Abstract
This article considers the relationship between Britain and Turkey during the Second World War and its immediate aftermath via the work of the British Council, specifically in its work with the Halkevleri (People's Houses) in Turkey and the Halkevi established in London in 1942. Concentrating on cultural diplomacy, it explores the ways in which the British Council adapted its cultural arsenal to build relations with Turkey – crucial for its strategic status, adamant in its neutrality – with the limited resources available. The article also examines how Turkey received these efforts at cultural diplomacy, whether they were reciprocated, and whether they managed to fill the gap between the aid that was requested and what Britain was willing or able to provide. It considers to what extent psychological rearmament could do military work, to what extent it sought to, and to what extent it could be expected to succeed. Finally, it considers the retraction of generosity and a series of rejected requests in the immediate postwar period as a clarification of the goals and limits of the Council's campaign.
In the midst of the Second World War, the British Ministry of Information drew up a series of key objectives in relation to Turkey. These included: ‘To convince the Turks that their future depends on an Allied victory’ and ‘to convince them that they will not face a hopeless struggle, and that total war need not interfere with their progress’.1,2 In these campaigns, the Turkish state and its people would take some convincing. The threat to Turkish progress was considerable, as the early Republican government aimed to rebuild a population devastated by the Balkan Wars 1912–3, the First World War 1914–8, and the Turkish War of Independence 1919–22. These wars had taken their toll in terms of poverty, disease, and life expectancy. Remobilizing the Turkish army would not only risk the lives of those fighting; it would also jeopardize the social revolutions that the Kemalist government had implemented just as they were starting to yield the rewards of improved healthcare, hygiene, and literacy. In this context, convincing the Turks that their future depended on an erstwhile enemy and that live combat would not scupper their hard-won gains was an ambitious aim, and the task was assigned to the British Council.
The British Council was established in 1934 as Britain's first earnest foray into cultural diplomacy, having lagged behind the success of Alliance Française for over a decade. 3 The British Council's founder, Rex Leeper, espoused a concept of ‘psychological rearmament’ and Lord Lloyd, British Council Chairman 1937–41, advocated for ‘moral rearmament’ alongside his less successful campaign for material arms. 4 Before long, these tasks acquired a newfound urgency, compensating for the scarcity of actual munitions with which to secure allies in the Second World War. This pushed the British Council into uncomfortable ground. The organization was frequently irritated and undermined, but seemingly powerless to stop the Foreign Office using it as a clandestine cover for espionage, 5 and mired in the ‘institutional chauvinism’ of in-fighting with the Ministry of Information over various fields and territories. 6 The Ministry of Information was established at the outbreak of war, and converted into the Central Office of Information in 1946. Its remit was immediate and political, where the British Council was assigned a longer-term cultural mission. British Council Representative Michael Grant suffered from the tension that arose in the inevitable overlap between cultural and political work when he arrived in Ankara to find colleagues at the British Embassy ‘dauntingly unhelpful about [his] job’, partly as a result of a fundamental lack of clarity around the role of the British Council: ‘Its name may be a mistake – certainly it is not understood in many countries, and is confused with “consul”.’ 7
The Council regularly moved into an area when the Colonial Office departed, picking up where they left off and maintaining British cultural influence as distinct from direct government or military interference. This soft form of belligerency was a cultural crusade that often involved taking the tactics that had proved successful in British colonies, such as language teaching, and repurposing them for European and Middle Eastern countries with which Britain did not have an imperial relationship. 8 Unlike Britain's colonies, English-language learning was far less well-established in Turkey, where the Ottoman elite had historically preferred French as a language of international relations and intellectual exchange. Without its own institute in Ankara, the British Council had neither the capacity nor the invitation to act as host, and any persuasive publications would struggle to avoid censorship in a climate distinctly wary of both German and British propaganda. Nevertheless, the Council deployed its twin strengths of language teaching and hospitality to imbue the minds of guests and readers with the idioms of battle, whilst using the content of its magazines to shore up a moral superiority that it could then sportingly offer to share.
British attempts to cultivate an ally, however, had to contend with the legacy of the War of Independence and subsequent suspicion of Britain. İsmet İnönü, President of Turkey 1938–50, was himself a victorious veteran of Britain's best attempts at hard power, and relations between Turkey and Britain were strained in the first years of the Republic as Britain sought to reassert its economic position and the Turkish government sought to ensure its economic independence. With the clouds of war looming from the mid-1930s, Britain was keen to secure a closer alliance with Turkey. Britain and France signed a Tripartite Alliance with Turkey in October 1939. While Turkey was reluctant to become the ‘living room’ from which ‘great powers cloak their expansionist ambitions’, 9 improved British-Turkish relations had the potential to enhance the security of both countries during the war.
