F I r s t d r a f t

When Turkish naval expansion looked imminent to foreign observers, there was little doubt that submarines would top the Turkish shopping list for naval weapons. Consequently, Turkish notification in May 1934 to Athens that the Turkish Navy was set to acquire six new submarines surprised hardly anyone. Athens, in return, gave due notice to Ankara about its plans to order two new destroyers. All these exchanges were made in compliance with the 1930 naval protocol between the two countries.⁷⁰⁴ The element of surprise in the new Turkish naval program lay in its composition as it called for one or two cruisers, two destroyers and a hospital ship.⁷⁰⁵ These larger units were meant to help Turkey secure the lines of communication in the Northern Aegean with Greece, which became one of top strategic priorities of the Turkish Navy.⁷⁰⁶ Later, Foreign Minister Aras clarified the logic behind the Turkish change of mind, if not heart, about ordering big cruisers with big guns in his conversation with the British naval attaché:

“Turkey must increase her navy firstly to have a fleet in the proper sense of the word and secondly for the protection of her merchant vessels. A fleet [is] on sea what the infantry [are] on the land. It [is] the fleet and infantry which in the last resort decide wars. Undoubtedly the roles of submarines and of aircraft [have] become of great importance but on the sea a fleet [has] the last word.”⁷⁰⁷

With or without the cruisers, the new Turkish naval program would stretch the national budget to a breaking point. Although the Turkish government introduced a “national defense tax,” collected on tobacco and spirits, to raise funds for naval building, the whole program would stand little chance of success without substantial foreign credits.⁷⁰⁸ Consequently, Ankara and Athens approached Britain for financial support to their new naval programs. Turkish-Greek and British positions on both the Italian threat and on disarmament were still far apart in 1934. Their joint plea failed to strike a chord in London where the view prevailed was “the prospect of a race between Italy and its nervous little neighbors conducted on borrowed money is a nightmare.”⁷⁰⁹

The new naval orders were inevitably delayed in view of lack of sufficient financial means. With the Italian attack on Abyssinia, however, the process gathered a momentum. On the diplomatic front, Ankara was working towards securing right to remilitarize the Straits in 1936. Defense of remilitarized Straits would require a reappraisal of Turkish military priorities and armaments policy. Once again, Ankara consulted the head German naval advisor, Admiral von Wülfing, in identifying arms needs for defense of the Dardanelles. The naval program was to be modified substantively.⁷¹⁰

When an international conference was in session at Montreux to discuss the Turkish request for revising the status of the Straits, Ankara announced awarding of the contract for four submarines to German shipbuilders in June 1936. As a matter of fact, German shipbuilders’ original offer was made through the nominally Dutch-owned I.v.S. which had supplied two submarines to Turkey in back 1926. In the meantime, Hitler unilaterally renounced the Versailles restrictions on German arms production. As they no longer needed to conceal their true identity behind a proxy, the German shipbuilders signed the contract with the Turkish government. The contract stipulated building of two units in German and two in Turkey.⁷¹¹

This Turkish order was primarily a consequence of the long-standing association of Turkish submarine service with Germany and German-built submarines. In addition to this, cost considerations and broader Turkish-German trade relations also favored German shipbuilders. To start with, German submarines were offered at lower costs than built by others such as France.⁷¹² More importantly, the 1933 Clearing Agreement turned Germany into Turkey’s leading foreign trade partner. When Hitler’s Germany embarked on a four-year rearmament program, German demand for Turkish chrome dramatically increased. As a result, Turkey accumulated a sizeable trade surplus from Germany. Procuring German submarines, in a way, offered Turkey a way of liquidating that trade surplus.⁷¹³ Also in 1936, the Turkish Navy could add another I.v.S.-built unit to its submarine fleet. The Spanish order from that shipbuilder had to be diverted to another customer after the eruption of the Civil War. The Turkish government did not pass up the offer made by I.v.S. for that submarine which was commissioned as Gür in December 1936.⁷¹⁴

Oscillating between London and Berlin for supply of naval arms, Ankara created international confusion regarding where Turkey stood in relation to the new European situation. According to an American assessment of Turkey’s international position after taking the Straits under its control, Ankara had been very much sucked into the European picture and its policy of being on friendly terms with everybody and tied to nobody had received several dents ⁷¹⁵ The change was partly due to the European crisis, but some of it was the price Turkey was paying for raising the questions of the Straits and the Sanjak. As a result, British influence over Turkey was getting stronger. The report cited the visit of the Turkish fleet to Malta in November 1936 as a case in point.

