F I r s t d r a f t

German Influence Revived? Subsidized Submarines and Naval Instructors
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.²²⁷ In December 1924, the French naval authorities were convinced that the program would provide for purchase of six light cruisers, 24 destroyers and 16 submarines in five years.²²⁸ According to an earlier French naval attaché report, the Turkish Navy had been contemplating acquisition of 20 destroyers and nine submarines to be built in 10 years.²²⁹ Two years later, in 1926, the British naval attaché reported that German naval advisors had devised a naval program that called for an initial order of six submarines, two destroyers and one cruiser.²³⁰

However, submarines had always been favored over other types of naval units by the Turkish General Staff. When the Turks began to look for submarines, the interwar international arms trade system presented them with significant restrictions. The new arms trade system was naturally a function the post-First World War political order. In Europe, Britain and France retained their arms-production capabilities. While London’s approach to arms production and trade was conditioned principally by the idea of disarmament, conventional balance-of- power considerations continued to shape Paris’ arms trade policy.²³¹

Another European arms producer and trader, Germany, was excluded from international arms trade until 1934. A non- European power, the United States, also emerged as a major supplier of arms. Like in Britain, there was strong public aversion to arms production and trade in the United States after the First World War. Consequently, strict restrictions and controls over German arms production, coupled with British and American policies of self-restraint, resulted in a temporary 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.²³² First, private arms manufactures pinned their hopes on foreign markets in a world of ever shrinking domestic sales. Second, the pro-disarmament nations stopped providing government guarantees or subventions for foreign sales.

This situation did not leave much of a choice for arms importers like Turkey for its future naval orders. Moreover, due to the poor state of Turkey’s finances, any order that would be placed on foreign private shipyards needed to be underwritten by their governments. Only European powers that were unsatisfied by the status quo were willing to open or underwrite credits for arms contracts that could serve their own political and strategic agenda. Of these powers, Italy had already embarked on ambitious arms projects to fill the supplier vacuum, whereas Germany was contemplating means of getting around the Versailles restrictions on its arms production.²³³ Both countries naturally figured prominently as suppliers of naval arms to Turkey in the 1920s. France was, at least, potentially strong contender for Turkish naval contracts. However, the deterioration of bilateral relations turned French contractors into politically unacceptable suppliers.

By mid-1924, British, American, French and Italian shipyards had made inquiries about supplying submarines to the Turkish Navy. A French naval attaché report mentioned an interesting detail regarding Armstrong Vickers' offer for five submarines for the Turkish navy. The British shipbuilder could deliver five submarines if Turkey agreed to scrap the battlecruiser Yavuz within five years from the order. The same report singled out Schneider as the top contender among other French shipbuilders. Because it had an outstanding contract to deliver to two submarines to the Ottoman navy.²³⁴ The Italian shipbuilder might enjoy a similar advantage as it also had outstanding obligation to supply a cruiser that had been ordered by the Ottoman Empire but commandeered by the Italian navy after the invasion of Tripoli in 1911.²³⁵

When London and Ankara came to loggerheads over the future status of Mosul in September 1924, the crisis turned the tables in the Turkish submarine deal. During the crisis, Italy supported Britain and was poised to stake a claim in Western Turkey, if the crisis led to a British-Turkish war and to the collapse of the fragile regime in Turkey. Hence, when the Turkish government officially invited bids for one submarine, the British bidder Armstrong Vickers was eliminated par principe, whereas Ansaldo was also rejected for offering submarines were of an outdated design.²³⁶ In December 1924, the surviving bidders for the Turkish submarine contract were two French, one Dutch (offering German designs) and one Swedish shipbuilder.

The Turkish Navy decided to place its order with the Dutch shipyard. Paris was taken aback by the Turkish decision. The French had been misled to believe that their shipyards would receive the contract.²³⁷ The decision was inevitably regarded as yet another manifestation of the continued German influence on the Turkish navy. As a matter of fact, of the three officers that evaluated the designs offered, two were trainees with the German submarine service during the First World War.²³⁸ Thus, they were naturally more inclined towards German designs. The disappointed French also mentioned the possibility of bribery in view of reportedly higher Dutch unit prices.²³⁹ All these factors may have contributed to the outcome. However, the decisive factor was the secret funds Germany pledged to the building of these submarines. Indeed, the Dutch shipyard of Ingenieurskantoor voor Scheepsbouw (I.v.S.) had been set up by three German shipbuilders, Krupp Germaniawerft (Kiel), A.G. Weser (Bremen) and Vulkanwerft (Hamburg and Stettin), seeking a way around the Versailles restrictions on German submarine-building.²⁴⁰ German financial support meant that Ankara could order two submarines instead of one. In return, Turkish submarines would be counted on in the training of a new generation of German submariners.²⁴¹

