PSI 302 – W4

THE 1970s
• Foreign policy principle in the 70s: “multicentered
foreign policy” continued, but was interrupted b/w 71-73,
some emphasis on history and geography (by Ecevit).
• Foreign policy-makers: government and the military.
• Important individuals: Bülent Ecevit (PM) (at the center
of DM process), Turan Güneş (FM), Necmettin Erbakan
(MSP leader), İ. Sabri Çağlayangil (FM), Süleyman
Demirel (PM).
• Foreign policy practices: Opium affair, 1974 Cyprus
intervention, US arms embargo, TR-GR conflicts, (also
1973 global oil crisis).

1
• 1971 Coup: In the early 1970s, the main focus in
Turkey was on domestic problems, the Demirel
government was forced to resign by a military
intervention on 12 March 1971.
• For the next 2,5 years, Turkey was governed by
a series of weak governments that followed the
off-stage directions of the military chiefs.
• It is generally argued that the military
intervention was an entirely home-grown event
and that the US did not play any part in bringing
it about (although the Nixon administration was
quite supportive of the semi-military regime
once it was established).

2
• Opium affair: During 1971-3, the main bone of
contention in Turkey's foreign relations was a dispute
with the USA over the cultivation of the opium poppy,
which was an important source of income for some
Turkish farmers, grown especially in Afyon.
• Opium had been grown legally in Turkey for many years,
since it was an important ingredient in legal pain-killing
drugs.
• However, the Nixon administration was extremely
concerned by the growth of heroin addiction in the US in
the 1970s and sought to ban opium cultivation in Turkey,
to prevent diversion into the illegal market.
• In June 1971, the semi-­military government under Nihat
Erim yielded to American pressure, by agreeing to
implement a ban on production, to begin in the autumn
1972.

3
• This move led to popular opposition, on the
grounds that Turkey sacrificed an important source
of legitimate income, merely to please the United
States.
• Eventually, in July 1974, the succeeding civilian
government under Bülent Ecevit revoked the ban,
and implemented measures to prevent diversion of
opium into the illegal market.
• These measures were accepted in Washington: in
fact the Ford administration encouraged the
government in taking these measures, and the
dispute was thus laid to rest.

4
• Turkey returned to civilian government in 1974
with two new actors on the political stage:
• 1)In May 1972, Bülent Ecevit unexpectedly
captured the leadership of the CHP from İsmet
İnönü, and then attempted to turn the party into
a “social democrat party” on the western
European model, while retaining the commitment
to Kemalist secularism and espousing the idea of
a more independent foreign policy within NATO.
• 2)Meanwhile, Turkey's first Islamist party
emerged, in the shape of the National Salvation
Party (MSP) led by Necmettin Erbakan.

5
• The MSP had strong anti-western views, little in the
way of a developed foreign policy apart from a
strongly nationalist outlook.
• A coalition government of these two parties was
formed in January 1974.
Cyprus Crisis 1974
• Five months later, it faced the most severe foreign
policy test encountered by any Turkish government
since the late 1940s, when the Greek military junta
tried to oust Makarios and to unite Greece with
Cyprus.
• In 1968, negotiations on a new constitution had
already begun between Glafkos Klerides, and Rauf
Denktaş, but they broke down in 1973 since Greek
Cypriots did not accept a settlement ruling out enosis.
6
• In November 1973, Colonel Demetrios Ioannides,
(who was hostile to Makarios and committed to
enosis) replaced Colonel Georgos Papadopoulos
as the head of the Athens junta.
• In the same year, following the death of Colonel
Georgos Grivas in Cyprus, the reconstructed junta
took over full control of the Greek Cypriot National
Guard and EOKA-B (the extremist successor to the
EOKA terrorist organization of the 1950s).
• This produced a sharp reaction from Makarios and
he demanded from the Greek president General
Gizikis, immediate withdrawal of the 650 mainland
Greek officers in the National Guard.
7
• The Athens junta responded on 15 July
1974, when Makarios was deposed by the
National Guard and EOKA-B, to be
replaced by Nikos Samson.
• Sampson was the worst possible choice
from every viewpoint, since he had no
support in Cyprus and was notorious for his
killings in EOKA's campaign against the
British in the 1950s, not to mention his
hatred of the Turks.

