F I r s t d r a f t

All these reshufflings should be regarded in the light of changes in a wider context. To start with, Italo Balbo’s succession of Grandi was a major sign of a new and even more strained phase in Italy’s relations with the League of Nations. Rome’s scorn for the League and its institutions had long been in place. Mussolini’s Four-Power Pact was, indeed, aimed at undermining the League and its authority.⁵³⁰

In March 1933, Mussolini made his famous Four-Power Pact proposal. Mussolini’s idea hastened the formation of a Balkan entente. In his speech, the fascist leader advocated closer cooperation between the four European great powers, including Italy, Britain, France, and Germany to manage the European order. Mussolini’s Four-Power Pact served to confirm the existing Turkish belief that rivalries among the great powers would not hinder their collaboration when their interests required them to do so.⁵³¹ The Four-Power Pact, however, would mean the demands and interests of the smaller states could be overlooked in shaping Balkan and Mediterranean politics.

Mussolini’s Four-Power Pact marked also a departure from his professed strategy towards Turkey. Back in 1932, he had outlined his strategy to Turkish Prime Minister İsmet İnönü and Foreign Minister Tevfik Rüştü Aras during their visit to Rome. Mussolini had assured them that Italy did favor formation of any kind of alliance system in the region and he would rather maintain close relations with Turkey.⁵³² However, Ankara had no reason to believe that the European great powers ceased to think of the Balkans in terms of separate spheres of influence.

Even after he made the Four-Power Pact proposal, Mussolini took great strides in showing that friendly relations with Turkey continued to matter for Italy. To this end, Mussolini assured the Turkish government that Italy’s friendship policy towards Turkey would remain unchanged. He committed his government to keep Ankara informed of all Italian political activities. In return, Mussolini expected loyauté from Turkey. Moreover, if Turkey was concerned about any aspect of Italian policies, he expected the Turkish government to approach Rome directly for clarification. In other words, Italy would not welcome any mediators or intermediaries between Rome and Ankara. By extension, Mussolini’s approach ruled out any third party involvement in Italian-Turkish discussions on the Balkan affairs.⁵³³

Italy’s expectations were not compatible with Ankara’s own assessment of the Balkans where any great power interference could have a negative effect on Turkey’s relations with its neighbors.⁵³⁴ For instance, Turkey did not approve the joint French-Yugoslav initiative to accommodate Bulgaria into the Little Entente. Turkey’s Balkan strategy, in contrast, required the inclusion of these two Balkan countries within a possible Balkan entente.⁵³⁵ Although Rome renewed its commitment to good relations with Turkey, Ankara shifted its attention away from bilateral relations to multilateral and regional cooperation in the Balkans. Turkish diplomacy, thus, endeavored to enlist as many Balkan countries as possible into a Balkan entente.

Hanging together offered the only solution to the risk of the manipulation of the smaller states in the region by the great powers. In September 1933, Turkey signed the Entente Cordiale with Greece that reaffirmed the inviolability of their common boundaries. In quick succession, it was followed by separate treaties of friendship, non-aggression and reconciliation signed by Turkey and Romania in October and by Turkey and Yugoslavia in November 1933.⁵³⁶ These treaties would hopefully stepping stones to a wider regional cooperation scheme.

Rome tended to downplay the political significance of these bilateral arrangements between the Balkan countries. It was argued in Rome that these treaties provided for loose political cooperation in the event of aggression. In contrast, under the treaties of neutrality signed separately with Italy in 1928 and with Bulgaria in 1929 Ankara’s political commitments were not limited to crisis situation or cases of aggression.⁵³⁷ Thus, Rome was convinced that Turkey’s relations with Romania and Yugoslavia paled in significance to those with Italy and Bulgaria. Evidently, Italian officials preserved their optimism that if Turkey would be more prone towards the Italian-Bulgarian camp than that of Romania and Yugoslavia, members of the Little Entente.⁵³⁸

Italian diplomats stepped up their efforts to promote rapprochement between the Balkan countries which were not members of the French-sponsored Little Entente. These were Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey. In this respect, the Italian strategy had been consistent since the late 1920s. Rome had lent major support to Turkey’s signing treaties with Bulgaria in 1929 and with Greece in 1930. Italian political leaders thought that these treaties would bring about greater Italian influence and control over the Balkan states. Moreover, the Turkish-Italian and the Greek-Italian treaties were perceived as building blocks for a tripartite alliance.⁵³⁹ For them, Turkish-Greek relations were intrinsically tied to the state of Turkish-Italian relations. As such, the former could improve or deteriorate only as a function of the latter. Some Italian leaders retained a false optimism that Turkey could play a key role in shaping the future of Balkan cooperation in such a way that would not harm Italian influence in the Peninsula.

