ABSTRACT
In September 1954, when Menderes asked Nasser for a meeting, the reply was that public opinion was not ripe for an immediate contact. Menderes then suggested that he should visit Cairo in November, and the following month Nasser should visit Ankara, but the Egyptian government again asked for postponements. In view of Nasser’s refusal to meet Menderes and of the unlikelihood of any rapid progress being made in persuading the Arab states to join a defence arrangement, the Turkish government made a Turco-Iraqi defence agreement its immediate objective, and Menderes decided to visit Baghdad in January 1955.1 However, according to Bowker, Menderes’s motives were mixed. In the first place, there was genuine concern for Turkey’s right flank in any war with Russia, and the urgent desire to continue the work begun with the Turco-Pakistani Agreement of filling in the gaps in the line from the Turkish frontier eastwards. Second, however, the deterioration in Turkey’s internal and external economic position made it necessary that Menderes’s government should establish itself in American eyes as the most effective instrument for bringing about the realization of the northern tier concept and, as the corollary to this, establish the impossibility of the United States allowing the economic collapse of so valuable an ally. Third, the Turkish government was most concerned to see Britain maintain her military position in the Middle East and in Iraq particularly. Menderes was therefore willing that a Turco-Iraqi agreement should provide the means for revising the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1930. His aim was to conclude an arrangement in line with the northern tier project, and to bring the Iraqis to sign a bilateral Turco-Iraqi pact on lines similar to the Turco-Pakistani Agreement, since Nuri Said had mentioned rather casually at the end of his Istanbul visit in October 1954 that if the Turks wanted to sign a bilateral agreement, he would be prepared to consider it.2