The choice of Malta for the Turkish fleet’s first ever overseas port call was evidently linked to the improved climate between Britain and Turkey.⁷¹⁶ From hindsight, it appears that the Turkish visit to the British naval base in Malta reflected more the Turkish desire to forge an alliance with Britain than growing British influence over Turkey. The visit was historic from a number of other accounts too. For instance, it was argued that the Turkish fleet had not sailed that far into the Mediterranean since the naval battle of Navarino in 1827.⁷¹⁷ Moreover, Ankara wanted to make a strong political statement by dispatching to Malta the whole fleet, including the battlecruiser Yavuz, the four Italian-built destroyers and five submarines. The British, on the other hand, struggled to downplay the political and strategic implications of such a demonstration by a minor naval power.⁷¹⁸

The Turkish fleet’s visit to Malta ushered in a period of more relaxed Turkish military and naval attitudes towards their British counterparts. Notoriously reserved when dealing with foreigners, the Turks saw little problem in allowing the British naval intelligence to examine two modified Turbine class destroyers, Zafer and Tinaztepe, built in Italy.⁷¹⁹ While Kocatepe and Adatepe were designed and built to Turkish specifications, the former had typical design features common to Italian destroyer building, hence, were of great interest to the British hosts. This new policy of openness to the British stood in stark contrast to the earlier reserved attitude of Turkish naval authorities towards similar demands. For instance, back in 1933, the Fleet Commander had denied the request of high-ranking Soviet military delegation to visit the battlecruiser Yavuz and have a look inside one of her main gun turrets.⁷²⁰

En route its home base from Malta, the Turkish fleet paid a visit to Pireus, Athens where they received a very warm welcome. After the first visit to foreign ports in 1936, Ankara seemed intent on continuing its naval activism. For instance, in July 1937, the government decided to send Turkish naval units to make port calls in Italy, Yugoslavia, Romania and the Soviet Union. However, this time, the fleet would be divided into two groups, one to cruise in the Mediterranean and the other in the Black Sea. The planned visits would strain the naval budget as the Ministry of Finance had faced difficulties in gathering the requisite funds for these two simultaneous tours.⁷²¹ Very shortly, in fact, the government reversed its decision and cancelled visits to Italian and Yugoslav ports in the Mediterranean and the Romanian and the Soviet ports in the Black Sea.⁷²²
Piracy in the Mediterranean and the Nyon Conference
Notwithstanding shortage of funds, a quick succession of events had rendered such naval visits risky ventures in the submarine infested waters of the Mediterranean. Pirate submarine activity in the Mediterranean during the Spanish Civil War propelled Ankara further towards Britain and even France. Spanish vessels had, at best, been rare sights in Turkish waters before the Civil War. They began to make their appearances in Turkish ports after 1936.⁷²³

Soon an unidentified submarine, stalking the Republican Spanish merchant shipping, managed to sneak into the Straits and sank two vessels with torpedoes. After the attack, the Turkish government held an emergency meeting at the Dolmabahçe Palace on 24 August, 1937. Chief of Staff Field Marshal Fevzi Çakmak and the Commander of the Fleet Admiral Şükrü Okan were also summoned to attend the meeting. The Council deliberations culminated in two decisions. First, the military and naval authorities were asked to establish firmly if the submarine attacks had taken place within Turkish territorial waters. Second, diplomatic notes were to be delivered to the League of Nations, to the foreign missions in Turkey and finally to the Non-Intervention Committee describing the incident and advising the rules of engagement with unidentified submarines operating in Turkish territorial waters.⁷²⁴

