Strategische Außenwirtschaftsbeziehungen. Die Bundesrepublik, die Türkei und der Kalte Krieg 1945–1970

Germany and Turkey have a long tradition of trade and business relations. In addition to economic interests in the narrow sense (the export of German industrial goods in return for the import of raw materials and agricultural products from Turkey), political and strategic military considerations were also of prime importance. The following article is based on the assumption that trade and business relations between Germany and Turkey continued to be shaped by a primacy of politics in the post war period. It examines why the Federal Government and numerous West German export companies continued and even expanded trade with Turkey despite increasing risks: Turkey was becoming problematic with a growing balance of payments deficit accompanied by increasingly bad payment practice, the uncertain political situation in the Near East, the already lower attractiveness of imported Turkish goods on the West German market, in addition to some restrictive trade and investment conditions. The analysis focuses on the West’s strategic foreign policy interests during the Cold War, the political and economic safeguarding of economic relations at home, as well as on complex and conflict-ridden international interdependencies.