8
• As co-guarantors of Cyprus' independence, the British
were against military action, since
• 1) there were thousands of British tourists and residents
on the island who would have been vulnerable to
retaliation by the Greeks, and
• 2) the maintenance of the British bases was dependent
on cooperation from the Greek Cypriots.
• The British tried to save Makarios, who was transported
to London via the British base at Akrotiri.
• President Nixon was embroiled in the Watergate scandal,
while his SoS Henry Kissinger was preoccupied with the
Middle East, following the Arab-Israeli war of October
1973.
• Hence the United States failed to take strong action to
defuse the crisis until it was too late.
• This left Turkey as the sole regional power that was likely
to take a strong stand. 9
• The Cypriot events of 15 July 1974 caught
Ecevit's government by surprise.
• Ecevit’s gov’t was committed to some sort of
federal solution, and opposed the return of
Makarios.
• In the conditions of the time, federation would
have been difficult to apply in Cyprus, since the
Turkish Cypriots did not inhabit a single stretch of
territory but were scattered in pockets (or ghettos)
around the island, complicating the military
problem of protecting them.
• On the other hand, Turkey now had sufficient
landing-craft and other equipment to carry out a
successful invasion of Cyprus, provided that it was
not physically opposed by Britain or the United
States.
10
• The expectation that this would not happen was
a crucial factor in convincing Turkey that it could
go ahead with the invasion if it were necessary.
• The Ecevit government also realized that it might
provoke a war with Greece, but calculated that it
could take this risk.
• Turkey would base its action on Article 4 of the
1960 Treaty of Guarantee, although this allowed
it to intervene only after consulting with the other
guarantor powers, and with the sole aim of re-
establishing the state of affairs set up by the
treaty - that is, the independence and territorial
integrity of Cyprus.

11
• On 16 July, Ecevit held a meeting with his military
commanders in the MGK, it was decided to carry out
preparations for a landing, to be launched on 20 July.
• According to the military planning, the operation would be
completed in two stages.
• 1)In the first stage, Turkish forces would secure a
bridgehead in the northern part of the island, after which
negotiations would begin for a new constitutional
settlement.
• 2)If the Greeks refused this, then a second advance would
be ordered to gain sufficient territory where the Turkish
Cypriots could be settled for their security.
• Prior to the first operation, Turkey had to first consult with
the British for a diplomatic solution, though Ecevit was not
hopeful that this could be achieved.

