F I r s t d r a f t

Although a large number of junior- rank naval officers either fought in land campaigns, mostly with infantry units, or were involved in smuggling arms to the nationalist forces in Anatolia, the majority of senior-rank naval officers remained by choice or by order in Istanbul.⁹⁹ The most prominent naval figure of the War of Independence was Hüseyin Rauf [Orbay], a retired naval captain and a former Ottoman Minister of Marine, who had become a legendary figure for the daring raids of the cruiser Hamidiye under his command in the Aegean against the Greek navy during the Balkan Wars. In 1919, he joined the Turkish nationalists in Anatolia and then returned to Istanbul to serve as a deputy in the last Ottoman Assembly. Subsequently, the British exiled him to Malta in 1920 for his pro-nationalist stand in the Assembly. When finally released, he went to Ankara to serve as the Minister of Public Works and then as Prime Minister until 1923.¹⁰⁰

The President and his supporters also successfully implemented a series of legislative measures related to the military. First, serving military officers were barred from engaging in politics. Until 1924, officers in uniform could be elected as deputies and be involved in the Assembly's activities. During and in the immediate aftermath of the War of Independence, this was an acceptable practice. After 1924, they were asked to make a choice between their uniforms and seats in the Assembly. Secondly, in March 1924, the Ministry of War headed by the Chief of Staff was abolished and replaced by a civilian-led Ministry of National Defence. The office of Chief of Staff was then placed on a purely military footing.

These measures excluded the Turkish military from politics only nominally. The ultimate aim was not to remove the military from politics but to secure its loyalty to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the new regime. To this end, he could depend on Chief of Staff Field-Marshal Fevzi Çakmak who was granted exclusive authority over military matters.¹⁰¹ When the two generals in opposition, Karabekir and Cebesoy, decided to engage in politics, they were asked to relinquish their military commands before joining the Assembly. Both resigned in October 1924. Their resignations enabled President Atatürk consolidate its control over the armed forces. According to İsmet İnönü, it was a decisive event that showed unmistakably who was in charge of the country and the Turkish military.¹⁰²

In March 1924, the TBMM adopted a bill that authorized funds for the repair of naval vessels left over from the Ottoman Empire, including the battlecruiser, Yavuz Sultan Selim (ex-SMS Goeben). The prospects for Turkish naval development sparked a campaign in the press calling on the government to institute a Ministry of Marine. It was argued that a project of such magnitude warranted the supervision of a politically empowered and accountable office. Hence, the creation of a Ministry of Marine was also brought to the agenda of the National Defence Commission in the Assembly. Captain Ali Rıza, the former Chief of Staff in the Ottoman Ministry of Marine, had already tabled a bill to this end. However, the National Defence Commission initially saw no reason to institute a ministry to replace the Navy Department that had stood at the apex of naval organization since the War of Independence.¹⁰³ Captain Ali Riza's bill then was left to hibernate until the formation of an opposition party under former Ottoman Minister of Marine, Rauf Orbay, in November 1924.

The War of Independence experience in a sense enabled the Ottoman army officer corps to acquire pro-Republican credentials. The majority of naval officers did not or could not go through a similar mass transformation or conversion. The large-scale purge of officers who did not fight in the War of Independence affected particularly the senior officers of the Navy. With the purge, the navy was then relegated to a service staffed by of largely junior officers. In contrast, the army ranks were filled with War of Independence veterans.¹⁰⁴ Nevertheless, it is difficult to argue that the purge of a large number of naval officers removed fully suspicions regarding political loyalty of the navy and its officer corps.

