(Pictured Vyacheslav Molotov with Stalin)
The parties to the meeting, Sarper and Molotov, the leaders of the two countries, İnönü and Stalin, foreign statesmen, the retired Chief of General Staff of Turkey and the leader of the opposition party all agreed that there was an offer. So how did the Molotov-Sarper meetings turn into a crisis and become the founding element of anti-communism, which formed the ideological backbone of Cold War Turkey?
Did Stalin ask Turkey for Kars, Ardahan and the Straits in 1945?
80 years ago today, USSR Foreign Minister Molotov and Turkey’s Moscow Ambassador Selim Sarper had a meeting. The claim about what was discussed that day has become so indisputable over time that it has been the justification for Turkey establishing relations with the Western Bloc at every level since its entry into NATO in 1952. Whenever Turkey’s relations with the West are criticized, someone waves their stick saying, “Don’t forget Stalin’s territorial demands!” So what’s the real story?
The history of Turkey distancing itself from the Soviet Union, which helped it win the War of Independence with military aid, money and diplomatic support, is long. However, the history of this distance turning into a “cold war” is associated with the claim in the title. This claim has become so indisputable that it has been the justification for Turkey establishing relations with the Western Bloc at every level since its entry into NATO in 1952. Whenever Turkey’s relations with the West are criticized, someone waves their stick and says, “Don’t forget Stalin’s territorial demands!”
So what’s the real story? In order to understand the issue, we need to start a little further back.
During World War II, Turkey’s neutrality was very popular
for both the Axis Powers and the Allies. Despite this, Turkey was a country
that always flirted but never won. When the Turkish-German Friendship Agreement
was signed on June 18, 1941, there was a festive atmosphere in Turkey. Four
days later, the Cumhuriyet newspaper celebrated the attack of Hitler’s armies
on the Soviet Union with the headline “A New Crusade.” Let us learn about the
atmosphere of those days from Trabzon Deputy Faik Ahmet Barutçu (Political
Memoirs, v. 1, Ankara, 2001, p. 494): “The German-Soviet war created a festive
atmosphere in the country. Everyone was congratulating each other. With the
excitement and joy of a five-hundred-year-old historical revenge, hearts
immediately began to beat for the German victory. In the afternoon, in the
corridor of the Parliament, I said to Foreign Minister Saraçoğlu: - May your
political jihad be blessed once more. Saraçoğlu replied: - All of us! The
deputies were saying to each other: - May your holiday be blessed.”
According to a secret letter sent by Nazi Germany’s Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to Germany’s Ambassador to Ankara, Franz von Papen, Germany had set aside 5 million Marks for propaganda activities. This included bribing a wide range of people, from statesmen to journalists.
Turkey’s “active neutrality” discourse
On June 26, 1941, Turkey declared its neutrality, but it did
not refrain from massing its troops on the USSR’s southern border. So much so
that the Kremlin believed that if the Red Army was defeated and Moscow and
Stalingrad fell, the Turks could invade the Soviet Caucasus. In the fall of
1941, upon the invitation of Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, Turkish Army Generals
Ali Fuad Erden and Hüseyin Hüsnü Emir Erkilet visited the occupied Soviet
territories. “Nobody could guarantee that [Turkey] would not be on Germany’s
side in mid-1942,” wrote General Semyon Timeshenko in his unpublished memoirs.
“You are far from the front, but that does not mean that you are in less
danger, because we cannot count on Turkey’s neutrality,” Stalin told the
leaders of the Communist Parties of Azerbaijan and Armenia. In June 1942, as
the German armies advanced toward Stalingrad and Baku, the Soviet ambassador in
Turkey, Sergey A. Vinogradov, told the leader of the Bulgarian Communist Party,
Georgi Dimitrov: “My guess is that the Turks will never go to war, and the
Germans to Suez. If the Germans reach the Caucasus, something else will happen.
They will probably use all sorts of maneuvers to win the battles on the
Soviet-German front. The Turks are afraid of the Germans now, and they will be
afraid of us in the future. Their inner feeling is, ‘Send the Germans to the
hospital, the Russians to the cemetery.’” (The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov,
1933-1949, New Heaven, CT, 2003, p. 229.)
Soviet expectations from Turkey
On July 29, 1942, Molotov would warn Dimitrov: “The position
of the Turks is still uncertain. They should be on our side. It is still quite
possible that the Turks will be against us again…”
After the 200-day and night-long battle of Stalingrad ended
in February 1943 with the victory of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany and its
allies, the possibility of the Turks’ alliance with the Axis Powers diminished
and Moscow began to think that it would enter the war on the side of the
Allies. After the First Adana Conference on January 30-31, 1943, Churchill told
Stalin that he had persuaded the Turkish leaders at this meeting to enter the
war on the side of the Allies at the end of 1943 and asked Stalin if he could
make a friendly gesture towards the Turks. On February 6, Stalin responded to
this and said that the Turks’ position was still disturbing because they had
signed friendship agreements with Germany, Britain and the USSR at the same
time. Thus there were friendly diplomatic murmurs between Moscow and Ankara,
but these ended when no statement was forthcoming that Turkey had abandoned its
absolute neutrality. The Soviets then launched an intensive campaign against
Turkey’s neutrality and began to portray Turkey as pro-German, which was true.