12
• The idea of a military intervention was
strongly supported by Erbakan.
• In private, Demirel attacked the proposal,
on the grounds that it could provoke a war
with Greece.
• Demirel argued that even if Turkey
occupied Cyprus or part of it, global actors
might restore Makarios to power and the
Turks would be left in a worse condition.
• However, his party's parliamentary group
later gave full support to military
intervention.
13
• On 17 July 1974, Ecevit flew to London for
emergency meetings with the British gov’t.
• However, as he had expected, he was unable to
persuade them to take joint action (by allowing
Turkish forces to operate from the British bases).
• (Meanwhile, Nixon's Undersecretary of State
Joseph Sisco also arrived in London for
mediation, but he failed.)
• The First Offensive: Neither Sisco, nor Kissinger
nor the British could persuade Ecevit to cancel the
invasion, which was launched in the early morning
of 20 July.
• Britain and the US did not prevent it, and Soviet
government was prepared to accept a limited
Turkish intervention (provided the independence
of Cyprus were preserved).
14
• A cease-fire was agreed to on 22 July
through Resolution no. 353 of the UN
Security Council, at that time Turkish forces
held a small triangle of territory in the north
of the island.
• This still left about 50,000-60,000 Turkish
Cypriots (about half the Turkish Cypriot
population) outside Turkish protection.
• It fell short of what the Turkish military had
planned to achieve during the first two days.
• Turkish Cypriot areas outside the northern
triangle were still surrounded by the Greek
National Guard and were in grave danger.
15
• Immediately after the Turkish landings on 20 July,
the Greek government decided in principle to
declare war on Turkey, and on the following day it
demanded that the Greek army should attack the
Turks directly across the river Maritsa in Thrace.
• The Greek armed forces were quite unprepared for
such an operation and the military regime fell apart
(end of junta in GR).
• On 23 July, Konstantinos Karamanlis was called
back from exile to establish a civilian government in
Athens.
• Simultaneously, Sampson fell from power in
Cyprus, and Glafkos Klerides was made head of a
provisional Greek Cypriot gov’t on 24 July.
16
• Peace talks between Britain, Turkey and the new Greek
government opened in Geneva on 25 July.
• By 29 July they had reached a deadlock, but at that point
Kissinger persuaded Ecevit that acceptance of Resolution
353 did not mean that Turkey would have to withdraw its
forces immediately, and the parties signed a joint
declaration on the following day.
• This represented a considerable success for Turkey.
• 1) It confirmed the joint acceptance of a military
intervention and the establishment of buffer zones between
the two sides,
• 2) it linked the withdrawal of Turkish forces to the
achievement of 'a just and lasting solution acceptable to all
parties concerned'
• 3)and noted 'the existence of two autonomous
administrations' on the island - an implicit recognition that
the former unitary republic could not be restored. 17
• The British, Greek and Turkish delegations, which
were later joined by Klerides and Denktaş, met in
Geneva on 9 August, supposedly to work out the
basis of a new constitutional settlement.
• The need to secure Turkish Cypriots outside the
triangle was an important objective for the Turks.
• However, by the time the second Geneva
conference began, the two sides had dug
themselves into irreconcilable positions.
• On the Turkish side, Erbakan wanted partition of
Cyprus and was persuaded by Ecevit to accept the
principle of an “independent Cypriot state only on
the basis of a federation of the two communities”.
18
• On 10 August, at Geneva, Denktaş put forward
proposals for a bi-zonal federation, with a Turkish
state in the north of the island.
• Under American pressure the Ankara government
agreed two days later to what was known as the
'cantonal' plan, under which the Turkish Cypriots
would be given six separate cantons, around
existing settlements, within a federal structure, as
an alternative.
• Some sort of federal solution was favoured by both
Kissinger and James Callaghan, the British
Foreign Secretary.
• When the Turkish FM Turan Güneş put the bi-
zonal and cantonal plans to him on 13 August,
Klerides asked for a 48-hour recess to consider
the proposals.
19
• The Second Offensive: This was refused by Güneş, and
the next day Turkish forces began a second advance, which
effectively sectioned off the northern part of the island, from
Kokkina in the west to Famagusta in the east.
• Neither Britain or the United States took any effective action
to halt the second Turkish advance.
• When Klerides asked the Soviets at Geneva for a limited
Russian military presence in Cyprus, he was asked whether
this had been cleared with the Americans.
• Although Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots were still
committed in principle to maintaining an independent
federal Cypriot state, the island was in practice partitioned
(as some Turks argued it had been since 1963--4) with the
Turkey controlling about 36 per cent of its territory.
• About 150,000 Greek Cypriots were forced to flee as
refugees to the south, while the 120,000 Turkish Cypriots
regrouped in the north, completing the physical division.
20
• After the second Turkish advance, Ecevit
expected that the Greek side would come back to
the negotiating table, but the Greeks solidly
refused to return to Geneva.
• Turkey had a clear military superiority in Cyprus,
but could not convert this into political influence,
so as to gain a Cyprus settlement in accordance
with its own objectives.
• Ecevit enjoyed international support at the time of
the first landings, but somehow lost it with the
second offensive.
• He also had difficulties in persuading Erbakan to
negotiate and this was one of the main factors
leading to his resignation on 7 November 1974.
21
• In February 1975, Rauf Denktaş proclaimed the
'Turkish Federated State of Cyprus' (Kıbrıs Türk
Federe Devleti) in the north, but this move was
unrecognized by any state except Turkey.
• On 28 April 1975, inter-communal negotiations
began in Vienna under UN auspices.
• No real progress until 12 February 1977, when
Makarios and Denktaş agreed to four important
guidelines on which future negotiations would
proceed.
• For Makarios, this included the important
concession that: 'We are seeking an
1)independent, 2)non-aligned, 3)bi-communal
4)Federal Republic.' 22
• The two sides also agreed to discuss what were called the
'three freedoms' –
• 1)freedom of movement between the two parts of the
island,
• 2)freedom of settlement and
• 3)the right to own property in either part - 'taking into
consideration the fundamental basis of a bi-communal
federal system'.
• However, no result was achieved.
• Spyros Kyprianou became Greek Cypriot president in
1977, but the two sides could not agree on the powers of
the central government and constituent states, or the
geographical division between the two.
• Hence the inter-communal negotiations dragged on
fruitlessly, as Cyprus was overtaken on the list of Turkey's
concerns by far more pressing domestic problems.
23
 Relations with Greece
• While the Cyprus dispute continued during the 1970s,
relations between Greece and Turkey became further
embittered by bilateral conflicts.
• Of these, the most acute related to offshore mineral rights
in the Aegean.
• Continental Shelf problem: As a signatory to the
Geneva Convention on the Continental Shelf (1958),
(which grants coastal states rights to seabed resources at
a depth of less than 200 metres contiguous to their
coasts) Greece claimed exclusive offshore mineral rights
to about 2/3 of the Aegean, since Greek islands extend to
within a few miles of the coast of Turkey.
• Exploration licences to search for oil were granted by
Greece in 1970, and a small commercial oil find was
made near the northern island of Thassos in 1974.

24
• The Greek claim was rejected by Turkey, which
suggested
• 1)the division of resources by a median line down the
middle of the Aegean, or
• 2)joint exploration and production by the two
countries.
• Conflict erupted in May 1974, when Turkey sent a
survey ship into areas claimed by Greece, but did not
continue so long due to the events in Cyprus later
that year.
• After a second incident in July-August 1976, Greece
made unsuccessful appeals on this issue to the UN
Security Council and the International Court of The
Hague. It tried to internationalize the issue.
• The dispute then subsided, although it remained
unsettled, as Greece argued that it should be
submitted for adjudication by the International Court,
while Turkey preferred bilateral negotiations. 25
• In Turkey, the conflict did not present economic importance (the oil resources
of the Aegean are limited) but strategic claims to seabed resources might be
converted into claims to sovereignty over the adjacent sea and air space.

