Strategic imperatives, Democratic rhetoric: The United States and Turkey, 1945–52

Abstract

This study states that Turkish President İsmet İnönü did not use democracy merely as a tool to bring his country into the US-led Western alliance at the onset of the Cold War. Instead, İnönü was inspired by a true sense of mission to fulfil Atatürk's legacy to bring democracy to Turkey. Admittedly, the Truman administration used democracy as rhetoric in order to realize its strategic goals in, and secure congressional aid for, Turkey, and yet Washington did not put pressure on Turkey to democratize faster or more thoroughly. There is no causal link between Turkey's democratization and either the Truman Doctrine or Turkey's admission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1952.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Melvyn Leffler, Michael Holt, James Hershberg, Hope Harrison, Christian Ostermann, Edward Kohn, Ergun Özbudun, the late Stanford Shaw, and Cold War History's two anonymous referees for their comments on the earlier versions of this article.

Notes

Barın Kayaoğlu is a graduate of Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, and is currently a PhD candidate in history working with Melvyn Leffler at The University of Virginia. He is writing his dissertation on US–Turkish–Iranian relations during the Cold War. His research interests are the history of US foreign relations and modern Middle East history

  [1] Counsellor of the Embassy Herbert S. Bursley to the Secretary of State, dispatch. no. 1819, Ankara, 30 August 1947; Internal Affairs of Turkey, 1945–1949 (hereafter IAT) [microfilm]; reel 4.

  [2] According to historian David Schmitz, at the meeting of US chiefs of mission in Rio de Janeiro in March 1950, George Kennan discussed how ‘Turkey and Portugal are examples of nations which have been successful in repressing Communism’. ‘It is better’, Kennan continued, ‘to have a strong regime in power than a liberal government if it is indulgent and relaxed and penetrated by Communists’. Kennan quoted in Schmitz, Thank God They're On Our Side, 149.

  [3] Edwin Wilson to the Secretary of State, telegram no.1352, Ankara, 19 October 1945, IAT, reel 1.

  [4] Quoted in Aydemir, İkinci Adam, 2: 415.

  [5] Ahmad, The Making of Modern Turkey, 104.

  [6] Yılmaz, ‘Democratization from Above’, 2–5. For a more detailed discussion of Yılmaz's position, see his Ph.D. dissertation, ‘The International Context of Regime Change’.

  [7] VanderLippe, The Politics of Turkish Democracy.

  [8] Koçak, Türkiye'de Milli Şef Dönemi, 2: 561–3.

  [9] Heper, İsmet İnönü.

 [10] Mango, Atatürk, 534.

 [11] Toker, Demokrasimizin İsmet Paşalı Yılları, 1: 77–8. In fact, he pushed this point and claimed that things could have been very different for Turkey had the Committee of Union and Progress tolerated the Party of Freedom and Concord in the period between the Second Constitutional Revolution (1908) and the outbreak of the First World War (1914). See Barutçu, Siyasi Hatıralar: Milli Mücadeleden Demokrasiye, 1: 285.

 [12] Ulus, 20 May 1945. Also see İnönü, Anılar ve Düşünceler, 2: 167.

 [13] For the discussion on the relationship between Turkey's Kemalist legacy, İnönü's role, and democratization, aside from the studies mentioned in notes 5 through 9, see Ahmad, The Turkish Experiment in Democracy; Mango, ‘Atatürk’; Heper, ‘İsmet İnönü’.

 [14] Ferrell, Off the Record, 80; Truman, Memoirs, 1: 551–2.

 [15] Leffler, A Preponderance of Power, 3.

 [16] Leffler, ‘The American Conception of National Security’, 357.

 [17] ‘Seventh Plenary Meeting’, 23 July 1945, Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter FRUS), 1945, Potsdam, 2: 312–13.

 [18] Osborn, Operation Pike.

 [19] Turan, İsmet İnönü, 34–6.

 [20] Raine, ‘Stalin and the Creation of the Azerbaijan Democratic Party’.

 [21] For a detailed analyses of the Greek crises, see Jones, ‘A New Kind of War’; Sifkas, ‘War and Peace’.

 [22] Mark, ‘The War Scare of 1946’; Kuniholm, The Origins of the Cold War, 359–82.

 [23] ‘Record of Conversation, Prepared by the United Kingdom Delegation at the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers’, FRUS, 1945, 2: 630.

 [24] McGhee, The US–Turkish–NATO Middle East Connection, 21; Kuniholm, The Origins of the Cold War, 212.

 [25] Loy W. Henderson, ‘Memorandum on Turkey’ Washington, 21 October 1946, IAT, reel 1; ‘Memorandum by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Secretary of War (Patterson) and the Secretary of the Navy (Forrestal)’, FRUS, 1946, 7: 856–8; ‘Memorandum on Turkey Prepared in the Division of Near Eastern Affairs’, FRUS, 1946, 7: 895.