British Council engagements with Turkey in the 1940s were channelled through the Halkevi (People's House; plural: Halkevleri) institutions in Turkish towns, and through an establishment in London under the same name. Sir Malcolm Robertson, who had succeeded Lord Lloyd to become British Council Chairman in 1941, noted in 1943 that ‘Our work in Turkey is being organized differently from that in other countries. We have no Institutes – and probably never shall have any. We are working through the Halkevleri and that appears to be quite sufficient’. 10 These Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP; the Republican People's Party, which governed as the single party in Turkish politics 1923–45) institutions were established across the country and tasked with nine branches of activity: Language and literature; Fine arts; Drama; Sport; Social assistance; People's classrooms and courses; Libraries and publishing; Villages; and History and museums. 11 They were instrumental to the implementation of the Kemalist ideological project, positioned at the forefront of Atatürk's revolutionary reforms and deemed crucial to their lasting success. 12
Although the main focus of Halkevleri in Turkey was on the domestic task of nation-building, they were also hospitable to British cultural influence: their work with the British Council can be read as a measure of trust from the Turkish government and a sign that the collaboration was fruitful for CHP foreign policy as well as British objectives. The Director of İstanbul Halkevi emphasized a sense of mutual admiration at the opening of an exhibition of British scientific achievements in 1943: ‘We Turks who are lovers of liberty and freedom can understand and feel these cultural gifts that are sent from England, the cradle of liberty’.
13
Ankara Halkevi hosted exhibitions of English Educational Institutions and Universities (1942), English Paintings and Drawings (1943), and English Architecture (1944).
14
An exhibition of Turkish children's paintings in the Londra Türk Halkevi in 1943 was reciprocated in 1945 with an exhibition of paintings by children from London and Berkshire schools in Ankara.
15
As well as a forum to showcase British accomplishments, Turkish Halkevleri also hosted English language teachers supplied by the British Council. Michael Grant developed a close friendship with Education Minister Hasan Ali Yücel, and observed that a request for more English teachers was a remarkable statement of confidence in the Council when it is noted that this replacement, apart from its outstanding effect on the development of English teaching in the country, would bring Englishmen into a large number of towns where no foreigner has ever been allowed to reside before. Indeed, this is an offer of wholehearted collaboration amounting to the permanent, exclusive and ubiquitous establishment of British influence in the whole of the vast system of 600 Halkevis.
16
As both Allied and Axis propaganda were being closely monitored in Turkey, 17 the importance of smuggling in politics (and people) under the guise of international friendship was paramount. Language lessons proved a highly effective tool in this mission. Most usefully, the English language was an export that could out-compete European rivals in their struggle for influence in Turkey. The British Council in Ankara was proud to report in November 1943 that, at the opening of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs classes: ‘the emphasis is entirely on English’, the Minister ‘did not mention German lessons, and his only reference to French was to imply that it had been completely replaced by English as an international language’. 18 At the Ankara Halkevi too, English was allowed to dominate with as many hours of teaching per day as French and German were allotted per week, boasting large classes with a long waiting list. 19 Of the 3987 students learning a foreign language in Halkevleri across Turkey in the last half of 1943, 3312 were studying English which, as Grant was pleased to declare, left less than 700 studying another language. 20
Throughout the Middle East, the imperative to spread the English language appeared to be not only an urgent battle with the enemy Germans, but also a long-running imperial rivalry with Britain's Second World War ally, France. A report from a recent tour of the Middle East in October 1943 noted that ‘the peoples […] now wished to learn English instead of French, and be taught something about the British character. I hope that we may take advantage of all this in the interests of the peace of the world. That will be the job of the British Council!’ 21 This exchange betrays a diplomatic motive that stretched back earlier than Nazi Germany posed a threat. In fact, it suggests that the sympathies Britain garnered in the Allied fight against fascism (the same letter recalled that ‘a number of Arab religious Sheikhs’ began to empathize with the British ‘ever since your disaster at Dunkirk’) could be swiftly repurposed to consolidate its control over the Middle Eastern post-Ottoman territories that had been divided between Britain and France in the aftermath of the First World War. 22
Linguistic supremacy could secure cultural and commercial interests long after the war, and the peace Britain sought to keep was contingent on its own long-term dominance in the region. Reports on British Council teaching from Izmir in the aftermath of the Second World War confirm the strong currency of the English language: the Foreign Office's Vincent Cusden found ‘Turkish teachers now amongst the most eager seekers after knowledge of English ideas and customs and the keenest students of the language. This augurs well for the future, as their enthusiasm, their understanding and their sympathy must affect the minds of the younger generation’.
23
This ‘teach the teacher’ approach was well-established in the British Empire and is testament to the long game that the Council was designed to play.
24
The act of learning, Cusden suggested, had united Turkish people to organize tea-parties, dances, and rambles. It was, according to him, the first time such a venture has been made. The only binding link is the English language. Without the tie of their liking for the language, many of the members would never have come together, being of varying grades of society that would not ordinarily mix. That they themselves should have wanted such regular gatherings of the English pupils is in itself astounding.
25
The claim that Turkish compatriots might have little in common beyond their love of English is also relatively astounding, and it is perhaps more likely that the class mixing in these venues was testament to the success of Halkevleri as community centres. Some of this popularity, however, could be attributed to an alternative Anglophone power, as US influence was on the rise in the Second World War and cowboy films filled the pages of Turkish magazines. 26 In this context, a desire to learn English did not neatly translate into a sympathy for UK culture or politics: Hollywood provided the appeal, and the British Council merely provided the service.