• Territorial Waters problem: Greece claimed the right to extend its territorial
waters from the present 6 miles to the internationally recognized norm of 12
miles.

• Given the large number of Greek islands, this would give Greece control of
about 64 per cent of the Aegean, compared with about l 0 per cent for
Turkey.

• Turkey concluded that they would be vulnerable to total enclosure by

Greece. Increasing territorial waters to 12 miles was considered “casus belli”
(reason of war) by Turkey.

• (De)militarization of the Islands problem: The Greeks fortified their Aegean

islands, in spite of the demilitarization required by the Lausanne Treaty.

• In 1975 Turkey reconstructed its Fourth Army as an 'Army of the Aegean‘.

• Minorities problem: Other disputes centred on the rights of the Turkish-
Muslim minority in Thrace and the greatly depleted Greek community in
Istanbul, as well as flight control rights in the Aegean.
• None of these conflicts are or were insoluble (indeed, the flight control dispute
was settled in 1980) but they further embittered historical rivalries between the
two states and added to the problems created by Cyprus. 26
• The Cyprus crisis of 1974 also had important
effects on Turkey's relations with the United
States:
• Arms embargo: Until this time, ethnic politics in
Washington had not played a decisive role in the
relationship, but in September 1975, a powerful
pro-Greek lobby in Congress secured the
passage of a resolution banning military sales
and aid to Turkey until the President could show
that substantial progress had been registered
towards a settlement of the Cyprus problem.
• The fact that there were an estimated 1.25 million
Greek-Americans at the time, compared with only
54,000 Turkish-Americans, gave the Greeks a
clear advantage on this issue.

27
• The ban was opposed by Ford and Kissinger, but it
nonetheless came into effect on 5 February 1975.
• In response, Demirel's government suspended the
Defence Cooperation Agreement of 1969, and in July
1975 ended all operations at all US facilities in
Turkey, other than those deemed to have a purely
NATO function.
• This had a serious effect in curtailing America's ability
to monitor Soviet troop movements, as well as missile
and underground nuclear tests in the southern region of
the USSR, which depended on the use of radar
and other facilities on Turkish soil.
• In fact, the signs are that the embargo had at least as
damaging an effect on American military capabilities as
on those of Turkey.

28
• In October 1975, under strong pressure from the
Ford administration, Congress agreed to a partial
lifting of the embargo, by limiting it to supplies
covered by grants and deferred credit sales.
• Turkey was in any case able to circumvent US
restrictions by buying supplies from other NATO
countries, such as Italy and Germany.
• Turkish armed forces were seriously short of
modern equipment by the late 1970s, but this was
not just due to the arms embargo, but also poor
financial condition in Turkey and the shortage of
foreign exchange.

29
• The embargo was completely lifted by Congress
in August 1978, allowing reopening of the major
US facilities in the following October 1978.
• In view of the sharp public reaction in Turkey to
the 'Johnson letter' of 1964, it is perhaps
surprising that the arms embargo of 1975-8 had
comparatively little political effect.
• There were no massive demonstrations against
the United States, such as might have been
expected, and public comment was relatively
restrained.
• After becoming PM in 1978, Bülent Ecevit began
to suggest that Turkey might pull out of NATO if
the embargo were not lifted, causing
consternation in Washington. 30
• However, in fact there were no moves to withdraw Turkey
from NATO's military structures, as Greece and France
had done.
• The fact that the catharsis in US-Turkish relations had
already been passed in the 1960s may have played a part
in this, but the knowledge that opinions in Washington were
divided also moderated Turkish reactions.
• Not only did the Ford administration clearly oppose the
embargo, but Jimmy Carter (the successful candidate in
the 1976 presidential elections) also changed his position
on this issue.
• During the election campaign, he had indulged in some
pro-Greek rhetoric, but after his inauguration he rapidly
reversed his stance, in line with military and diplomatic
opinion, and supported the total and unconditional
lifting of the embargo in 1978.
• Lastly, the arms embargo did not have any effect in
softening Turkish policies on Cyprus, but it may have
moderated anti-American feelings in Greece.
31
 CONSEQUENCES OF THE CYPRUS
INTERVENTION
• 1) Restored the image of the Turkish
military in Turkey after the 1971 coup,
• 2)Led to tension in the TR-US relationship,
• 3)Severed relations b/w TR and GR over
the Aegean issues,
• 4)Cyprus issue could not be resolved via
IL and still remains as a deadlock.

32