Foreign Policy of the Republic of Turkey on the Eve of World War II in the Publications of Modern Turkish Researchers

Abstract

The article is devoted to the assessment by modern Turkish researchers of the foreign policy of the Republic of Turkey on the eve of the Second World War. Therefore, in assessing the interwar period of Soviet-Turkish relations, there is a consensus between the “old” and “new” Turkish historiography, although some researchers note Ankara's desire to preserve a positive image of the USSR in the eyes of Turkish public opinion at all stages of Soviet-Turkish relations in the 1920s and 1940s. Today, Turkish historians turn their attention to the desire of the Turkish Republic to avoid war and to create a collective security system in the Eastern Mediterranean with the help of the European powers. In Turkish studies, the position of the USSR looks provocative, since it is the Soviet Union is considered to be the culprit for the fact that a similar system was not extended to the Black Sea region. Turkish historians prefer not to focus on the fact that wishing to conclude a double agreement with the USSR and the Anglo-French alliance, Turkey itself sought to avoid entering the war, but admit that at the Moscow negotiations in 1939 the USSR defended its interests, and the Molotov Pact –Ribbentrop was the result of European politics. The Ankara agreement of 1939 is interpreted as the result of unsuccessful Moscow negotiations, but the agreement itself is seen as in the interests of Turkey. Such views are associated with the desire of some Turkish researchers to revise a number of existing concepts.