Turkey's Middle Eastern policies were influenced by the founding of Israel and its becoming a significant actor in the Middle East relatively quickly. Turkey realized that Israel differed significantly from its Middle Eastern counterparts in several respects, one of the most essential of which was its economic structure. At the time of its foundation, Israel was a state with poor agricultural output potential as well as underground resources, and had a constant influx of immigrants. In sharp contrast to Israel's foreign-dependent situation in terms of agricultural products and raw materials, Turkey was capable of manufacturing many kinds of intermediate goods with the raw materials it imported from Europe. Turkey shortly realized that Israel was a state from which it could obtain intermediate goods and technological devices in return for agricultural products and raw materials. The discourse that the two states would complement each other in this way -and the partial fulfilment of it- caused relationships between the two states to develop rapidly. However, Turkey-Israel relations changed for worse following the year 1954 due to a change in the economic structures of both states, Israel's increased agricultural output capacity, the economic depression in Turkey, along with regional crises. From 1958 onwards, the two states came closer once again economically thanks to increased strategic alliance between them, which led to the trade agreement in March 1960, much broader than that of 1950. This study puts forward that one of the factors that drew Turkey and Israel together in spite of all the crises in the Middle East between 1948 and 1960 was economic considerations.
Turkey, Israel, Middle East, economy.
| Author : | Arda BAŞ |
|---|---|
| Number of pages: | 163-184 |
| DOI: | http://dx.doi.org/10.29228/TurkishStudies.22915 |
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