reactions to the Democratic foreign policy, we can draw the main features of the DP period. Similar to the Ottoman, Mustafa Kemal and İnönü eras, external factors remained the most important determinant in Turkish foreign policy. Despite crucial changes in the aims, ideologies and methods, the impact of these changes remained limited. The traditional Russian/Communist threat and the need for external financial and military aid remained at the top of the agenda. Thanks to its geographic location and political position between the blocs, perhaps Turkey was exposed to the Cold War more than other countries. The success of Turkish foreign policy remained dependent an international circumstances most of the time.
Second, the close connection between the domestic and foreign policies continued in the DP era. The Menderes governments did not separate them and saw these two as inseparable. Therefore, apart from the international circumstances, Democratic foreign policy was deeply dependent on domestic policies. This increased the importance of ideology in foreign policy.
Third, as a result of the first two factors, during the Democratic years two more factors shaped Turkish foreign policy, Westernisation (under Cold War circumstances) and democratisation. There was a close relationship between these two factors. The main force behind the Turkish democratisation process was external factors. The more Turkey needed the
104 Robinson, The First..., p. 163.
105 Haydar Tuçkanat, İkili Anlaşmaların İç Yüzü (The Inside Story of the Bileteral
Aggrements), (Ankara: Ekim Yayinlari, 1970), p. 252; Sander, Türk-Amerikan..., p.
109; George Harries, Troubled Alliance: Turkish-American Problems in Historical
Perspective, 1945–1971, (Washington D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1972), p.
West, the more it democratised. Democratisation provided alternatives to the Kemalist model and made the system more pluralistic. On the other hand, Westernisation had two contrary effects: it imposed on Turkey a capitalist, Western economic model, thus undermining the Kemalist elite and state structure by increasing the power of the bourgeois, villagers, religious-traditional groups and other periphery forces; at the same time, the Kemalists legitimated their ideology by using the success of the Western bloc. From their perspective, Turkey had to be an equal member of the West and the only way to do so was through Kemalism.
Similar to its impact on the Kemalists, democratisation and the Cold War affected the Democrats in two different ways. Both provided a legitimating ideological ground for alternatives to Kemalism. Democratisation granted power to the Democrats. The rise of the US as leader of the Western bloc provided foreign support for DP power. However, the fledgling Turkish democracy denuded Turkish foreign policy from its balanced, realist, cautious character. Under the populist understanding, Turkey dramatically changed its foreign policy tracks without analysing the situation enough. Likewise, together with the Democrats’ economic and cultural orientations, the Soviet threat and close relations with the West left Turkey without protection and Turkey was exposed to the negative effects of the Cold War. The Cold War ideology created its own organisations and connections and a Cold War lobby emerged in Turkey with the DP power. This lobby threatened all Turkish people with the Soviet, communist menaces. It is true that even the Turkish governments sometimes used the Cold War to justify their position in the West, yet most times the Cold War considerations buried other considerations under the communist-capitalist competition, including the Kemalist and the Democratic ones. As a result, Turkey was heavily involved in the Cold War competition in the name of other countries.
Fourth, thanks to the Cold War’s impact, Turkish foreign policy was based on an assumption. That Turkish national interests and Western interests were identical. However, the Western countries did not share Turkey’s exaggerated understanding of this. As a result, Turkey sacrificed or risked its national interests to maintain Western support. Due to that policy, Turkey supported the Western states in any part of the world and on almost all subjects at the cost of losing its good relations with these states.
Fifth, the DP foreign policy can be considered a failure. The DP sought an alternative to the Kemalist approach because Kemalism could not provide a sufficient framework for foreign policy. Ironically, the Democrats also suffered from a lack of sufficient ideology in foreign policy. In other words, they had an ideology or a bulk of the ideologies, but none of these were for foreign policy. The DP’s inexperience and thirst for
success made it impatient in foreign policy and deprived it of the ability to carry out consistent policies. In the Middle East and the Third World, those contradicting policies damaged the reliability and predictability of Turkish foreign policy. Its alliance with the West was based on naïve assumptions.
Having drawn on the general features of the DP era, it can be said that the sixth feature was that the Democrats could be considered the first organised and successful challenge to the Kemalist ideology. The Democrats changed the essence and methods of Kemalist foreign policy, and to some degree they were forced by international developments to do so; however, most of the time they knew what they were doing. It is true that the Cold War and economic and military weaknesses decreased the effect of the ideological changes, but their different ideological orientation differed from their foreign policy than the Kemalist one. They failed mainly in foreign policy implementation, but this failure cannot be taken as proof of the success of the Kemalist approach. It can be said that the Democrats’ success was to shake the Kemalist monopoly. The Democrats’ power sowed the seeds of opposition and pluralism over Turkish political life. The coming political groups would take the Democrats as an example to oppose the Kemalist revolutionary approach, and, in particular, the centre-right political parties would see themselves as an extension of the Democratic political school.
In foreign policy, despite its challenge to Kemalism, the DP was inevitably under the effect of the Kemalist legacy as well. The impact of Kemalist secularism, pragmatism, realism, Eastern perception and the Western obsession could be seen in the Democratic foreign policy. However, the DP departed from the Kemalist understanding in many foreign policy issues. The Democrats heavily criticised the Kemalist non- alignment, pacifism principles and the Kemalist Middle Eastern policies. For example, the DP’s Middle East policy represented a departure from the traditional Turkish policy of not committing itself irrevocably to any particular position in the Middle East.106 Moreover, since the Ottoman- German alliance, Turkey, for the first time identified its national interests with a foreign power’s interests. As witnessed in the Iraq and Syrian affairs, Turkey was almost involving itself militarily in other countries internal affairs. In other words, Turkey risked its own national security for a foreign country, namely the US. Obviously, all of these imply a clear deviation from the Kemalist foreign policy understanding and a challenge to the Kemalist foreign policy bureaucracy.