The most striking examples of the navy’s questionable loyalty can be found in Mustafa Kemal's well-publicized cruise on the cruiser Hamidiye in the Black Sea in September 1924.¹⁰⁵ The published accounts of this cruise point to the ruling elite's doubts about the navy’s loyalty and Rauf Orbay’s influence on the naval officer corps. Aware of such doubts the commanding officer of the cruiser and his staff decided to remove Rauf Orbay’s photograph from the officers' quarter before Mustafa Kemal arrived on board ship, as the former legendary commander of the Hamidiye had turned into an opponent of Mustafa Kemal.¹⁰⁶ Some in Mustafa Kemal’s entourage even asked if the Navy identified itself with Rauf Orbay. Many junior officers on board flatly rejected such identification and vocally dissociated themselves from Rauf Orbay and other "old generation" officers.¹⁰⁷

In December 1924, Captain Ali Rıza’s earlier bill for a Ministry of Marine found a new lease on life. The chain of political events suggests a link between the bill’s revival and the formation of Terakkiperver Cumhuriyet Fırkası as the opposition party.¹⁰⁸ This link was also obvious to the members of the opposition party. They justifiably questioned the sudden change of heart on the part of the ruling Cumhuriyet Halk Fırkası about the Ministry of Marine which had been considered unnecessary a few months previously. The debates on the revived bill basically centered on the issue of an independent naval staff for the Ministry of Marine. The opposition party deputies were notagainst the idea of a Ministry of Marine per se. Instead, they argued for an independent naval staff for the Ministry.

On the other hand, the Ministry itself could be seen by Chief of Staff Field Marshal Çakmak, a key ally of President Atatürk, as a challenge to his exclusive authority. An independent naval staff for the Ministry would certainly prejudice his authority over the armed forces. For the ruling political elite, therefore, the Ministry of Marine without an independent naval staff was the best option to consolidate political control over the Navy without alienating the General Staff. In the end, the bill was adopted and the Ministry of Marine was instituted as a government post with the votes of the ruling Cumhuriyet Halk Fırkası. The opposition party deputies, including Rauf Orbay himself, cast their votes against the creation of the Ministry of Marine without an independent staff.¹⁰⁹

Ali İhsan [Eryavuz] was appointed the first Minister of Marine of the Republic. He was a retired artillery officer, a former İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti (Union and Progress Party) hardliner and an outspoken critic of Rauf Orbay.¹¹⁰ After the War of Independence, he became an ardent supporter of President Mustafa Kemal. He was among the most vocal members of the ruling Cumhuriyet Halk Fırkası in the TBMM. His appointment lends further credence to the claim that the Ministry was devised to consolidate political control over the armed forces and to eliminate Rauf Orbay's influence over the navy.¹¹¹

This organizational change served the overall objective of political control of armed services well. It also marked an institutional gain for the navy against the army-dominated General Staff in the inter-service rivalry. Chief of General Staff Field Marshal Fevzi Çakmak was an advocate of unity of command in the armed services and scorned the idea of an independent Ministry of Marine, even with significantly crippled powers. At any rate, the Ministry provided the Navy with a semblance (or a false sense) of parity with the Army. In reality, the General Staff retained its key military decision-maker status in strategy and procurement issues.

Inter-service Rivalry
In the 1920s, Turkey was in a state of flux. This situation was reflected in Turkish naval policy. Coupled with the impact of interservice competition for limited funds, the poor or deteriorating state of Turkey's relations with potential suppliers of naval armaments restricted its freedom of action. However, there was one requirement given in all naval programs devised: the reconditioning of the battlecruiser, Yavuz Sultan Selim (renamed Yavuz). This battlecruiser became the symbol of Turkish naval revival, a symbol around which the Republican fleet was to take shape. For years, she also became the focus of international attention that remained mostly skeptical about her fate until her re-commissioning in 1930.¹¹²

This battlecruiser was by no means an uncontested symbol. The Army and the Navy had substantially diverging conceptions of sea power. The Navy was clearly in favour of a big surface fleet with dreadnoughts and destroyers for superiority over other Balkan nations, including Greece.¹¹³ The Navy, indeed, set its sights on revitalizing the last Ottoman naval program which had failed to materialize as result of the outbreak of the First World War In 1914,.¹¹⁴ This last Ottoman naval program had provided for forming a fleet around three dreadnought battleships, complemented by two protected cruisers, ten destroyers and four submarines. When war broke out in July 1914, the Ottoman Navy had two battleships nearing completion (Reşadiye and Sultan Osman), and a third one (Fatih) on order at British shipyards. The order for lighter units had been split between British and French shipbuilders, while the lion's share had again gone to the British with an order for two protected cruisers, four destroyers and two submarines. The French shipyards had to settle for six destroyers and two submarines.¹¹⁵ Using the last Ottoman naval program as a yardstick for Turkish naval revival could drain the new state's finances.

