Turkish Politics during the Cold War: Anti-Communism, Islam and the Impact of the USA
Panel 158, 2012 Annual Meeting
On Tuesday, November 20 at 8:30 am
Panel Description
This panel aims to shed some light on the relatively understudied Cold War period in Turkish politics. As far as the state of the literature goes, it is striking that we, students of modern Turkish politics, can claim to know a lot more about the late Ottoman-early republican period compared to the Cold War years, extending roughly from 1945 to the 1980s. The transition from the single-party regime to a polarized multi-party system in late 1945 revolutionized Turkish domestic and foreign policy, one the one hand, and led to a complete overhaul of Turkish bureaucracy and military, on the other. Cold War years also witnessed the political comeback of the Turkish periphery as evidenced by successive right-wing governments which dominated this period with the exception of brief intervals. It is impossible to understand the intellectual fervor of the 1980s, the rise of nationalism (both Turkish and Kurdish) in the 1990s, and finally the emergence of the JDP in the 200s. With this panel we hope to create a momentum to shift scholarly attention toward the Cold War period. The first paper focuses on M?mtaz Turhan's journal Yol. It discusses the impact of the Cold War on Turkish right-wing intellectuals and the difficult choices imposed on them, arising from conjectural contradictions between anti-communism and nationalist-conservatism. The second paper examines early contacts between Turkish Muslims and the emerging world of transnational Islam. It does so by uncovering the activities and publications of Ali Fuad Ba gil and amer Rmza Do?rul in support of the World Muslim Congress from 1949 to 1952. The final paper explores the American impact on Turkish institutions with a case study of joint counter-narcotics operations between 1945 and 1960. Although the adoption of the US-NATO operation structure by Turkish military has received some (but certainly not enough) academic attention, the influence of American models on other Turkish institutions constitutes is rather unknown. These papers address three crucial questions of Cold War Turkish politics and highlight them for future research: anti-communism, the rise of political Islam, and the American connection.
In this paper, we aim to discuss the extent to which the Cold War shaped political debates in Turkey and how it compelled right-wingers to seek solutions to conjectural contradictions between anti-communism and nationalist-conservatism. Our focus will be on the journal Yol, published from December 1965 to August 1966 in 35 issues by Mümtaz Turhan, professor of social psychology and a mentor of Turkish nationalist and conservative circles. Other contributors to Yol included Tar?k Bu?ra, nationalist literary critic and novelist, and Turhan’s assistant Erol Güngör, an iconic figure in the 20th century Turkish nationalism. Yol was intended to be a right-wing response to the rising tide of socialism in Turkey in the 1960s and, particularly, to the influential leftist journal Yön. It was not successful in achieving this goal as its short lifespan indicates. However, Yol is an extremely important source for understanding difficult choices facing a right-wing ideologue in those years. Mümtaz Turhan and other nationalist contributors to Yol made anti-communism the central pillar of their ideology, an uncomfortable position which occasionally forced them to sacrifice central tenets of their nationalist and conservative heritage. How could Yol denounce the idea of “full independence” as a communist trick, for example, and passionately justify Turkey’s pro-American and pro-NATO orientation? Why did Yol downplay the significance of the Johnson Letter (June 1964), written by President Lyndon Johnson to the Turkish government to warn them that NATO might not come to their rescue if a Turkish offensive in Cyprus invited Soviet intervention? What explains Yol’s recommendation to stop literacy campaigns in Turkey and to give priority to educate an elite of intellectuals and technocrats, who would then enlighten the rest of the society in a top-down manner à la Kemalism? How could Yol endorse westernization as the perfect antidote to communism? An exploration of the unanticipated path taken by the Yol group will contribute to the understudied history of nationalism and conservatism in Cold War Turkey.
This paper will examine Turkish participation in a series of conferences held in Karachi, Pakistan between 1949 and 1952. The conferences led to the formation of the World Muslim Congress, and Turkish delegates played an important part in the establishment of this organization. The paper will examine the roll of specific individuals such as Ali Fuad Basgil and Omer Riza Dogrul based on the articles they wrote for major newspapers during and after their participation in each conference. Set in the context of larger debates in Turkish society about the relationship of religion to national identity, this analysis will shed light on the important transnational connections between Turks and Muslims in other countries. Given that this period is normally understood in terms of Cold War politics and modernization, it is important to identify religious movements that ultimately provided the foundation for the Islamist politics that came to the fore in the 1990s.
A long-standing, but often troubled, partnership binds the United States and the Republic of Turkey. Shared national security interests, first brought on by the onset of the Cold War, lies at the heart of this relationship. This paper will address the construction and early evolution of one element of America’s security relationship with Turkey: the development of joint counter-narcotics operations in the city of Istanbul. In exploring how American officials came to influence the policing of narcotics trafficking in Turkey’s largest city between the years 1948 and 1960, this paper will address two key issues. Firstly, it will survey how American narcotics and intelligence officers contributed to Turkish approaches to policing drug (particularly heroin) trafficking in advance of the official declaration of the so-called “war on drugs”. Secondly, it will attend to how and why elements of the Istanbul police department (as well as the Democratic Party) abetted or collaborated with many of the powerful figures within the Turkish underworld. The significance of this study, I would argue, contributes to ongoing studies of both America’s impact upon construction of modern Turkey as well as the roles played by criminals in building Turkey’s contemporary security apparatus.
