F I r s t d r a f t

Before hiring naval advisors, the Turkish government considered a variety of options. It was pragmatic enough to approach even London, although Anglo-Turkish relations were far from cordial after the Mosul debacle.¹⁴⁴ In addition to the poor state of their relations, the high rates of pay demanded for British advisors presented a practical econmic problem. London turned out to be willing to discuss the possibility of sending retired officers at lower rates of pay.¹⁴⁵ By the time this alternative offer was made in 1926 Ankara had made its choice in favour of the Germans to advise and train Turkish naval officers. In hindsight, it can be argued that the Turkish order for German-designed submarines from the Netherlands in 1925 more or less defined the choice of foreign naval advisors. The submarine order and the decision to recruit German naval advisors intensified international interest in Turkish naval programs. London considered the hiring of retired German naval officers as a violation of Article 179 of the Treaty of Versailles. It even contemplated filing a protest note to the Turkish government. It never did so, as British diplomats admitted that they did not possess any lever to induce Ankara to backtrack from its decision.¹⁴⁶

Contrary to international perceptions, some Turkish authors argue, that, for a number of reasons, since the end of the First World War up until 1933, no significant progress was made in reviving Turkish-German military relations. First and foremost, the Versailles restrictions had remained a barrier to such a revival. Secondly, there was a certain element of distrust and resentment from the Turkish public and press towards the Germans whom they held responsible for the Ottoman entry into the First World War. Finally, others, particularly the powers victorious in the war, eyed any attempt having military/naval implications between the former allies with great suspicion and from time to time tried to block any improvement in military relations between the two countries.¹⁴⁷

Nevertheless, the hiring of former German officers and non-commissioned officers as instructors/advisors was regarded as a manifestation of continued German influence in Turkish military/naval affairs. The choice of Germans over others as instructors/advisors reflected two motivations of the Turkish government. First, the whole military system that had been inherited from the Empire was based on the Prussian/German system in terms of organization and training. Military rejuvenation required a revival of the German link, at least for training purposes. Secondly, as a result of large scale demobilization of the German armed forces, unemployed or retired former German officers and non-commissioned officers were available in large numbers to serve other countries. As a corollary to that, it was much cheaper to hire them than to hire the British, for instance, as advisors/instructors. The hirings began in 1926. Under individual service contracts, former German military/naval personnel were recruited as contracted instructor officers, first in the faculties of the War and Naval Academies. Their numbers remained modest until 1933. However, their impact on the shaping of the new Turkey’s military organization and military thinking is considered to have gone beyond what their number would normally suggest. The process witnessed a revival of admiration for the German military tradition in Turkey.¹⁴⁸

From the outset, the Turkish government and the General Staff were very sensitive about how the German naval advisors’ role and status would be perceived by foreign governments.¹⁴⁹ Different from the practice during the Ottoman period, foreign advisors were kept out of the chain of command. The body of German naval advisors was designated as an “advisory group” rather than a “naval mission” to avoid any resemblance to the British or German Naval Missions of the Ottoman era.¹⁵⁰ From time to time, the Turks vocally expressed their disappointment with the German naval advisors’ “unsatisfactory” performance.¹⁵¹ There was a certain degree of truth in such statements. However, they can be considered more as political statements aimed to appease the foreign governments that attentively followed their activities. In spite of official “disappointment,” Ankara continued to hire retired German naval advisors or instructors until 1939.

The arrival of German naval advisors also exposed the rift between the adherents of “the British school” and those of “the German school” in the Turkish Navy. Particularly for the former group, the new German advisors were not in the same league as the British Naval Mission in the Ottoman navy had been.¹⁵² Moreover, the senior member of the advisory group, Admiral Von Gagern initially suggested a naval force very much in line with the Turkish General Staff’s concept of naval power. He advised that all remaining Ottoman naval units be scrapped and the navy be built from scratch with motorboats and aircraft.¹⁵³ However, eventually, the German advisors devised an order of battle for the Turkish Navy¹⁵⁴ which included a battleship squadron of eight vessels supplemented by a flotilla of eight destroyers.¹⁵⁵

In 1926, Germans figured prominently in another significant naval affair. The contract for the Yavuz’s repair and reconditioning was split between German and French contractors. The German company, Flanders, was to build a floating dock to hold the Yavuz. Then the French company, Penhoët, was to undertake her repairs and reconditioning. French diplomatic archives indicate that it was President Mustafa Kemal’s own political choice to involve the French in spite of strong lobbying by the German naval advisors in favour of German contractors.¹⁵⁶ He was probably motivated by a desire to avoid dependence solely on Germany in naval matters. Paris also viewed the Yavuz’s reconditioning as a politically significant venture. The French Embassy strongly encouraged Penhoët to proceed with the contract, although the contracted work looked financially and technically risky for the French company. Official French support of the private contractor was, however, devoid of any financial commitment.¹⁵⁷