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 when they were in the hands of minor powers. The British stood firmly against allowing the small countries bordering on the Baltic Sea to acquire submarines for their naval defense 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.”²⁴²

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.²⁴³ 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 practically commanded the Ottoman Army whereas a British naval mission was in charge of the Navy.²⁴⁴ When the Ottoman Empire entered the war in 1914, a German naval mission took over the command of the navy from the British mission. Although their competence and even their authority were questioned and occasionally challenged by Ottoman officers,²⁴⁵ 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."²⁴⁶

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 home with them the manuals that they had prepared for the Ottoman Navy. This is considered to have retarded Turkish naval development. The officers had to rely on their memories in reconstructing procedures the foreign missions had devised. The navy had to operate along somewhat hybridized procedures that featured diverse elements from the British and the German styles of training and instruction.²⁴⁷

The new rulers of Turkey had already drawn their own lessons from the Ottoman experience with foreign military and naval missions. However modest the new Turkish plans for naval reorganization might be, there was a recognized need for foreign advisors for their implementation. The Turkish government had considered a number of options as regards to where should foreign advisors be hired from. London was among the capitals where Ankara made a formal inquiry for hiring naval advisors, although the Anglo-Turkish relations were burdened with the Mosul issue at that time.²⁴⁸ The poor state of their relations would have probably precluded any deal anyway. However, in the end, the prohibitively high salaries of active duty British officers ruled out the British option for Turkey. London revised its proposal to provide retired British officers at more reasonable rates of pay.²⁴⁹ By the time this alternative proposal was made in 1926 Ankara had already decided to hire retired German advisors to instruct and train Turkish naval officers.

A number of factors worked in favor of German naval advisors. First, they were familiar with the military system which the new Turkish state inherited. The Ottoman military system had been significantly wielded by the Prussian/German system, particularly in terms of organization and training. Hence, efforts for military rejuvenation required a revival of the German link, at least for training purposes. Second, 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. Consequently, they were ready to make their services available at far lower rates of pay than the British, for instance, as advisors/instructors. Finally, Turkey had already placed an order for two German-designed submarines on a Dutch yard, I.v.S... Since this order was subsidized under secret German funds, it can be suggested that this order for two submarines probably set the seal on Turkey’s choice as regards to foreign instructors.

The hirings began around the time when the submarine order was placed in 1926. Under individual service contracts, former German military/naval personnel were recruited as faculty on contract for the War and Naval Academies first. Then, they were followed by additional officers and non-commissioned officers who were assigned as instructors to various services of the navy. In 1926, there were 26 Germans on contract with the Turkish Navy.²⁵⁰ Their numbers remained modest until 1933. However, their impact on the shaping of the new Turkey’s military organization and military thinking was far greater than their numbers would normally suggest. The process eventually led to the revival of Turkish admiration of the German military tradition.²⁵¹

Nevertheless, it is not possible to argue that the Germans had recovered their military prestige with Turkey to the First World War levels. On the contrary, Turkish-German military relations could not be restored fully until 1933 for a number of reasons. First and foremost, Turkish leaders and public had retained a certain sense of distrust and resentment towards the Germans, whom, they believed, tricked the Ottoman Empire into the First World War.²⁵² Second, the Versailles restrictions had been a major obstacle to such a revival. Finally, some foreign powers 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 such countries.²⁵³

For instance, British government was inclined to view Turkish hiring of German officers as a clear violation of Article 179 of the Treaty of Versailles. It was even poised to file a protest note to the Turkish government. However, its reaction stopped short of delivering a diplomatic protest, as British diplomats admitted that they did not possess any lever to induce Ankara to backtrack from its decision.²⁵⁴ British position on the issue manifested limits of dealing with an outcast such as Turkey. Such a status implied international isolation, on the one hand, and a relatively high degree of autonomy foreign policy, on the other.

That Turkey was an international outcast did not necessarily mean that it was totally oblivious to others' concerns. From the outset, the Turkish government and the General Staff cared about how the German naval advisors’ role and status would be perceived by foreign governments.²⁵⁵ In a significant departure from the Ottoman practice, foreign advisors were denied command responsibilities and were indeed kept out of the normal military chain of command. The body of German naval advisors was designated as a “naval advisory group” rather than a “naval mission” to avoid any resemblance to the British or German Naval Missions of the Ottoman era.²⁵⁶

Occasionally, the Turk political and military leaders publicly complained about the German naval advisors’ “unsatisfactory” performance.²⁵⁷ There might be a certain element of truth in such statements. However, their complaints were mostly politically motivated aimed at alleviating the apprehensions of foreign governments who kept a wary eye on their activities.²⁵⁸ In spite of official “disappointment,” Ankara continued to hire retired German officers for advising and instructing purposes 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.²⁵⁹ Moreover, Admiral Von Gagern’s initial proposal for the Turkish navy resonated well with the Turkish General Staff’s conception of naval power. He advised that all remaining Ottoman naval units be scrapped and the navy be built from scratch with motorboats and aircraft.²⁶⁰ Nevertheless, the German advisors eventually devised an order of battle for the Turkish Navy²⁶¹ which included a battleship squadron of eight vessels supplemented by a flotilla of eight destroyers.²⁶²