In 1933, the Turkish Foreign Ministry had been actively supporting an early settlement between Bulgaria and Greece as well. American Minister in Sofia Shoemaker interpreted Turkish activities as efforts geared towards creating something similar to the Little Entente in extreme Southeastern Europe between Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece. His British colleague in Sofia was also of the opinion that there were plans for creating a Turkish-Bulgarian-Greek group and welcomed such a development in Southeastern Europe.⁵⁴⁰

However in September 1933, when İsmet İnönü and Aras visited Sofia with the hope of persuading Bulgaria to become a party to the Greek-Turkish pact, they were disappointed with the Bulgarian approach. Bulgarian Prime Minister Mooshanoff spelled out openly the Bulgarian revisionist demands. He said that Bulgaria could not sign any pact which did not take into consideration the points that Bulgarian territory in Thrace had been ceded to Greece, that the Dobrudjan settlement of 1913 was not just to Bulgaria and that Bulgaria had a good case against Yugoslavia with reference to the Bulgarian minority in Macedonia.⁵⁴¹

On the other hand, Mooshanoff assured İnönü that Bulgaria had no design on Turkish territory and its revisionist demands at the expense of Greece would never be prosecuted in a manner to upset the peace. In return, Turkish officials assured the Bulgarian government that the Greek-Turkish pact was not directed against Bulgaria. Both sides also agreed to extend the Treaty of Neutrality signed between Bulgaria and Turkey for another five years.⁵⁴² According to the US diplomatic archives, the Bulgarian Prime Minister told Turkish officials that his country would remain attached to the League of Nations and to the Four Power Pact.⁵⁴³ Mooshanoff’s declaration on the Four Power pact was in a sense a proof that the Bulgarians were thinking along the same lines as the Italians because this pact was initially proposed by Italy to other powers, primarily Britain, France and Germany.

An early demonstration of the Turkish naval power coincided with Turkish officials’ visit to Bulgaria in September 1933. While İnönü and Aras were negotiating with the Bulgarians, the battlecruiser Yavuz was en route to the post city of Varna with the newest Italian-build destroyers of Turkish Navy, Zafer and Tınaztepe, in her escort.⁵⁴⁴ İnönü and Aras were to make their return trip to İstanbul on board the Yavuz.⁵⁴⁵ Off Varna, the Yavuz fired her big guns to perform the traditional salute. However, her gunners had been deliberately instructed to fill the rounds with more gunpowder than needed for a bigger bang and, hopefully, a greater effect on their Bulgarian hosts.⁵⁴⁶ In Turkish naval historiography, this incident is treated as a case of successful implementation of gunboat diplomacy which resulted in toned-down Bulgarian opposition to the Balkan entente.⁵⁴⁷ In summary, Turkish diplomatic initiatives could now be backed up with naval muscle.⁵⁴⁸

Also in 1933, Romanian Foreign Minister Nicolae Titulescu encouraged Aras to obtain from Bogoljub Jevtic a secret written assurance that Yugoslavia would not reach an agreement with Bulgaria without Turkey’s prior assent. According to Titulescu, all Balkan treaties were to have a similar clause, therefore covering Romanians too.⁵⁴⁹ The aim was to prevent a Bulgarian-Yugoslav agreement. Unlike the Yugoslavs, the Romanians recommended a simultaneous agreement between Romania, Yugoslavia, Turkey, and Greece with or without Bulgarian participation. Titulescu found in Ankara similar distrust of Bulgaria since İnönü and Aras had recently returned from Sofia largely empty-handed.⁵⁵⁰

