The Turkish American Relationship Between 1947 And 2003

Turkish-American Relationship Between 1947 & 2003 - The History of a Distinctive Alliance

This book presents a colourful and analytical picture of Turkish-American relations from the early nineteenth century to the post cold war era, providing excellent reference for study of their impact as well as for a deeper understanding of the region.

Recent public squabbles between American and Turkish leaders and lawmakers have led many to question what kind of an alliance Turkey and the United States have. This book is directly concerned with this question and attempts to shed light on every single detail related to the nature of this alliance. With discussions on the historical evolution of the bilateral relations and current disagreements on various issues such as the Turkish acquisition of Russian air defense systems and the Kurdish question in the Middle East, this study offers a lucid genealogy of the Turkish-American alliance for all those interested in the subject.

Turkey and the United States have been critically important to each other since the beginning of the Cold War. The history of Turkish-American relations includes not only strategic, but also political, social, cultural and intellectual dimensions. While critical to understanding Turkish-American relations, these dimensions rarely surface in today’s discourse, which reduces bilateral relations to issues currently being contested. In reality, the encounter between East and West embodied in Turkish-American interactions ranges from the official and diplomatic, to unofficial and informal exchanges at the social and individual level; while often compatible and friendly, such interactions occasionally have been less so. Authors from both countries developed a variety of perspectives on their interactions through original research that will enable both specialists and general readers to appreciate its many facets. Most scholarly works on the two nations have been limited to the analysis of US-Turkish relations in the context of Cold War politics. The editors intend that this volume will begin to fill a serious gap and encourage others to study American-Turkish relations from as many aspects as possible. This book shows that when seen in a historical framework, the American Turkish encounter took place beyond the level of formal political and military ties during the Cold War period and has enduringly interacted at the level of educational, social, and cultural realms.

This book provides a unique and timely window into the views and opinions of a wide segment of the Turkish society on the subject of contemporary Turkish-U.S. relations. Based on interview data collected and analyzed largely by Turkish academicians, this study focuses on the opinions and attitudes of Turkish citizens across nine different sectors of Turkish society. Ranging from military officers to university students to the labor and media sectors, the depth and breadth of this multi-sectoral survey, looked at carefully by a group of scholars from broad academic backgrounds and public service expertise, serves as an important contribution to the literature. Serving as a "snap-shot" of contemporary views being expressed in Turkey, this work serves to identify and address those issues and events that have impacted or might tend to influence the conduct and future of Turkish-U.S. relations.

Current debates on Turkish foreign policy flamed by Turkey’s purchase of S-400 air defense systems from Russia throws into question Turkey-US relations and poses a challenge to Turkey’s membership in NATO, which has been regarded as the most important symbol of Turkey’s alliance with the West. However, Turkey’s maneuvers between the US and Russia are not unique to the present era as they can be traced back to the Cold War period. In fact, Turkey’s alliance with the West did not prevent Turkey from establishing special relations with the Soviet Union. This book, which is spurred by Glenn Snyder’s theory on alliance politics, indicates that Turkey’s foreign policy moves shaped in accordance with the fear of abandonment and the fear of entrapment with regards to its relations with the US, did not only stay within the boundaries of the Cold War, but further moved beyond that era. The authors argue that Turkey’s maneuvers to balance the US with Russia in the historical context constitute a strong element of continuity and a significant pattern in Turkish foreign policy. Yet, the authors underline that the motives behind this legacy have changed in the 2010s due to the transformations occurred within global, regional as well as domestic contexts.

For the last seventy years, experts have tried to define the nature of Turkey's partnership with the US. While Turkish-US relations have always been susceptible to different crises, they enjoyed a brief “golden era” in the 1950s. This book argues that a false nostalgia about that period - when the strategic interests of two countries fully converged - has distorted analyses by scholars and policymakers ever since. To provide a more accurate assessment, this book look at the patterns of crises between the two countries throughout history and how these relate to the current points of tension in Turkish-American relations today. It coins a new conceptual framework to understand the Turkey-US partnership: the “vulnerable partnership”. The book outlines the key causes of this vulnerability, showing that for the last 70 years, there have been recurring frictions and faultlines that have been repeated across different political periods. These especially involve the US congress, public opinion, Russia, and crises in the Middle East. Based on journalistic, archival and scholarly sources, the topic of the book is at the intersection foreign policy studies, Middle East politics, the history of Turkish-American relations, and foreign policy making.