Turkey’s Foreign Policy towards the Middle East in the 1950’s and Its Impact On Turco-Arab Relations

Turkey’s Middle Eastern policy was inaugurated by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk whose policy

reached its zenith with the establishment of the Pact of Sadabad in 1937. Thereafter this political

activism in the Middle East was abandoned by forthcoming Turkish leader, President

İnönü. İnönü adopted a rather passive policy in the regional affairs in order to follow a balanced

policy between Arabs and Jews for geopolitical reasons. When Democrat party came to

power in 1950 they re-embarked Turkey’s engagement in the Middle Eastern politics. Their

idea was to set up a kind of Arab-NATO under Turkey’s leadership. Their idea was first to

revive and develop the Sadabad Pact with which their efforts convert this pact into the Baghdad

Pact in 1955. Then their second aim was to secure Western especially American security

and economic aid. Apart from security imperatives, they believed that their political activism

against to the spread of communism in the Middle East could result western involvement in

the regional affairs and hence could result for more economic aid. Though Turkey to a greater

extend obtained their economic and political objectives vis a vis the West their policies with the

Arab states resulted in a failure. This was because there were fundamental differences in the

interests of Turkey and the Arab states.

This article is based on abundant archival documents available in Turkey and abroad.

It also consulted the available existing literature.