The Early Cold War Years

With Soviet forces occupying Eastern Europe and Joseph Stalin proposing modifications to the country’s northeastern border, Turkey in 1945 found itself facing a far more dramatic threat than Italian imperial ambitions. In these circumstances, securing Western support against the Soviet Union became Turkey’s over-riding foreign policy concern, and Turkey’s involvement in the Middle East, as a result, became a facet of a broader anti-Soviet struggle.

In the early years of the Cold War, both Washington and Ankara agreed that Turkey could play an important role in helping to organize the defense of the Middle East (both the formerly Ottoman Arab world and Iran) against Soviet penetration.8 Yet this effort put both countries in an untenable position, forced to balance the competing demands of the British and French, whose continued military dominance in the region was seen as crucial to its defense, and those of Arab nationalists, who saw European imperialism, and in time Israel, as a far greater threat than the Soviet Union.

The story of Turkey’s involvement in the Middle East during the 1950s follows the failure of a number of mutual defense pacts to overcome these differences in the name of common defense.9 Initially, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, when the Turkish government under Ismet Inönü initially sought Western support against the Soviet Union, Ankara presented its capacity to take the lead in organizing the defense of the Middle East as a key benefit for the US and Britain. Yet in the subsequent debate over Turkey’s NATO accession, it became clear that London wanted to make Turkey’s support for a British-led Middle East defense plan a pre-requisite, and perhaps alternative, to full Turkish membership in the emerging Western alliance. Correctly sensing that NATO would be the main focus of US diplomatic and military commitments in the region, however, Turkey pushed for membership, and to this end made its support for any such planning dependent on first securing admission.10

After this effort proved successful, in 1952, Turkey, now under the leadership of the enthusiastically pro-American and anti-Soviet government of Adnan Menderes, became an active supporter of bolstering Western defense efforts in the Middle East. This initially took the form of a proposed Middle East Defense Organization under British leadership and focused on the Arab world. Yet with Syrian anger over the loss of Hatay still raw, British-Egyptian tensions mounting and other Arab states still primarily focused on Israel, the Middle East Defense Organization proved a non-starter. Two years later, however, Turkey, with US and British support, renewed these efforts through a more modest but ultimately successful effort leading to the 1955 Baghdad Pact. Focusing on the countries that appeared most amenable to cooperation (while holding out hope that others might join later), the Baghdad Pact brought together Turkey, Britain, and Iraq with Pakistan and Iran, two other “northern tier” states that, on account of their location, felt the Soviet threat more directly than other Arab states farther south.

In the following years, Menderes’s eagerness to respond aggressively to perceived Soviet threats in the Arab world repeatedly went beyond what his Western partners were comfortable with. After coups in Syria and Iraq threatened to bring more pro-Soviet governments to power in 1957 and 1958, for example, Menderes pushed for direct intervention to restore the status quo, but was dissuaded from taking action by Washington and London, both of which shared his concerns but worried armed intervention would be counter-productive.11 After Iraq’s 1958 coup, Baghdad withdrew from its eponymous pact, which was then reformed as Central Treaty Organization, or CENTO. Under this new guise, it lasted until 1979, when another political upheaval in Iran led to its final disillusion.

In short, from the late 1950s on, the broad contours of Turkey’s Cold War policy toward the Middle East remained consistent. Iraq and Syria, Turkey’s two Arab neighbors, fell, to varying degrees into the rival camp, ensuring an extended period of frosty relations but no direct conflict. As Cyprus became increasingly central in the 1960s and 1970s, Turkish policymakers, somewhat taken aback that so many Arab states seemed to be siding with Greece, sought to patch up their relations with the Middle East (downgrading relations with Israel in the process). Yet this soft thaw, also motivated by the rise in oil prices during the 1970s, did little to change the regional alignments. Indeed, with the re-emergence of Turkey’s Kurdish conflict in the 1980s, the interaction of Turkey’s internal politics with its strained regional relationships set the stage for these alignments to persist even after the Cold War concluded.

Ideological and Historical Roots of Turkey’s Cold War Policy

In the context of the Cold War, where Soviet imperialism had replaced British imperialism as Ankara’s prime concern, Turkey ultimately closed ranks behind the United States and its NATO allies.12 But this was not always a natural outgrowth of Turkey’s historical or ideological sympathies. The possibility of a British general, for example, commanding Arab, American, and Turkish troops in battle against the Soviets met with stiff resistance. The Arabs would never agree to it, Turkish diplomats said, nor would the Turkish people. George Wadsworth, the US ambassador in Ankara, drew up a handwritten memo in 1951 outlining why Turks “disliked” the British. British behavior in World War I was “not forgotten,” he wrote, while Turks believed the British “still have imperialist ambitions in the Middle East” and think of Turkey and others as “colonials.”13 Similarly, throughout this period, US diplomats took Turkey’s support for Palestine for granted. Turkey’s foreign minister at the time later told the US ambassador that Israel’s creation had been a “mistake.” And in 1948, the embassy thought rumors that Turkish military officers might be resigning to go fight as volunteers with the Arabs were plausible enough to report back to Washington.

