Lesson in Realities

Cairo purveyed a graceless joke: when Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Ismet Inoenue met after Teheran, they dined on warmed-up Turkey. President Inoenue and his agile Foreign Minister, Numan Menemencioglu, deserved a better commentary--for, to all intents, Turkey had joined the Allies. She might at any moment be faced with war, either by her own declaration or by German attack.

Thus ended a shrewd and careful game of balance-of-power politics. For four years, Turkey had perched inviolate between the warring powers. The game ended because first Russia and then the U.S. and Britain wanted it to end; because Turkey realized that the time had come to pay for postwar security. After the stimulus of the Big Three Conferences, the end of Turkey's game was a sobering anticlimax, a dour lesson in the realities which Europe still faces despite the promise of Teheran.

Fear and Security. Three treaties and a traditional fear were the realities behind Turkey's neutrality in World War II. The treaties were 1) a mutual-assistance pact signed with Britain in 1939; 2) a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union in 1939; 3) a friendship and nonaggression pact signed with Germany in 1941. All were hedges against Turkey's old fear of Russia, which has always wanted Turkey's greatest asset: the Straits (Dardanelles, Sea of Marmara, Bosporus), linking the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.

Soviet Russia lately has also wanted Turkey in the war, so that German forces would be diverted from the Red fronts. For nearly four years Britain (and, after Dec. 7, 1941, the U.S.) did not want Turkey in the war. The Western Allies had a good reason: they lacked the troops, planes, ships to protect Turkey against the Germans, or to make use of her strategic position in a Balkan campaign. In effect, during this welcome neutrality Turkey at war would probably have put a severer drain upon Britain and the U.S. than upon Germany. As late as last February, Churchill told the House of Commons: "It is not part of our policy to get Turkey into trouble."

But Britain and the U.S. did want eventual Turkish aid in the form of land and air bases for use when all was ready. In cold, intelligent self-interest, Turkey held out through most of 1943 for assurances that Britain and the U.S. could 1) protect her against Germany during the war; 2) protect her against Russian claims and dominance after the war. Britain's feckless failure to hold three Aegean islands just off Turkey's shores did not help matters this fall.

Demands v. Demands. Mounting U.S. and British might, German losses, a Russian demand finally broke this deadlock. In October, just before the Hull-Eden-Molotov Conference in Moscow, Russia suddenly asked that Turkey be brought in. At Moscow, Britain and the U.S. agreed to use their strongest influence; picked Anthony Eden for the job.

Eden did not like the job. He had tried and failed before to get commitments from the Turks. When, willy-nilly, he met Menemencioglu in Cairo after the Moscow Conference, Eden spoke softly. He sought first to get the use of strategic air and sea bases. Gradually he edged up to the point of Turkey's full entry.

The Turks had been suspicious of the Moscow Conference; now they saw their suspicions confirmed. They declared that they would not come in until they knew exactly how they would stand with the U.S.S.R. after the war. They also made it plain that they would need air protection for Istanbul and Ankara, both highly vulnerable to bombing, and military aid in the event of a Nazi blitz from Bulgaria. There matters stood until Teheran.

In the end, the Turks' reaction to Teheran was the strongest testimony to the success of that conference. They were at last convinced that Britain and the U.S. would not split with Russia, leave a helpless, empty-handed Turkey in the middle. When President Roosevelt sent five planes to Adana to bring Inoenue and his party to Cairo, the Turks were not exactly happy, but they were ready.

Capitulation and Risk. Roosevelt, Churchill, Inoenue talked for three days. With them were Menemencioglu and Russia's smart, smooth Ambassador to Ankara Sergei Vinogradov. Afterward, an ambiguous, labored communique could not conceal that: 1) Turkey, risking war, had granted everything short of war; 2) the understanding at Cairo may have lessened but had not erased the differences between the Turks and Russians. The communique mentioned "closest unity" between Turkey, the U.S. and Britain. It referred to the "identity of interests and views of the great American and British democracies with those of the Soviet Union." But as for Turkey and the Soviet Union, the best that could be done was to link them indirectly in "traditional relations of friendship" among all four powers.

By all indications, the U.S. and Britain had--or would soon have--invaluable bases for use against southeastern Europe. If the Straits were opened to military traffic into the Black Sea, Russia's supply line would be smoothed and shortened. But the U.S. and Britain had also taken on an enormous responsibility. A German attack on Turkey, even if only temporarily successful, could have profound effects on Allied prestige in all Europe.

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