In July 1943, Vinogradov advised Moscow to put pressure on Ankara regarding
military bases in the Balkans. If this pressure did not work, Vinogradov said,
new hostile issues could be added to the list for future implementation. At the
Foreign Ministers’ Conference in Moscow in October 1943, Soviet diplomats
proposed to recommend Turkey to enter the war on the Allied side before the end
of the year. Stalin justified this to Eden as follows: Turkey’s participation
in the war next year will be unnecessary. But today, Turkey’s neutrality helps
the Germans to maintain their positions in the Balkans. If Turkey enters the
war, the Germans may not be able to resist because they will not have
sufficient reserves. Therefore, Turkey's contribution to victory is necessary
for them to participate in the peace conference in the future.
The Allies are provoking Stalin
According to Roberts, the Allies then decided to call on
Turkey to join the war and ask whether it would open its bases to the Allies.
The issue continued to be discussed at the Tehran Conference on November 28,
1943. This time, Stalin was skeptical: He would say, "I don't think Turkey
will enter the war, no matter how much pressure we put on it." Stalin also
thought that the Overlord operation that the Allies conducted in northern
France in 1944 was not an operation related to Turkey in terms of Anglo-American
military priorities. In return, he even made a plan to create a
Turkish-Bulgarian conflict if the USSR declared war on Bulgaria. At the second
session of the Tehran Conference on November 29, Churchill said to Stalin: If
Turkey rejects our offer to enter the war, we will tell Turkey that this will
have serious political consequences. Especially in matters affecting the status
of the Straits. Stalin did not react to this sentence, but the next day at
dinner, when Churchill tried to bring the subject to the Russians’ need for an
“ice-free port” (‘warm sea’) and the status of the Straits, Stalin said that
this issue was important but needed to be discussed more deeply. Churchill
continued: “Previously, the British were against the Russians reaching the warm
seas, but now we have no objection to this issue. Stalin replied: “The Straits
regime was first arranged with the Sevres Treaty, then Lausanne and finally
Montreux… All these times, the British wanted to strangle Russia, and if the
British do not want this now, it is more necessary than ever to change the
Straits regime. Churchill said that he agreed with Stalin, but the urgent issue
was Turkey’s entry into the war. Stalin also agreed with him and the situation
of the Straits and ports could be discussed in due time!”
The policy of pressuring Turkey through Stalin
When it became clear in 1944 that Turkey would not enter the war, Churchill told Stalin to stop pressuring Turkey, but also to imply that it would be deprived of some rights after the war. Of course, Stalin had started to think more about the Montreux Convention after the war. On October 9, 1944, Stalin complained to Churchill that Turkey had much more rights than the USSR under Montreux. He said that Montreux definitely needed to be revised. He added that this had nothing to do with the current situation. Churchill said that he was in favor of the Russians having the right to access warm seas, but asked Stalin what he had in mind. Stalin was not in a position to say what needed to be changed at Montreux at that moment, but he contented himself with saying that there needed to be a revision. According to British archives, this is exactly what he said: It is quite impossible for Russia to be subject to Turkey, which has the right to close the Straits and prevent Russia's imports and exports. For example, what would the British, Spanish or Egyptian do if they closed the Suez Canal, or what would the US government do if the South American Republic closed the Panama Canal? In subsequent correspondence, the examples of Suez and Panama were constantly recalled, and finally, at the Yalta Conference in 1945, Stalin officially brought up the revision of Montreux and suggested that the issue be discussed with the US, British and Soviet foreign ministers.
Situation after the Yalta Conference
4-11 February 1945 After Yalta, the Soviets' policy towards Turkey became unilateral. On 18 March, Molotov announced that the Soviet-Turkish Friendship Treaty of 1925, which had expired in November 1945, might not be renewed. The idea behind it was to end this agreement and open a new negotiation table with the Turks and to negotiate the Montreux issue at this table. The Prime Minister of the period, Şükrü Saraçoğlu, was praising Stalin when the war ended on May 11, 1945: “The children of the people, whose courage was not broken, gathered around Stalin, who was also a child of the people, and with his genius guidance and management, they took all their revenge one by one… The Soviets wrote many brilliant pages of this world war, and Stalin’s lively face is always seen on every page of these writings.” Around the same time, Saraçoğlu gave a written instruction to Ambassador Sarper, who was returning to Moscow, saying, “The government of the Republic is inclined in principle to proceed to the point of concluding an alliance agreement with the Soviets.” You read that right.
Selim Sarper[2] enters the scene
Turkey, on the other hand, assigned its Moscow Ambassador Selim Sarper to meet with Molotov on June 7 for a new agreement. Selim Sarper was an important representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was an important historical actor who İsmet İnönü brought into politics and raised. He spent his high school and university years in Germany. He studied law at the University of Berlin. Sarper was only 24 when the Republic was declared. He worked as a clerk at the Independence Tribunals during the foundation of the Republic and entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1927. He served as the Director of Press and Publication Information in the 40s. During the war, he was in charge of managing newspapers and the Ministry of Propaganda. In 1944, he took on an important role that makes us remember his name: the Ambassador to Moscow. When we remember that this period covered the years when World War II was nearing its end and the beginning of the Cold War, the importance of Sarper’s duty in Moscow can be understood. What made Sarper important was that he declared a “Cold War” for Türkiye, albeit a bit exaggerated.
