Turkey in the mediterranean during the interwar era

On 11 March 1936, the representatives of the Balkan Entente declared that they would defend the application of all treaties including that of Locarno.⁶⁶⁹ It is argued that Titulescu had sent a message of support to France in the name of the Balkan Entente following the remilitarization of the Rhineland. Yugoslavia, Turkey and Greece subsequently contacted the German government dissociating themselves from Titulescu’s message.⁶⁷⁰

The US Ambassador to Turkey, J. V. A. MacMurray, reported to Washington that there had been some changes since Shaw’s dispatch of March on Turkey’s international position. First of all, the Italian threat had become more concrete because of Italy’s military success in Abyssinia. A peace dictated by Italy and the inability of the powers to prevent aggression had definitely impressed Ankara.⁶⁷¹ US diplomat pointed out Turkish concern about the developing Italian influence on Bulgaria. He diagnosed that Aras’ remarks to the Yugoslav press that Bulgaria would take no steps towards rearming without notifying its neighbors was more of a warning than a reflection of his real convictions. The Turkish authorities also suspected that the Germans could be supplying arms and munitions to Bulgaria because Berlin had inquired concerning the attitude Ankara might take towards the passage through the Straits of vessels loaded with arms and munitions.⁶⁷²

However, Turkey did not have any appetite to commit itself in the ensuing Western European crisis, according to the American diplomat. In fact, the Turkish government asked for the resignation of Cemal Hüsnü Taray who was accused of committing Turkey without instruction to taking sides in a controversy among the great powers. At Geneva, Taray had backed Titulescu who stated that the Balkan and Little Ententes should align with France and Belgium in the present European crisis.⁶⁷³

Even after the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the Turkish Foreign Ministry had by no means given up hope of a general Mediterranean settlement to include all riparian states and Britain on the basis of non-aggression and mutual guarantees, including settlement of the Italian-Abyssinian conflict.⁶⁷⁴ Contrary to Ankara’s desires, the British Foreign Office’s immediate objective was to avoid discussing the Mediterranean question in its broader aspects but to solidify the British-Italian détente in the Mediterranean. In December 1935, the British Foreign Office advised its embassy in Turkey to discourage the Turkish Foreign Ministry from embarking on such an ambitious and a comprehensive scheme.⁶⁷⁵

Turkey’s dilemma as a middle power continued vis-à-vis the great powers even though Ankara hoped to gain more British support in the region. The greatest disappointment for Turkey was the growing disregard by these powers of multilateral organizations and initiatives. As a member of the League of Nations, Turkey took great strides and risks in supporting the League’s efforts, including the sanctions to preserve peace under all circumstances.⁶⁷⁶ However, London and Paris failed to put their weight behind the League. While full panoply of sanctions was not imposed on Rome, the British and French Foreign Ministers were also contemplating new concessions to Italy in Abyssinia. In December, foreign ministers of the two countries agreed to relinquish a large part Abyssinia to Italy.⁶⁷⁷

Turkish political leaders were disappointed by the great powers’ approach to international security. The Abyssinian crisis and the way in which the great powers handled it provoked Turkish questioning of the future and dependability of the existing collective security regime in preserving the peace. The great powers chose to pursue bilateral solutions to settle international issues over counting on the authority of the League of Nations. In contrast to the great powers, as a middle power, Ankara had pinned its hopes on the principle of collective security and the League of Nations, as principal instrument of its implementation. In the context of the Abyssinian issue, Turkish Prime Minister İnönü stated: “If the idea of the mutual guarantee of nations for the maintenance of peace widens its scope so as to be applicable to all events, we are in favor of laboring to assure such an evolution.”⁶⁷⁸ Thus Ankara would like to see a more determined and efficient League of Nations in overseeing the implementation of collective security for all nations.

