World view

Our foreign service

by Prof. Dr. Türkkaya ATAÖV

In the opinion of many, the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, founded some eight-and-a-half decades ago, has been professionally responsible for the guardianship of the nation’s interests abroad, instantly reactive to the vicissitudes in international affairs, and dedicatedly firm in the face of hardships. Many high-principled obligations and commensurate authorities have been thrust on its shoulders at several moments of crisis. Oftentimes, these were not moments at all, but years passed under diplomatic stress or during which blood was being shed near to or far away from our borders. There have been occasions when the Ministry’s policies influenced international relations well beyond our national frontiers. Its timely warnings of approaching storms and its leadership in initiatives designed to prevent them are now among the proud annals of history. For instance, Turkey’s courageous pursuits in the former League of Nations and in some European capitals, principally of the Balkan states, are chronicles of much-needed rationality and peace.   

Spirit of Lausanne

This skilled journey of dedication started at the beginning of our unforgettable War of National Liberation in the early 1920s. It climbed to its first peak of success with the legendary Lausanne Convention, where the nation’s brilliant foreign minister, İsmet İnönü, shook the traditionalist European diplomats and statesmen with his resolute spirit and devotion to the rights of all states medium-sized or small - and not only the great powers. At first, some former Ottoman officials, then hovering around the leading European cities, ventured to offer their expertise to the Turkish Delegation in Lausanne but, upon observing İnönü’s straightforward and able stance, they admitted that the “old guard” now had nothing to contribute to this new unequivocal approach. Like the other Europeans, they also witnessed that although Britain’s Lord Curzon deployed all his eloquent English against Turkey’s İsmet Paşa, the latter was totally unmoved.

Under the able direction of the great Atatürk himself and his new foreign minister Dr. Tevfik Rüştü Aras, Turkey became the leading spirit in regional organisations, such as the Balkan Entente of 1934, which Ankara’s diplomacy sought to create bulwarks against rising fascism in Europe and its expansionist policies. The Balkan Conference, which met in Istanbul in 1931, was addressed by President Atatürk and Prime Minister İnönü, but Foreign Minister Aras and his able staff also laboured in all meetings to conciliate conflicting opinions. Likewise, Turkey went out of its way to discourage aggression in Ethiopia and minimise its devastating consequences. The Balkan Pact was a regional arrangement like the Little Entente and the Baltic Pact, all of which aroused resentment in Bulgaria and Hungary, then revisionist states. Had these two European countries joined hands with Turkish diplomacy in time, the unprecedented horrors of the Second World War and their own sad experiences in it could have been avoided.           

The gathering storm of those days added urgency to the need to militarise the Turkish Straits, a wound left over from Lausanne. In view of Germany’s unilateral remilitarization of the Rhineland and other similar acts, Turkey could have also pursued the fait accompli option, which would have met with understanding under the circumstances of the day. But Turkish diplomacy preferred to secure an agreement through an international conference, and certainly scored a moral success by becoming the first state to utilise legal means for the revision of a post-war treaty. Turkey had advocated collective security and consistently practised peaceful change for the settlement of disputes. It was a member of the League of Nations, and did not wish to undermine its system. The Lausanne signatories met in Montreux and altered the Straits regime to the satisfaction of the Turks.

Hot and cold wars

During the Second World War, Turkish diplomacy consistently preferred the Allies to the Axis. Beginning with Turkey’s treaty with Britain and France in 1939, and throughout the entire war period, there was no question where Turkey’s sympathies lay. The question had always been how far the country’s diplomacy could express its sympathies without involving the country in disaster. The Turkish government of the time and its foreign service did not commit a single miscalculation that might have embroiled Turkey in the world conflict and turned it into a battlefield. Aside from Turkey’s interests, such a chain reaction would have benefited nobody. Turkish diplomacy rendered great services to the Allies even during their darkest days. Adequate evidence is to be found in the published memoirs of Ankara’s leading foreign ambassadors of the war years - Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, Franz von Papen and René Massigli.

Having eventually declared war on the Axis, Turkey became one of the original founders of the United Nations and served on its leading organs, including the Security Council. Turkey’s role during the turbulent Cold War decades and its stature in the decade following the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union are episodes that are still hot off the fire, and must cool before a reliable evaluation can be made. The issues under discussion include the exact description of the Turkish identity. Although this current topic deserves a separate and exclusive treatment, one may safely state that the Turks are Asian by virtue of their origin and the bulk of their territory, but also Middle Eastern, Eastern Mediterranean and predominantly Muslim. At the same time, they are also a Black Sea and a Balkan power on the basis of their long coast and territory. Last but not least, they unmistakably belong to Europe as well given their considerable territory on that continent, their long heritage of amalgamation into Europe’s history and diplomacy, their social and political institutions derived from common principles and legal framework, and finally through their millions of citizens living and working for generations in various European countries.

Names to remember

Leaving some of these challenging topics for discussion in future articles, it seems appropriate to recall that foreign associates agree on the high quality of our diplomats. The names of Ambassadors Numan Menemencioğlu, Cevat Açıkalın and Hasan Esat Işık glittered like stars in the diplomatic life of a former era. In a sense, these were not exceptions. Academic preparedness, seriousness of purpose and hard work have been the trademark of our diplomatic personnel.

For more than four decades, I personally taught, along with other colleagues, various aspects of international relations at the Faculty of Political Science of Ankara University, the faculty which traditionally trained our future diplomatic representatives. For more than three decades, almost all of these representatives were our former students. Starting as third secretaries, they gradually moved up the ranks, in many cases putting in brilliant service as chiefs of mission.

There are many outstanding examples. Filiz Dinçmen, the first lady ambassador, for example, distinguished herself as a diplomat who always made the right decisions on her own. İnal Batu, our one-time representative at the U.N. and now a significant figure in domestic politics, was also an excellent public relations man whose frequent and lengthy commentaries appeared in the pages of The New York Times and other widely-read foreign ’papers. I remember with nostalgia his support of my two press conferences in the U.N. building.

Some personal recollections

I had the pleasure of working closely with many of these diplomats in various places. When I stopped in New Delhi, my favourite city, on the way back from a Kurt Waldheim mission in Sri Lanka, our Ambassador in the Indian capital A. H. Alp detained me there for eleven days for a series of talks. This is how he surprised me with the news: “Your first talk is at the J. Nehru University tomorrow morning; you may cross over to my library immediately to write the text.” When I was attending the European Security and Cooperation sessions in Moscow, our Ambassador in Bern, Onur Öymen, sent me a message asking me to come to Germany to attend an international conference in which PKK militants were apparently the moving spirit. I made my speech and left, and only found out later that the militants had brought (this time, not bullets but) rotten tomatoes to launch at me. When a Paris court twice called me, in 1884 and 1985, to make statements in the trials of the Armenian terrorists, it was our Embassy in the French capital that provided the bullet-proof cars...

These are only a very small fraction of the memories which I have amassed in conjunction with the work of our illustrious foreign service – some casual sprinklings; the tip of the iceberg. A complete account would make a whole book of memoirs. Nevertheless, I must recognise here my long association with two outstanding patriots, Ambassadors Erhan Tunçel and Erhan Yiğitbaşıoğlu. They were modest and unpretentious, but self-sacrificing, creative and hard-working.

Let us hope that the Ministry continues to live up to its proud traditions, and that its members go on achieving the standards set by their luminary predecessors.