ernest Benn, 1926), pp. 31–61.

For modernisation attempts in the Ottoman Empire see Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1961); Robert Ward and Dankwart Rustow, Political Modernisation in Japan and Turkey (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964).

Abdullah Cevdet (1869–1932) was one of the co-founders of the Society of Union and Progress, and a political writer. Quotation taken from Ictihad (Istanbul), No. 89 (1909), by Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, p. 236.

Karaosmanoğlu, ‘The Evolution of the National Security Culture and the Military in Turkey’, pp. 200–201.

Ibid., p. 201.

Ibid.

For a detailed study of early foreign relations of the Ottoman Empire and the system of the ‘foreign office’ see Lord Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire (London: Jonathan Cape, 1977); and Stanford Shaw and Ezel Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey (London: Cambridge University Press, 1977).

The only exception was Hatay, the district around Iskenderun (Alexandretta), which remained in Syria as an autonomous region for the time being, and later in 1939 re-joined Turkey by majority vote of its parliament. For the text of the Lausanne Peace Treaty see Jacob Hurewitz, Diplomacy in the Near and Middle East: A Documentary Record, 1535–1956, Vol. II (Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand, 1956), pp. 119–27. For text of the National Pact see Atatürk, Nutuk, Vol. 3, Doc. no. 41. Also reprinted in Hurewitz, Diplomacy in the Near and Middle East, pp. 74–5.

For the text of the Treaty of Sèvres see Hurewitz, Diplomacy in the Near and Middle East, pp. 81–9. For the Entente plans to partition the territories of the Ottoman Empire see Harry Howard, The Partition of Turkey: A Diplomatic History (New York: Howard Fertig, 1966); Salahi Sonyel, Turkish Diplomacy, 1918–1923: M. Kemal and the Turkish National Movement (London: Sage, 1975), pp. 1–13; Toynbee and Kirkwood, The Modern World, pp. 61–8 and 136–42.

For detailed study of Turkish nationalists' struggle for independence and its external relations see Mehmet Gönlübol, et al., Olaylarla Türk Dis Politikası, 6th ed. (Ankara: Siyasal, 1987), pp. 3–48; Sonyel, Turkish Diplomacy, 1918–1923; Edward Reginald Vere-Hodge, Turkish Foreign Policy, 1918–1948, PhD Thesis, Imprimerie Franco-Swisse, Ambilly-Annemasse, 1950, pp. 23–50; and Atatürk, Nutuk.

Philip Robins, ‘The Overlord State: Turkish Policy and the Kurdish Issue’, International Affairs, Vol. 69, no. 4 (1993), p. 659; and Richard Sim, ‘Kurdistan: The Search For Recognition’, Conflict Studies, no. 124, 1980, p. 4. The Treaty itself, although it did not define the exact territory of proposed autonomous Kurdistan, stipulated that after one year it might ask the League of Nations for a conformation of its status as an independent state. Conformation of this status was to be based on the evaluation of mandatory power(s).

Karaosmanoğlu, ‘The Evolution of the National Security Culture and the Military in Turkey’, p. 202.

Malik Mufti, ‘Daring and Caution in Turkish Foreign Policy’, Middle East Journal, Vol. 52, no. 1 (1998), p. 43.

Statement by Kenan Evren, 7th President of Turkey, Newspot, official weekly, Sep. 7, 1984, p. 1.

Atatürk, Nutuk, pp. 135–8.

Richard Robinson, The First Turkish Republic (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), p. 170; Philip Robins, ‘Turkey and the Eastern Arab World’, in Gerd Nonneman (ed.), The Middle East and Europe, 2nd ed. (London: Federal Trust for Education and Research, 1993), pp. 189–94; Nülüfer Narlı, ‘Civil–Military Relations in Turkey’, Turkish Studies, Vol. 1, no. 1 (Spring 2000), pp. 107–27.

Mustafa Aydın, ‘Cacophony in the Aegean: Contemporary Greek–Turkish Relations’, Turkish Yearbook of International Relations, no. 27 (1997), pp. 111–13.

Aydın, ‘Determinants of Turkish Foreign Policy’, p. 164.

Shaw and Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, p. 483.

