British Ambitions in the Mediterranean and Their Effect on the Allied Quest for Turkish Belligerency in Wwii
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EGEMEN GÜRGEN BRITISH AMBITIONS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN AND THEIR EFFECT ON THE ALLIED QUEST FOR TURKISH BELLIGERENCY IN WWII A Master‘s Thesis EFFECT EFFECT BRITISH AMBITIONSBRITISH IN THE MEDITERRANEAN AND by ON THE ALLIED QUEST EGEMEN GÜRGEN FOR TURKISH BELLIGERENCY THEIR Bilkent U The Department of History Ġhsan Doğramacı Bilkent University Ankara December 2020 niversity 2020 To my family BRITISH AMBITIONS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN AND THEIR EFFECT ON THE ALLIED QUEST FOR TURKISH BELLIGERENCY IN WWII The Graduate School of Economic and Social Sciences of Ġhsan Doğramacı Bilkent University by EGEMEN GÜRGEN In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY ĠHSAN DOĞRAMACI BĠLKENT UNIVERSITY ANKARA DECEMBER 2020 ABSTRACT BRITISH AMBITIONS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN AND THEIR EFFECT ON THE ALLIED QUEST FOR TURKISH BELLIGERENCY IN WWII Gürgen, Egemen M.A., Department of History Supervisor: Asst. Prof. Dr. Paul Latimer December 2020 Turkish belligerency which was not quite desired by Britain during the World War II was interwoven with the British ambitions in the Mediterranean including the post- World War II settlement of the region into the British sphere of influence. The importance of the Mediterranean and its effect on Anglo-Turkish relations during the World War II has been narrated through Britain‘s point of view in the literature considering that the region was one of the life-lines of British Empire. However, the Eastern Mediterranean was also a primary concern for Turkey. Since the 1930s as the recent literature confirms, Italy was perceived as the biggest possible threat to Turkey as all the military preparations were made accordingly by the Turkish state. The total 4.400 km of Turkish Mediterranean and Aegean coastline combined with the young Republic‘s obsolete and impotent navy, and the close proximity of numerous foreign islands, made Turkey equally apprehensive for the situation in the region since the opening rounds of the war. Thanks to the opening of the Soviet iv archives, and published British intelligence records alongside the important secondary sources, we now have a better understanding of Turkey‘s relations with the major belligerents. With this motivation and along this line of research this thesis aims to show the relation between Britain‘s Mediterranean strategy and Turkey‘s belligerency. Key words: The Second World War, Britain, Turkey, Mediterranean, Belligerency v ÖZET BRITANYA‘NIN AKDENIZ ÜZERINDEKI EMELLERININMÜTTEFIKLER‘IN TÜRKIYE‘YI ĠKINCI DÜNYA SAVAġI‘NA SOKMA ÇABALARI ÜZERINDEKI ETKILERI Gürgen, Egemen Yüksek Lisans, Tarih Bölümü Tez DanıĢmanı: Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Paul Latimer Aralık 2020 Ġkinci Dünya SavaĢı sırasında Ġngiltere'nin sürekli olarak arzu ettiği Türkiye'nin savaĢa giriĢi, Ġkinci Dünya SavaĢı sonrası Akdeniz Bölgesi‘nin Ġngiliz etki alanına yerleĢmesi de dâhil olmak üzere Akdeniz'deki Ġngiliz emelleri ile iç içe geçmiĢtir. Dünya SavaĢı sırasında Akdeniz'in önemi ve Akdeniz'in Türk-Ġngiliz iliĢkileri üzerindeki etkisi, genellikle literatürde bir Ġngiliz bakıĢ açısıyla anlatılmıĢtır. Ancak, Doğu Akdeniz Türkiye için de çok büyük bir öneme sahipti. Güncel literatürün de onayladığı gibi, 1930‘lardan Ġtalya'nın teslim oluĢuna kadar, Ġtalya, Türkiye tarafından en büyük tehdit olarak algılandı ve Türkiye'nin askeri hazırlıkları olası bir Ġtalyan tehdidine göre yapıldı. Türkiye'nin Akdeniz ve Ege'deki toplam 4.400 km'yi geçen kıyı uzunluğu, eski ve zayıf donanması ve Türkiye'nin çok yakınında bulunan yabancı adalar Türkiye'nin savaĢın baĢından itibaren Akdeniz Bölgesi'ndeki güvenlik kaygılarını tetikleyen etmenler arasında olarak gösterilebilir. Sovyet arĢivlerinin açılması ve önemli ikincil vi kaynakların yanı sıra Ġngiliz istihbarat kayıtlarının yayınlanması sayesinde, artık Türkiye'nin savaĢın büyük güçleriyle olan iliĢkilerini daha iyi anlıyoruz. Bu araĢtırma doğrultusunda, bu tez, Ġngiltere'nin Akdeniz stratejisi ile Türkiye'nin savaĢa girmesi durumu arasındaki iliĢkiyi göstermeyi amaçlamaktadır. Anahtar Kelimeler: Ġkinci Dünya SavaĢı, Britanya, Türkiye, Akdeniz, SavaĢa Girme vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................... iv ÖZET ..................................................................................................................... vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ...................................................................................... viii CHAPTER I ............................................................................................................ 