Turkish political leaders were preoccupied with the impact of the League’s failure in the Abyssinian crisis on future Italian behavior. And they were not very optimistic. For instance, during an informal conversation with the British Ambassador to Turkey, Sir Percy Loraine, Turkish President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk brought up the necessity to consider seriously possible consequences of a complete Italian victory in Abyssinia. He predicted: “Italian exultation over such a success would be all the more intense and arrogant because the success would have been won despite the League of Nations”.⁶⁷⁹ Finally he asked the following question:

“If the action taken by the states who had pronounced Italy an aggressor and were enforcing sanctions on her, had not proved efficacious to prevent Italy’s single-handed conquest of Abyssinia, was it to be expected that the action of those states through the League would be more energetic and more efficacious in preventing Mussolini’s next act of spoliation?”⁶⁸⁰

In this conversation, Turkish President in fact offered an excellent example of middle power thinking of international relations. First, Ankara detested “inactivity” towards Italian “colonialist” policy in Abyssinia. Turkey identified strongly itself with the victim, as it had been through a very similar experience, not long ago.⁶⁸¹ Therefore, the Turkish diplomats could not turn a blind eye to the invasion of a member of the League of Nations. They were also disappointed with the League’s failure to act efficiently and resolutely. As a result of this failure, Mussolini might be tempted to seek expansion into other territories.⁶⁸² A last point about Atatürk’s conversation with the British ambassador is that it was probably a subtle reminder to London that Ankara expected Britain to assume a more vocal stand against Italian expansionism.⁶⁸³

In March 1936, Turkish Foreign Minister Aras gave an interview in Paris-Midi. He argued that developments in the first quarter of the year affirmed Turkey’s increasing significance in the Mediterranean issues. Such significance might trigger a rivalry between London and Rome to win Ankara’s support.⁶⁸⁴ For Aras, two factors accounted for Turkey’s growing centrality. First, the Mediterranean itself took on a new geopolitical significance. The second factor was the sanctions imposed by the League of Nations on Italy after its Abyssinian campaign. The sanctions would be effective only in the medium-term. In the meantime, Turkish diplomacy would continue to promote regional cooperation in the Mediterranean which became a pressing issue in view of lack of sufficient measures against aggression. Moreover, the great powers’ positions were still far apart and not amenable to the bridging by a middle power such as Turkey. In other words, the conflicting interests of the great powers stood in the way of such Mediterranean cooperation.

The great powers’ unbridgeable differences imposed structural constraints on developing and implementing other-help strategies in the region as well. Consequently, there was a renewal of emphasis in Ankara on self-help strategies. Amidst international speculations that the League of Nations-sanctioned collective security was doomed to collapse, the demilitarized status of the Straits gained currency in Turkish defense planning. Under the existing regime, the Straits compromised Turkey’s security. To regain the right to militarize the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, a long-standing military requirement, evolved into a key diplomatic objective for Turkey in the course of 1935.

To contemplate measures to beef up Turkish defenses in and around the Straits zone, Ankara counted on the services of German naval advisory mission in Turkey. In December 1935, the chief German naval advisor was invited to offer his views on naval strategy and the attendant arms build-up needed to defend the demilitarized Straits. The discussions revealed that Turkish strategic calculations gave primacy to defending the Dardanelles over the Bosphorus. In practical terms, Turkey was in the process of adjusting its military strategy around the perceived Italian threat in the Aegean. At this point, the Soviet military and naval capabilities in the Black Sea did not warrant a similar degree of attention from Ankara.⁶⁸⁵

The impression in Turkey was that Britain, France, Italy and Japan would not be willing to assume the burden of defending the Straits in the event of aggression, contrary to their commitments at the Lausanne Conference. The Italian invasion of Abyssinia and the German occupation of the Rhine Demilitarized Zone were two cases in point for Turkish officials who arrived at this conclusion. Therefore, Ankara eventually voiced its demand for a substantial revision of the demilitarized status of the Straits and consequently called for a meeting.