Moreover, the Republican Turkey inherited from the Ottoman Empire was the popularity of naval power as well. The navy enjoyed a strong public appeal and had influential friends in the press. This was a consequence of the deep imprint the last Ottoman naval program had left on the minds of the Turkish public. Through the Ottoman Navy League, the Ottomans had been called on to participate through their donations in the building of a navy commensurate with the great power status of the Ottoman Empire. In particular, the big dreadnoughts with big guns, partially funded by the donations of the people, ordered from British shipyards had captured the popular imagination.¹¹⁶ Moreover, their unlawful seizure by the British in August 1914 continued to haunt the people and naval officer corps. In 1924, two deputies in the TBMM tabled a motion for the revival of the Navy League. Before deciding on the issue, the government sought the opinion of the Turkish General Staff. Field-Marshal Fevzi Çakmak clearly expressed his preference for air power and aircraft over naval power and naval vessels. He recommended the resuscitation of the League as the Navy and Air League so that the funds at its disposal could be employed in the procurement of military and naval aircraft.¹¹⁷

President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk himself had apparently not been very much influenced by the naval advocates of a large surface fleet. He stated that the Turkish naval programs' initial focus would be limited to training.¹¹⁸ In the same frame of mind, Prime Minister Fethi [Okyar] reiterated that the government had no intention of placing new orders for naval vessels before the existing fleet had been refurbished to operational status.¹¹⁹

The weight of Turkish General Staff opinion was felt in two crucial institutional matters relating to the reorganization of its armed services. The first one was the fate of naval aviation in Turkey and the other the naval strategy for the new republic. Both issues perfectly echoed the contours of the debate in several other navies of the interwar years. However, the way these two issues were handled also exposed unique features of Turkish military culture. The Turkish Navy inherited a relatively established naval aviation tradition from the Ottoman era. Even during the War of Independence, the nationalist forces maintained a detachment of naval aircraft at Amasra on the Black Sea, under the jurisdiction of the Navy Department. After the War of Independence, this detachment was relocated to İzmir as a Naval Aviation company in 1924. Soon, the General Staff decided to integrate both army and naval air services under a single command. In spite of opposition from the Navy, which wanted to keep its wings under its own jurisdiction, the single naval aviation company in İzmir was amalgamated into the Army Aviation Corps.¹²⁰

The Turkish case does not really represent an exception, particularly in light of the Italian and British experiences of the time. For instance, in Britain, when the Royal Air Force (RAF) was established in 1918, the Royal Navy lost its aviators to this service.¹²¹ Around the same time, the Italian Navy also lost its wings to the Air Force.¹²² The Turkish case differed from both British and Italian experiences only in one major institutional respect. An independent air force did not exist in Turkey at the time. The Turkish Navy had to give away its wings to the General Staff. Interestingly, the Turkish General Staff continued to purchase aircraft dedicated to the navy and recruit naval officers for flying duties until the mid-1930s.¹²³

The interwar years offer interesting cases for the study of debates on strategy and doctrine in many aspects of warfare.¹²⁴ The sea power debates of the time usually centred largely on a submarine-battleships axis. The crucial question was whether navies had to stick to the concept of sea command with large surface fleets or develop new strategies around lighter forces in view of technological advances in submarines and aviation.¹²⁵ Essentially, that was the crux of the naval strategy debate in Turkey. Broadly speaking, the navy was arguing for a surface fleet, whereas the General Staff and the army officer corps were in favour of lighter, and therefore cheaper, units. The latter idea was justifiable because of lack of funds. A navy, particularly a large surface fleet, was an expensive investment which was likely to absorb a substantial portion of the defence budget. For the General Staff, this would mean allocation of scarce resources to a low-return service, as they could not see any decisive role for a navy in the defence of the Republic.¹²⁶ Hence, the budget argument worked in tandem with Turkish military culture in shaping the Republican Navy. Williamson Murray describes military culture
"as the sum of intellectual, professional, and traditional values of an officer corps; it plays a central role in how that officer corps assesses the external environment and how it analyzes the possible response that it might make to 'the threat'... The past weighs in with a laden hand of tradition that can often block innovation. And not without reason. The approaches that succeeded on earlier battlefields were often worked out at a considerable cost in blood. Consequently, military cultures tend to change slowly, particularly in peacetime."¹²⁷

