MUSSOLINI’S “FOUR POWER PACT” PROJECT AND TURKEY’S POLITICAL ACTIVISM

Abstract

The "Versailles System", which was established after World War I, could not eliminate the existing problems and caused new problems. In an environment where the effects of the world economic crisis ravaged Europe, the Disarmament Conferences were unsuccessful, and the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations was understood as a result of the Japan's occupation of Manchuria; in revisionist Italy, the "Four Power Pact" project was launched by Benito Mussolini, the prime minister of the fascist government. The aim of Mussolini's project is; bringing together Italy, England, France and Germany with vital problems among them, creating a hierarchical order among countries in Europe and a kind of "directive management", to make the League of Nations nonfunctional, thus having a say in European and world affairs and keep the Soviet Union outside Europe to prevent the spread of communism. This poject of Mussolini created a great concern in Republic of Turkey, which faced with a similar situation earlier during World War I and the War of Independence and obtained her modern borders with Lausanne Peace Treaty. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk gave the directive on the prevention of this project. On the result of Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Tevfik Rüştü's work with the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Soviet Union and Romania, at an initiative was launched with the framework criteria of Maxim Litvinov's "Definition of Aggressor" and it signed two separate conventions involving Turkey in London. These conventions, which bring together countries from the Baltic Sea to the Persian Gulf, constituted the most important obstacle for the name of world peace in the face of the implementation of the "Four Power Pact." In this study, the emergence of the Mussolini's "Four Power Pact" project and foreign policy laid down by Turkey not to be passed to the implementation phase of this project and diplomatic activities pursued in this process will be evaluated.

There is no study that would require Ethical Commitee approval in this article.