Turning to German influence in Turkish military and naval affairs, it should be added that although German ways dominated the Army, it is not possible to trace a similar degree of German penetration into and influence on other services. This was mostly due to German reluctance to send active-duty officers to serve in the air force and naval branches of the Turkish war colleges. In view of its own priorities, the Nazi government could not spare active-duty German officers to serve as instructors in Turkish war colleges, particularly after 1933. Hermann Goering, for instance, turned down a Turkish request for German aviators to train Turkish officers at the Air Force War College.¹⁵⁸

Turkish Naval Building and International Disarmament
Turkish efforts to develop a navy stood in sharp contrast to the great powers’ professed willingness to voluntarily agree to naval limitations in the aftermath of the First World War. Like Turkey, most powers of lesser degree did not want to accept production controls or non-proliferation agreements that worked to their disadvantage.¹⁵⁹ As far as the Great Powers were concerned a distinction had to be made between the attitudes of the public and the government. Particularly in the 1920s, the idea of disarmament captured the popular imagination. There was strong popular sentiment in the United States favouring disarmament. This sentiment was equally shared by the American press. In Britain, on the other hand, public sentiments and press interest in disarmament were not of a comparable degree,¹⁶⁰ although it was public demand for ending conscription that compelled the British government to take up the issue of German and general disarmament.¹⁶¹

Disarmament efforts were not confined to the navy. Indeed, German disarmament provided for under the Treaty of Versailles was justified as being the beginning of a general international disarmament. The French advocated German disarmament although they were not interested in a general disarmament at all, despite both Wilson’s Fourth Point and the League Covenant’s Article 8 suggesting this was so.¹⁶² League debate on general disarmament led to the establishment of a Preparatory Commission in September 1925. The Preparatory Commission became the main venue for a discussion of general disarmament, particularly in the absence of political will on the part of the major powers. However, this evident lack of political will did not end or kill the pursuit of the issue. The Preparatory Commission created its own momentum as a result of the emergence of sprit of camaraderie and an interest in finding acceptable compromises among the experts who worked on the specialized committees.¹⁶³

Moreover, the efforts of smaller should also be taken into account among the sources of sustained momentum for disarmament negotiations.¹⁶⁴ The issue was added to the agenda of the League’s first Assembly by three Scandinavian countries in 1920. , The smaller powers were to gain disproportionately more than the great powers from a general disarmament. Finally, “for the first time they were given, in the League, an opportunity to make their voice heard on all international issues.”¹⁶⁵ The disarmament discussions at Geneva revealed the skill of the experts and the national egoism of the participating powers, as each Great Power came up with an innovative proposal that called for the abolition of a category of arms in which its rival enjoyed clear superiority. All these proposals were made in pursuit of a principle of qualitative disarmament.¹⁶⁶

In light of recent evidence and scholarship on interwar disarmament, the extent to which Turkish naval building defied the general trend is at least debatable. Evidently, back then the Turkish rulers and the elite did not hide their skepticism on the issue. For instance, Afet Inan, a protégé of President Atatürk, wrote in a government-endorsed pamphlet in 1930 that “disarmament is very humanitarian as an idea. It is desirable to see that this idea is put into practice in the world, yet it is not practical at all. It will [hence] remain eternally a noble idea.”¹⁶⁷ Turkish suspicions regarding Great Powers’ motivation for championing disarmament and restrictions on arms trade had already been put on record by Turkish representative at the Arms Traffic Conference in Geneva in 1925. Mehmet Tevfik Bey expressed a vocal opposition to the proposals for licensing requirement for arms exports. He argued “If the governments of arms-producing states could halt the flow of arms by denying licensing, the Convention [on arms trade] could become a tool for the Great Powers to dominate the small.”¹⁶⁸

On the other hand, successive British governments between 1919 and 1934 managed to foster the impression both in words and deeds that they fully embraced the idea of disarmament. Later studies on disarmament between the two World Wars consistently indicate skepticism regarding disarmament rather than enthusiasm among the British ministers and diplomats in the Foreign Office. Richardson links the politicians’ and professionals’ skepticism to their collective experience. He argues that ministers and career diplomats “... had grown up during the high-noon of the Empire, when British power was unrivalled, and found it difficult to adjust to the changed circumstances of the 1920s. They might declare themselves in favour of disarmament in public, but in the confines of the cabinet room they were reluctant to take decisions that would translate their word into action.”¹⁶⁹