In May 1936, after Turkey’s request for the revision of the Straits status, the US Chargé d’Affaires in Bucharest, Frederick P. Hibbard, commented on Turkish-Romanian relations. On the one hand, he mentioned that the Romanian press talked about a feeling of gratification towards Turkey which had requested revision in a legal manner rather than resorting to treaty violation as Austria and Germany had done. On the other hand, Hibbard wrote that Romanian Foreign Minister Nicolae Titulescu was most indignant at Turkey’s request for the revision. Interestingly enough, he argued that Turkey had not consulted with its allies in the Balkan Entente prior to issuing the note to the League of Nations.⁶⁸⁶

According to the US diplomat, Titulescu also opposed Turkey’s request because of its timing. He argued that if Turkey’s claims were met, Hungary and Bulgaria would also be encouraged to request revisions to the military clauses of the Trianon and Neuilly Treaties.⁶⁸⁷ Moreover, the Romanian leader believed that if the request of these countries was made in the same manner as Turkey has made its request, Romania would find it difficult to refuse to consider this.

Whatever their original reservations might have been, in the end the Balkan Entente members preferred to present a common front in response to the Turkish demand as a manifestation of regional solidarity in the Balkans. They issued a joint communiqué supporting Turkey’s case.⁶⁸⁸ However, Turkey had to convince Britain, a major naval power, to bring about a change in the status of the Straits. At this point, Britain consented to the Turkish demand in view of the rapidly deteriorating political situation in the Mediterranean. After Italian invasion of Abyssinia, Turkey became a dedicated defender of the status quo in the Eastern Mediterranean.⁶⁸⁹ Moreover, forging a link with Turkey would also diminish the possibility of Soviet-Turkish collaboration in the region.⁶⁹⁰

Between June and July 1936 Turkey, Britain and the other signatories of the Treaty of Lausanne met at Montreux and agreed eventually to abolish the International Straits Commission. In addition, the Montreux Conference terminated the demilitarized status of the Straits and placed them under Turkish control. The only opposition came from Italy which resisted the transfer of the Straits Commission’s jurisdiction to the Turkish authorities. Such transfer, Rome reasoned, could restrict and even impede free passage through the Straits for Italy. Finally, Rome referred to Ankara’s decision to enforce sanctions on Italy to justify its opposition to the Montreux Convention. ⁶⁹¹

It is important here to note that even at Montreux, Turkish officials strove to promote regional alliances. During the conference, Turkish Foreign Minister Aras and Romanian Foreign Minister Titulescu had conversations with Soviet Foreign Commissar Litvinov on the possibility of forming a Black Sea pact, part and parcel of a wider Mediterranean pact. Even though Turkey did not completely agree with Romania and the Soviet Union concerning their rights in the Black Sea, Ankara fully supported the idea of a Black Sea pact for the security of the Straits.⁶⁹²

Ankara scored a diplomatic victory at Montreux by securing substantial revision of an important post-war international treaty through accommodation rather than by use of force or threat of force. The Montreux Convention might have provided a somewhat satisfactory answer to Turkey’s most pressing defense problem. However, remilitarization of the Straits zone was required but not sufficient alone to solve all of Turkey’s security problems. After Montreux, Turkish diplomacy did not shy away from multilateral arrangements for regional security. On the contrary, the proposed Mediterranean pact remained of particular interest to Turkey. Turkish officials knew that the security of the Straits hinged intricately on the security of the Mediterranean. The latter could be assured only through regional cooperation. In other words, Turkish diplomats were aware of the limits of self-help strategies and interrelated nature of international security. The partial improvement through self-help strategies could easily be offset unless they were backed up by multilateral solutions. The typical middle power understanding of security, hence, manifested itself in the form of relentless Turkish promotion of multilateral frameworks to reduce the uneven control of great powers.