Still, Council correspondents repeatedly flattered themselves with the extent of their influence and Cusden accepted the Turkish lessons that Ankara Halkevi offered in return as another unprecedented reward: ‘This is probably the first time that anything of the like nature has been offered foreigners here without payment. It is a slight acknowledgement of all that is offered the Turks by the Council’. 27 English teachers were indeed sent out bearing British Council gifts to be presented in competition with their German rivals, and Grant described the books and films offered to libraries in Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir as ‘Another new development which the Axis has not been able to imitate’. 28 But British Council internal mail fails to recognize that some of these offerings were unwanted, sent without the Turkish government's knowledge and received as somewhere between propaganda and linguistic imperialism rather than cultural diplomacy. 29
The weekly periodical Do You Speak English? was published by the British Council between 1941 and 1946, designed to introduce English grammar, vocabulary, and culture to a Turkish readership. The publication concentrated on the pastoral and picturesque (such as a double feature on the National Trust, ‘It Belongs to the People’, spread across two issues in January 1945), but some issues did allude to the fallout of combat (such as ‘Seeing Without Eyes’, a feature by Lieutenant Colonel Sir Ian Fraser, a blind MP who ‘describes what his hospital, St Dunstan's, does for men who have been blinded during the war, either on the battlefield, or by bombs at home’). 30 While its articles usually evaded any explicit diplomatic or military pressure, the magazine's method of language teaching harboured an embattled lexicon. The choice of proverbs in March 1944 barely concealed the desperate need for military allies behind its pictures of a tranquil, untroubled British countryside: ‘Two heads are better than one’ and ‘A man is known by the company he keeps’. 31 Two months later, the proverbs continued to coerce a message of brothers-in-arms with ‘Birds of a feather flock together’. 32 A year earlier, in March 1943, ‘Our Dictionary’ translated a selection of words beginning with A, notably including Anchor, Angel, Anglo-, Angry, Anguish, Animosity, Annex, Annexed, Annexation, Annihilate, Annihilation, Anniversary, and Announcement. 33 The same issue contained a pointed reference in its illustration of difficult English grammar: ‘At war: Example: With the exception of a few countries all Europe is at war’. 34
Thus Britain's not-so-secret agenda to rouse Allied sympathies in Turkish readers was smuggled in via language lessons. But these efforts were perhaps neither as subtle nor as well-received as British Council reports suggest. Published in the months following the Adana conference of January 1943, when the British prime minister and Turkish president met in a railway car to discuss Turkey's participation in the war, Do You Speak English? magazines met with a thorough and prudent scrutiny: the CHP office of the Secretary General demanded that issues were sent to the central office for examination rather than being displayed in Halkevi libraries. 35 While The Times chose to translate sympathetic reports from the CHP newspaper Ulus in the week after the Adana conference, 36 one of the other main daily newspapers, Cumhuriyet, maintained German sympathies for longer, and was less inclined to support the British account of events in the summer of 1943. In reporting Churchill's account of British lives lost and avenged by the bombs dropped on German cities, Nadir Nadi Abalıoğlu, who became editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet on his father's death in 1946, queried this strange ‘sword of justice’ and described both the British and German lives lost in war as innocent, dampening what Nicholas Tamkin refers to as the ‘self-satisfied optimism which dominated Anglo-Turkish relations following the supposed ‘breakthrough’ at Adana’. 37
Notwithstanding their confiscated magazines, the British Council was often successful in exerting its influence through existing Turkish infrastructure. In return, Britain played host to the only Halkevi to exist outside Turkey, at 14 Fitzhardinge Street in Marylebone, West London. The Londra Türk Halkevi was founded in 1942 and named for the network of Halkevleri that Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden described as ‘Turkey's most vital contribution to the civilization of this century’.
38
Despite its name, the functions of the Londra Türk Halkevi had more in common with British Council Institutes abroad than the Halkevleri across Anatolia. In both Turkey and the UK, the Halkevi was a quasi-governmental organization. Where in Turkey these institutes contributed to literacy and language reform, folk traditions and nation-building, in London the Halkevi was a place in which cultural exchange could be celebrated and ties of international friendship strengthened without explicitly demanding military support. This was essentially an extra embassy, with the freedom to focus on cultural exchange between peoples, rather than (but always in the service of) interstate politics. And unlike the unfamiliar vocabulary of warmongering, the British Council was practised in feigning apolitical hospitality. Robertson's report on his tour across the Middle East between January and April 1943 opens: though politics, whether national or international, are not properly the business of the British Council, it seems to me essential that in certain parts of the world and notably the Middle East, we should bear well in mind the background against which our work is to be carried on. During my recent tour it was pointed out to me by some of our leading soldiers and airmen that the whole of this area […] was of vital political and strategic importance for security and, indeed, the continued existence of the British Empire, as it forms the land line of our communications with India and Australasia.