Sarper said that Turkey was ready to sign a new friendship agreement but did not consider changing the status of the Straits. After asking who was against this in Ankara, Molotov swore that agreements could be made that would allow Armenia and Georgia to withdraw their territorial claims against Turkey. He meant Kars and Ardahan. According to our official historians, Sarper’s answer to this was definitive: “1921 was already the repair of an injustice and Lenin signed it. The USSR has no need for land or population. It is not worth sacrificing the sympathy of the Turkish public opinion for this. In any case, it is not possible.” What Sarper meant by “it was already the repair of an injustice” was that Kars and Ardahan, which had already been left to the Ottomans by the 1918 Brest-Litovsk Treaty, were only given to Turkey in 1921.
Molotov then said, “The Straits leave 200 million people to the will of Turkey alone.” Sarper’s response was: “If you mean a base in the Straits, that’s out of the question!” Then Molotov added: “Montreux is outdated, it needs to change.”
Molotov brought up the subject again on June 18. If they didn’t want an agreement on the territorial issue, they could only discuss the Straits. This time, Molotov gave the example of Poland. In 1921, when the USSR was weak, it had to cede some territory to Poland. After the war, the USSR-Poland border was redrawn and this situation was resolved, but the territorial demands of Armenia and Georgia had not yet been met. The Soviet press wrote about the “betrayal of the Turks” who were taking advantage of the weakness of Soviet Russia and the Soviet Caucasus republics, the “forced removal” of small indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands, and the need for reunification.
Sarper sent a long report evaluating his talks with Molotov to Ankara in June 1945. According to Sarper’s personal assessment, Moscow was putting forward the issue of border changes and bases in the Straits “in order to gain concessions on other points.” “I don’t think the Soviets will stop the talks. They will not insist on the land issue. They put it forward as a bargaining chip.” Years later, when the US archives were opened, it would be revealed that Sarper had told the US Ambassador to Moscow, Averell Harriman, about his meeting with Molotov, before informing Turkey. However, the part told to Harriman seemed far from being a land demand.
What was Molotov’s aim?
The most well-known historian of this subject, Geoffrey
Roberts (“Moscow’s Cold War on the Periphery: Soviet Policy in Greece, Iran,
and Turkey, 1943-8”, Moscow’s Cold War on the Periphery: Soviet Policy in
Greece, Iran, and Turkey, 1943–8”, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 46,
No. 1 (JANUARY 2011), 58-81) says, “It is not clear why Molotov brought this
subject up, but perhaps clues can be found in what he said to Dimitrov in
November 1940.” What did Molotov say to Dimitrov? “As for Turkey, we want a base
to make sure that the Straits will not be used against us again. The Germans
can be the bosses of the Straits, just like the Italians, but they can ignore
our priorities in the region. We will drive the Turks into the interior of
Asia. What is Turkey? Two million Georgians, 1.5 million Armenians, one million
Kurds, and so on. The Turks are only 6 or 7 million,” he says.
In the memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, who would become the USSR Communist Party Secretary in 1955 (Khruschchev Remembers: The Last Testament, London 1974, 295-6), the origin of the demand for Kars and Ardahan is described as follows: “During one of the endless dinners at Stalin’s dacha, Beria began to talk about how certain regions that were now part of Turkey actually belonged to Georgia and that the Soviet Union should demand their return. Beria constantly brought this issue up, jabbing Stalin to do something. According to him, Turkey was exhausted from the war and too weak to do anything. Stalin finally gave up and ordered an official memorandum to be written to Turkey regarding the territorial demands.”
The picture is completed years later with what Molotov told Soviet journalist Felix Chuev (Ivan R. Dee, Molotov Remembers, Chicago, 1999, p. 9): “Here is a story told to me by the leader of the Georgian Communist Party, A. Mgeladze, and completed by Molotov: one day after the war, at Stalin’s dacha, there was a map showing the new borders of the USSR. Stalin said, let’s see what we have. Towards the north, everything is correct. Finland attacked us and we moved the border from Leningrad to that side. The Baltic states: Russian territory for ages! And ours again. We live together with all the Belarusians now. We are with the Ukrainians. We are with the Moldavians. The Kuril Islands are now ours. Sakhalin is all ours… And Port Arthur and Dairen and the Chinese Eastern Railway are ours. China, Mongolia, everything is fine. But I don’t like this part of our borders: said Stalin and pointed to the Caucasus.”
According to Roberts, Khrushchev and Chuev’s narratives were prophetic, but they were important in drawing attention to the strong ethnic emphasis that dominated the years of World War II. Moscow’s territorial demands from Turkey were related to ethnic expansionism that could be traced back to the Red Army’s occupation of Poland in 1929. This action was repeated when the Red Army occupied Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, which Stalin described as ethnically and historically part of Russia. Similarly, the objections made when Romania annexed Bessarabia and Bukovina in June 1940, or when the Baltic region was annexed in July-August 1940, were more ethnic than ideological. But of course, the historical provinces of the Tsarist period were also important. Throughout the war, Stalin was very determined that the USSR should pass through the so-called Curzon Line in Poland. This line was defined as an ethnogeographic line at the Paris Conference of 1929. When Churchill offered the city of Lvov to Poland as a gesture after the war, Stalin said that the Ukrainians would never forgive him. At the end of the war, when discussing the transfer of the Carpathian-Ukrainian region, Stalin said: “In the 13th century, the Russians lost Trans-Carpathian Ukraine and always dreamed of getting it back. Thanks to our correct policy, we have achieved this. We have brought together all the Slavs, Ukrainians and Belarusians and their lands; this has been the dream of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians for centuries.”
