‘Let the black sea unite Us’: the 1967 Soviet-Turkish industrial agreement and Ankara’s cold war rapprochement with Moscow

Abstract

This article explores a turning point in Soviet-Turkish relations during the Cold War: the 1967 interstate agreement that enabled construction of the backbone of Turkey’s post-war state-owned industry, including the petroleum refinery in Aliağa, the steel plant in İskenderun, and the aluminium plant in Seydişehir. It shows that Turkish leaders were not unusual in their balancing of Western and Soviet aid, nor in their attempt to use state intervention to overcome underdevelopment. During the 1950s and 1960s, Jawaharlal Nehru and Gamal Abdel Nasser employed similar tactics for similar ends. What was indeed unusual, was that Turkey was the only NATO member to receive such significant Soviet industrial aid. To explore the Soviet approach and the Turkish response, the article uses recently declassified records from the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI) and the Turkish state archives (BCA).