Earlier in May 1936, Turkish Foreign Minister Aras had already urged France to present to the League of Nations its project for a Mediterranean pact of mutual assistance for July 1936.⁶⁹³ However, Britain did not consent on calling the League to convene for a discussion of the French project. Later the French government sent a memorandum to London proposing a Mediterranean pact of mutual assistance which would include the Mediterranean as well as the Black Sea countries. It should be borne in mind that this particular French proposal followed the termination of sanctions on Italy and subsequent withdrawal of British guarantees to Turkey, Greece and Yugoslavia due to their adherence to the sanctions.⁶⁹⁴ The French administration believed that such a pact could mean replacing unilateral British guarantees to Yugoslavia, Greece, and Turkey with a more institutionalized and solid commitment. London did not respond positively to this French proposal either. The idea of winning Italy to their side continued to preoccupy British diplomats. For instance, in October 1936, British Foreign Office Under-Secretary R. Sergeant bluntly stated to his French counterpart that the security of the three Balkan countries could be disregarded if there was a possibility of settling British-Italian relations tête à tête.⁶⁹⁵

British (great power) behavior in the Mediterranean stood in stark contrast to Turkish (middle power) behavior and preferences at this time. While Ankara emphasized the need for multilateral solutions to international problems, London preferred bilateral ones. As noted practitioners of balance of power, the British diplomats gave priority to keeping Italy and Germany apart by offering the former concessions and incentives in the Mediterranean. This was the kind of bilateral cooperation between great powers Ankara, sought to preclude.

Such a diplomatic strategy needed partners or like-minded governments to succeed. After 1936, they were in short supply. Turkish diplomats had rounds of high-key diplomatic talks with Turkey’s neighbors and partners in the Balkan Entente for the formation of a Mediterranean pact. For instance, in October 1936, both Prime Minister İnönü and Foreign Minister Aras tried to talk Yugoslav Prime Minister Stojadinovic into such an arrangement. Six months later, in April 1937, Ankara renewed its efforts to win Belgrade’s support, again without much success. In the end, Turkey was frustrated by the reluctance of its neighbors to support to multilateral arrangements and their ever-increasing tendency to conclude bilateral treaties.⁶⁹⁶

This frustration finally prompted Ankara to seek accommodation with the great powers, including Italy. After the Montreux Conference, Turkish diplomacy hoped to secure Italian endorsement of the revised status of the Straits. Foreign diplomatic papers give the impression that Ankara and Rome might have reached an understanding on the link between the Straits and the Abyssinian issues. the Italian victory in Abyssinia presented Turkey with a problem regarding the future of its diplomatic mission in Addis Ababa. Maintaining a Turkish diplomatic mission ran the risk of increasing the tension in the already strained Italian-Turkish relations. Withdrawing the mission would, on the other hand, mean lending legitimacy to the Italian annexation. Ankara was helped by the “illness” of the Turkish Chargé d’Affaires in that country. In September 1936, the news was leaked that Ankara would recall the head of its diplomatic mission for reasons of health and ask the British to undertake the protection of Turkish nationals and Turkish interests in Abyssinia. Reportedly, Turkish Foreign Minister Tevfik Rüştü Aras knew that the Italians would certainly be satisfied with this new situation. At any rate, if genuine, the Turkish Chargé D’Affaires’ poor health was a blessing in disguise as it allowed Turkey to justify the closure of its diplomatic mission on non-political grounds. Moreover, Ankara’s request to Britain to protect its nationals and interests in Abyssinia “removed the embarrassment of asking the Italians for an exequatur to establish a consular mission.”⁶⁹⁷

An American diplomatic dispatch of May 1937 mentioned Count Ciano’s conversation with Turkish Foreign Minister Aras, Reportedly, Aras committed to support at Geneva Italy’s claim to recognition of the annexation of Abyssinia, although Ciano was less clear as to what Italy would or would not do with respect to the Montreux Convention. In fact, when the Italian conquest had become clear, Turkey withdrew its diplomatic mission to Addis-Ababa. In analyzing the Turkish diplomacy of the time towards Italy, MacMurray wrote that the underlying distrust was barely concealed by a discreet and realistic diplomacy.⁶⁹⁸