However, according to Roberts, ethnic sensitivity was even
stronger regarding Kars and Ardahan. Molotov’s territorial demands from Turkey
coincided with the rise of separatist movements in Iranian Azerbaijan. Just as
the Red Army’s invasion of Northern Iran had emboldened separatist Azeris, the
breakdown of the Turkey-USSR Friendship Treaty had emboldened Armenian and
Georgian nationalists towards unification. However, since Molotov’s main
concern was the status of the Straits, he did not care much whether the
territorial issues were resolved or not.
Turkey's reaction to news from Moscow
Now let’s go to Turkey and look at the records of the meeting that the then President İnönü held with high-level commanders on July 8-9, 1945. In those days, there were news in the press about demands for land and bases. The President organized this meeting to alleviate the suspicions of the high-level military officials. İnönü stated that an alliance had been offered to the USSR and that in return Molotov had said, “Let’s first resolve the difficult issues between us,” and he would list the Soviet offers. However, according to İnönü, “There is no such grave situation. It is more correct to act cautiously.” Moreover, İnönü emphasized that the Soviet offers had not taken on an “official status,” and that Moscow was conducting “probing and research.” He declared military mobilization against the USSR and said, “We have no interest in turning the situation into an irreparable official area” and added: “You said it, you didn’t. After that, we didn’t turn it into a presentation of documents. However, we must be vigilant in accepting this as an offer.”
Zekeriya Sertel wrote in his memoirs that former Chief of General Staff Marshal Fevzi Çakmak stated that “there is no need to panic” regarding the problems experienced with the USSR: “I do not understand the concern that has been expressed recently in Soviet-Turkish relations. Even Stalin’s offer did not cause me any concern. In my opinion, we need to talk to the Soviets. We should not get angry that they come before us with a wrong request. On the contrary, we need to sit down with them and explain their mistakes to them. They are understanding people and have no ill intentions towards us.”
The leader of the opposition, Democrat Party Chairman Celal Bayar, would also share the same view with Çakmak in an interview he gave to an American newspaper in April 1946. Bayar, who said that the Soviets could set their eyes on our home and rights at a time when the principle of respecting the rights of nations prevailed, added, “There is no longer any case between us.”
On the day of the Sarper-Molotov meeting, June 7, 1945, the Quadruple Memorandum, in which opposition emerged within the CHP, was signed by Bayar, Menderes, Köprülü and Koraltan. From that date on, opposition within the CHP began to make elbow contact with the left wing circles gathered around the Tan newspaper. Their aim was to test the ground for the establishment of a broad democratic front. İnönü thought that it would be impossible to control the opposition formed against him if it turned into a front. Moreover, according to İnönü, Moscow could benefit from the opposition formed against its own leadership. By turning Soviet proposals into “threats” against Turkey, the way was opened to escape the isolation it had fallen into in foreign policy.
How was the issue of the Straits addressed in Potsdam?
(signature-de-la-Convention-de-Montreux-en-1936)
Indeed, according to Roberts’ account, during the Potsdam Conference on July 17-August 2, 1945, Stalin and Molotov touched upon territorial demands from Turkey at dinner on the night of July 18, but the main issue they focused on was the status of the Straits and the granting of military bases in the Dardanelles. At another dinner on July 23, Stalin would turn to the British representative Winston Churchill and say, “If you cannot give us a fortified position in the Marmara, then can we not have a base at Dedeağaç?” Contrary to Churchill’s emphasis on Turkey’s territorial integrity, US President Henry Truman thought that “the issue of territorial cessions was one that the Turks and Russians had to sit down and resolve on their own.” Although Truman and Churchill prepared a text that included changes to the Straits regime, the Conference would only say that it would be good to change Montreux because it did not comply with today’s conditions. (However, it is claimed that Article 16 of the Protocol signed in Potsdam on August 1, 1945, regarding the Straits, was interpreted differently due to the differences in the Russian and English texts. Accordingly, while the English text requested that “all three states separately notify Turkey of their views on the Straits”, the Russian text stipulated that “the Straits issue should be the subject of separate direct negotiations between each of the three states and the Turkish Government”.)
The Tan Printing House incident in Turkey
After Postsdam, Soviet-Western talks continued in London on September 23, 1945. Molotov told British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin that he did not understand why the British were resisting now, when they were ready to leave the Straits to the Russians in World War I. These conversations had a strong repercussion in Turkey. According to İsmail Köse, “The Soviet Union’s Demands Regarding the Turkish Straits: 1945-1946 Notes”, Ankara University SBF Journal, Volume 74, No. 4, 2019, pp. 1125 – 1148.) President İsmet İnönü categorically rejected the Russian demands and accusations in his opening speech to the Turkish Grand National Assembly on November 1, 1945. (TBMM Tutanak Journal, Vol. 20; D. I; November 1, 1945). In his speech in December, he said that “no positive results could be obtained from the negotiations for a new alliance agreement” with the Russians. (TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, 20 December 1945: 3-10) Russian demands had brought the government and the opposition together in the TBMM. In the speech made by Kâzım Karabekir, the Soviet demands regarding Kars, Ardahan and the Straits were rejected on historical grounds. Foreign Minister Hasan Saka, who took the floor after Karabekir, said similar things. The TBMM was in a rage and there was an atmosphere that would accept war if necessary to reject the Soviet demands. In the meantime, the Allied foreign ministers were holding talks in Moscow regarding Turkey (TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, 1945: 256-261).