39
Once more, the imperative to win Turkey's support extends beyond the outcome of the Second World War and into longer-term security plans. While the fate of Europe hung in the balance, the British Council formed its strategy on the basis of imperial influence as well as international warfare. In fact, this was the more comfortable and suitable mission for an organization ill-equipped to inspire spontaneous military action but highly skilled in maintaining long-term cultural supremacy. On the Turkish leg of his tour, Robertson visited many Halkevleri and stayed in Adana Halkevi on his last night, noting that ‘it is believed that no foreigner has ever before stayed in a Halkevi’. 40 He described this stint as ‘the most encouraging experience of my whole tour’ and noted, ‘I think the Turks were impressed that I never mentioned politics in any form or shape, nor even alluded to the War, the Germans or the Axis. Mine was a purely cultural mission and here again I found that the doctrine of reciprocity was the key with which to open the door’. 41
The need to foster a sense of commonality and good will between British and Turkish people was deemed crucial to the war effort and a peace that would benefit both countries thereafter. The Turkish diaspora in Britain at the time was not large enough for diplomats and CHP party officials to rely on this happening organically, so an institution that would be ‘fed materially and spiritually from the Centre’ and carry the name of Halkevi was established to retain close links to other CHP institutions.
42
In a telegram to Ankara, the British Poet Laureate John Masefield stressed the capacity of these institutions to express international friendship: wherever halkevleri have come they have brought instruction interest gladness companionship friendship understanding and the freeing of many minds from prejudices […] I love to think that the new foundation […] may make it easy for our two peoples to meet share thoughts and cultures and discuss and encourage each other over the problem of after the war […] in any case (since generous things prosper) it will fulfil the great hope of its founders by teaching the best of our country to know and love what is best in yours.
43
This plan of interstate diplomacy masquerading as cultural friendship lent the Londra Türk Halkevi an ambiguous legal standing and caused various confusions over the tax status of its staff, because a government waiver and tax exemption relied on charity and Crown Privilege. 44 Although there was some uncertainty over whether the ‘institution in question is run directly by the foreign state and its employees are government officials’, A. H. Miller of the Inland Revenue eventually decided that they did not possess diplomatic status. 45 On this matter, the British Council and Londra Türk Halkevi were placed in direct equivalence, because British Council staff in Turkey were not exempt from the requirements of working permits, so the Foreign Office sought clarification because ‘as a general rule we do not like to ask for privileges for British Council staff abroad which would not be granted to foreigners of the same status in London’. 46 There was also inconsistency and resistance within the Turkish government to the ‘vast tax demands made upon the [British] Council’, which Grant credits to the fact that CHP ‘supported us – probably because it wanted to insure against a German defeat, without officially supporting any foreign embassy’. 47 In both countries, Robertson's doctrine of reciprocity was forced into fiscal practice by limited resources and strategic necessity.
The hazy line between public and official diplomacy, and the ensuing questions over charitable status, emerged from the Londra Türk Halkevi's philanthropic foundations. One of its first advocates, British military officer and civil administrator Sir Wyndham Deedes, was a representative of the Anglo-Turkish Relief Committee for aid to victims of the Erzincan earthquake disaster in 1939. Known locally as Deedes Bey, his involvement with Turkey began in 1910, with a posting to Istanbul and a role in the Ottoman Interior Ministry, and his contributions to the British propaganda effort continued beyond the Second World War, with weekly broadcasts on a miscellany of British and Turkish social and cultural phenomena (including bread, public libraries, and Peckham health centre) throughout 1948. 48 Deedes would draw on the work of the Anglo-Turkish Relief Committee when comparing the generosity between suffering parties in war, directly addressing another Ministry of Information objective (‘To educate the Turks in the ways in which a population can and should stand up to blitz’) with one of its proposed tactics (‘By reminding the Turks that they have already been stoically brave in earthquakes’). 49 When Lord Lloyd first made the case for a Turkish Halkevi in London, it was clear that the joint venture would require financial aid from the British Council. 50 A gift bank account was set up for this purpose and it was agreed that the British Council would procure and prepare the house, then contribute £250 towards the cost of administration, to which CHP would add £1300. 51 But over the years the British subsidy dwindled while that of CHP increased: the British Council donated £250 in 1942 and 1943, then £187 in 1944, where CHP donated £486 in 1942, £1646 in 1943, and £2031 in 1944. 52 By 1945 there is only one contribution recorded: £6000 from CHP. 53
Although its monetary donations did not quite live up to its philanthropic beginnings, gifts and hospitality played an important role in the tacit alliance that the British Council sought to form in this venue. Here, the language lessons were reversed, and the cultural exchange included an adult education programme providing Turkish lessons to English speakers.
