The Perception of The Turkish Policy Makers Towards to Middle East: 1957-1958 Crisis

The purpose of this study is to reveal the views of the Democrat Party leader Adnan Menderes and other prominent party members on the Middle East through analyzing the events in Syria and Iraq. The Democrat Party followed the same foreign policy principles of the predecessor founding power while it also attempted to carry out a more active diplomacy. In the first days of his rule, Menderes put the NATO membership issue as the main objective of his foreign policy, but after the country became a NATO member in 1952, Menderes tried to strengthen his influence under the Western security umbrella by starting cooperating with the regimes in the Middle East. In the same period, the effects of the rising Nasserism in the Middle East pushed Turkey to see its southern borders as a threat. For instance, Turkey experienced facing serious crises with the possibility to confront with both Syria and Iraq while the regimes in the two countries were changed in favor of the Soviets and Nasser. In this study, the perception of the Democrat Party decision makers towards the Middle East will be examined via using the discourse analysis method and its reflections on the Turkish foreign politics