Tellingly, American and Turkish diplomats all eagerly discussed Turkey’s role as a “bridge between East and West.” But there were differences in the way each invoked the cliché.14 When Anglo-Arab tensions emerged, such as in the years before the 1956 Suez crisis, the United States (which had its own anti-imperial tradition) and Turkey both, to some extent, found themselves caught in the middle, eager to smooth things over and focus on the Soviets again. Turkish diplomats felt they could bridge the gap by pushing the United States toward accommodating Arab concerns, whereas the United States hoped Ankara would instead help Arabs see the regrettable necessity of cooperating with the United Kingdom. From the US perspective, Turkey sometimes seemed to be building its bridge from the wrong side, as when Ankara failed in trying to convince Washington to accommodate Mohammad Mossedegh during the early stages of the Anglo-Persian oil dispute.

Ironically, amidst all these disagreements, Turkey tried to simultaneously capitalize on its Ottoman past as evidence of its cultural, religious, and historic bond with the Arab world but also as proof that it, no less than France and Britain, had relevant experience successfully managing the Middle East.15 Thus, in negotiations over Middle East defense, Ankara forcefully insisted that it participate alongside Paris and London, engaging the region’s leaders from the position of a NATO ally and Western power. Yet at the same time, in bilateral relations with Middle Eastern leaders Ankara was eager to play up their shared history. This included efforts to capitalize on a narrative of joint anti-imperial struggle, for example, when the Ottomans and Libyans fought together against Italy, as well as more personal examples of shared culture and history, particularly when dealing with regional leaders who had lived or studied in Istanbul themselves.

Ultimately, political dynamics triumphed over shared history. Indeed, history was to some extent rewritten to match the new political dynamics. As Syria, Egypt, and Iraq appeared to cast their lot with the Soviet Union against the West, Turkey’s stab in the back narrative took on a new prominence, with the Soviet Union replacing Britain as the sponsor of Arab treachery. The sometimesconsiderable sympathy that existed between World War I comrades took a back seat to Cold War rivalry. And yet as circumstances pushed Turkey to slowly improve its relations with the Arab world after the 1950s, Ankara sought to again recalibrate, however slightly, the balance between support for the Western alliance and respect for Arab nationalism.16 Whether by recognizing the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1976 or intensifying engagement with the Organization of the Islamic Conference in the early 1980s, Turkish policymakers took a series of steps reflecting the belief that they had erred too far in the direction of uncritical support for their NATO allies at the outset of the Cold War. It would, however, take some time before the impact of these policies could make themselves felt amongst a host of more pressing geopolitical and domestic concerns.

Enter the 1990s

While the end of the Cold War seemed to offer the promise of peace for many in the West, it brought Turkey little respite. After four decades on the front lines against the Soviet Union and a decade of military tutelage and counter-insurgency, Turkey entered the 1990s with a continuing sense of paranoia and besiegement undercutting the optimism of the era. Amidst politicians’ fitful attempts to capitalize on the country’s growing economy, emerge from the shadow of the 1980 coup, and end the country’s Kurdish conflict, the military establishment continued to see the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) as the country’s over-riding national security challenge. In the absence of the Soviet Union, this threat came to dominate Turkish foreign policy in the Middle East. At the same time, the end of the Cold War gave Turkey’s military and political leadership alike a renewed interest in demonstrating the continued value of the Western alliance as well as Turkey’s role in it. Especially as the war against the PKK generated ongoing criticism among many in the West, close cooperation with the US military, in the Middle East and Balkans, served as a way to secure Turkey’s relationship with Washington.

