Japanese-Turkish relations

Japanese-Turkish relations

Turkey	Japan

Relations between Japan and the Ottoman Empire , later Turkey , developed slowly only after the opening of Japan in 1868. Official diplomatic relations have existed since 1924 .

history

1868-1918

The journey of the frigate Ertuğrul to Japan by Osman Nuri

Memorial to the victims of the sunken ship in Japan

Before the Meiji Restoration , the Ottoman Empire in Japan was only known from a few accounts that happened to come into the country via the Dutch trade mission on Dejima .

Even after the opening, there was no direct relationship between Japan and the Ottoman Empire. During the Meiji period , Japanese politics were critical and negative towards Islam. Fukuzawa Yukichi shared the Western attitude of the "sick man on the Bosporus." Negotiations between the Porte and Japan about the establishment of diplomatic and trade relations, which took place again and again from 1875, failed mainly because both countries were only sovereign to a limited extent due to unequal treaties - in the Turkish case called surrenders . Exceptions were the Yoshida missions in 1880, the visit of the Imperial Prince Komatsu in 1887, and some military missions in the 1890s that also served to study opium cultivation. After 1900 there are reports of Japanese espionage missions, mostly in Mesopotamia.

In 1891 two Japanese warships were dispatched to bring home the 69 survivors of the Ertuğrul, who sank off Kii-Ōshima on September 16, 1890 . The Ertuğrul was sent by Sultan Abdülhamid II , under the command of Osman Pasha, on a diplomatic mission with 609 men on board. The trip also served the purpose of spreading the pan-Islamic idea at the intermediate stops. Both countries - together with Britain, which formed an alliance with Japan in 1902 - had a common interest in restricting Russian expansion in Asia. At this time, the pan-Asian idea began to gain the upper hand in Tokyo, but it only served the imperialist expansion policy.

Japan was unofficially represented by Yamada Torajirō (1886-1956) in Istanbul, who resided there since 1892. Before 1914, he was the only local Japanese trader who also acted as the de facto consul. His announcement that the Russian Black Sea Fleet had passed the Bosphorus gave the Japanese an important advance warning in the war of 1904/5. The Sultan sent military observers to Manchuria.

On his second trip to Japan in 1908/9, the pan-Islamist agitator Abdurresid Ibrahim found the support of ultra-nationalist circles. He initiated the first construction of a mosque ( Tokyo Camii ) in Tokyo's Akasaka district . Since this construction had to be approved by the caliph (i.e. the Turkish sultan), the secret service officer Yamaoka Kōtarō was sent to Istanbul to accompany Ibrahim.

After Japan used the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914 to appropriate the German leased area near Kiautschou and the colonies in Micronesia , it was formally at war with the Ottoman Empire as a German ally. However, there was no fighting. Towards the end of the war, Japan sent a flotilla to Istanbul with the cruiser Nisshin as its flagship.

Overall, there was almost no exchange, economic or cultural, during this period.

1919-1945

In 1920 Japan co-signed the Treaty of Sèvres on the side of the victorious Entente . The following year, Uchida Sadatsuji became a member of the Dardanelles Commission . As a party to the Lausanne Treaty in 1923, Japan accepted the annulment of the Sèvres agreement with the now established Turkish Republic and its President Mustafa Kemal ( Ataturk ; since October 27, 1923). Official diplomatic relations were established for the first time, and the first diplomats arrived in 1925. The consulate in Tokyo officially became an embassy in 1929.

Organizations for cultural and economic exchange were founded as early as 1925. In 1930 a preliminary trade agreement was concluded (ratified in 1934). In the same year, the first Japanese trade fair took place in Istanbul. In 1931, Prince Takamatsu , patron of the Japanese-Turkish Society, came to Turkey.

On February 23, 1945, Turkey declared war on Japan in order to join the United Nations .

Turkish nationalists in Japan

In 1934 there was a convention of Turks and Tatars living in Japan in Kobe , who decided to build a mosque, which was consecrated in 1935 ( Kobe Mosque ). At that time there were about 600 Tatar Turks in Japan, mostly fled from Soviet power, many of whom allow themselves to be captured by nationalist forces. Already after 1905 the Kokuryūkai ("Black Dragon Society") had begun to promote the interests of Japanese imperialism on the mainland under the banner of a pan-Asian (anti-Western) policy. The nationalist leader Kurban Ali published Yani Yapon Muhbiri. The nationalist Milli Bayrak, founded by Ayaz İshaki , appeared in Mukden in 1935–45 . In Harbin , where a mosque begun in 1922 is also being completed in 1937, he founded the nationalist Harbin-Ural civilizing society. Abdurresid Ibrahim , pan-Islamic publicist, became chairman of the Dai Nippon Kaikyō Kyōkai, the official state organization for Islam in Japan , in 1938 .

The construction of a mosque began in Tokyo in 1938, largely financed by the Zaibatsu ( Mitsui , Sumitomo , Mitsubishi ). The building was demolished in 1985 to make way for a new building.

present

The current relations between Turkey and Japan are primarily of economic importance. There are around 4,400 Turks living in Japan today. Turkey has an embassy in Tokyo, Japan has a consulate in Istanbul and an embassy in Ankara .

See also

• Turkey's foreign policy
• Japanese foreign policy

literature

• Esenbel, Selcuk; Japanese Interest in the Ottoman Empire; in: Edstrom, Bert; The Japanese and Europe: Images and Perceptions; Surrey 2000
• Esenbel, Selcuk; Inaba Chiharū; The Rising Sun and the Turkish Crescent; İstanbul 2003, ISBN 975-518-196-2
• A fin-de-siecle Japanese Romantic in Istanbul: The life of Yamada Torajirō and his Turoko gakan; Bull SOAS , Vol. LIX-2 (1996), pp. 237-52.
• Ali Merthan Dündar; Japonya Türk-Tartar Diasporasi (Turkish; PDF file; 360 kB)
• Roemer, Hans Robert; Turkish historical research in Japan; in: Klaus Antoni (Hrsg.): Festgabe für Nelly Naumann. Hamburg: Society for Nature and Ethnology of East Asia, 1993, pp. 313–319 .pdf

Remarks

1. ↑ Fischer Weltgeschichte, The Japanese Empire; Frankfurt 1968, chap. 16
2. ^ Memoirs of his time in Turkey: Toruko Gakan, 1911
3. ↑ The Japanese National Library records only 19 monographs and 2 articles for the period before 1912. 7 of them related to the Turkish-Russian War. NDL-OPAC