10. RELUCTANT NAVAL ACTIVISM IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
After 1936, Turkish diplomacy had to revert to more conventional self-help strategies in an international setting marked by a general return to “old diplomacy.” In other words, other-help strategies no longer offered viable diplomatic alternatives for middle powers. In the first half of the 1930s, Turkey could punch diplomatically above its weight for two reasons. First, the reluctance of traditional leaders to perform managerial roles in the Balkans and the Mediterranean gave Turkey a leeway much longer than usual. Second, its membership in the League of Nations in 1932 enhanced Turkey’s ability to find and work with greater number of like-minded and comparably placed powers beyond its neighborhood. By 1936, the great powers were back in the old balance of power game in the surrounding regions and the League of Nations had an extremely bleak outlook. In short, Turkish switch to the old diplomatic practices was not an exception, but was in line with the order of the day.

A similar development had started earlier, for instance, in Britain where, after 1932, the foreign office bureaucracy tried to steer politicians in the direction of “old diplomacy.” Its principal aim was to maintain a balance in continental Europe, in the Mediterranean and in the Far East. After the War, as the constellation of enemies that could threaten the Empire changed, so did the identity of potential allies and friends to protect the same. According to McKercher,

“Like the ‘Victorians’ before them, the interwar ‘Edwardians’ did not see a balance existing only in continental Europe. Rather, they saw several balances in those areas of globe judged vital to British and Imperial security. Though they gave expression to these multiple balances in terms of questions needing answers – the ‘Mediterranean question’, the ‘Chinese question’, and so on – they approached the issue of national security as one of meeting specific threats in particular parts of the world. Grand strategy thus entailed pursuing foreign and defense policies that considered a series of interlocking questions on a global scale.”⁶⁹⁹

Accordingly, civilian and military bureaucracy in Britain began to put pressure on the

government to increase defense spending to meet emerging German and Japanese threats. The Defense Requirements Sub-Committee (DRC) set up under the Committee of Imperial Defense (CID) came up with specific recommendations to bring British defenses up to strength by 1939, the year the DRC identified as the one when war was most probable. The Sub-Committee recommendations were geared mainly towards making up for deficiencies and delays in the existing programs as a result of anticipation of a certain degree of success in international disarmament efforts. More importantly, the DRC’s work culminated in a new strategy for British foreign policy which remained in effect until Neville Chamberlain’s Premiership. This new strategy identified Germany as the “ultimate potential enemy” of Britain. Its immediate objective was to buy time by making the best possible use of political means to maintain a global equilibrium until British defenses were brought up to strength.⁷⁰⁰

In contrast to British preoccupation with Germany, Ankara was most concerned about Italy. Mussolini’s March 1934 speech on future Italian expansion into Asia and Africa had elevated this country to the status of “enemy number one” in Turkish assessments. Turkey had to tackle a greater Italian threat than in the 1920s due to expansion of the Italian naval power.⁷⁰¹ Moreover, inspired by the international naval disarmament efforts, it signed naval protocols with Greece in the Aegean and the Soviets in the Black Sea in 1930. In practical terms, the Turkish Navy did not commission any new units after 1932. The new Turkish naval program did take its final shape until after the signing of the Montreux Convention which renounced the demilitarization requirement for the Turkish Straits in 1936.

In 1934, the Turkish military thought that “the defense of the Straits… was not a question of battleships, but rather of mines, guns and torpedoes.”⁷⁰² As a military institution, the Turkish General Staff, still headed by Field-Marshal Çakmak initially stuck to its original conception of naval power, which was first and foremost an instrument of coastal defense. This line of reasoning, however, had its day in the 1920s and was not relevant to the emerging strategic landscape of the 1930s. In the 1920s, Turkey had been an international outcast and its military strategy took shape more or less in diplomatic isolation. Due to regime consolidation problems, the Turkish political and military elite came up with a territorial defense strategy that relied mostly on manpower. However, after 1930, Turkey was no longer diplomatically isolated or an international outcast. Consequently, the international system had a more profound bearing on Turkish strategy and arming efforts than the institutional or domestic considerations. To be precise, it was the changing international power configuration in Europe and the Mediterranean that compelled Turkey to embark on a major strategic adjustment after 1936.⁷⁰³