James Rosenau, The Scientific Study of Foreign Policy (New York, Free Press, 1971), pp. 19–20.

See Richard Snyder, H. W. Bruck and Burton Sapin, ‘The Decision-Making Approach to the Study of International Politics’ in James N. Rosenau (ed.), International Politics and Foreign Policy: A Reader In Search and Theory (New York: Free Press, 1961), pp. 189–90.

Aydın, ‘Determinants of Turkish Foreign Policy’, pp. 152 and 165.

Ferenc Váli, Bridge Across the Bosphorus; The Foreign Policy of Turkey (Baltimore and London: John's Hopkins University Press, 1971), p. 46.

Aydın, ‘Determinants of Turkish Foreign Policy’, p. 166.

Ibid.; and Aydın, ‘Cacophony in the Aegean’, pp. 116–17.

Andrew Wilson, The Aegean Dispute, Adelphi Papers, No. 155 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1980), pp. 36–7.

In the early days of the Republic, Turkey had borders with seven states, including four with major powers: Greece, Bulgaria, the Soviet Union, Iran, Great Britain (mandate in Iraq and possession of Cyprus), France (mandate in Syria), and Italy (possession of the Dodecanese Islands). After World War II, Turkey's borders dropped to six, leaving Greece, Bulgaria, the Soviet Union, Iran, Iraq and Syria as neighbours, and the Republic of Cyprus joined them in 1960. At the end of the Cold War, while Soviet Union disappeared, Azerbaijan (Nahichevan), Armenia and Georgia became independent on Turkey's north-eastern border, adding further uncertainties.

Benjamin Most and Harvey Starr, ‘Diffusion, Reinforcement, Geopolitics and the Spread of War’, The American Political Science Review, Vol. 74, no. 4 (1980), p. 935.

Váli, Bridge Across the Bosphorus, p. 44.

Legg and Morrison, Politics and the International System, p. 101.

Nuri Eren, Turkey Today and Tomorrow: An Experiment in Westernization (London: Pall Mall Press, 1963), p. 227.

Nuri Eren, Turkey, NATO and Europe; A Deteriorating Relationship? (Paris: The Atlantic Institute for International Affairs, 1977), p. 16.

Ferenc Váli, Turkish Straits and NATO (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1972), pp. 302–5.

Haluk Ülman and Oral Sander, ‘Türk Dış Politikasına Yön Veren Etkenler-II’, Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi Dergisi, Vol. 27, no. 1 (1972), pp. 1–24.

Aydın, ‘Determinants of Turkish Foreign Policy’, p. 169.

Ali Karaosmanoğlu, ‘Turkey's Security and the Middle East’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 62, no. 1 Fall 1983), p. 99.

Aydın, ‘Determinants of Turkish Foreign Policy’, pp. 169–70.

Váli, Bridge Across the Bosporus, p. 55.

The 1982 Constitution (as well as the 1961 Constitution) presented a modified version of Kemalist principles, declaring in Article 2: ‘The Republic of Turkey is a democratic, secular and social state governed by the rule of law; bearing in mind the concepts of public peace, national solidarity and justice; respecting human rights; loyal to the nationalism of Atatürk, and based on the fundamental tenets set forth in the Preamble’. The preamble gave renewed credit to the Kemalist achievements and ideology by expressing ‘absolute loyalty to…the direction of concept of nationalism as outlined by Atatürk…[and] the reforms and principles introduced by him’. It also expressed ‘desire for, and belief in peace at home, peace in the world’, and its determination not to protect any ‘thoughts or opinions contrary to Turkish National interests…the nationalism, principles, reform and modernism of Atatürk, and that as required by the principle of secularism’.

Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal: McGill University, 1964), pp. 479–503.

Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey, p. 6.

Turhan Feyzioğlu, ‘Secularism: Cornerstone of Turkish Revolution’ in Turhan Feyzioğlu (ed.), Atatürk's Way (Istanbul: Otomarsan, 1982), p. 208. For Nationalist resentment and objections at the Lausanne Peace Conference to the abuse of the Millet system by Western powers see Toynbee and Kirkwood, The Modern World, pp. 143–8.

