As a democratic ally, it is surprising to find Turkey in a study of Friendly Tyrants, but three facts explain its presence: the Turkish-American alliance has been primarily military and did not originally presuppose democracy in Turkey from 1923 to the present Turkey has passed through several nondemocratic phases and, contemporary facts notwithstanding, popular images of Turkey in the United States confuse an autocratic political style in which the military stands behind democracy for an authoritarian system in which the military dictates politics. Second was the forging of a Turkish-American security alliance after World War II to block Soviet expansion in southern Europe and the Middle East. First was the birth of the Turkish Republic in 1923 and its evolution as a democracy after 1946. Two major developments have shaped the Turkish-American relationship in this century.
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