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Background and Objectives ............................................................................ 1 1.2 Historiography and Methodology ................................................................... 7 1.3 The Importance of the Mediterranean to Britain .............................................13 1.3.2 British Strategy for the Oncoming War in the Mediterranean ..................22 1.4 British Grand Strategy: the Necessities of Empire ..........................................31 CHAPTER II ..........................................................................................................38 TURKEY IN WWII AND ANGLO-TURKISH ALLIANCE ..................................38 2.1 Turkey‘s Condition before the War ................................................................38 2.2 Turkey and the Mediterranean .......................................................................46 2.3 The Anglo-Turkish Alliance at the Outbreak of the War ................................57 2.3.1 Britain Desires a Neutral Turkey Rather Than an Active Belligerent .......61 CHAPTER III .........................................................................................................68 BRITISH GRAND STRATEGY AND INTER-ALLIED DIVERGENCES ............68 3.1 Differences between American and British Strategies ....................................68 3.2 The Importance of the Soviet Union for the Anglo-American Strategy ..........75 3.3 Second Front: When and Where? ...................................................................80 CHAPTER IV .........................................................................................................99 BRITAIN AND TURKISH BELLIGERENCY .......................................................99 4.1 Churchill‘s role in the relations with Turkey ................................................ 102 4.2 Turning Tables: Stalingrad and the 2nd Battle of El Alamein ....................... 106 4.2.1 Adana Conference ................................................................................. 109 4.2.2 Dodecanese Campaign .......................................................................... 114 4.2.3 Second Cairo Conference ...................................................................... 118 4.3 Churchill‘s last ditch effort to actualize the Balkan front .............................. 120 viii CHAPTER V ........................................................................................................ 124 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................... 124 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................. 128 APPENDIX .......................................................................................................... 138 CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS ......................................................................... 138 ix CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background and Objectives Britain‘s imperial connection to the Mediterranean impacted her grand strategy. The opening of the Suez Canal significantly increased the Mediterranean‘s importance for Britain. The sea was Britain‘s main line of connection to her Far Eastern colonies. After the Great War, the growing importance of oil and Britain‘s own protectorates in North Africa and in Middle East added to the Mediterranean‘s importance. In the WWII, Italy was threatening Anglo-French authority in the Mediterranean region; therefore Britain followed an appeasement policy towards Italy hoping to isolate Germany. However the appeasement policy failed with the Italian invasion of Albania and with the fall of France in the summer 1940, Britain was left alone in the sea. Britain‘s past experiences and her imperialist approach to matters were the two main components which shaped the British grand strategy. The grand strategy is defined as the ―highest level of national statecraft that establishes how states, or other political units, prioritize and mobilize which military, diplomatic, political, economic, and other sources of power to ensure what they perceive as their interests.‖1 It was the British Empire‘s dire situation on the eve of WWII that had been affecting Britain‘s interests when it seemed as the Britain‘s ties 1 Paul van Hooft, Grand Strategy, Oxford Online Bibliographies, (2017). 1 to Canada, West Indies and Australia were reduced to a ―sentimental‖ connection under the growing US influence over the aforementioned countries.2 Turkey on the other hand, concerned with the upcoming war, was trying to secure alliances with the western democracies. However Turkey‘s enthusiasm could not instantly produce an alliance between Britain and Turkey. The aforementioned British policy of appeasement prevented Britain from establishing deep bilateral relations