 [26] Joint Intelligence Committee 329, ‘Strategic Vulnerability of the USSR to a Limited Air Attack’, 3 November 1945, in Ross and Rosenberg, America's Plans for War, 1: 2.

 [27] Leffler, ‘Strategy, Diplomacy, and the Cold War’, 814. Also see Joint War Plans Committee (JWPC) 416/1, ‘Military Position of the United States in the Light of Russian Policy’, 8 January 1946, in Ross and Rosenberg, America's Plans for War, 1: 28–9; JWPC 475/1, ‘Strategic Study of the Area Between the Alps and the Himalayas, Short Title: “Caldron”’, 2 November 1946, in Ross and Rosenberg, America's Plans for War, vol. 3.

 [28] Joint Staff Planners (JPS) 789/1, ‘Staff Studies of Certain Military Problems Deriving From Concept of Operations for “Pincher”’, 13 April 1946, in Ross and Rosenberg, America's Plans for War, 2: 29–30.

 [29] Truman, Memoirs, 2: 97.

 [30] Acheson, Present at the Creation, 195.

 [31] Mark, ‘The War Scare of 1946’, 383.

 [32] Resis, Molotov Remembers, 73. For Soviet perceptions of Turkey and Greece in this period, see Ulunian, ‘Soviet Cold War Perceptions of Turkey and Greece’; Mastny, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity, 23–9; Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War, 91–8.

 [33] Edwin Wilson to the Secretary of State, telegram no. 1352, Ankara, 19 October 1945, IAT, reel 1.

 [34] Ahmet Emin Yalman, ‘Hesap Günü’, Vatan, 20 July 1946.

 [35] Bursley to the Secretary of State, dispatch no. 992, ‘Turkish Election Day, July 21, 1946’, Ankara, 21 July 1946, IAT, reel 1.

 [36] Truman, Memoirs, 2: 98; ‘The Ambassador in the Soviet Union to the Secretary of State’, FRUS, 1947, 5: 3.

 [37] ‘Executive Session, March 28, 1947’, Legislative Origins of the Truman Doctrine, 48.

 [38] ‘Greek Government Seeks U.S. Financial Aid – Message to President and Secretary of State from Greek Prime Minister and Foreign Minister’, Department of State Bulletin (hereafter DSB) 16, no. 402 (16 March 1947): 493–4.

 [39] ‘Special Message to the Congress on Greece and Turkey: The Truman Doctrine’, Public Papers of President Harry S. Truman, 176–80.

 [40] Jones, Fifteen Weeks, 11. For another inside account of the development of the Truman Doctrine, see Satterthwaite, ‘The Truman Doctrine: Turkey’.

 [41] ‘Memorandum by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Secretary of War (Patterson) and the Secretary of the Navy (Forrestal)’, FRUS, 1947, 5: 112.

 [42] Departmental Interim Greece–Turkey Assistance Committee Memorandum, ‘Nature of U.S. Program of Aid to Turkey’, Washington, 24 April 1947, IAT, reel 2.

 [43] Wilson to Secretary of State, dispatch no. 1750-A, ‘Supplementary Report of the US Ambassador Recommending Continuing Aid to Turkey’, Ankara, 15 July 1947, IAT, reel 3. The State Department's deputy director of the Near Eastern and African affairs office, Henry S. Villard, made a similar comment in an address he delivered on 5 May 1947 in ‘Some Aspects of Our Policy in Greece and Turkey’, DSB 16, no. 411 (18 May 1947): 996–1001. The JCS' Joint Strategic Plans Group (JSPG) used the term ‘an entity of paramount strategic importance’ to define Turkey. JSPG 496/10, ‘Crankshaft’, 11 May 1948, in Ross and Rosenberg, America's Plans for War, 5: 34.

 [44] Adler and Paterson, ‘Red Fascism’, 1046–7.

 [45] McCullough, Truman, 542; Acheson, Present at the Creation, 219.

 [46] ‘Executive Session, March 13, 1947’, Legislative Origins of the Truman Doctrine, 15.

 [47] ‘Questions and Answers Relating to the Greco-Turkish Aid Bill’, DSB 16, No.409-A (4 May 1947): 866–95.

 [48] Congressional Record, 93: 1883–4, 93: 3826–7. The historian Justus Doenecke notes that Bender spoke ‘with all the intensity of a medieval Crusader attacking the Infidel’. Doenecke, Not to the Swift, 77.

 [49] Quoted in Woods, Fulbright, 137–8.

