Turkey and Soviet Union relations during Khrushchev Era: Between conflict and collaboration

In the early 20th centuries have new beginning in the two states histories that are neighbors for centuries. The Soviet Union in 1917, the Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923. History of bilateral relations began to support each other. But when Stalin came to power and due to Soviet demands on Eastern Anatolian territory and military bases on the Straits the relations were disrupted. During this period the world was divided into two poles as East-West under the leadership of the USSR and the USA. After the Second World War Turkey had taken place with the USA in the Western bloc that could not overcome alone with the Soviet Union demands. Khrushchev had taken power with the death of Stalin and begun to criticize the Stalin's policies. In this context, Soviet Union announced that they withdrew the above-mentioned demands from Turkey in 30 May 1953. However, Soviet efforts to improve the relations with Turkey could not meet expectations that were expected because of Turkey's bloc politics for that period. In this study, under Khrushchev leadership the USSR-Turkey relations are studied in details between the years 1953-1964. Due to there were any direct diplomatic relations Soviet Union-Turkey relations are evaluated over the USSR-USA and Turkey-USA relations. Turkey has been included in the USA containment policy during this period and has been involved in the establishment of the Balkan and the Baghdad Pact. Military bases in Turkey, placing the Jupiter missiles to those bases; killing of USA's spy plane U2 that took of firstly from Turkey, Incirlik military air base, when it was spying on Soviet lands and Cuban Missile Crisis have been retaliatory factors affecting the relations negatively. Khrushchev's leadership, which is the hallmark of Soviet foreign policy in the process of 'peaceful coexistence' principle, has been reflected in the relations with Turkey, led to the normalization of relations.