54
Many of the Halkevi's students were British Council employees, strongly encouraged by Grant: ‘We go further than ‘advising some people’ to join the Halkevi Turkish classes. I impress the importance of learning the language on all appointees, provide them with textbooks and
Just as the outward focus had to be cultural rather than political, so many of the gifts took the form of material objects rather than liquid cash. Courtship could be costly, and when Malcolm Robertson was appointed British Council Chairman he was convinced that ‘we shall be able to get almost any money we like out of Parliament’ but he had been warned that it was ‘absolutely essential that we do not waste a single sovereign’. 58 British Council donations furnished the Halkevi property in London, and in turn it was fitted out for receiving its own guests. The more explicitly nationalist decor was provided by CHP (‘some necessary belongings such as Turkish flags, a bust of Atatürk, and a painting of İnönü had been sent to London’), and supplemented by the British Council (‘painted portraits that had been specially framed of the deceased Atatürk and English King George VI were hung in place’ on 2 December 1942). 59 Then the Halkevi's inventory notebook is mostly made up of British Council donations that offer far more practical provisions, including writing tables, a cupboard, a typewriter, several chairs; armchairs, electric lamps; an oven set, bookcase, and glass cabinet; sofas, blackboards; coat racks, a lantern machine; hanging lamps; beds and bedding; maps; wardrobes and curtains; fire buckets and extinguishers; a laundry basket, coffee cups, kettle, glasses, cake plates and sugar bowls; milk jugs, teacups, saucers, and knives. 60
All these gifts enabled the Turkish expatriate community centre to play host to the British in London. Their main mode of generosity was tea parties, which were served to assorted groups, both British (including the Association for Jewish Youth, Stoke Newington Youth Club, and various school groups); Turkish (including squadrons of Airforce officers and representatives of the press); and together, in gatherings of single Turkish and English ladies. 61 Some gifts hint at a wider programme of cultural exchange, such as the gilded visitors’ book from Middlesex Wanderers A.F.C, whose constitution was ‘to promote a good fellowship among football clubs and other sporting organisations throughout the world’. 62 The Wanderers’ 50th tour had gone to Turkey in 1939, making them the first British club to visit the country, in a match against Fenerbahçe on the occasion of the Istanbul club's jubilee. 63 Three years later, the team visited Londra Türk Halkevi bearing a gift designed to record further visits. 64 The British Ministry of Information presented Londra Türk Halkevi with a Philips cinema machine, case, and curtains, 65 and video reels were regularly screened to visitors on site depicting the Halkevi's opening ceremony with various views of the house, the arrival of guests, and speeches. 66 The spirit of reciprocity was palpable: Ambassador Rauf Orbay noted that these tea parties ‘took place in a very cordial atmosphere and it was beneficial for both sides’. 67 Equipped with the means to host, record and project, the Londra Türk Halkevi could provide the space and occasion for international cultural events as well as the stage for their swift retelling, in an immediate historicization of its own diplomatic importance.
As with the tax status of individuals working for these organizations, British Council material gifts caused some bureaucratic confusion, and the Foreign Office had to again inquire as to the levy of duties on imported materials ‘for official, as opposed to commercial purposes? Amongst these materials may be mentioned printed matter, films and paintings for exhibition, office equipment, the personal property of members of the staff, and food, liquor and drinks for entertainment purposes’. 68 Once again, the sleight of hand between cultural and official operations came to a sticking point over the question of taxation, which required a clearer line on commercial gain than many efforts at public diplomacy were willing to admit.
While the end of the war signalled an easing of hostilities for Britain, a new window of risk opened up for Turkey. In March 1945, the USSR refused to renew its Friendship and Non-Aggression Pact with Turkey. And Turkey would have to wait another two years, until March 1947, to secure the assurance of American support via the Truman Doctrine. Internally, the Democrat Party was officially formed in January 1946, CHP brought forward an election to the summer, and the end of the single-party period was in sight. Despite its bold attempt to maintain polite society in the midst of war, the Londra Türk Halkevi had never been immune to the destructive effects of conflict: in March 1944, a fire broke out on site and was only safely extinguished thanks to the efforts of the watchman and his wife, and the prompt and diligent help of the fire brigade. 69 So the gift of London accommodation had always carried an edge of peril and, though it survived air raids, the jeopardy did not end with ceasefire, when Britain's generosity waned and hard power was slow to vacate its premises and make space for continued intercultural exchange.
