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Smokestacks and Pipelines.
@Onur_Isci_ and I have written an article that argues for an economic approach to Turkish-Russian relations over the past
years and engages with recent discussions of economic development and the Global Cold War. (1/9) https://academic.oup.com/dh/article/doi/10.1093/dh/dhaa046/5864174
@Onur_Isci_ and I have written an article that argues for an economic approach to Turkish-Russian relations over the past
years and engages with recent discussions of economic development and the Global Cold War. (1/9) https://academic.oup.com/dh/article/doi/10.1093/dh/dhaa046/5864174
We begin with Aleksei Kosygin’s 1975 visit to the massive, Soviet-built steelworks in İskenderun, pictured below. Our central argument is that Moscow’s and Ankara’s interactions have long been defined by a shared desire to overcome under-development relative to the West (2/9)
Turkey was a NATO member in 1975 and we acknowledge significant divergence of interests. But we ask: given the often-cited history of Russo-Ottoman conflict, why have the post-imperial states that reconstituted themselves in Moscow and Ankara avoided conflict for a century? (3/9)
Clashes between tsars and sultans offers an attractive way to frame historical narratives, but 1919-1920 is the moment to begin any narrative of these two states’ relations. That year, Turkey joined Russia in challenging the post-World War I international order. (4/9)
Turkey was unambiguously pro-Western between 1945 and 1957, but it is a mistake to take this period as the norm. Although Soviet-Turkish hostility during WWII drove Turkey into NATO, tensions w/West in the 1960s saw Turkey return to balancing the West & the USSR. (5/9)
Like many non-aligned countries, Turkey received Soviet aid in the 1960s/1970s (projects in İskenderun, Aliağa, etc.). The photos below show Turkey’s first aluminum plant in Seydişehir and Celil Vayısoğlu visiting the Ordzhonikidze factory in Moscow in 1967. (6/9)
The most significant Soviet-Turkish agreement came a year after the USSR signed a similar agreement with India, and Turkey fits into the story of development/Global Cold War that @oawestad, @ArtemyMK, @timothynunan @erezmanela @stephenmacekura and others have told so well. (7/9)
But Soviet engineers were in Kayseri in the 1930s and their Russian successors are in Akkuyu today. Russian-Turkish cooperation's long arc demonstrates that the drive to catch up with the West fed the Soviet development politics of the Cold War but was not subsumed by them. (8/9)
We had to squeeze a ton into 26 pages and cut a lot of footnotes and with them the acknowledgement of many debts. But some of the people who gave us feedback on the manuscript are on Twitter – thanks @M_E_Hoffman, @crmiller1, and @gheorghe_eliza!
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