The Tan Printing House on 4 December 1945 and the printing of communist publications and magazines were related to this. In the articles published in the press, Stalin was branded as the “heir of the Russian tsars” who had been trying to seize the Black Sea straits for centuries. In the parliament, it was said that “the leaders of the Red Order are the continuation of the Romanovs.” Then, whoever leaked it, two professors from the Georgian Academy of Sciences’ articles expressing their demands on Turkish lands came to the agenda: This article, published in the newspaper Communist! in Tbilisi on December 14, 1945, and in Pravda and Izvestiya on December 20, and titled “Our legitimate demands from Turkey”, ended as follows: “(…) The Georgian people must take back their lands that they have never given up and will never give up. We mean Eastern Lazistan, that is, a part of the lands that were detached from Georgia, including the regions of Ardahan, Artvin, Oltu, Tortum, İspir, Bayburt, Gümüşhane and Giresun, Trabzon.”
In response, the USSR Ambassador to Ankara, Vinogradov, suggested to Moscow to condemn Turkish fascism, to call on the British and Americans to take tough measures against the Turks and to strengthen the garrisons on the Turkish-Soviet border, but Moscow issued a statement criticizing Turkey for its anti-Soviet attitudes, while also strongly condemning Vinogradov in the background: “Your recommendations are completely wrong and unacceptable. We cannot officially condemn Turkey for the rise of fascism in Turkey, because this is entirely Turkey’s internal affair. The publication of a declaration inviting the British and Americans to this issue cannot even be taken seriously, and the clanging of sabers can be seen as a provocation. The announcement by TASS that the garrisons on the Soviet-Turkish border have been strengthened is impudent and borders on childishness. We also cannot accept your proposal to sever relations with the Turks. Come to your senses and stop making hasty recommendations that will drag our state into such political problems.”
In December 1945, Stalin reminded Bevin to reiterate his territorial demands at the Foreign Ministers’ Conference in Moscow, but he also stated that going to war with Turkey over this was also ridiculous (rubbish).
Churchill’s Iron Curtain Speech
When British Prime Minister Winston Churchill spoke of the “iron curtain” dividing Europe in his speech at Westminster College in Fulton, on March 5, 1946, the new role of the United States began to become clear. On one side lay the communist bloc, and on the other side lay the ‘free world’ led by the US. The name of this new situation was the Cold War. During this visit, Churchill told US President Henry Truman about the great impasse in the USSR’s demands regarding Turkey. Stalin, who probably heard about this, told US Ambassador Bedell Smith in April 1946: “I assure President Truman that the USSR has no intention of dealing with Turkey, but Turkey is weak and the USSR knows very well what dangers the Straits protected by a weak Turkey pose to it. That is why we want a base in the Dardanelles. This is about our own security.”
Despite all these guarantees, the West had grown increasingly concerned that the USSR could enter a war with Turkey over the Straits, and that even without it, weapons could replace the diplomatic table. Stalin was not in a position to start a war in 1946, but the Red Army's maneuvers on the Turkish border were in a position to increase tensions in Turkey. However, in the summer of 1946, it was unexpectedly understood that Stalin would no longer voice his territorial demands.
Molotov wants revisions in Montreux
On August 7, 1946, Molotov met with Sarper and the USSR sent a diplomatic note to Ankara. Accordingly, this time the revision of the 1936 Montreux Convention was requested. The note stated that “The Straits 1. Should always be open to commercial vessels, 2. Should be open to warships of countries bordering the Black Sea, 3. Should be closed to warships of countries not bordering the Black Sea, except in exceptional cases, 4. Should be under the control of Turkey and countries bordering the Black Sea, and 5. Should be jointly protected by Turkey and the USSR.” These articles were very similar to those in the American diplomatic note of November 2, 1945.
According to İsmail Köse, the USSR presented a new note to Turkey on August 8, 1946. In this note, it was claimed that the demands regarding the Straits were not arbitrary, on the contrary, after reminding the Soviet Union of the dangers it faced due to the passage of some German warships through the Straits during the war, Turkey was unable to ensure the security of the Straits: “On July 9, 1941, the German Command had passed the German coast guard ship named ‘Seefalke’ through the Straits to the Black Sea, and this arbitrariness, which was a serious violation of the agreement regarding the Straits, had caused the Soviet Government to make an attempt with the Turkish Government. On October 4, 1942, the Soviet Government had drawn the attention of the Turkish Government again that Germany intended to pass its auxiliary warships, weighing a total of 140,000 tons, through the Straits to the Black Sea in the form of merchant ships. These ships were allocated for the transportation of the armed forces of the Axis Powers and war material to the Black Sea. In June 1945, the Soviet Government had sent 8 EMS type warships, which had participated in military operations in the Black Sea, and He had protested the incidents of five German warships and warships of the Kriegstransport type passing from the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea through the Straits in late May and early June…
On August 19, the US reminded Moscow that the Montreux Convention was not only a matter for the countries bordering the Black Sea but also for the signatory countries. Therefore, the issue could only be discussed at a multilateral conference. Two days later, the British made a similar objection. On August 22, Turkey joined the US and British views and said that Moscow’s demands were against Turkey’s sovereign rights and security. In its note, Turkey first explained separately the situation of the ships that passed through the Straits during World War II and that, according to the USSR, had violated the provisions of the convention, and added: “(…) During World War II, the Soviet Government never once applied to the Government of the Republic of Turkey for a situation that could endanger its security in the Black Sea.”