In the context of the above, the Turkish military culture of the interwar period offers a textbook case. The army-dominated Turkish General Staff enjoyed an unchallenged monopoly in setting military strategy and priorities. In the early 1920s, the Turkish military mind was preoccupied with the gap caused in Turkish defences by the demilitarization requirement for the Turkish Straits under the Lausanne Convention. This situation was thought to have exposed Turkey to an Italian threat in the West. The main strategic objectives were thus to fill this defence gap and counter a possible sea-borne assault by Italy from the Dodecanese in the Aegean. In both objectives, the navy was relegated to an auxiliary role. The way Turkish defence was organized reflected the prevailing culture of the officer corps.

The first generation of the Republic’s military leaders had been involved in overwhelmingly defensive land battles from the War of Tripoli in 1911 and the Gallipoli Wars in 1915 to the end of the War of Independence in 1922. In all these conflicts, friendly naval forces performed peripheral roles. As a result, the early Republic military mind saw, at best, a coastal defence function for the navy. In practical terms, the Navy was treated as a natural extension of the Army.¹²⁸ Hence, submarines and sea mines were weapons of choice and offered an affordable alternative to the expensive surface vessels that the naval officer corps yearned for.¹²⁹

If the submarine was one weapon of choice for the Turkish General Staff, the other was aircraft. Throughout the interwar period, submarines and aircraft topped their shopping lists for arms. It is no coincidence that in 1924 two military commissions were touring Europe at around the same time; one visited Britain, France, Germany and Italy to buy aircraft, and the other toured France, the Netherlands and Sweden to buy submarines.¹³⁰ Their missions clearly reflected the military priorities of the new Republic. However, airpower enjoyed a distinct advantage. Its popular appeal in Turkey was no less than its appeal to the Turkish military mind. Aircraft and the aviator offered useful symbols of progress and power for the image of the new Republic in Turkey. This helped the Turkish government to overcome funding problems for at least one aspect of its armament program. A countrywide fund-raising drive translated aviation's popular appeal into the finances to create a 200-aircraft air arm in the 1920s. Only the Yavuz could compete with aircraft in capturing the hearts and minds of the Turkish public.¹³¹

The Republic could spare only limited funds for the naval program. However, in the 1920s, even these small funds had to be diverted to other areas of national defence.¹³² The Mosul crisis with Britain and the Sheik Said rebellion in 1925 presented serious threats to the Republic’s survival. The security of the eastern borders and provinces become a top military priority for Turkey. The Turkish General Staff quickly discovered the use of airpower in dealing with insurgencies in remote areas, ¹³³ as the Royal Air Force had experienced earlier in neighboring regions of Iraq.¹³⁴ For problems encountered in the east, the government depended on the army backed by air power. In the west, both offered the primary means of defence against a possible Italian assault. Hence, a surface fleet for the navy was relegated to the bottom of the arms procurement priorities of the new Republic. A final indication of the primacy of air power over all other considerations was the Turkish interest in developing a national aviation industry. To this end, Ankara probed for a prospective cooperation with Berlin which was seeking a way around the Versailles restrictions on German air power and industry.¹³⁵

