The role of ideology in Turkish foreign policy during the Democrat Party

Abstract

With the end of the Second World War, Turkey increasingly aligned with the Western powers. Turkey was a key recipient of Marshall Plan aid that sought to rebuild Europe after the destruction of the war. In the aftermath of the war, the Turkish political scene and the economy liberalized as Turkey integrated itself more with the West. These policies were followed by a power change with the defeat of the Republic’s founding party, the Republican People’s Party, to the Democrat Party in the 1950 elections. Adnan Menderes’ ten-year rule was a period of close cooperation between Ankara and its Western partners. In this study, I have sought to examine the role of ideology in the Menderes Government’s foreign policy. To capture the balance between Menderes’s pro-Western ideology and his concerns about Turkey’s security and economy, the thesis highlights three different cases. American financial aid to Turkey reveals the limits of Menderes’s pro-Westernism and the different approaches to developmental plans in Ankara and Washington. Turkish-Soviet relations show that his government’s attitude towards Moscow was not narrowly ideological and changed over time. It was in the Menderes government’s attitude towards decolonization movements and Third World nationalism that ideology had an undeniable influence on Ankara’s foreign policy.