On September 24, Moscow issued a memorandum stating that it had special rights in the Black Sea and that the demands for revision did not endanger Turkey's sovereignty and security. The US resisted, and on October 18, Turkey sent its response to all other signatory states of Monro, except for Japan, which was defeated in the war, and ensured that they were informed about an international conference to be held when necessary.
Soviets retreat, Turkey anchors to the West
The USSR never responded to this letter, but instructed its ambassador in Ankara to "stop playing with Turkey's nerves." One of these was to invalidate the 1921 agreements that gave Kars and Ardahan to Turkey, and the other was to give an ultimatum regarding the Straits and to cut off diplomatic relations with Ankara if it was not accepted. The diplomats also suggested that the issue be discussed with the US and England, bypassing Turkey. However, none of these were accepted by Stalin and were not implemented. In 1948, a new ambassador was appointed to Turkey, who followed the old demands of the Soviets as usual. He repeated it so that it would come, but no further steps were taken.
While these were happening, the “Great Power” that was interested in Turkey was not the USSR but the USA. After President Truman’s “Truman Doctrine” speech in March 1947, US aid flowed to Turkey. The USSR condemned Turkey’s attempt to join NATO with a note on November 3, 1951. It stated that if it became a member of NATO, it would be an instrument for NATO’s aggressive aims and that it would have to accept its responsibilities. Turkey responded to this on November 12, 1951 and claimed that NATO was a defensive alliance. Then, it joined the organization in February 1952, becoming the second NATO member to border the USSR, along with Norway.
Now, it was not Turkey but the USSR that was being oppressed in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. After Stalin’s death, territorial claims and the Straits issue were completely off the agenda. However, it continued to be the most effective element in the Turkish right’s foreign relations repertoire when explaining how legitimate and vital it was to anchor in the West.
Why did Stalin's Turkey policy fail?
According to Western writers, the reason for Stalin's failure was that the West stood by Turkey. "This is true but incomplete," says Geoffrey Roberts. According to him, in July-October 1946, Moscow was busy with peace talks with the mini-axis states of Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary, Italy and Romania. These countries were vital for the USSR's position in Eastern Europe and the future of the communist parties. The conference failed, and a new conference was held in New York in November. With the softening of the Soviets, an agreement was signed in February 1947. The subject of the sessions in Moscow in March-April 1947 was German peace. Stalin was obsessed with the revival of the Germans and was strictly committed to the principles of de-Nazification, disarmament and democratization of Germany in the Potsdam Agreements. In this context, control of the Black Sea was important but not vital. Furthermore, pursuing a more aggressive policy could have damaged the theater he was performing with the West.
To summarize what we have said so far; In general, post-war Soviet policies towards Greece, Iran and Turkey contained different dimensions and dynamics. Soviet policy in Greece was to deter Stalin's Greek communists from a civil war. This was in accordance with the principles of parliamentary democracy that the Soviets tried to implement through communist parties in post-war Europe and the agreements made with the British and Americans. The driving force of Soviet policy in Iran was economic interests, but this goal was intertwined with the country's ethnic division and nationalist policies. Ethnicism and nationalism also played a role in relations with Turkey, but the main issue was the Soviets' security in the Black Sea. Stalin was unsuccessful in all three countries. This issue coincided with the Allies' desire to remove the Soviets from the historical narrative after the war. In the early years after the war, Stalin and other Soviet leaders thought that the Allies had underestimated the Soviets' role in winning the war. London and Washington did not recognize the USSR as a new global power and did not accept that it could have superior interests like theirs. Stalin had complained about this to British Foreign Minister Bevin as early as December 1945. “As you can see, the United Kingdom has India, the United States, China and Japan; but the USSR has nothing!” he said. This sentiment was observed by diplomats such as Bevin and US Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, and when it became clear that this was a sensitive point for the Russians, they frequently pushed their buttons on this issue.
Stalin’s death on March 5, 1953 was undoubtedly a very important event in the history of the USSR and changed the system in terms of relations between the people and the government. The era of collective government began. Georgi Malenkov, who was seen as Stalin’s “natural successor,” came to the fore and tried to follow a three-component policy: reducing tensions in international relations, restructuring the economy and, for this purpose, regulating relations with the village. Malenkov eventually resigned in February 1955, Nikita Khrushchev became party general secretary, and Nikolay Bulganin became prime minister.
In 1957, Khrushchev made an emotional assessment of Stalin’s
policy towards Turkey: “We had defeated the Germans. It was dizzying. Turks,
comrades, friends. Let’s write a note, they should surrender Çanakkale
immediately… Nobody is that stupid. Çanakkale is not Turkey, it is the nexus of
states. We terminated the friendship treaty and spat in their faces… It was
stupid. We lost friendly Turkey and now there are US bases in the south…”
Ayşe Hür – 07.06.2025
[**] Ayşe Hür (b. 1956, Artvin) is a Turkish historian, researcher and writer and radio-TV programmer.