Two weeks later, the Turkish Government adopted additional and tougher measures regarding unidentified submarine activity in and around Turkish territorial waters. The Government instructed the General Staff and the Fleet to attack and destroy, as a rule, any unauthorized submarines that might be detected in the Marmara Sea if they failed to identify themselves. The Fleet was ordered to upgrade its state of alert to a level that would allow swift and effective response to any future attack by submarines. The Customs Ministry was instructed to place its boats at the disposal of the General Staff to augment anti-submarine patrols. The General Staff contemplated more drastic measures such as laying submarine nets across the Straits. However, this idea was not adopted by the Government as it might be construed as a declaration of war, a line of action the current situation did not sufficiently warrant.⁷²⁵

Reports of unidentified submarine activity continued to pour in. Periscopes of unidentified submarines were spotted several times in the Sea of Marmara throughout 1937. Shore-based observers reported submarine activity, once off Gallipoli and once off Darıca respectively. A third encounter was reported by the commanding officer of protected cruiser Hamidiye off the Prince’s Islands. The second and third sightings indicated unidentified submarine activity within the Sea of Marmara and in fact exposed poor shape of Turkish submarine defenses. Subsequently, the Turkish Navy submarine chasers and destroyers were put on patrol in the Marmara Sea to hunt for submarines. On one such patrol, a submarine chaser claimed to have sighted a periscope and dropped depth charges in pursuit off Gallipoli.⁷²⁶

It soon became embarrassingly evident in Ankara that the Turkish Navy was ill-equipped and ill-trained to tackle the submarine menace.⁷²⁷ Meanwhile, the Turkish government agreed in principle to cooperate with other Mediterranean powers against pirate submarine activity. However, the scope and nature of this cooperation would eventually split the ranks of Turkish political leadership down the middle.

When an international conference convened at Nyon in September 1937 to discuss measures against this new form of piracy in the Mediterranean, the Turkish authorities failed to form a consensus on how far Ankara should get involved in the naval activity against the submarines. President Atatürk advocated an activist line and favored naval cooperation with Britain and France in the Mediterranean. Prime Minister İnönü, on the other hand, was not ready to go that far. Chief of Staff Field Marshal Çakmak subscribed to İnönü’s cautions stand on the issue. It is suggested that such a major rift of opinion among the key political and military actors reflected personal styles of Atatürk and İnönü in assessing the risks associated with such cooperation differently.⁷²⁸

Nevertheless, Turkish position rested on keeping the Soviet navy away from the Mediterranean. Like most other riparians, Ankara was concerned about the prospects for the Soviet navy operating in the Mediterranean even in the context of combating piracy.⁷²⁹ The Soviet naval presence would be a nuisance for Turkey per se. Beyond that Ankara feared most about a possible standoff between the Italian and the Soviet navies. Such a standoff would render it difficult for Turkey to maintain a neutral position between the two sides without alienating one or the other or even both.⁷³⁰ Although the Soviet authorities gave serious consideration to the idea of sending a small squadron to operate with the international forces, they concluded that “the Soviet Navy could not spare a single combat ship for overseas duties.”⁷³¹

At Nyon, Turkey was presented with a similar dilemma. The internal debate revolved around the British request for a Turkish destroyer to patrol with the British fleet in the Eastern Mediterranean. President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk gave serious and thorough consideration to responding positively to this request. He even summoned the Commander of the Fleet at İzmit to discuss the pros and cons of the issue. President Atatürk was personally convinced that the benefits of such naval cooperation would outweigh its costs. Turkey might end up losing one or two destroyers in the patrols. It was a risk that was worth taking for Turkish naval cooperation was likely to be rewarded by British and French support against Italy in the Mediterranean.⁷³²