 [50] Departmental Interim Greece–Turkey Assistance Committee, ‘Draft of Domestic Information Program on Assistance to Greece and Turkey’, Washington, 6 May 1947, IAT, reel 2.

 [51] ‘Questions and Answers Relating to the Greco-Turkish Aid Bill’, DSB 16, No.409-A (4 May 1947): 870.

 [52] ‘35 of the 51 Republican senators and 123 of the 245 Republican representatives voted in favour of the aid bill’. Congressional Record, 93: 3793; 93: 4975.

 [53] ‘Agreement Between the United States of America and Turkey Respecting Aid to Turkey’, United States Statutes at Large (Washington: USGPO, 1948), 61–3: 2953.

 [54] Figures from Thornburg et al. , Turkey: An Economic Appraisal, 146, 217. As much as those numbers might seem impressive, the military aid was a great bargain for the American side. In April 1954, Major General George C. Stuart told a House of Representatives committee that, because of the low salary of Turkish conscripts, ‘Turkey had an annual maintenance cost of $20 a head, as compared with $1100 in Europe and $3000 in the United States’. Quoted in Satterthwaite, ‘The Truman Doctrine: Turkey’, 81.

 [55] Soyak, Atatürk'ten Hatıralar, 52.

 [56] Kılçık, Adnan Menderes'in Konuşmaları, 142.

 [57] Toker, Demokrasimizin İsmet Paşalı Yılları, 1: 165.

 [58] Toker, Demokrasimizin İsmet Paşalı Yılları, 1: 177–9.

 [59] İnönü's son-in-law, the journalist Metin Toker, did not believe that the DP leadership actually appealed to the Americans. See Toker, Demokrasimizin İsmet Paşalı Yılları, 1: 179–80.

 [60] İnönü, ‘Cumhurbaşkanı İsmet İnönü'nün Tebliğleri’, 15.

 [61] ‘Greece and Turkey: Background Material: Political, Economic, and Military, Budget Presentation, Fiscal Year 1949’, National Archives and Record Administration, College Park, Maryland (hereafter NARA), General Records of the Department of State – Record Group 59 (hereafter RG 59), Records of the Office of Greek, Turkish, and Iranian Affairs, 1947–50 (hereafter Office of GTI); Subject File/Greece and Turkey, 1947–50, Lot 24, Box 3, TU-A-I-1 through TU-A-I-11.

 [62] Erkin, Dışişlerinde 34 Yıl, 2–1: 25.

 [63] McGhee, The US–Turkish–NATO Middle East Connection, 56.

 [64] Erkin to Satterthwaite, Washington, 10 September 1948, NARA, RG 59, Office Files of Assistant Secretary of State George C. McGhee (hereafter ‘George McGhee Files’), 1945–53, Lot 53 D 468, Box 2.

 [65] ‘Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Republic of Turkey’, DSB 19, No.488 (7 November 1948): 585.

 [66] Sadak, ‘Turkey Faces the Soviets’.

 [67] ‘Memorandum of Conversation’, Washington, 12 April 1949, NARA, RG 59, Central Decimal Files, 711.6711-2645–711.6822/12-3145, Box 3392; ‘Memorandum of Conversation, by the Secretary of State’, FRUS, 1949, 6: 1647–53; Erkin, Dışişlerinde 34 Yıl, 2–1: 66.

 [68] ‘Memorandum of Conversation – Mr. Webb, Mr. Feridun C. Erkin, Mr. John D. Jernegan’, George McGhee Files, Box 19.

 [69] ‘Memorandum of Conversation by the Director of the Office of Greek, Turkish, and Iranian Affairs (Jernegan)’, FRUS, 1949, 6: 1682.

 [70] ‘Turkish Desire for Security Arrangement with United States’, Washington, 5 December 1949, NARA, RG 59, Decimal Files, 867.154/1-145–867.24/12-3146, Box 6981.

 [71] US Department of State, Policy Statement, Washington, 5 May 1949, 1, NARA, RG 59, Decimal Files, 711.6711-2645–711.6822/12-3145, Box 3392.

 [72] US Department of State, Policy Statement, 1.

 [73] ‘An Evaluation of the Development of Democratic Processes in Turkey Since 1945’, NARA, RG 59, Records of the Office of GTI, Subject File/Turkey, 1947–50, Box 29.

 [74] ‘Tribute to Turkish–American Relations: Address by George V. Allen, Ambassador-Designate to Yugoslavia’, DSB 21, no. 540 (7 November 1949): 707.

 [75] Derin, Çankaya Özel Kalemini Anımsarken, 242–3.

 [76] Toker, Demokrasimizin İsmet Paşalı Yılları, 1: 94.

 [77] ‘Department Sees Turkish Elections as Victory for Democracy’, DSB 21, no. 569 (29 May 1950): 869.