In 2004, he returned to academic education and completed his postgraduate thesis on the European Union's Reconciliation Points with History and the Armenian Issue at the Atatürk Institute of Boğaziçi University (2005). She worked as a columnist for the Taraf newspaper between November 2007 and May 2012. While at the Taraf newspaper, she criticized Kemalism in various ways, claimed that the only difference between the Gülen Movement and Kemalism was that it was a 'religious social engineering project, not a civil one', and said that Fethullah Gülen was the 'leitmotiv' of politics. She returned to the Radikal newspaper on August 26, 2012. She served on the editorial board of the monthly Toplumsal Tarih magazine published by the History Foundation. She prepared a history talk program for Açık Radyo. Between 2020 and 2022, she prepared the podcast content called The Other Face of History on Özgürüz Radyo, where Can Dündar is the editor-in-chief. She produces the program called Erdoğan Aydın ile Tarihin Peşinde on Artı TV. In this program, she made a claim with the statement, “Whether it is the İsfendiyaroğulları that we think is a Turkish principality, the Germiyanoğulları, the Aydınoğulları are Kurds.”
Books
Other History 1: From Abdülmecid to the Union and Progress, Profil Publishing (2012)
Other History 2: From Mondros to the Izmir Assassination Trial, Profil Publishing (2012)
Other History 3: Kemalist Revolutions and Rebellions, Profil Publishing (2013)
The Years of İnönü and Bayar The Other History of the Multi-Party Period 1 (1938-1960), Profil Publishing (2015)
Years of Coup and Conflict - The Other History of the Multi-Party Period - 2 1961-2000, Profil Publishing (2015)
The Other History of Non-Muslims, Literatür Publishing (2016)
The Other History of Turks, Literatür Publishing (2016)
The Other History of Kurds, Literatür Publishing (2017)
From Tanzimat to the World The Other History of the Ottoman Empire to the War, Literatür Publishing (2017)
The Other History of the Ottoman Empire, Literatür Publishing (2017)
The Other History of the National Struggle from Mondros to the Republic, Literatür Publishing (2019)
The Other History of the Mustafa Kemal Atatürk Period 1 - Revolutionary Laws and the Elimination of the Opposition 1923-1927, Literatür Publishing (2020)
The Other History of the Mustafa Kemal Atatürk Period 2 - Nation Building to Nation State (1928-1933), Literatür Publishing (2020)
The Other History of the Mustafa Kemal Atatürk Period 3 - Integration of Party, State, Leader (1934-1938), Literatür Publishing (2021)
[1] Tevfik Rüştü Aras (11 February 1883 – 5 January 1972) was a Turkish politician, serving as deputy and foreign minister of Turkey during the Atatürk era (1923–1938).
Aras was born in 1883 in Çanakkale. He graduated from the medical school of Beirut. He served as a doctor in İzmir, Istanbul, and Thessaloniki (Turkish: Selanik ). He became a member of the Committee of Union and Progress, and during his membership he met Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey.
In 1918, he was a member of the high commission of health
(Turkish: Yüksek Sağlık Kurulu). At that time he married the journalist
Evliyazade Makbule, who was the daughter of a wealthy family from İzmir.
Political career
The Turkish Grand National Assembly (TGNA) was inaugurated
in 1920 and Aras was elected to the parliament from Muğla. In his first period
as a Member of Parliament (MP), he was appointed to the Independence Court of
Kastamonu. In the autumn of 1920, he became one of the founders of the
Communist Party of Turkey. Tevfik Rustu visited the Russian Soviet Federative
Socialist Republic with Ali Fuat Cebesoy, when Mr. Cebesoy was appointed as
ambassador to Moscow. He served as MP for İzmir in the second, third, fourth
and fifth periods of TGNA, between 1923 and 1939.
When the Law on the Maintenance of Order was effected on 4
March 1925, he was the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the third İsmet İnönü
government. He stayed in office by keeping his position in all the cabinets
until Atatürk died. He implemented Atatürk's foreign policy, held good
relations with neighbouring countries and opposition to hegemonic powers. He
visited Russia three times at the invitation of Maxim Litvinov, the People's
Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union. These visits took place in
1926 (Odessa), and in 1936 and 1937 (Moscow).
In 1933, he met with Bulgarian Prime Minister Mushanov in
Plovdiv, because of the incident in Razgrad, where the Turkish cemetery was
attacked. Aras claimed that the situation was stabilized and that the incident
was an attempted provocation.
Aras was elected as the president of League of Nations
during the Special Session of the Assembly Convened for the Purpose of
Considering the Request of the Kingdom of Egypt for Admission to the League of
Nations in Geneva, on 26–27 May 1937.
He was removed from his position as Foreign Minister right
after Ataturk's passing away by the new Head of Republic Ismet Inonu. Aras and
Inonu had different opinions in foreign affairs especially in Soviet relations,
Inonu believed that Aras was more loyal to Ataturk rather than the government
and conducting foreign affairs directly with him and finally Inonu had
suspected Aras for lobbying against him before the Head of Republic election. This conflict prompted Aras to take his place
in the opposition to Inonu. He supported the establishment of the Democratic
Party (DP), but was soon dismissed by the DP following his attempt to include
socialist ideas into the party program. He advocated for a conciliatory policy
towards the Soviet Union to which the DP did not agree to. He then was also
involved in the establishment of the New Turkey Party in 1961.
Aras was appointed ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1939
since he was removed and stayed in London for three and a half years. He
retired in 1943 and published some stories in the Istanbul press (especially in
the newspaper Tan). He took office as chairman of the board of Turkiye Is
Bankasi, a Turkish Bank.
