ABSTRACT
Adnan Menderes' Democratic party, which had ruled Turkey for a decade, was overthrown by a coup on May 27, 196o. His regime had alienated a great part of the country's etite, especially the urban middle class, many army officers, and the younger intellectuals, who by and large supported the Republican party. Many of the promises made in I 9 5o, when Menderes came to power, had not been kept: political life had not been liberalized, and the government had retreated from secularism, one of the basic principles of the modern Turkish State. The Democratic party had strong roots in the countryside, for the peasants had on the whole benefited from the regime; but ill-considered economic policies had caused galloping inflation and led eventually to an unofficial devaluation which severely affected the urban population. Following widespread student riots, troops were called in by Menderes to restore order, but the army command refused to use force against the demonstrators; instead, a group of officers under General Gtirsel, whose declared aim was to restore democracy, arrested Menderes and his closest collaborators and seized power. The new men were politically by no means a homogeneous body; some of them advocated a fully fledged military dictatorship on a Nasserist (or left-wing fascist) pattern. But in the tug-of-war that ensued, the upper hand was gained by those who stood for a compromise with the civilian establishment and for eventual reconciliation with the erstwhile supporters of Menderes. Conditions soon returned to normal; the elections of October 1961 were won by the Republican People's party, whose leader, Ismet Inonti, one of
The Neutralization of the Northern Tier
Atatiirk's closest collaborators, became once again prime minister.1* Under Menderes Turkey had collaborated closely with the
Western powers; having joined NATO in 1952, it was one of the original signatories of the Baghdad Pact (subsequently CENTO). As the second world war ended, Turkey found itself under great pressure from the Soviet Union, which had demonstratively revoked the 1925 Soviet-Turkish treaty of neutrality and non-aggression; Moscow also demanded a revision of the Montreux Convention governing the Straits and claimed the Turkish provinces of Kars and Ardahan. After Stalin's death the Soviet leaders decided to revise their attitude towards Turkey. The governments of the Georgian and Armenian Soviet Republics renounced their territorial claims and Khrushchev admitted in a speech in the Supreme Soviet that 'we cannot say that this [the deterioration in relations between the two countries] occurred solely because of Turkey's fault .. .'.2