During the 1980s, Turkey’s transition to a market economy under Prime Minister Turgut Özal accelerated an effort to improve trade ties with the Middle East that began as a response to the 1970s oil crisis. By 1985, Turkey’s exports to the Middle East had reached $3 billion a year and Turkish construction firms had secured $15.5 billion worth of contracts.17 Yet at the same time, Turkey’s intensifying conflict with the PKK emerged as a dominant factor in Turkey’s regional policy. Ankara’s already strained relations with Syria were not improved when Damascus welcomed left-wing activists fleeing Turkey after the 1980 coup, and only worsened when the Assad regime began actively supporting the PKK. With PKK guerillas training alongside Hezbollah and Palestinian Liberation Organization fighters in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, the conflict also served as a driving force behind Turkey’s increasingly close relationship with Israel during the decade.18 Meanwhile, the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war also created changing economic incentives and security threats further east along Turkey’s border. For Ankara, a policy of firm neutrality in the conflict facilitated profitable trade relations with both increasingly isolated belligerents. And as Iran and Iraq tried to mobilize their rival’s Kurdish population against it, both countries had, as a result, a shared interest with Turkey in containing Kurdish separatism within their own borders.

This was the backdrop when, quickly following on the end of the Cold War, Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait triggered a new conflict that would reshape Western interests and local dynamics in the region. In retrospect, the first Gulf war and its aftermath revealed both the potential for new strategic divergence between the United States and Turkey in the aftermath of the Cold War, as well as Turkey’s capacity to overcome it so long as it prioritized maintaining strong ties to the United States.19 In the lead-up to the war, Özal promoted an active Turkish role, even suggesting that Turkish forces could attack Iraq from the north. Özal appeared to believe that active cooperation in the Middle East could help secure Ankara’s relationship with Washington, just as Inönü and Menderes had envisioned in very different circumstances at the Cold War’s outset. Yet set against Özal’s eagerness to cooperate were Turkish concerns over the Kurdish issue. These not only limited Ankara’s participation in the initial conflict but created a potential impasse after the war, when Baghdad’s crackdown on a Kurdish uprising sent hundreds of thousands of refugees streaming over the border into Turkey. In response, Ankara ultimately supported the creation of a no-fly zone in northern Iraq that allowed refugees to return but, in doing so, facilitated the creation of a quasi-independent Kurdish political entity. This was by no means an ideal outcome from Turkey’s perspective, but it was seen as being the most pragmatic response compatible with maintaining Turkey’s international relationships.

Throughout much of the 1990s, however, the impact of the Kurdish issue on Turkey’s regional policies as often as not complemented US interests in the region. Along with the economic cost of Iraqsanctions on Turkey, US support for what emerged into the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) caused tension with Ankara. But as long as both Washington and the KRG leadership turned a blind eye to Turkish military operations against the PKK in northern Iraq, these tensions never created a major bilateral issue. Similarly, Western human rights concerns over Turkey’s conduct of its domestic counter-insurgency campaign against the PKK continued to dog the US-Turkish relationship during this period. Yet ironically this helped contribute to Turkey’s growing relationship with Israel, a country which Ankara hoped would have fewer qualms about providing both military and diplomatic support for its counterterror efforts. Additionally, Syria’s ongoing support for the PKK, most notably its willingness to host PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan in Damascus, provided a common enemy to further bring Turkey and Israel together. And in this case Washington was eager to support Turkey’s efforts. Indeed, the end of the decade saw Turkey effectively leverage its relationships with both Israel and the United States to achieve an unprecedented success in its fight against the PKK. By convincingly threatening a military attack on Syria—a threat made possible, in turn, by Israel’s implicit support—Ankara eventually forced Damascus to expel Öcalan in 1999. Then, with US and Israeli covert assistance, Turkish special forces succeeded in capturing Öcalan in Kenya, dealing a major blow to the PKK.20 Ironically, the joint effort that led to Öcalan’s arrest represented a high point in the

US-Turkish relationship, but also indirectly made possible some of the policies that would cause tension between the two countries in the coming decade.

Getting to Zero: 2002 to 2010

On the eve of the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) rise to power in 2002, Turkey seemed poised to achieve a degree of security and prosperity that had consistently eluded it over the past decade, if not half century. Initially, many observers hoped that an economically dynamic and culturally confident Turcongkey, at peace with its Kurdish population and firmly under civilian rule, might simultaneously succeed in improving ties with once-hostile regional neighbors while simultaneously taking its place within the European Union. And yet the political pathologies that had hindered the country’s progress remained very much alive. Amidst renewed instability in the Middle East and ongoing fears over the Turkey’s territorial integrity, as well as the country’s deep political divisions and intensified anti-Western attitudes, the possibility of a radical transformation in Turkish foreign policy was never realized. Indeed, it now appears that if a transformation occurs it will be a dramatic break in Turkey’s ties with the West rather than a dramatic improvement in its ties to the Middle East.