 [78] ‘Comments on the Turkish Elections of May 14, 1950’, George McGhee Files, Box 19.

 [79] ‘Memorandum by the Acting Secretary of State to the President’, FRUS, 1950, 5: 1262. The State Department forwarded an almost identical note to Senator Tom Connally (Democrat, Texas), chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, on 24 May. See ‘Discussion with Senator Connally on the Turkish Elections’, NARA, RG 59, Decimal Files, 1950–54, 781.58/1-2851-782.00/6-2851, Box 4062.

 [80] Erkin, Dışişlerinde 34 Yıl, 2–1: 153.

 [81] George C. McGhee, ‘Turkey, the United States, and the Free World’, DSB 23, no. 592 (6 November 1950): 739.

 [82] Dr. Halim Alyot (Director-General, Bureau of the Press & Broadcasting) to Basri Aktaş (Private Secretary to the Prime Minister), Ankara, 5 August 1950, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Devlet Arşivleri, 30.01/102.630.8.

 [83] ‘Statement by the Secretary of State’, Washington, 28 November 1950, in Reviews of the World Situation, 1949–1950, 393.

 [84] ‘Memorandum of Conversation’, George McGhee Files, Box 19.

 [85] ‘Request of Turkey for NAT Membership’, Washington, 29 August 1950, NARA, RG 59, Records of the Policy Planning Staff, 1947–53, Lot 64 D 563, Box 22.

 [86] Erkin, Dışişlerinde 34 Yıl, 2–2: 340–52.

 [87] Onozawa, ‘Formation of American Regional Policy’, 128. Also see Yeşilbursa, ‘Turkey's Participation in the Middle East Command and its Admission to NATO’.

 [88] Athanassopoulou, Turkey – Anglo-American Security Interests, 240.

 [89] Ülman, ‘Türk Dış Politikasına Yön Veren Etkenler’, 262.

 [90] ‘Report by the Secretary of State on European Problems’, Executive Session of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 82nd Congress, First Session, 451.

 [91] The memoirs of Ambassador Erkin and Zeki Kuneralp, private secretary to the Secretary-General of the Turkish Foreign Ministry, also reflect the fact that democracy had no bearing on American–Turkish relations. See Erkin, Dışişlerinde 34 Yıl and Kuneralp, Just a Diplomat.

 [92] Smith, America's Mission. Tony Smith has been deeply troubled by the implications of his defence of liberal internationalism and the way President George W. Bush has implemented ‘democratization’ in the Middle East. See Smith's Pact with the Devil.

 [93] Ikenberry, ‘America's Liberal Grand Strategy’, 103–4.

 [94] Owen, Liberal Peace, Liberal War; Brown, Debating the Democratic Peace.

 [95] Smith, ‘U.S. Democracy Promotion’, 65–6.

 [96] The preamble reads as follows: ‘The Parties to this Treaty reaffirm their faith in the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and their desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments. They are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilization of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law’. ‘The North Atlantic Treaty’ available from http://www.nato.int/docu/basictxt/treaty.htm; accessed 21 January 2008. Salazar's remarks from Crollen, Portugal, the US, and NATO, 48–9.

 [97] Liedtke, Embracing a Dictatorship, 23–32.

 [98] Ross and Rosenberg, America's Plans for War, vol. 8, Plan Bushwacker.

 [99] Hayes, The United States and Spain, 181.

 [100] Athanassopoulou, Turkey – Anglo-American Security Interests, 187–235; Harris, Troubled Alliance, 9–25; Henze, Turkish Democracy and the American Alliance, 9–11; Barutçu, Siyasi Hatıralar: Milli Mücadeleden Demokrasiye, 1: 818–65; Derin, Çankaya Özel Kalemini Anımsarken, 201–15.

[101] Henze, Turkish Democracy and the American Alliance, 11.

[102] In fact, fearing that he would try to stop them, members of the military junta that carried out the coup did not inform İnönü beforehand. See Toker, Demokrasimizin İsmet Paşalı Yılları, 5: 21. Following the coup, a group within the junta began campaigning against democracy and political parties, with the pretext that they caused instability. In an article published in various papers on 9 September 1960, İnönü came forward in defence of democracy and began clashing with the junta. The article is available as İnönü, ‘Democracy and Revolution in Turkey’, 314–7.

[103] Rustow, ‘Modernization of Turkey’, 113.

[104] Ferrell, Off the Record, 368.

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Barın Kayaoğlu

Barın Kayaoğlu is a graduate of Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, and is currently a PhD candidate in history working with Melvyn Leffler at The University of Virginia. He is writing his dissertation on US–Turkish–Iranian relations during the Cold War. His research interests are the history of US foreign relations and modern Middle East history