| Summary/Abstract |
For many scholars working on Turkish foreign policy in the 1930s, Italy is taken as the greatest threat to the newly-established Republic and one that dominated Turkish foreign policy making in this period. Italy did adopt a threating stance with the Italian occupation of the Dodecanese islands and its expansionist aims in Asia and Africa, which were a cause of concern for the Turkish government. A re-examination of the Turkish-Italian political and economic relations within the broader context of the Mediterranean and the great power politics of the period, however, demonstrates that the bilateral relations, at least officially, functioned without any significant and lasting crisis until the Italian invasion of Albania in 1939. What motivated and drove Turkish thinking and decision-making in the international arena was not Italy’s actions per se but the insecurity in the Mediterranean and beyond of which Italy was a part.
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