Demirel and Özal’s Ostpolitik between the Western alliance and Soviet economic engagement: fighting reds at home, cooperating with reds abroad

This article traces how Turkey’s centre-right governments under Süleyman Demirel and Turgut Özal combined hardline anti-communism in domestic politics with pragmatic economic engagement of the Soviet Union. Using archival sources, it shows that, from 1965, Demirel reasserted sovereignty over US military operations conducted from bases in Turkey, opened channels to Moscow, and secured Soviet heavy-industry plants while remaining inside NATO, an Ostpolitik avant la lettre. After 1980, Özal advanced market liberalization, defended the post-1980-coup order, and anchored cooperation with the West, while simultaneously expanding commerce with the Eastern Bloc, capped by the 1984 natural-gas agreement that inaugurated deliveries in 1987 and widened Soviet demand for Turkish goods and contracting. The article conceptualizes this dual track as strategic compartmentalization – ideological confrontation at home, instrumental cooperation abroad – and argues that it enhanced Ankara’s bargaining leverage without making political concessions to Moscow. Reframing Turkey’s centre right revises Cold War narratives that downplay its influence on the country’s external alignments and internal order.