In 1926, Germany 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 point to President Mustafa Kemal’s role in the issue. The decision to involve the French was attributed to President’s personal involvement. Otherwise, it was argued that, the aggressive lobbying by German naval advisors would have secured the contract for German companies.²⁶³ Choice of a French contractor represented a well-calculated move on the part of President Atatürk who sought to avoid total dependence 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 did not look very promising financially and indeed could expose the French company to a technologically risky and challenging venture. Private French contractor received not financial or material support from its government for the Yavuz’s refurbishing.²⁶⁴

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 throughout the 1920s and 1930s. In view of its own priorities, the Nazi government in particular refrained from sparing active-duty German officers to serve as instructors in Turkish war academies after 1933. Hermann Goering, for instance, turned down a Turkish request for German aviators to train Turkish officers at the Air Force War College. ²⁶⁵ Then the job was given to the British officers.²⁶⁶

In light of recent evidence and of scholarship on interwar disarmament, the extent to which Turkish naval building defied the general disarmament trend is at least debatable. Turkey and some other powers of lesser degrees expressed strong reservations to accept production controls or non-proliferation agreements. Their common concern was that such arrangements might compromise their ability to acquire means of defense.²⁶⁷ 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 [Bıyıkoğlu] voiced 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.”²⁶⁸ At any rate, the Turkish rulers and the elite never tried to conceal their skepticism on the issue. For instance, Afet İnan, 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 would be put into practice worldwide, yet it is not practical at all. It will [hence] remain eternally a noble idea.”²⁶⁹ Although Turkish leaders and diplomats retained their reservations and even skeptical views along lines provided above, the official Turkish position on disarmament negotiations had featured a much more toned down, pragmatic and accommodating rhetoric.²⁷⁰ Hence, such reservations and views hardly set them apart from their counterparts in many foreign governments, including the champions of disarmament.

Although they were modest by any standards, Turkey’s naval programs set the seal on Turkey’s image as a potential revisionist power. The hiring of German naval instructors, the order for submarines secretly funded by Germany and finally the refurbishing of the “notorious” battlecruiser Yavuz were all taken as clear indicators of Turkish ill-will towards the post-war international settlement.²⁷¹

It was around this time that intellectuals like as Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi were espousing ideas about the need for a European union. Not surprisingly, his conceived European Union would be a cure to what he imagined as a joint Russo-Turkish military threat to Europe in general²⁷² and a Turkish threat to the Balkan countries in particular.²⁷³ Thus, in the 1920s, Turkey seemed to have a long way to go in order to gain international legitimacy and admission into the European states system. Strangely, Turkey’s way back into the international fold began with the improvement of its diplomatic and naval relations with Italy who at the time considered the existing European system unfair.

4. FROM ADVERSITY TO AMITY WITH ITALY IN THE MEDITERRANEAN

In the interwar years, relations between Italy and Turkey waxed and waned between antagonism and friendship. From time to time antagonism and friendship went hand in hand. Such inconsistencies prompted French diplomats to coin the term ami-adversion (amity-adversity) to describe this relationship.²⁷⁴ The cycles of antagonism and friendship in Italian-Turkish relations were elegantly summarized by a British diplomat who described the evaluation of Italian-Turkish relations in stages of ‘warmth’, ‘cooling off’ and ‘frost.²⁷⁵ The “warmth” was the prevailing climate between 1928 and 1932 during which Ankara’s foreign policy featured many contradictions, shifts and re-orientations, mostly for pragmatic reasons in search of security in an external environment perceived as largely hostile to Turkey. Their frustration with the existing international system temporarily provided a common ground for Italy and Turkey in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Ankara was not a challenger to the status quo. Its resentment stemmed largely from being excluded from the post-War international order and from lack of recognition of Turkey as an equal and legitimate member of the international community. This resentment did not necessarily entail a revisionist stand. Mussolini, on the other hand, pushed for recognition of Italy’s political equality of a different order. His policy was aimed at carving out a greater say and share in world affairs as a fully-fledged great power, not as the least of the great powers. While Ankara viewed the international system as being composed of horizontally ordered equal and sovereign states, Fascist Italy’s policy was premised on the existence of a great -power-managed internal system that was composed of hierarchically ordered states. Consequently, the common ground was not to last long and Italian and Turkish policies evolved in diverging directions after the mid-1930s, particularly after Turkey’s admission to the League of Nations which symbolized the end of its exclusion from the international system. Paradoxically, this short-lived Italian-Turkish friendship facilitated first the rapprochement between Ankara and Athens and then contributed international and European recognition of Turkey through its participation in various schemes and proposals for political and economic cooperation in Europe. Finally, Turkish naval revival in the early 1930s with loans underwritten by Italian government can be regarded as another consequence of the years of “warmth.”