Oral Sander, ‘Turkish Foreign Policy; Forces of Continuity and of Change’ in Ahmet Evin (ed.), Modern Turkey; Continuity and Change (Opladen: Lesle Verlag, 1984), p. 119.

Salamone, ‘The Dialectics of Turkish National Identity’, p. 226 quoted from the US Department of State, Turkey, Post Report: The Host Country (Jan. 1986), p. 1.

From a speech delivered at the Fourth National Convention of the RPP by its Chairman and ideologue, Recep Peker, on May 9, 1935. Cited in Fahir Armaoğlu, CHP Tarihi, Vol. 1 (Ankara: TTK, 1971), p. 46.

Sadri Maksudi Arsal, Milliyet Duygusunun Sosyolojik Esasları (Istanbul: n.p., 1963), p. 103.

For further discussion see Salamone, ‘The Dialectics of Turkish National Identity’.

The term that Mustafa Kemal used during the War of Independence to refer to the people lived then in Anatolia was ‘Nation of Turkey’ (Türkiye Milleti), which was replaced after the war by ‘Turkish Nation’ (Türk Milleti). See Baskın Oran, Atatürk Milliyetçiliği; Resmi İdeoloji Dışı Bir İnceleme (Ankara: Bilgi, 1993), p. 208.

Robins, ‘The Overlord State: Turkish Policy and the Kurdish Issue’, p. 658.

Atatürk, Nutuk, Vol. 3, pp. 67–8.

İsmet İnönü, ‘Negotiations and National Interest’, in Perspectives on Peace, 1919–1960 (London: Stevens, 1960), pp. 137–8.

Most and Starr, ‘Diffusion, Reinforcement, Geopolitics and the Spread of War’, p. 934.

Edward Weiseband, Turkish Foreign Policy, 1943–1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), p. 7.

George Lenczowski, The Middle East in World Affairs (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980), p. 121.

Edward Mortimer, ‘Active in a New World Role’ in Turkey, Europe's Rising Star; The Opportunities in Anglo-Turkish Relations (London: Lowe Bell, 1993), p. 44.

The then Turkish president Turgut Özal, in his opening speech of the Turkish Grand National Assembly in Sept. 1, 1991, described the situation created by the end of Cold War and breaking up of the former Soviet Union as an ‘historic opportunity’ for the Turks to became a ‘regional power’, and urged the Assembly not to ‘throw away this change which presented itself for the first time in 400 years’. See Minutes of the TGNA, Term: 19–1, Vol. 1, no. 3 (1992), p. 25.

As the then Turkish Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel put it, ‘we share a common history, a common language, a common religion and a common culture. We are cousins cut off from each other for over a hundred years, first by the Russians under the Czars, and then by the Communist regime’. See Mushahid Hussain, ‘Iran and Turkey in Central Asia; Complementary or Competing Roles?’, Middle East International, 19 February 1993, p. 19. Also see ‘Turkey; Central Asia's Dominant Power’, Newsweek, 28 January 1992.

See Philip Robins, ‘Between Sentiment and Self Interest: Turkey's Policy Toward Azerbaijan and the Central Asian States’, Middle East Journal, Vol. 47, no. 4 (1993), p. 595.

Şükrü Elekdağ, ‘2 ½ War Strategy’, Perceptions, Vol. 1, no. 1 (March–May 1996), p. 13.

Ian O. Lesser, ‘Turkey in a Changing Security Environment’, Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 54, no. 1 (Fall 2000), pp. 1956.

Lesser, ‘Turkey in a Changing Security Environment’, p. 197.

Salamone, ‘The Dialectics of Turkish National Identity’, p. 226.

For an extended discussion of the relation between Turkish and European identities see Nuri Yurdusev, ‘Perception and Images in Turkish (Ottoman)–European Relations’ in Tareq Ismael and Mustafa Aydın (eds), Turkey's Foreign Policy in the Twenty-First Century; A Changing Role in World Politics (Aldershot: Ashgate, forthcoming), pp. 69–92.

For a discussion of the requirements of the standard of civilization as understood by the nineteenth century European elite and statesmen see Gerrrit W. Gong, The Standard of ‘Civilization’ in International Society (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), pp. 14–15.

Yurdusev, ‘Perception and Images in Turkish (Ottoman)–European Relations’, p. 88.