Turkey Book Talk #203Onur İşçi, associate professor of international relations at Kadir Has University, on his article “Turkey at a Crossroads: The Soviet Threat and Postwar Realignment, 1945-1946”, published in the journal Diplomatic History. 

The piece reexamines the years immediately after the Second World War, when Stalin’s Soviet Union made a series of military and territorial demands on Turkey, ultimately pushing Ankara to pursue Nato membership. The conversation also touches on the historic roots of Turkey’s present-day policy towards Moscow, combining cooperation and competition.

Read the article here.

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Check out Onur’s previous appearance on the podcast from March 2020.

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Turkey Book Talk episode #110  –  Onur İşçi, assistant professor at Ankara’s Bilkent University and director of its Centre for Russian Studies, on “Turkey and the Soviet Union during World War II: Diplomacy, Discord and International Relations” (IB Tauris/Bloomsbury).

The book counter-intuitively argues that the breakdown in Turkey-Soviet relations the Second World War and at the start of the Cold War was an anomaly in a 20th century in which Turkey and Russia in fact cooperated widely.

We also take the opportunity to address present-day Ankara-Moscow ties and the situation in Syria.

Download the episode or listen below.

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turkey and the soviet union

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