Turkish Foreign Policy in the Chaos of War, 1939-1945

Mustafa Aydın

Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 2021, vol. 23, issue 6, 854-871

Abstract: The World War II marked an important watershed for Turkey’s foreign policy. It caught Turkey in the middle of a nation and state-building processes as well as still recovering from the damages of the previous war. Thus when the war started, its main concern was to survive it without damage to its territorial integrity. To ensure this, Turkey signed non-aggression agreements with all the major powers and tried to steer a course between the clashing interests of belligerents. Its main strategy was geared towards staying out of the war as long as possible as it did not have the means to ensure its security. While the Italian threat appeared paramount early in the war, this was neutralized by maintaining friendly relations with Germany, which was balanced by developing closer relations with Britain. But the main source of apprehension to Turkey during the war was the Soviet Union, which remained as the defining feature of its foreign policy after the war, and motivated the Turkish leaders to secure Allied guarantees that would ensure its safety at the end of the war.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/19448953.2021.1981687 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cjsbxx:v:23:y:2021:i:6:p:854-871

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cjsb20

DOI: 10.1080/19448953.2021.1981687

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies is currently edited by Professor Vassilis Fouskas

More articles in Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().