The matter of housing became fraught when the Halkevi was supposed to move to a new address, Lord Linlithgow's house in Belgravia. 70 In October 1945, five months after VE-day, the move was decided but not underway and the house was still occupied by the War Office. 71 Civil servants were hesitant to exert any pressure, but Wyndham Deedes reminded Sir Orme Sargent that the Halkevi's ‘work is not without interest to the Foreign Office’. 72 The Belgravia house was larger, and in April 1945 the new Turkish Ambassador Ruşen Eşref Ünaydın was already anticipating more convenient spaces for conferences and an expansion of the library and classroom. 73 The Halkevi was not established there until July 1946, and the official opening was further delayed by repairs for over a year but, ‘in spite of the dilapidated condition of the new premises, due to war damage’ their information bureau, library and free Turkish classes continued ‘without interruption’. 74 Maintaining these services came at a cost, and by November that year, a lack of funds had hit the Londra Türk Halkevi and the Turkish Ambassador sent an appeal to the CHP General Secretary to cover the outstanding debts for transportation and tax, and to pay the director and secretary, who had not received their monthly salaries. 75 Despite hints at financial strain, this was a long-term investment from the Turkish perspective: in October 1947, Cumhuriyet reported that the building would be leased for 52 years with an annual allocation of 55,000 Turkish lira, and that the renovations would incorporate Turkish motifs as much as possible. 76 The Turkish commitment to postwar cultural diplomacy was upheld in Ankara too, where they hosted another British Council exhibition showcasing urbanism, farming, and transport, opened by the British Ambassador, filmed by the Directorate General of Press and Publication, and attended with interest by President İnönü in 1947. 77
British commitments were more easily interrupted, with a generosity that was materially limited by war and then abruptly curtailed when no longer strategically useful. Alice Byrne notes that, in the interwar period and throughout the Second World War, the British Council developed a new, more relational kind of diplomacy focused on internationalism in the service of a softer supremacy. 78 The arms-length body began to project its image of Britain ‘on a basis of reciprocity’ developed through mutual understanding and the cultivation of an interested public, and with the realization that propaganda was most effective when it moved beyond ‘narrow nationalism’ and was exchanged back and forth. 79 This shift was arguably pragmatic, a response to postwar penury rather than altruism. And while the British Council enjoyed good relations with several CHP leaders, Grant maintained that he had always considered the task ‘to serve a double role, meeting wartime needs but at the same time trying to take a long-term view’, so the British Council kept ‘an eye on the future’ when they brought English books and periodicals into Turkey and ‘got some of them into the hands of the leaders of the opposition’. 80
Regardless of the motivation, reports from Izmir to the British Consulate-General in February 1947 suggest that a postwar shift was discernible on the ground: ‘Few people would now be found who regard the Council as a mere propaganda bureau, as was the case at one time’. 81 Here, Cusden was gauging local views through his own Turkish language teacher, who told him: ‘How long the British Council has been here and we did not know what it was! We knew there was a British Council, that it gave English lessons and possessed an English library. Now we feel so much more. We feel that the Council really means something’. 82 This testimony delivers what could be the ultimate victory for an organization like the British Council: that its public diplomacy had been so effective as to no longer be considered propaganda. This was of course another triumph over Germany during the war, when Malcolm Robertson scornfully insisted: ‘behind all the Axis façade of cultural propaganda was political propaganda, naked unashamed and bestial in many directions’. 83
Positive feedback allowed the British Council more confidence in its peace-loving persona and enabled its staff to refuse requests that went beyond its remit. The Press Attaché W. E. D. Allen wrote in 1946 that Turkish General Asım Tınaztepe had asked him about the possibility of supplying a collection of military books for the Officers’ Club in Istanbul: ‘I referred the matter to London […] I then understood you to hold the view that the supply of books to the Army might be regarded as having political implications’. 84 Despite his initial caution, Allen was compelled to continue: ‘At the same time I feel that we have an excellent opportunity for introducing British military theory to the Turkish mind, in substitution for the German theories on which two whole generations of officers have been brought up’. 85 This lingering wartime mentality met with swift rebuttal from John Bostock: ‘It is one thing for the Council to present books on the arts of peace to an officers’ club, but it is an entirely different thing for the Council to introduce British military theory (except possibly in connection with history) to the Turkish mind. Although the Council is allowed to address specialist audiences on their special subjects, I feel very strongly that in so doing the Council should not become an instructor in methods of modern warfare’. 86 Having won the war, the limits of British Council influence were easier to determine and assert, and the organization could retreat to its cultural comfort zone.
It was in this political climate, in April 1946, that the Mayor of Izmir Reşat Leblebicioğlu's request also met with rejection, when he asked the British Council for lions to populate his zoo. 87 The British Council employee conveying this message assured the recipient that ‘the request for lions is perfectly serious […] and Reşat Bey says that he understands that those in Edinburgh are breeding freely. We realize of course that requests for information of this sort come very near the border of British Council work and indeed, coming on top of exchange of fleas, ticks and other parasites, we ourselves are wondering what will come up next’. 88 Much joviality ensued from internal notes between British Council staff: ‘I imagine that you can supply lions from stock?!’; ‘For a long time now we have tamed lions in this dept!!! Before I can buy any however, I should like to know how many is meant by ‘some’ also what sex or if possible what age. Do the Turks want African or Indian?! (Do they want them with tails twisted or straight?)’. 89 The requested reports were supplied and Mayor Reşat Leblebicioğlu responded to the follow-up questions with a preference for Indian lions (male and female), and a male mate for the female Anatolian leopard already in Izmir. 90 The British Council received informal word from the Reptile House that ‘there might be some difficulty about lions, but they might have a spare leopard’. 91 Eventually though, the Scientific Director of the Zoological Society confirmed that he very much doubted he would be able to obtain them and, in passing this information back to Turkey, the British Council representative proposed a Plan B: ‘You may have read that the Hamburg Zoo is disposing of its collection of animals, but since the London Zoo have themselves made purchases from this source I presume that neither Indian nor Anatolian leopards were included in the collection’. 92 Whether or not this tip proved successful, it is telling that the British Council was, by 27 September 1946, willing to recommend a German source, for the same reason that Hamburg Zoo was disposing of its animals: the Axis had lost the war.
