Pressure Off

No surprise to President Ismet Inoenue and his Government, fidgeting in Ankara, was a piece of news that came last week from Moscow. The Red Army, said the Soviet radio, had taken from officers of a German chemical regiment papers and maps containing a detailed plan of a Nazi invasion of Turkey.

Well aware are the Turks that their country offers Hitler the best road to Suez, the shortest land route to Russia's Transcaucasian oil fields (and to Iran, Afghanistan, India, beyond). Since the Balkan campaign, Nazi pressure on Turkey has increased notch by notch, with troop concentrations in Bulgaria, fortification of islands in the Aegean off the Turkish coast, increasing activity of Nazi agents behind Turkey's back (particularly in Iran). Economic pressure, too, has steadily risen since the German-Turkish trade pact was signed in June.

Suddenly last weekend the pressure slackened. For no announced reason the Germans canceled a visit by Economist Karl Clodius, who was scheduled to go to Ankara to negotiate a -L-25,000,000 trade pact. Best guess was that the pressure would stay off Turkey until the Germans made a stronger showing in Russia.

At the week's beginning Russia helped ease the pressure still more. Joseph Stalin himself wrote to President Inoenue to assure him that Russia did not, as Nazi propaganda charged, have designs on the Dardanelles and the Bosporus.

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