Turkey's foreign policy during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis

the article examines the impact of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis on Turkey’s foreign policy, focusing on its role as a NATO member in the context of the Soviet-American confrontation. The aim of the work is to overcome the gap in historiography by analyzing Ankara’s strategic decisions, diplomatic interactions with the United States and the USSR, as well as the long-term consequences of the crisis, including the cooling of relations with Washington and rapprochement with Moscow in the 1960s. Based on an interdisciplinary methodology that combines a historical-systemic approach, comparative analysis of archival documents and criticism of memoirs (Khrushchev, Kennedy), the authors reveal the military-political context of the deployment of Jupiter missiles in Turkey, the reaction of its leadership to the secret agreements on the withdrawal of missiles and the subsequent transformation of strategic priorities. The results demonstrate that US unilateral actions, including neglecting consultations with Ankara and using Turkish bases for operations outside NATO's mandate, undermined Turkey's trust in the alliance, spurring its turn toward a more independent policy and dialogue with the USSR. The study contributes to the study of the peripheral aspects of the Cold War by offering a model for analyzing Turkey’s role in global crisis events, and its findings are relevant for understanding crisis diplomacy in the nuclear age, contemporary challenges to NATO, and the strategies of secondary actors in the context of geopolitical competition.

Cuban missile crisis, Turkish foreign policy, Jupiter missiles, NATO, crisis diplomacy, strategic autonomy, nuclear deterrence, Cyprus conflict 1963, ExComm, Turkish historiography