Abstract:

The first enlargement of NATO in 1952, to include Turkey and Greece, integrated the eastern Mediterranean with West European strategic planning and consolidated US presence in the area. Today, Turkey's inclusion in the North Antlantic Treaty Organisation seems natural, given Soviet pressures against the country in 1945-1946 and its geostrategic position. Yet, in the early post-Cold War period this was not a foregone conclusion in the minds of policy-makers in Washington and particularly, in London, despite Ankara's relentless efforts after 1947 to obtain an American security guarantee. 
  This first book-lenght study of the background to Turkey's accession to NATO provides us with a better understanding of a neglected chapter in the history of the early Cold War. The book offers a detailed analysis of how American and British security considerations in the eastern Mediterranean evolved, sometimes in parallel, sometimes in a rival fashion, bewteen 1945 and 1952 against the backdrop of the Turks' diplomatic pressure for a US military commitment. I addition, it provides an in-depth look into the fundamental tenets of Turkish foreign policy, which, it is argued, remained the same throughtout the first 30 years of the life of the Turkish republic.
 

Publisher's Version

Full Text

CONCLUSION (excerpt)

A United States security guarantee to the eastern Mediterranean, after the American military commitment to western Europe, appeared to be a logical step in the context of the United States' strategic interest in Turkey and Greece, clearly demonstrated by the vast quantities of military assistance to both countries. This was certainly the contention of the Turkish governmnets. The extension of such a guarantee was also the desire of the British. Yet it was hardly contemplated by Washington before 1951. Between 1948 and late 1950 the American Joint Chiefs of Staff and the State Department ruled out bringing this region under the United States' military responsibility. This policy was adopted despite the oft-repeated in Washington importance of the eastern Mediterranean for the United States' security interests in the Middle East and the fact that the British had no forces to commit to its defence. It was a case in point of the discrepancy between American foreign policy and strategic planning in the late 1940s, which essentially reflected the gradual evolution of the United States' national security policy towards assuming global resonsibilities.
[...]
  The Americans brought Turkey into NATO against the will of the British, not to mention the misgivings of some smaller members of the alliance. In 1947 and 1948 it was Britain who steered the United States into becoming involved in the security of the eastern Mediterranean and western Europe. By 1950, however, the British had lost all initiative to the Americans. Bevin, the  Foreign Office and the Bristish Chiefs of Staff were keen on an American security guarantee to Turkey as a means of bringing the United States a step closer to the defence of the Middle East for which Britain was responsible, but for which task it no longer had the necessary power. London, like Washington, had its eyes on Turkey's 19 American-trained and equipped divisions, which were seen as a valuable asset in the context of Middle East strategic planning. It hoped that they could be used to sustain, along with American backing, Britain's military position in the Middle East and so its status as a major poawer. Therefore, the Bristish preferred an American guarantee in the form of a bilaterl agreement outside the Norrth Atlantic Treaty as they feared that Turkey's participation in NATO and the coordination of its defence with west European military planning would draw Turkish forces away from Middle Eastern defence.
[...]they deluded themselves into believing that London would still be able to command strategic decisions regarding Turkey, while the Americans were paying the bills and the Turks danced on an Allied tune orchestrated by Britain.
[...]
  Turkey, for its part, was reacting to postwar realities in a most pragmatic manner. As the Greek dictator Ioannis Metaxas once said, muddling through is a prerogative granted only to great powers. Free from the excessive preoccupation of the major powers, ankara was bale to approach the issue of Turkey's security interests with the same clear judgement it had demonstrated during the interwar and war years. [...]Strikingly, it was Turkey and not the United States who managed to set to a large extent the agenda for American-Turkish relations. Ankara, by insisting on an alliance with the United States as a quid pro quo for full military co-operation with Washington, drove a hard bargain, to which the Americans responded defesnively instead of trying to counter-bargaain on the back of their military aid to Turkey. Ankara's power was demonstrated in a striking manner overthe question of Turkish participation in the Middle East Command. Not only did the Turks defy the British, who unlike the Americans sought to impose on Turkey the rules of the game, but they were also quick to take advantage of the underlying differences bewteen Washington and London so as to serve their own interests.