Whom McKercher dubs “Edwardians,” refers to a generation of British foreign policy-making-elite “who prided themselves on seeing the world for what it was, not what it should be.”¹⁷⁰ The “Edwardians” did not see any substantial change in essential British interests as a result of the First World War. On the contrary, the geographical scope of those interests was expanded with the acquisition of mandates in the Middle East and Africa after the war. The only change the war brought about was in the constellation of powers that could pose a threat to British interests. Consequently, until 1937, the career diplomats and the foreign secretaries, with the exception of Anthony Eden, viewed the League of Nations only as “a tool in the British diplomatic arsenal.”¹⁷¹

Pointing to the link between domestic and international dynamics in the case of America, O’Connor argues that international disarmament caused tension between politicians and naval/military professionals at home. Such a tension was inevitable for each side set out with a completely different set of assumptions. For civilian decision-makers, security was at times viewed in the broader context of goodwill and international agreement, whereas for naval experts or professionals, it was an issue to be strictly regarded within the context of armaments. For instance, in America “... professional military views were clearly overridden by the civilian policy-makers, for the naval experts failed to secure the two-to-one superiority over the Japanese that they deemed essential, and they had to abandon the island bases in the Western Pacific... In effect, military advantage was sacrificed to the broader gains, which, at the time, seemed a real prospect”.¹⁷²

Indeed, the architects of the Treaty of Washington of 1922 shaped an international naval order which no single power might dominate.¹⁷³ They were hardly idealists; even Wilson himself appreciated the link between naval power and successful diplomacy. They were actually realists who tried to reconcile the forces for change with the international system as well as with conditions at home. Their common aim was to establish a more stable, less tension-filled international political and naval order than had existed before 1914.¹⁷⁴ The above analysis more or less accurately portrays the essence of American, British and Japanese behaviour regarding naval disarmament.

Two lesser naval powers, France and Italy, differed in motivation from these three. To start with, the Washington limitations on capital ships did not generate any immediate practical impact on either French or Italian navies as the current tonnages they were allotted were far below the Treaty limits. French participation in the Washington Treaty seemed to have been diplomatically motivated, whereas Italy became a party to the Treaty which, indeed, granted Italy the status of naval parity with France. Thus, the Treaty itself stood more as an endorsement of Italy’s great power status than as a curb on it. Writing in 1935, Chaput argued “that the Washington agreements included France and Italy was therefore purely incidental.”¹⁷⁵

The idea of banning submarines altogether was hotly debated at Washington. When several proposals aimed at abolishing submarines or limiting their production failed, for a while attention shifted to the subject of submarines being used. A Republican Congressman, Elihu Root, came out with a proposition that would regard unwarned submarine attacks on merchant vessels as an act of piracy. The Treaty relating to the use of Submarines and Noxious Gases in Warfare of 6 February 1922 represents a futile attempt to regulate the use of submarines. Although it was signed by all signatories to the Treaty of Washington, it could not be put into effect because of France’s failure to ratify it.¹⁷⁶ Unwarned submarine attacks as acts of piracy would later form the basis for the Nyon arrangement in 1937.

There were also efforts to extend naval limitations not only to other types of vessels but also to other naval powers. The British, for a while, tried to persuade naval powers which were not represented at Washington to reduce their forces. This idea was first brought up by Rear-Admiral Segrave in July 1922. Consequently, a conference of experts met in Rome from 14 to 25 February, 1924 to discuss the issue. Obviously, the idea of naval disarmament did not resonate well with most of the smaller naval powers. Indeed, Spain, Brazil, Argentina and the Soviet Union rejected the idea of freezing or reducing their naval forces.¹⁷⁷

The British reaction to the news of Turkish submarine orders from the Dutch I.v.S. shipyard may, for instance, also be regarded in the context of general British dislike for submarines, particularly for those in the possession of the small powers. The British stood firmly, for instance, against the idea of allowing the small countries bordering on the Baltic to acquire submarines for their naval defence needs. The British representative on the Naval Subcommission [of the Permanent Advisory Commission] voted against the idea on the grounds that possession of submarines was likely to add a new dimension of hostility to the existing unsettled conditions in the region. Moreover, the British argument went on, these countries were located in such close proximity to each other that this ruled out the imposition of an individual tonnage limitation “to ensure the purely defensive use of the submarine.”¹⁷⁸

In 1922, before the new Turkish state placed an order for two submarines with the I.v.S, international disarmament had already culminated in the major naval powers’ first agreement on limitations on capital ships under the Washington Treaty.¹⁷⁹ This early success was taken over-optimistically as the harbinger of worldwide disarmament in the interwar period. Although only the United States, Britain, France, Italy and Japan were signatories to the Washington Treaty, other nations were also invited to adhere to its limitations. In June 1924, Athens declared its willingness to accept a 35,000-ton limit for capital ships on two conditions: first, Turkey’s tonnage would not exceed this figure; second, Greece would reserve the right to acquire or build a cruiser in place of the Salamis if the latter could not be completed.¹⁸⁰