Britain was well aware of what war meant for zoos: in the course of the Second World War, the chalk lion at Whipsnade zoo had been camouflaged with nets and manure to hide it from enemy aircraft and Sargeant Hardy had photographed defeated Nazi prisoners and their collaborators incarcerated in Antwerp Zoo's lion cage. 93 Had the lions ever made it to Izmir, they would not have been Turkey's only engagement in postwar animal diplomacy. When a Japanese zoo was destroyed by bombs and Indian Prime Minister Nehru sent the children of Tokyo a baby elephant in 1949, the Turkish broadcaster and journalist Vedat Nedim Tör adopted the voice of Turkish children to plead to ‘Nehru Amca’ (Uncle Nehru) for a baby elephant of their own. To his surprise, the gift was granted and Mohini the baby elephant boarded a ferry bound for Istanbul. Vedat Tör was delighted that, as well as entertaining the children, Mohini performed an ambassadorial service, as the Press Attaché at the Indian Embassy wrote to him to say ‘In these last three days, the Indian and Turkish people thought of each other with the most cordial feelings maybe even since 1920. Thus both nations should be grateful to you. All on your own you achieved something that neither your diplomats nor ours had achieved’. 94 The operation was such a success that Vedat Nedim Tör went on to ask the Pakistani Embassy for a female baby elephant as a mate, and Azade joined Mohini at the Atatürk Orman Çiftliği in Ankara soon after. 95 In context then, the Mayor of Izmir's request was not as laughable as British Council employees might have thought: zoos were destroyed in conflict and re-built on international gifts, and animal diplomacy had a track record of establishing good relations. Their scornful tone displays an arrogance that Britain could ill afford during the war, harking back to the Orientalism of Turkey's would-be colonizer and betraying a sense of superiority restored by the recent Allied victory.
Once the urgency was gone, British attention turned to the economy, the other significant factor in its rapidly diminishing munificence. In December 1945, at a meeting between the British Council and the Foreign Office, cuts were on the horizon. It was reported that Mr Grant had made a very good start and had the complete confidence of the Turks, but that both he and we had failed to cash in on this. We still pandered to them and made them presents of things which they could well afford to pay for. […] With regard to the Halkevi, for example, it was not really necessary to continue indefinitely a system whereby British teachers, brought out at great expense, taught local Turks in these places all over the country. It was possible to obtain the services of Turks, professional men and others, who would gladly take on the job on behalf of the Council without cost, the prestige gained being sufficient reward.
96
Confident of the unpaid labour that could replace a withdrawal of British Council services, the report continues: We gave away far too many books, and we should get in touch with Mr. Allen of the Ministry of Information and link-up our sale of books and ‘Geçit’ with his sale of his paper ‘Cephe’. If we did that we should ensure the sale of all material we wished to sell and make a large profit, as indeed Mr. Allen did.
97
The postwar economic strain was keenly felt on both sides when discussions turned to the practical matter of printing in either Turkey, ‘where paper is very expensive’, or England, where it was ‘almost unobtainable’. 98 In the grip of postwar austerity, propaganda had a harder time proving that it was worth the paper it was printed on. And this reckoning was limited to the investments that had been considered in the first place: books and teaching had previously been forthcoming, but they were small gestures in the absence of the aid Turkey actually required if it were to engage in further military combat. Military supplies were occasionally pledged but rarely delivered. In his analysis of the 1939 Tripartite Alliance, Brock Millman charts the quantity of weapons as they diminish from those requested by Turkey, to those pledged by Britain, to those delivered, by which point the number often dwindled to 0. 99 In 1940, weapons manufacturer Vickers-Armstrong struggled to agree a price for sending Spitfire planes to Turkey when the quantity to be sent plummeted from sixty to two, a number so low it was not worth them sending a test pilot they could hardly spare. 100 The deficit continued, and journalist Ahmet Emin Yalman complained in 1944 that ‘none of the promised material’ from the military lists compiled at the Adana conference had arrived. 101
Turkish Foreign Minister Hasan Saka was acutely aware of these purloined presents when he met with his British counterpart, Ernest Bevin, in February 1946. He asked for assurance that the Anglo-Turkish alliance remained the same, and though Bevin replied in the affirmative, his actions suggested otherwise. Saka was asking for a sign of Britain's support, but his plea for financial aid, in the form of a payment plan for military supplies, was more than dismissed. Rather than entertain the request, Bevin responded with a leveraging of debt, stating that Turkey owed Britain ∼£500m; he added that Britain had emerged from the war impoverished and that several other states were requesting loans. 102 Finally, Bevin swept away any prospect of further assistance with the suggestion: ‘You have a lot of gold reserves. You can use them’. 103 British political support was no more forthcoming than economic aid. Bevin suggested to Saka that mentioning the Anglo-Turkish alliance in Parliament – in what would have amounted to a gift of reassurance and protection against Soviet invasion – could prove provocative. Bevin's speech to the House of Commons days later not only refrained from enthusiastic support, it also distanced him from any antagonism with the USSR: ‘I must be really frank and say I do not want Turkey converted into a satellite state. What I want her to be is really independent. I should like to see the treaty of friendship renewed between Soviet Russia and Turkey’. 104 And so Turkey's independence, so concerning to Britain during the war, became valuable in its aftermath. Although Bevin privately insisted that the alliance remained intact, Turkey had clearly lost its special strategic status, and this retraction of public solidarity confirms that, by February 1946, gifts had run out and debts were being called in.
