Surviving the Pressure of the Superpowers: An Analysis of Turkish Neutrality during the Second World War

Abstract

The Second World War years indisputably constitute one of the most important periods of modern Turkish history. Yet, it is perhaps amongst those topics on which there is not a satisfactory amount of academic work available. This is an article prepared with the objective of shedding light on some of the issues not adequately explored before. The diplomatic maneuvers pursued by the then Inonu Administration to avoid the pressure from the Great Power to join the War have been analyzed in detail. Moreover, some regard has also been given to the Turkish domestic politics of that era. Such issues as the pro-German stance of various senior Turkish politicians of the time, the oppression of some ethnic minorities in pursuit of the so-called Turkification policies and German support to the growth of pan-Turkist movements have also been examined. The article concludes with a commentary on how the Turkish policy of neutrality in the 1940s triggered a chain of events that revived Greco-Turkish hostilities and led to Turkish membership of NATO.