At Nyon, Foreign Minister Aras failed to present a coherent Turkish position as he was caught in crossfire between President Atatürk and Prime Minister İnönü. Two Turkish political leaders gave conflicting and overriding instructions particularly on the issue of Turkish contribution to the naval patrols in the Mediterranean.⁷³³ However, in the end the Prime Minister İnönü and Field Marshal Çakmak prevailed. In practice, Turkish contribution to the joint naval activity in the Mediterranean remained modest. Ankara’s commitments were confined to Turkish territorial waters.⁷³⁴ Moreover, the Turkish port of Alaçatı (near İzmir) was designated as a supply and relief port for the patrolling British and French fleets. A Turkish naval officer, Lieutenant Commander Safiyetin Dagada was assigned to the Non-Intervention Control Board to serve as Turkey’s official representative alongside three British officers and one Dutch officer at Gibraltar.⁷³⁵ Dagada was subsequently appointed the administrator of the Board,⁷³⁶

The case of Nyon is instructive for the study of interwar Turkish foreign policy from several perspectives. To start with, even President Atatürk who was regarded as the ultimate arbiter in foreign policy had to accept moderation of his authority by more cautious and “neutralist” actors at home. It should be added that İnönü could prevail over President Atatürk on a key foreign policy issue, but he paid a huge political cost. Shortly after Nyon, he resigned (or was subtly asked to do so) on account of poor health. Until Atatürk’s death, he did not take up any other government position. İnönü’s resignation, on the other hand, removed a major constraint on President Atatürk’s appetite for risk-taking in foreign policy. His subsequent handling of the Sanjak ( Hatay) issue is a case in point. The Sanjak, in fact, validates the proposition that middle power behavior is guided by “healthy doses of self-interest.”⁷³⁷

The case of Nyon, however, is an excellent, or textbook, example of middle powers’ dilemma in coalitions “built on them.” As a multilateral framework, the Nyon arrangement offered an opportunity to take part in a coalition built under great power leadership to secure the Mediterranean. Secondary powers were called on to back diplomacy with military or naval muscle. Very much in line with the conclusion of Cooper, Higgot and Nossal, Ankara remained in the coalition as a secondary or peripheral actor who was very uncomfortable with the idea of committing its forces to the actual naval effort.⁷³⁸ After 1937, the conduct of Turkish diplomacy was guided by more conventional balancing and bandwagoning strategies rather than middle power strategies.

The termination of the Nyon arrangement also abruptly ended Turkish openness towards Britain. To the surprise and dismay of the British authorities, the Turkish military reverted to their reserved attitude as soon as the crisis in the Mediterranean ceased to be vital.⁷³⁹ Another explanation of the immediate reversal of Turkish openness may lie in London’s unrelenting efforts to keep Italy on its side for the sake of continental European power balance at the expense of Mediterranean security.

The year 1937 was a decisive one in many respects. In that year, Italy, having abandoned the League of Nations and signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, increased its solidarity with Germany and Japan.⁷⁴⁰ As international divisions became more clear-cut, Ankara gradually reoriented its foreign policy towards Britain, the principal status quo power in Europe and the Mediterranean. Turkey’s strategic value for Britain, not only in the Eastern Mediterranean but also in the Balkans accounted for acceleration of Anglo-Turkish rapprochement after 1937. British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden referred to Turkey among several others as a small state “whose support in time of war would not be negligible, but whose support to the other side might be disastrous.”⁷⁴¹

The Admiralty had already begun to view Turkey as a bulwark against Italian action and ambitions in the Eastern Mediterranean. In their calculations, Turkey was even more crucial in forestalling German attempts to dominate the Balkan Peninsula too. Its loss to the German orbit could set in motion a “domino effect” that would consolidate German control over the Balkan states. Turkey’s growing dependence on Germany for foreign trade was identified as a vulnerability which Berlin might exploit to complement its political and military influence in that country.⁷⁴²

Britain rose to the occasion when the opportunity to break German influence in Turkish military and naval matters presented itself in 1937. At that time, Turkey did not have a separate air force. It was basically a subordinate command with personnel drawn from the army and, to a lesser extent, the navy. Particularly for staff training, the officers in air service were sent to the war colleges of their parent services. Since 1926, the German instructors hired to teach in the war colleges enjoyed a great deal of influence in shaping Turkish military and curricula and the minds of Turkish staff officers.