Meantime, in August 1933, American Chargé d’Affaires G. Howland Shaw in İstanbul reported to Washington that the last three or four months had witnessed the revival of French prestige in Turkey. The debt settlement, the commercial agreement and the visit of former French Prime Minister Eduard Herriot were the major steps in this revival.⁵⁵¹ Indeed, Turkish Navy was again employed as an instrument of diplomacy in Herriot’s visit. The destroyer Zafer was dispatched on a special mission to the Romanian port city of Constanza. She brought Herriot to İstanbul. It political significance notwithstanding, Herriot’s visit provided also an opportunity for Turkish naval activism in the Black Sea.⁵⁵² Shaw also anticipated that France could enjoy some degree of influence in Turkey if it approached the latter as a means to establish closer relations with the Soviet Union.⁵⁵³

In January 1934, the efforts towards concluding a Balkan pact intensified with a concomitant increase in Turkish naval activism. The destroyer Zafer made another port call at Contanza on 30 January 1934, again on a diplomatic assignment. This time she carried Turkish Foreign Minister Tevfik Rüştü Aras who was working out the details of a possible pact between the Balkan countries.⁵⁵⁴ Regarding this possibility, the American Ambassador in Turkey, Robert P. Skinner, wrote that Italy did not want the domination of one of the Little Entente states in such a union. This in fact meant for Italy the domination of Yugoslavia. Skinner also emphasized that Turkey felt very strongly on the Balkan Pact and preferred to remain neutral rather than take sides in the revisionist and anti-revisionist camps. Moreover, he added that even though Turkey found revision of the postwar treaties dangerous for the moment, it would not oppose a later date revision as long as it was done with the full accord of the parties concerned. For Turkey the Balkan Entente came first and foremost.⁵⁵⁵

A month later, in February 1934, combined Romanian, Turkish and Greek pressures failed to persuade the Yugoslavs to give up hope on the Bulgarians. They turned out to be reluctant to leave the Bulgarians out so long as the envisaged pact between the four Balkan states did not provide the security they sought. Such an agreement would be worth joining only if it provided Yugoslavia with Turkish military assistance. Lungu wrote that the Turkish army was the only Balkan army that the Yugoslavs respected. Since Titulescu was aware of the Yugoslav position, he tried to secure Turkish approval for a military convention to supplement the suggested pact among the four states.

King Alexander of Yugoslavia also wanted Titulescu to convince the Turks and the Greeks that the proposed pact should guarantee not only the maintenance of the existing boundaries between the contracting parties and Bulgaria but also of all other Balkan countries. Although the Turks and the Greeks had been wary of getting entangled in the Italian-Yugoslav conflict, the desire to conclude the agreement prevailed and the Yugoslav request was granted.⁵⁵⁶

The new Balkan developments began to strain Turkish-Italian relations. Diplomatic exchanges between the Foreign Ministries of Turkey and Italy in 1934 was dominated by the formation of the Balkan Entente and its likely ramifications in Turkish-Italian relations. These exchanges also indicate a change of Italian official mind about Turkey and the Balkans. Previous optimism on the link between the two was replaced in a short time with an assessment that the Balkan Entente would encourage Turkey to take up a strong anti-Italian stand. ⁵⁵⁷

The Italian Ambassador in Turkey, F. F. Lojacono warned Rome that the formation of the Balkan Entente was a harbinger of such behavior for a number of reasons. First of all, Ankara had taken advantage of the Italian initiative to reconcile with Greece and around the Turkish-Greek reconciliation it built a pact excluding Italy. Nevertheless, Turkish-Greek relations would not have a future without Italian blessing or leadership.⁵⁵⁸ Furthermore, Lojacono located the roots of improvement climate in Turkish-Yugoslav relations in their shared anti-Italian feelings. Consequently, Yugoslavia and Turkey stood among others as the champions of anti-Italian solidarity in the Balkan Entente. Lojacono, for his part, did not wish this solidarity to work against Italy.⁵⁵⁹ Otherwise, he threatened, Italy would have no choice but to defend its interests in the Mediterranean.⁵⁶⁰

Ankara had worked enthusiastically and energetically for the formation of the Balkan Entente. President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk proposed İstanbul as the venue for the signing the entente. Beyond its symbolic significance, his proposal reflected his desire to Turkey into the diplomatic center of the Balkans. In that period, Ankara’s diplomatic behavior was characterized by pursuit of multilateral solutions and compromise positions to regional problems. Diplomatic activism by a power of lesser degree was not well received by certain great powers. Turkish leaders were aware of the potential consequences of their promotion of multilateral solution to the regional problems; Atatürk had warned his colleagues that Italy would very much like to kill the idea of a Balkan entente. He had written to Prime Minister İnönü that Rome could seek to undermine it through Bulgaria, which Ankara identified as an Italian proxy.⁵⁶¹

