POLITICAL FRONT: Victory

Great Britain and France won War II’s biggest victory last week, but the scene of success was neither at the front nor on the sea nor in the air, but rather in quiet, faraway Ankara, capital of Turkey, 1,600 miles from the guns of the Western Front. There, 25 years almost to the day after Sultanate Turkey had entered World War I on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, a new Turkey, now republican in form, signed a treaty with Britain and France which made the onetime enemies allies—on condition.

An intricate affair sprinkled throughout with “ifs,” the treaty provided that: 1) all three nations will go to the others’ help in case of war in the Mediterranean; 2) Turkey will aid Great Britain and France in honoring their guarantees to protect Greece and Rumania. Big condition in the treaty was the provision, made in an adjoining protocol, that Turkey would not be compelled to war against Soviet Russia.

Behind the treaty’s signing was a background of money, diplomatic scheming, intrigue, the threat and promise of arms. Undoubtedly assisting French Ambassador René Massigli and British Ambassador Sir Hughe Montgomery Knatchbull-Hugessen in their talks with Turkish statesmen was the fact that they could promise an immediate large credit. Impressive also to practical-minded Turks must have been the fact that in nearby Syria that old French Near East campaigner, General Maxime Weygand, had collected an imposing Army of 50,000 Frenchmen and that farther south in Jerusalem Lieut.-General Archibald Percival Wavell, who during War I was a British liaison officer to the Russian Imperial Army fighting the Turks, commanded a force of 60,000 Britons. Both these veterans came to Ankara to help their Ambassadors explain that Turkey, unlike Poland, would not be left to fight Germany alone should she sign up with Britain and France.

More complicating and difficult was Soviet Russia, with whom Turkey had enjoyed 20 years of uninterrupted friendship. For three weeks before the alliance was finally signed Turkish Foreign Minister Shokru Saracoglu had been in Moscow. In between visits to the Soviet Agricultural Exposition and the ballet, he had talked with Foreign Commissar Viacheslav Molotov, who was just then also heavily engaged in conversations with various Finns, Estonians, Lithuanians, Letts.

What Comrade Molotov demanded of M. Saracoglu was kept veiled in Oriental secrecy. A good guess was that the Soviet Union wanted Turkey to: 1) close and keep closed the Dardanelles to belligerent warships—an action which would prevent Allied aid to Rumania; 2) give active assent to Russia’s snipping Bessarabia and Bulgaria’s snipping Dobruja off Rumania.

M. Saracoglu refused all demands, and at length departed, with Soviet and Turkish flags decorating the Moscow station, a band alternating between the Internationale and the Turkish national anthem and a courteous Soviet communique announcing that the two countries still retained their friendship. Later, however, the Moscow newsorgan Izvestia ominously hinted that Turkish-Russian relations had soured. At the same time in Ankara, German Ambassador Franz von Papen entrained for Berlin, there to explain to Fiihrer Hitler why he had failed to win the Turks away from the Allies.

Strategically, the treaty gave no positive protection against Russian invasion of southeastern Europe. But for Britain and France many problems were solved:

>There will be no need for long, hard campaigns in Mesopotamia or Palestine during this war.

> British and French Near Eastern protectorates and dependencies are safer than ever from uprisings engineered from without.

> The Suez Canal is not likely to be attacked.

> There will be no necessity for futile, costly attempts to storm the Dardanelles, such as the last war saw.

If the alliance specifically exempted Russia and was only indirectly aimed at Germany, the full force of it was felt in Italy. The Italian-owned Dodecanese Islands lie just off the coast of Turkey: British and French warships are now assured of ample bases in the eastern as well as the western Mediterranean; and the Allies’ new partner has an army of 700,000 ready to fight in the Mediterranean area.

Turkey’s alliance with Britain and France also bade fair to ease German pressure on the little Balkan States. Backed by such a powerful neighbor, Rumania, Greece and Yugoslavia may now take a more independent and fearless course than so far they have dared to do.

Officially the Wilhelmstrasse was not only bitterly disappointed but speechless. Growled an unofficial spokesman: “God help the Anatolian peasants. There are no trees there for them to hide behind when the bombers come. There were trees in Poland.”