If Ahmet Davutoğlu, as foreign policy advisor and later foreign minister, was central to the formation of Turkey’s foreign policy under the AKP, his rhetoric was even more central to the way the way this policy was understood.21 Between the vaguely profound sounding “strategic depth” and the awkwardly direct “zero problems with neighbors,” Davutoğlu’s various doctrines came to define what others called “neo-Ottomanism”—a historically informed attempt to increase Turkey’s geopolitical influence by improving diplomatic and economic relations with and between its largely Muslim neighbors.22 In retrospect, Davutoğlu’s ambitions have often appeared naïve and grandiose, but at the time they were widely applauded as a welcome alternative to what had come before. In the 1990s, the role of the past in Turkish foreign policy had been described in terms of the “Sevres Syndrome,” a nationalist paranoia inspired by the proposed post-World War I imperial carve up of Anatolia. Against this backdrop, a degree of romanticism seemed a healthy replacement for historically-fueled rivalries with neighbors like Greece and Armenia.23 And indeed, when the AKP in its first years in power moved to mend relations with these two countries, not to mention supporting a UN peace plan for Cyprus, Davutoğlu’s foreign policy won considerable support in the West.

More controversial, however, were Turkey’s moves in the Middle East, in particular its efforts to improve relations with the antiWestern governments of Syria and Iran. These steps initially drew some criticism in Washington, and raised concerns about the Islamist character of Davutoğlu’s foreign policy vision.24 Yet there were certainly sound pragmatic reasons for Turkey to seek out better ties with both of these governments. Iran provided Turkey with much needed natural gas and Syria offered a potentially lucrative market for Turkey’s growing export-oriented economy. The rapprochement with Syria, moreover, had been made possible by Turkey’s success in forcing Damascus to end support for the PKK, while Iran, on account of its own domestic politics, had also become more cooperative in working with Turkey against the threat of Kurdish separatism. Moreover, from a traditional Islamist perspective, neither Iran, on account of its Shiism, nor the Assad regime, on account of its distinctly violent history with the Muslim Brotherhood, represented an ideal partner.

At the same time, if the motivations for improving Turkey’s ties with new Middle Eastern partners were not purely Islamist, the manner in which Ankara went about it was nonetheless indicative of the problems to come. As often as not, for Erdoğan in particular, the discomfort his visits to Tehran and Damascus created in the West seemed to be a benefit. Asked about the AKP’s handlings of relations with Syria in 2005, for example, former President Suleiman Demirel offered a telling assessment, endorsing the substance of the rapprochement but not the manner in which it was done: “No one asked Turkey to become Syria’s enemy on behalf of America. But Turkey could have avoided acts that blatantly disturbed the US … Relations with both the US and with Syria could have been managed without creating problems.”25

During this period, Davutoğlu, at least, realized that Turkey could best expand its role in the region as a power on good terms with all parties if those parties, in turn, were on good terms with each other. In serving as a mediator between Syria and Israel, for example, or trying to negotiate a deal to end Iran’s nuclear program, Davutoğlu was not only trying to enhance Turkey’s prestige but also create the conditions in which a “zero-problems” policy would be possible. And yet when existing regional rifts proved insurmountable and these efforts failed, the AKP’s response gave voice to a distinctly anti-Western anger that contrasted with previous governments’ willingness to prioritize strong relations with the West. In the case of Israel, for example, the breakdown of Syrian-Israeli negotiations in 2009 as a result of Operation Cast Lead was quickly followed by Erdoğan’s infamous “one minute” moment, followed in turn by the Mavi Marmara flotilla. Similarly, in the case of Iran, Davutoğlu’s eagerness to find a formula that would end Western sanctions was, if somewhat rash in execution, entirely in keeping with a pragmatic understanding of Turkish interests. Yet when that effort failed, the AKP did not ultimately close ranks behind its NATO partners but instead went along with a massive and corrupt effort to help Iran subvert the sanctions regime.26

For all the challenges Davutoğlu’s foreign policy ambitions faced from the outset, it could still be described as largely successful up until 2010. The AKP’s efforts to make peace with Armenia, or on Cyprus, or between Israel and Syria may have all failed, but Turkey was nonetheless more secure in its neighborhood than it had arguably been at any point in the previous century. Turkish companies were expanding their business from the Balkans to the Persian Gulf and from Iraqi Kurdistan to North Africa. If some of Turkey’s new relationships were met with displeasure in Washington, others, such as Ankara’s rapprochement with Erbil and Athens, were seen as dramatic evidence of Turkey’s progress in overcoming its historical and nationalist liabilities. American policymakers continued to see Turkey as a valuable partner in the Middle East, as did many European champions of Turkey’s EU accession. Yet much of this progress was soon to flounder amidst the contradictions introduced by the Arab Spring.