The difficult case of a neutral and independent Turkey captures a lag between the capacity and attitude of the British establishment. The Second World War required British Council resources to be briefly and awkwardly diverted from their ‘purely cultural mission’ and deployed to drum up Turkish support for combat – a task it took on somewhat heavy-handedly. In the campaign for soft rearmament, the networks and tactics of Empire were a key weapon in its arsenal, but one that had to be used with caution in Turkey. Here, the British Council had neither its own institutes nor the means to supply the only aid that Turkey required. It offered meagre or unwanted gifts with an attitude of bounty and often failed to conceal the propaganda buried in its own publications. It suffered what it considered to be ridiculous requests from Turkish politicians, and its efforts were consistently undermined as other British agencies exploited any access it secured for blunter political ends. There was significant ambivalence as to what its job actually entailed. Every attempt at cultural diplomacy was hampered by arrogance, wartime privation, and desperation. Despite this, and while they barely succeeded in the ambitious target of getting Turkey to join the Allies, the British Council did manage to develop interpersonal relationships through teaching and sustain diplomatic relations with a Turkish outpost in London, on a shoestring and in the wake of the Blitz.
If the British Council was to navigate the challenges of working with a country that was neither an ally nor a colony, it had to do so in various guises and with awkward sleights of hand. The questionable gift of Anglophone (and Anglophile) courses of jingoistic grammar lessons served British foreign policy interests in war, but perhaps more successfully in peace. Print magazines, especially those that were confiscated on arrival, were unlikely to sway military decisions alone, but their brand of public diplomacy was particularly well-suited to nurturing and consolidating bilateral relations that would prove commercially or strategically productive to the British Empire, and even directly profitable if the Council managed to flog its publications with the same success as the Ministry of Information. English teachers were pulled when their project was deemed more expensive than useful, or when the British Council felt confident enough to leave the task to their Turkish counterparts. Language lessons were counted in direct competition with European rivals, and the latent contest with French as well as German reveals a power struggle left over from the First World War and undeterred by the Second, for cultural and commercial control over the Middle East.
Reports from Turkey suggest that British propaganda was received with prudent discernment. The Turkish press selectively shared and censored British publications depending on whether their interests aligned, and maintained enough scepticism to distance itself from Churchill's ‘strange sword of justice’. 105 Elements of cultural diplomacy, such as language learning, could provide a point of pride for both countries, and the fact that CHP hosted British Council exhibitions in Halkevleri across Turkey is a measure of mutual success. When it came to the Londra Türk Halkevi, it appears that the venue was a more promising exercise in cultural diplomacy for CHP than the British Council. Where Britain provided the rudimentary furnishings, venue, and depleting funds, CHP contributions remained constant and set the ideological tone of a place that was ‘fed materially and spiritually from the centre’. 106 Despite the British Council ambitions of sustained cultural influence and commercial relations, the doctrine of reciprocity faltered when money ran out after the war and the Londra Türk Halkevi slipped down its list of priorities. CHP, on the other hand, considered this potential flagship a long-term investment and announced plans for growth and expansion as it waited impatiently for its new London base.
For the British Council, the Londra Türk Halkevi briefly provided the venue for an extensive but inexpensive furnishing of relations that could be used immediately for mutual hospitality. These gifts were not only cheap but also well spent. They equipped a spare embassy at a time when all additional diplomacy was welcome and afforded CHP representatives the means to extend their own expat invitations to philanthropists, diplomats, and footballers. The ledger of Halkevi possessions is an inventory of the gifts that kept on giving, because conviviality turned out to be ideologically on trend as well as affordable. Domestic objects like kettles and sugar bowls were easier to disguise as apolitical than army equipment or money, and direct requests were usually denied or undelivered. The sniggering response to lion diplomacy, and Bevin's reluctance to present Saka with the payment plan or reassurance that he sorely needed in 1946, restrict British generosity to the dates of live combat and reveal the motives behind their earlier gifts. As soon as the war was over, the British Council could reassert the limits of its proper business: it would just about tolerate a cursory search to send big cats to Izmir, but absolutely refuse to equip Istanbul officers with manuals on the methods of modern warfare. In the furniture supplied and lions denied, we see Britain's attempt to balance a lingering attitude of imperial largesse with heavily depleted material capacity. The gifts of hospitality and language learning could draw out an illusion of grandeur and, while Turkey sought more tangible offerings, the British could place a conveniently high value on the cordiality of good crockery, teaching, and tea parties.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I am deeply grateful to Dr Kate Fleet and Professor Ebru Boyar for their wise advice on drafts of this article and generous encouragement throughout the research process. I would also like to thank the anonymous peer reviewers for their constructive comments, and the Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies for supporting my research and hosting ‘The Politics of Giving in the Late Ottoman Empire and Early Turkish Republic (1853–1950)' conference, where I presented an early version of this article.