In February 1934, the Balkan Entente was finally signed between Turkey, Yugoslavia, Romania and Greece. To persuade Greece, Ankara played down the Entente’s potential to bring Athens into conflict with Rome against the former’s will. Although he masterminded Greece’s pro-Balkan policy earlier, Venizelos, now in opposition, did not approve the signing of the Balkan Entente. For him, Greece was more a Mediterranean country than a Balkan country. Therefore, Greece should not be a party to any arrangement that could provoke its Mediterranean neighbor, Italy.⁵⁶² In the end, the Greek Parliament ratified the pact. However, Venizelos’ opposition also paid off in the form of a reservation added by the Greek Senate that ruled out the implementation of the pact Greece against a great power.⁵⁶³

The signing of the Balkan Entente did not immediately unleash Italian hostility towards Greece or Turkey. On the contrary, Mussolini reaffirmed his cordial feelings for both countries in the Italian Parliament. According to the Turkish Foreign Ministry, Mussolini signaled that that Italy was against the Balkan Entente, but not specifically against Turkey or Greece.⁵⁶⁴ Therefore, Italy seemed to regard Turkey and Greece not as a part of the Balkan cooperation but as potential “allies” in its Mediterranean policy.

The entente was designed only to provide security against regional threats, namely from Bulgaria. The Greek reservations in a way crippled the entente’s ability tackle the threats from outside. However, Bulgaria remained a major concern for Ankara, since it could pose a much greater threat to the regional security in collusion with a great power, Italy. Therefore, Sofia had to be accommodated into the Entente. This would require its detachment from Italy. In this frame of mind, a final attempt was made to include Bulgaria into the Balkan Entente in the form of a renewed invitation from Ankara to join the Entente. The Bulgarian rejection of the invitation did not deter Ankara from including a provision in the pact to allow for Bulgaria’s admission, should it change its mind and wish to join later. Moreover, unlike Greece, Turkey signed bilateral military accords with Yugoslavia and Romania which provided for a commitment to help each other in the event of a Balkan attack, with or without the support of any external power.⁵⁶⁵

Its Balkan neighbors usually responded positively to Turkish diplomatic initiatives and Turkish leadership towards building a coalition of Balkan states in the 1930s. On their way towards cooperation, the Balkan countries realized that they had to stand together against great power rivalry in the region since, individually, these countries were not strong enough militarily. These common interests of the Balkan countries offered Turkey the opportunity to develop a Balkan strategy independent of the great powers. In the 1930s, Turkey did not have any great power patron and was indeed at odds with most of the great powers over questions that could not be settled at Lausanne. Therefore, Turkish policy was generally perceived as promoting the interests of the regional countries at the expense of great power control in the Balkans.⁵⁶⁶ Turkish refusal to get caught in the Italian-French rivalry in the Balkans and the Mediterranean was a very good example of this policy.

Turkey’s ability to take such an initiative in the Balkans derived from its historical experiences. Although new Turkish Republic was intent on distancing itself from the Ottoman past. Nevertheless, as a successor to the geographical core of the Ottoman Empire, it inherited the historic role of serving as both a land bridge connecting Europe and Asia and as a fortress in the region. Although compromised by the demilitarization requirements, Turkey was pretty much in control over the only seaway linking the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.⁵⁶⁷ Like their predecessors, Turkish political leaders recognized the significance of Turkey’s geographical position. In other words, in such a key position, Turkey could not remain oblivious to new developments. Moreover, the regional stability was tied to Turkey’s own strength and stability. Hence, polarization in international relations or close association with great powers would not serve Turkey’s security interests.⁵⁶⁸ In this context, Ankara’s ability to provide intellectual leadership and to perform a brokerage function in the Balkans stemmed essentially from its credibility of “not being perceived to be the stalking horse for a … weight [ier] actor.”⁵⁶⁹ Ankara owed it managerial function in the Balkans to this point.

