Turkish - American Relations
Turkish - American Relations

Summary/Abstract: I came fresh out of a graduate school at Harvard to Washington in 1950 and soon found myself working on Turkey. I remember the elation in the foreign affairs establishment when Turkey joined NATO in 1951. This was the natural culmination of the Truman Doctrine enunciated in 1947. Turkey, which had sent a brigade to fight in Korea, was already seen as one of the bulwarks of the West against communist expansionism. Turkish soldiers were fighting well in Korea. Turkish- American relations remained warm throughout the 1950s and Turkey benefited from both military and economic aid. I took a job as head of an aid project in Turkey in 1958 and went to Ankara with my family to live. Thrilled as I was to be in Turkey, it quickly became evident to me that the Menderes government was faltering. Many of us younger officers connected with the Embassy made friends among journalists and academics who had become critical of Menderes and were sympathetic to Inonu’s RPP, but Ambassador Fletcher Warren did not permit us to report what they told us to Washington. Sometimes we went to gatherings of opposition people without the ambassador’s knowledge. The ambassador and his senior staff did not want to recognize that Menderes was falling into deep trouble.

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