Problems related to the Yavuz’s reconditioning presented Field-Marshal Çakmak with an opportunity to restore his authority over Turkish defences which he regarded as compromised by the existence of an independent ministry of marine. Shortly after awarding of the contract, a number of technical problems emerged with the floating dock, and the situation became more complicated with corruption charges against Minister of Marine Ali İhsan Eryavuz. The result was a significant delay in the realization of the project. The corruption charges caused not only the impeachment of the Minister himself but also resulted in the abolition of the Ministry of Marine in December 1927. The demise of the Ministry of Marine can be linked to several factors. The first one was the personal rivalry between Minister of Marine Ali İhsan and Prime Minister İsmet İnönü.¹³⁶ Secondly, Chief of Staff Field-Marshal Fevzi Çakmak had never approved of the idea of an independent ministry of marine. In June 1927, he strongly recommended that the Ministry be disbanded to ensure unity of command in the Turkish armed forces.¹³⁷

The corruption case thus provided a strong pretext to get rid of the Minister and his Ministry. A third factor that may be added to the above is that by 1927 the Republican regime could afford to dispense with the Ministry of Marine. It had consolidated its rule domestically and achieved complete control of the Turkish military by 1926. In addition, the opposition party, Terakkiperver Cumhuriyet Fırkası, had been closed down in 1925. Later some of its members were tried and executed for their alleged involvement in the attempted assassination of President Mustafa Kemal in 1926. The leader of the party, Rauf Orbay, had to flee the country. The ruling elite’s consolidation of power marked the beginning of single-party rule in Turkey, which was to last until 1946.¹³⁸

3. TURKEY’S SECURITY DILEMMA: BUILDING A REPUBLICAN NAVY:
The early interwar years remained a true self-help environment for Turkey as the new regime had to count on its own means for security. In that period, Turkey’s efforts to arm itself to ensure its own security initially reinforced its image as an outcast bound to challenge the post-war order in Europe. Moreover, other international outcasts or dissatisfied powers, such as Germany, the Soviet Union and Italy, figured prominently as suppliers of arms to Turkey. This pattern of arms trading emerged for a number of reasons, including the renewal of old links or influences and the reluctance of other suppliers to subsidize or open credit lines for arms sales to foreign powers like Turkey.

Nevertheless, it is difficult to argue that the old links or influences featured the same degree of resilience for every traditional supplier of arms to Turkey (to the Ottoman Empire, to be precise). Britain was a case in point. Understandably, the British government had no interest whatsoever in funding or subsidizing arms for others while it was seeking ways of curbing arms expenditure at home. Finally, and as a corollary to the above, Turkey’s growing appetite for arms seemed to contradict the enthusiasm for international disarmament which was initially focused on navies. Hence, Turkish naval revival had to take place against this largely unsuitable international diplomatic and naval background.

Naval Instructors: Revival of German Influence?
The hiring of foreign instructors or advisors in reforming the military along European (or Western) models had largely been a dictate in pursuit of military reform in the Ottoman Empire since the early 19th Century.¹³⁹ On the eve of the First World War, the foreign advisors' authority in the Empire had grown immensely. At that time, the German military mission was practically in command of the Ottoman Army whereas it was the British naval mission which ran the Navy.¹⁴⁰ When the Empire entered the war in 1914, a German naval mission took over the Navy from the British mission. Although their competence and even their authority were questioned and occasionally challenged by Ottoman officers,¹⁴¹ foreign advisors had a lasting influence on Turkish military culture, a fact not missed by foreign observers. For instance, while evaluating the state of the Turkish Navy for its annual report of 1924, the British Embassy in Turkey concluded: "from the British point of view, any weakening of the navy is to be regretted, as it is an important stronghold of the ancient traditional Anglophile sentiment in Turkey."¹⁴²

Foreign influence in the armed services manifested itself in the procurement decisions, operational, organizational, and training procedures in Republican Turkey. In 1924 the Turkish Navy was hampered by a lack of uniform operating rules and drill procedures for the ships. When the British and German naval missions left the country, they took with them the manuals they had prepared for the Ottoman Navy. This caused a great degree of discontinuity in Turkish naval development. The officers had to rely at best on their memories in reconstructing procedures the foreign missions had devised. The navy initially adapted mixed procedures that reflected the diversity of training the Ottoman navy had undergone at the hands of British and then German instructors.¹⁴³ However, the new rulers of Turkey were determined not to repeat the Ottoman experience with foreign military and naval missions.