The speeches he gave during his ministerial period were
collected in a book called "10 Years in Pursuit of Lausanne"
(Turkish: Lozan'ın izlerinde 10 yıl) by Mr. Numan Menemencioglu in 1937. He
also collected his stories (published in the daily press between 1945–63) into
a book called My Views (Turkish: Görüşlerim).
He died on 5 January 1972 in İstanbul, and was laid to rest
at the Aşiyan Asri Cemetery.
Alleged Role in the Armenian genocide
Tevfik Rüştü Aras was the brother-in-law of Nazim Bey, one
of the chief organizers of the Armenian genocide. Tevfik Rüştü Aras became
Inspector-General of Health Services and was given the task to destroy the
bodies of victims. He organized the disposal of Armenian corpses with thousands
of kilos of lime over six months. The bodies were dumped into wells which were
then filled with lime and sealed with soil. Tevfik Rüştü Aras was given six
months to complete the task, after which he returned to Istanbul. H.W.
Glockner, a British POW, wrote in his memoirs that he had seen the bodies of
murdered Armenians in Urfa thrown into large ditches and covered with lime,
just as Tevfik Rüştü Aras has been instructed to do.
In 1926, following the passage of the 'Settlement Law'
designed to break up Kurdish majority areas in the eastern provinces, Aras
justified the deportations to the British administrator of Iraq, Sir Henry
Dobbs. Dobbs recorded how Aras said that the government was 'determined to
clear the Kurds out of their valleys, the richest part of Turkey to-day, and to
settle Turkish peasants there,' adding that the Kurds 'were to be treated as
were the Armenians.' Aras apparently justified this argument: 'The Kurds would
for many generations be incapable of self-government ... He always said long
before the war that Turkey must get rid of the Albanians, Bulgarians and Arabs,
and must become more homogeneous.'
Personal life
He had a daughter from his marriage to Evliyazade Makbule
called Emel, who later married Fatin Rüştü Zorlu, the minister of foreign
affairs from 1957 to 1960.
[2] Selim Rauf Sarper (14 June 1899, Istanbul – 11 October 1968, Ankara) was a Turkish diplomat and politician. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs between 1960 and 1962.
Early years
Selim Sarper was born on 14 June 1899 in Istanbul. He spent
his youth years in Germany, where he finished the high school in 1918, and
attended University of Berlin to study law. At the age of 24, The Turkish
Republic was proclaimed in his home country.
Returned home, he studied at Ankara University, Law School.
He then served as a teacher of French language in a high school at Adana in
1923 before he worked as a clerk at the Independence Tribunal in the early
years of the Republican era. In 1927, he entered the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs as a translator.
Diplomatic career
Selim Sarper (second from right at the desk) during a
meeting of United Nations Security Council in New York City ca. 1951
In 1928, he was appointed vice-consul in Odessa, Soviet
Union, in 1929 third secretary at the Turkish Embassy in Moscow and two years
later he was promoted to the post of second secretary at the same office. His
further assignments were, Consul in Komotini, Greece in 1933, Consul in Odessa
in 1935, Consul in Berlin, Germany in 1937 and Ambassador in Bucharest, Romania
in 1939.
In the 1940s, Sarper served as the Director of the
governmental Press and Information Agency. During the World War II years, he
was responsible for the administration of the official propaganda and
information.
In 1944, Selim Sarper was appointed Turkey's Ambassador to
Moscow, an important mission during the last years of World War II and the
early years of the Cold War (1947-1991). According to President İsmet İnönü's
judgement relating to a conversation between Sarper and Stalin's Minister of
Foreign Affairs Molotov on 7 June 1945, Turkey, even remained neutral in the
war, might have been under a territorial claim threat from the Soviet Union.
Due to this context, Turkey subsequently positioned itself alongside the United
States. After the related official documents in the U.S. archives were made
available to the public, it became clear that Sarper reported the subject of
his conversation to the U.S. Ambassador W. Averell Harriman, even before he
notified his government. However, his report to Harriman does not mention any
threat by the Soviet Union, and the memoirs of Molotov deny such an allegation.
In 1946, Sarper became Ambassador to Italy in Rome, in 1947 Permanent Representative of Turkey to the United Nations and in 1957 Permanent Representative of Turkey to NATO.
Politics
On 28 May, the next day of the 1960 Turkish coup d'état,
Selim Sarper, took United States Ambassador in Ankara Fletcher Warren to the
coup leader General Cemal Gürsel for a visit. Sarper was appointed the same day
Minister of Foreign Affairs replacing Fahri Korutürk in the draft cabinet list.
Sarper entered later the Republican People's Party (CHP)
running for a seat in the parliament at the 1961 general elections. He
continued to serve at his post as Minister of Foreign Affairs until 16 February
1962.
Revealed U.S. diplomatic documents show that during his term
in the İnönü's coalition cabinet, Sarper made assessments to the U.S.
Government and told high words about his own head of state like "That
Gürsel was not a great brain".
In the 1965 general elections, Sarper was re-elected into
the parliament as a deputy from Istanbul Province.
Illness and death
On 14 May 1968 Selim Sarper underwent a lung surgery for the second time. He died on 11 October 1968 in Ankara; his body was transferred to Istanbul. He was survived by his wife Kamuran and daughters Ülker (Sarper) Kural and Ayşe (Sarper) Vanlı.
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