Talk:
“NATO and Democracy in Turkey: A View from the U.S. Archives”
by
Nicholas Danforth
Senior Visiting Fellow,
German Marshall Fund
nicholas.l.danforth@gmail.com
Thursday, March 31, 2022, 12:30 p.m.
***This is an online event. To obtain Zoom link and password, please contact to the department.
Info: pols@bilkent.edu.tr
Abstract:
Recent events have reinvigorated a longstanding debate about what role, if any, NATO membership played in Turkey’s transition to multi-party democracy. An investigation of declassified U.S. State Department documents suggests that Washington declined to pressure the İnönü government to hold fair elections or make participation in an anti-Soviet alliance dependent on democratization. This talk will explore how U.S. diplomats and military planners in Turkey approached the question of democracy in relation to modernization, geography and NATO membership during the early Cold War period.
Short Bio:
Nicholas Danforth is author of The Remaking of Republican Turkey: Memory and Modernity since the Fall of the Ottoman Empire. He has covered U.S.-Turkish relations for the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP), the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Bipartisan Policy Center. Danforth received his M.A. from the School of Oriental and African Studies and his B.A. from Yale. He completed his Ph.D. in history at Georgetown University in 2015 and has written widely about Turkey, U.S. foreign policy, and the Middle East for publications including The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, War on the Rocks, and The Washington Post.