Turkey became the first to have ratified the Balkan Entente on 6 March 1934. Ratification processes were delayed in Athens, Romania and Yugoslavia due to domestic opposition. Turkish proposals to include military conventions clearly specifying the obligations of each state in time of war broke the impasse.⁵⁷⁰ In case of an Italian-Bulgarian attack on Yugoslavia, Turkey undertook to supply not only its share of troops but also Greece’s share as well, so that Greece would not get involved in hostilities with a great power. Having received this assurance, Greece ratified the Pact on 2 April.⁵⁷¹

In other words, the role of Turkey not only in the formation of the Balkan Entente but also in the development of regional strategy was quite important. Titulescu considered that Ankara had become pivotal to the foreign policy of Romania. At the time, it was believed in Romania that Ankara was to play the role of facilitator in bringing about Romanian-Soviet rapprochement. Moreover, Titulescu saw the participation of Turkey in the Balkan Entente as an indication that the Soviet Union no longer contested the legality of the existing Romanian-Bulgarian border.⁵⁷²

A few months after the signing of the Balkan Pact, a Romanian newspaper, Dimineata, reported during Aras’s visit to Bucharest that Romania and Turkey had nearly identical views on most international and regional issues. Similarity of Turkish and Romanian positions was also noted by US diplomats in Romania, who also rated each Balkan country’s commitment to the Entente. While Turkey and Romania were the most committed among all, Greece’s withdrawal was considered possible. Finally Yugoslavia was not found completely devoted to the Entente.⁵⁷³

Another reason for Romanian-Turkish collaboration might be the weakening of sense of solidarity among the members of the Little Entente (Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia) towards each other as a result of political developments in Europe. Italy‘s declaration of sympathy for Austria and Hungary, Germany’s negative attitude towards disarmament and German-Polish rapprochement made the Little Entente members uneasy about adapting to the changing political conditions in Europe. ⁵⁷⁴ Under these conditions, Romanians felt that they could count more on Turkey than on other members of the Little Entente or the Balkan Entente.

By the end of 1934, Turkish Foreign Minister Aras openly criticized revisionism in a conversation with an American diplomat, Robert P. Skinner. He did not see any possibility of satisfying Bulgarian ambitions to recover its ‘lost’ territories. The Bulgarian attitude would open up the question of frontiers all over Europe and only increase international difficulties. Aras also suggested that those who lost must learn how to adapt themselves to the consequences-that was exactly what Turkey had done-because war was a terrible experience.⁵⁷⁵

8. IN SEARCH OF A WIDER ROLE: THE MEDITERRANEAN DIMENSION

Turkey’s admission to the League of Nations had a bearing on its bilateral relations with Italy and the Soviet Union. Italy reluctantly approved this development which ended Turkey’s isolation. Until 1932 Ankara had been careful to align itself with the Soviet positions in international fora such as the Preparatory Commission for Disarmament and the Commission of Inquiry for Europe Union. Both Turkey and the Soviet Union had participated in such meetings as non-members of the League. Hence, membership of the League represented a major departure from this policy of aligning with the Soviet positions in international organizations. Two years later, this situation was rectified with the Soviet entry into the League. While Rome began to steer clear of the League, there was a radical change of Soviet heart regarding the League. From 1933 on, the Soviets declared their support for the status quo of Versailles as well as for the League. They went so far as to devise a scheme in cooperation with France for an Eastern security pact.⁵⁷⁶

Following the signing of the Balkan Entente, Ankara shifted its attention onto the Mediterranean. As an operating environment for Turkish diplomacy and naval power, the Mediterranean was not comparable to the relatively compact Balkan Peninsula, Stretching from Portugal to Turkey in the North and Morocco to Syria in the South, it had traditionally been a scene of great power rivalries. Turkey could not expect to take advantage of geographic proximity in finding other comparably placed and like-minded actors either. In this vast geographic area, the number of potential partners for middle power diplomacy was disproportionately limited. In the north, France and Italy were the two great powers locked in fierce competition for naval supremacy or parity The most likely partners for Turkey were Spain and Portugal in the northwest and Yugoslavia, Greece in the northeast. The southern shores of the Mediterranean were under colonial rule or political influence of European great powers such as Italy, France and Great Britain. Their rivalries left very limited latitude for middle power diplomacy.