In 1937, a new war college was to be set up to provide staff training for the officers of the air service. Berlin was naturally the Turkish General Staff’s first choice to seek instructors for the new war college. Embarked on a mission to rebuild the German air power, Hermann Göering turned down the Turkish request, as every single German airman was a precious asset and counted in the process.⁷⁴³ After Berlin, Ankara turned to London which, unlike in the 1920s, was willing and able spare active duty officers for the job. Alongside the army and navy war colleges where the Germans taught the art of war, the air war college began to operate with the Royal Air Force instructors. This was the first dent to the German instructors’ domination in Turkish staff training in place since 1926.⁷⁴⁴

Anglo-Turkish rapprochement had ramifications on naval matters as well. In 1936, Ankara finally dropped its reservations and agreed to adhere to the global system of naval armaments limitations. Without doubt, Turkish moderation on such an issue of utmost importance to London helped consolidate its image as a status quo power. Turkey’s reservations were previously grounded in regional rather than global dynamics. Ankara refused to consider any naval limitations until it could reasonably improve its naval position against Greece in the Aegean and the Soviet Union in the Black Sea. Subsequent naval holidays with both of these countries did not necessarily lead Turkey to reconsider its stand on the global naval arrangements. Its continued reservations were driven by a policy of self-exclusion from international arrangements that did not include the Soviets. In May 1936, the Soviets were formally engaged in naval talks with Britain, expecting to “exchange Soviet adherence to naval limitations with British technical aid.”⁷⁴⁵

The timing of the Turkish decision corresponded more or less with the inauguration of the Anglo-Soviet naval talks which arguably cleared an obstacle in the way of closer Anglo-Turkish naval cooperation. In December 1936, Ankara became the first Mediterranean power to have responded positively to the British proposal to discuss adherence to naval limitations along the lines of the London Naval Conference of 1936. Moreover, the Turkish government asked to be informed of the progress in Anglo-Soviet talks.⁷⁴⁶

Anglo-Turkish discussions on naval disarmament provided the British with first-hand information on the new Turkish naval program. The British naval experts were unsettled when they were told that Turkey was intending to build two cruisers (8,000 or 10,000-ton) armed with eight-inch guns.⁷⁴⁷ This intention could plunge Turkey straight into the center of “the cruiser controversy,” an issue that poisoned the naval disarmament process and stood at the heart of the matter for Britain.⁷⁴⁸ The controversy began when the Admiralty came up with an outline disarmament proposal that called for revision of the cruiser classification and limitations agreed upon at Washington. Indeed, it was Britain who strongly advocated limits of 10,000 tons displacement and eight-inch gun caliber dimensions for cruisers. The cruisers that were built to these limitations were called “the Washington cruisers,” or “Washington standard type.” London argued subsequently that a distinction had to be made between the Washington standard types and smaller, less powerful cruisers armed with 6-inch-guns.⁷⁴⁹ By the same token, British naval experts tried to talk their Turkish counterparts out of building Washington cruisers, pointing to higher their building and maintenance costs.⁷⁵⁰

The Turkish naval experts, on the other hand, justified acquisition of Washington cruises in the context of new mission repertoire of the Turkish Navy. While coastal defense remained top priority, the Navy’s mission would include: (a) keeping coastwise communication from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean open; (b) preventing enemy landings from the Aegean islands in cooperation with other services; (c) conducting tip-and-run raids on enemy shipping. Hence, the Turkish Navy would need two 10,000-ton cruisers mounting eight-inch or bigger guns and capable of cruising at top speed of 35-knots. Agility and speed were essential for the cruisers to thwart enemy landings. The fleet that would be built around these two cruisers would also include eight destroyers and 20 submarines.⁷⁵¹