In the 1920s, the better-trained and better-equipped Greek Navy enjoyed an unchallenged edge over the Turkish navy, which was a motley collection of antiquated vessels inherited from the Ottoman Navy.¹⁸¹ Greek naval supremacy in the Aegean clearly hinged on the status of Yavuz. Prospects for her return to service prompted the Greek government to seek a ten-year “naval holiday” with Turkey modeled on the Washington Treaty. However, Athens attached additional strings to its proposal. It would reserve the right to build two cruisers to replace two pre-dreadnought battleships, Lemnos and Kilkis (formerly USS Idaho and USS Mississippi). In that case, the naval balance in the Aegean would be preserved on the side of Greece even if Turkey re-commissioned the battlecruiser Yavuz.

In reply, Ankara justified its naval program by pointing to growing Soviet naval power in the Black Sea.¹⁸² In hindsight, it appears that the Soviet naval programs provided Ankara with a solid excuse to continue with its own naval program in disregard of the proposals for naval limitations in the Aegean.¹⁸³ It is questionable if they had ever considered the Soviet Navy a potentially hostile power against which offensive plans or measures were needed, at least until 1939.¹⁸⁴ Nevertheless, the two Black Sea navies could not help but keep a weary eye on each other’s naval programs and movements that might tip the balance of power in favour of the other.

The views espoused by the Soviet delegate at the Rome Naval Conference, Eugene Berens, revealed the Soviet approach to the issue of disarmament in general and its regional implications in the Black Sea. Berens argued that a strong navy was a dictate of geography for the Soviet Union as the First World War experience had shown. Throughout the war, Russia’s northern and Black Sea coasts had remained exposed and vulnerable to enemy attack. Hence, he adopted a position that linked the Soviet Union’s adherence to the idea of a naval holiday to the fulfillment of certain conditions that were supposed to enhance security for his country. The Soviet Union would be willing to freeze its navy at the Russian Navy’s 1921 level, if all Russian warships, wherever located, were included in the Soviet tonnage for 1921. The Soviet naval freeze would also be conditional on certain “insignificant” amendments to post-First World War arrangements, including closure of the Black Sea and revision of the Lausanne Convention which called for an international administration and demilitarization of the Turkish Straits.¹⁸⁵

The initial Soviet proposal demanded a capital ship tonnage allowance nearly comparable to those of the United States and Britain, the two greatest naval powers of the time.¹⁸⁶ In their subsequent proposal, the Soviets backtracked and offered to reduce their capital ship tonnage to 280,000 tons, on the following conditions:
“1. The Council of the League of Nations is replaced in the draft [treaty] by another organization.

2. The Bosphorus and the Dardanelles (the Straits) are closed, in accordance with the proposal which we [the Soviets] made at the Lausanne Conference.

3. The vessels of war belonging to non-riparian states of the Baltic are forbidden access to the Baltic by the Sound and Belt.

4. The Straits of Korea are demilitarized (disarmed).

5. The vessels of war at present retained at Bizerta are restored to the Union…”¹⁸⁷.

There is no definite account of the original scope of the Turkish naval program in the 1920s. Foreign archives indicate that the Turkish government had advertised largely inflated numbers for its naval orders.¹⁸⁸ In December 1924, the French naval authorities were convinced that the program would cover six light cruisers, 24 destroyers and 16 submarines to be built in five years.¹⁸⁹ According to an earlier French naval attaché report, the program would include 20 destroyers and nine submarines to be built in 10 years.¹⁹⁰ Two years later, in 1926, the British naval attaché reported that the initial naval program the German naval advisors had drawn up provided for six submarines, two destroyers and one cruiser.¹⁹¹

However, the priority always remained on submarines, the favourite naval weapon of the Turkish General Staff. When the Turks went shopping for submarines, the interwar international arms trade system presented them with additional difficulties. The new arms trade system mirrored the post-First World War political order. In Europe, Britain and France retained their arms-production capabilities. While London considered arms production and trade issues in the context of disarmament, Paris continued to pursue traditional balance-of- power objectives in the arms trade.¹⁹²

Another European arms producer and trader, Germany, was kept out of the system until 1934. An extra-territorial power in Europe, the United States, also emerged as a major supplier of arms. There was strong public aversion to arms production and trade after the First World War, particularly in Britain and the United States. Consequently, the temporary absence of Germany, coupled with British and American policies of self-restraint, resulted in a supplier vacuum in the international arms trade system. The reluctance of major arms suppliers to spend even on their own armed services produced two significant consequences.¹⁹³ First, private arms producers turned to foreign markets in a world of shrinking domestic procurement bases. Second, the pro-disarmament nations stopped providing government guarantees or subventions for foreign sales.