AHC: Turkey not in NATO

whitecrow

Banned
Is there anyway Turkey could've never been a member of NATO (not counting scenarios where it becomes a communist puppet of the USSR)?

OTL Turkey and Greece were admitted in at the same time so as not to piss off one of them. Maybe an ATL Turkish administration makes it clear they'll NEVER be member of the same organization as Greece and Western powers give up on Turkey and instead admit Greece in alone?
 
Could Turkey be Finlandized the same way Finland was? If so, then that might work. Alternatively, the Soviets would be wise not to pursue their claims for a warm water port in Turkish waters in exchange for Turkish neutrality in the Cold War. No Turkish membership in NATO means no need for the USA to put nukes in Turkish soil, which would butterfly the Cuban missile crisis.
 

whitecrow

Banned
Here is another possibility: could Turky's government in 1950-1960 fall to a coup so common to its Arab neighbors at the time and replaced by an anti-U.S., anti-Israel, Soviet-freindly (but not communist) government? It wouldn't wanto to be part of NATO, it would be pro-Soviet but would not be a Soviet puppet any more than Saddam Hussein's Iraq was. Does that sound plausible?
 
Only if there is no NATO. So...

May I present the President of the United States
220px-Robert_a_taft.jpg
 
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OTL Turkey and Greece were admitted in at the same time so as not to piss off one of them. Maybe an ATL Turkish administration makes it clear they'll NEVER be member of the same organization as Greece and Western powers give up on Turkey and instead admit Greece in alone?

Given the importance of Turkey to the USSR, I think there's a strong possibility that if NATO had to make the choice, they would ditch Greece, and take Turkey.

Or they might admit one, and launch a coup in the other.
 

whitecrow

Banned
Given the importance of Turkey to the USSR, I think there's a strong possibility that if NATO had to make the choice, they would ditch Greece, and take Turkey.

Or they might admit one, and launch a coup in the other.
Well, if West dicks around with its politics too much, is there any chance of something like this happening:
Here is another possibility: could Turky's government in 1950-1960 fall to a coup so common to its Arab neighbors at the time and replaced by an anti-U.S., anti-Israel, Soviet-freindly (but not communist) government? It wouldn't wanto to be part of NATO, it would be pro-Soviet but would not be a Soviet puppet any more than Saddam Hussein's Iraq was. Does that sound plausible?
 
Here is another possibility: could Turky's government in 1950-1960 fall to a coup so common to its Arab neighbors at the time and replaced by an anti-U.S., anti-Israel, Soviet-freindly (but not communist) government? It wouldn't wanto to be part of NATO, it would be pro-Soviet but would not be a Soviet puppet any more than Saddam Hussein's Iraq was. Does that sound plausible?

Erm... actually Saddam Hussein was our puppet. The Soviets sold him weapons on the basis that 1: he was fighting the Iranians and the Soviets were interested in seeing the Islamic revolution quelched for reasons involving their Central Asian Republics and 2: he was actually paying for said weapons, which the cash-strapped USSR rather appreciated.

I think the analogy your looking for is either Nasser's Egypt or Syria (probably more the former then the latter).
 

whitecrow

Banned
Erm... actually Saddam Hussein was our puppet. The Soviets sold him weapons on the basis that 1: he was fighting the Iranians and the Soviets were interested in seeing the Islamic revolution quelched for reasons involving their Central Asian Republics and 2: he was actually paying for said weapons, which the cash-strapped USSR rather appreciated.

I think the analogy your looking for is either Nasser's Egypt or Syria (probably more the former then the latter).
Saddam Hussein wasn't U.S.S.R.'s puppet, he was an unreliable regional ally. What I was trying to cleverly say was that Turkey in that scenario would be as much a Soviet puppet as Saddam was -- in other words not at all.
 
Saddam Hussein wasn't U.S.S.R.'s puppet, he was an unreliable regional ally.

And again I say: that isn't true. He was the ally of the United States. The Soviets only sold him weapons for the reasons I already listed...

What I was trying to cleverly say was that Turkey in that scenario would be as much a Soviet puppet as Saddam was -- in other words not at all.

I got that, what I was pointing was that Saddam's Iraq isn't the comparison you want to make...
 

whitecrow

Banned
And again I say: that isn't true. He was the ally of the United States. The Soviets only sold him weapons for the reasons I already listed...
I've seen interview with high-ranking ex-Soviet military officer who said Iraq was U.S.S.R.'s unreliable regional ally so I beg to differ. But lets drop this - the OP is not asking who's ally Saddam really was and I think we can both agree that whatever the case Saddam was an unreliable ally.
 
Turkey had some skeletons in their closet over WWII and were terrified about USSR's new influence in the Balkans and in 1945, northern Iran.

Best bet is no Stalin - of all the blustering moves he made after the War the Straits Crisis was arguably his biggest loss (maybe excluding Tito). Stalin suffered a series of serious medical crises throughout 1945 and was splitting up Beria's NKVD empire - two reasons he could see an early grave.

He goaded and goaded the Turkish government, demanding ex-Tsarist provinces in Armenia, bases in the Bosphorus etc. Until then a nation that was keen to keep its neutrality (this is still the Kemalist regime, not getting dragged into Western penis-measuring contests is pretty much their base for foriegn affairs) turned into a US missile base in a decade.

If Stalin was in a different mind or some one less... well Stalin-y like Molotov or Beria or a collective leadership was in charge they could have got military access through the Straits and reconnected very strong pre-war economic ties (things Truman and Attlee suggested and Ankara had offered from the beginning). The Kemalists got a great deal of help from Lenin during the Turkish War of Independence - though their right-wing was in charge in 1945 as a whole they were quite happy to be friendly with Moscow.

Get the Red Army to stop playing tanks in Bulgaria and Armenian SSR and talk and you could easily get a neutral Turkey and possibly one slightly inclinded to the Soviets - Finlandisation but of a more voluntary variety. The Straits Crisis allowed Truman to pressure the leftist Kemalist Party into giving free elections in the late 1940s - if the Soviet trade mission is back in business and overall the USSR seems chummy the Kemalists may simply blow raspberries hold onto power for the forseeable future.
 

Cook

Banned
In November 1949 US Assistant Secretary of State George McGhee went to Ankara and proposed what was called the Northern Tier. This would have seen a line of Muslim Anti-Communist states backed by the United States running from Istanbul to Lahore, forming a hard ‘pie-crust’ beneath which the rest of the Middle-East would be safe from the spread of communism. So a Turkey – Iran – Pakistan – US alliance instead of NATO membership.
 
In November 1949 US Assistant Secretary of State George McGhee went to Ankara and proposed what was called the Northern Tier. This would have seen a line of Muslim Anti-Communist states backed by the United States running from Istanbul to Lahore, forming a hard ‘pie-crust’ beneath which the rest of the Middle-East would be safe from the spread of communism. So a Turkey – Iran – Pakistan – US alliance instead of NATO membership.

Wasn't that called the Baghdad Pact?
 
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