Italy as a Potential Menace in the Mediterranean
The ambiguous relationship between Italy and Turkey depended, in part on Turkey’s concerns about security. These concerns were based on the fact that Turkish people had witnessed Italian aggression in Tripoli and the Dodecanese in 1912 and, following the First World War, had had to endure the Italian occupation of part of Anatolia. Although Italy withdrew its occupation forces during the Turkish War of Independence,²⁷⁶ Mussolini’s advent to power with a pronounced rhetoric of change in foreign policy, dubbed tono fascista (fascist tone), immediately revived Turkish fears of Italy.²⁷⁷ While history loomed large in shaping Turkish leaders’ views of Italy, Turkey’s approach was also influenced by two inter-related factors: the need for foreign economic support and its international isolation. These two factors prompted Ankara to seek rapprochement with the great powers of Europe in order to survive as a new nation-state. Between 1922 and 1927, Mussolini’s tono fascista translated into Italy’s refusal to see Turkey as a sovereign state. It viewed the new country only as a geographical entity, Anatolia, with promising opportunities for Italian territorial and, to a lesser extent, ideological expansion.²⁷⁸ In the case of the collapse of the new regime in Turkey, the Italians were planning to invade the country by taking advantage of the proximity of the Dodecanese Islands and using them as a staging post. It was expected that the ongoing Mosul issue between Ankara and London would lead to the disintegration of Turkey and would offer an opportunity for Rome to get its share of Anatolia. Mussolini was convinced that the new Turkey was not strong enough to resist a powerful country such as Britain. As”a frustrated potential ally of Britain”, Mussolini’s Italy expected to be treated by Britain like”a sister rather than a waitress”.²⁷⁹ Mussolini believed that, due to the Mosul crisis, Turkey would offer Rome this chance. After he came to power in Italy, Mussolini pursued an Italian version of Lebensraum in the Balkans.²⁸⁰ The Balkan Peninsula, an area between the Adriatic and the Aegean, lies north of the Mediterranean, the Mare Nostrum of Mussolini. Actually, the early twenties offered conditions conducive to Italian expansion into these territories as Mussolini’s advent to power followed the collapse of both the Ottoman Empire and the Austrian Empire. Mussolini aimed to extend Italian control over the new nation-states that had thus come into existence in the territories of these former multi-ethnic empires. The Balkans, at the crossroads of the two collapsed empires, became a natural target and preoccupation for the Fascist regime. For Mussolini, Turkey, in the first half of the 1920s, was not a country in the Balkans that would deserve attention. In fact, the fascist leader was determined to keep Turkey sidelined from Balkan affairs through diplomacy. To this end, Mussolini made a personal appearance at the Lausanne Conference. Mussolini’s policy at Lausanne was a typical example of the persistence of Italy’s former colonial policies. Italy had a special interest in the Dodecanese, which stood at the intersection of maritime borders between the two Mediterranean and Balkan countries, Turkey and Greece. He sought to forestall Turkey because he feared that victorious Turkish nationalists might assert claims over these islands. Mussolini also detested the idea that Greece would be controlling various strategic islands in the Eastern Mediterranean. Since Greece had already acquired the Northern Aegean Islands, it had to be deterred from demanding the Dodecanese Islands.

Once in power, Mussolini invigorated Italian expansionist designs over Anatolia. During the Lausanne Conference, the Italian representative Montagna, in a conversation with American diplomats, compared Turkey to a mummy “which so long as it remained sealed in its tomb retained its normal state but as soon as the tomb was opened and it came into contact with the outside air it immediately began to decompose and to crumble away.” ²⁸¹ Then Montagna added when Turkey’s collapse came, the other nations would be there to profit from it and Italy could not be left out in the cold.²⁸² In the final analysis, Mussolini’s presence at Lausanne was meant to convey a clear warning to Turkey. At a time when Turkey emerged as a sovereign state, Mussolini secured formal recognition of the Italian possession of the Dodecanese Islands. Even though at Lausanne the fascist leader had to accept the Turkish presence in the Balkans (limited to Eastern Thrace), his insistence on the annexation of the Dodecanese by Italy made Balkan Turkey more vulnerable to any attack on the demilitarized Straits. In addition, Mussolini was present at Lausanne to assert that Italy was an equal “partner” with other European powers and that he would not allow Italy’s wartime allies to cheat Italy again over the spoils of war.²⁸³