867.24/749

The First Secretary of the British Embassy (Thorold) to the Assistant Secretary of State (Acheson)

W. T. 205 BE/73/43

My Dear Mr. Acheson: As a result of the Adana Conference and in the light of new situation, the British Government has decided to extend Lend Lease facilities to Turkey to cover the supply of war-like stores.

War-like stores which will be supplied on Lend Lease are to be defined as “Arms, munitions, tanks, other military vehicles, aircraft, naval vessels, and other war-like stores”. Raw materials, machinery or other equipment not of a direct military nature, will not be included as it has been found in other similar agreements that a strict adherence to definition is necessary if constant pressure to expand the list with consequent friction is to be avoided.

It will be necessary to make these arrangements formal by a short agreement between His Majesty’s Government and the Turkish Government. I should explain in this connection that although the Turkish Government has been informed of our offer to grant Lend Lease facilities in general terms, no actual draft agreement has yet been submitted to them. This is now being prepared and before it is submitted to the Turkish authorities it will be communicated to you for your views. The general ideas held by the Foreign Office upon the lines which the new agreement will take are as follows:

(1)
It is proposed to leave the position of the 1938 credit91 unaltered. It is in any case fully allocated and orders placed thereunder are being fulfilled. The credit will thus be automatically absorbed in due course.
(2)
As the new Lend Lease arrangement will to a large extent supersede the 1939 armaments credit92 the following adjustments are proposed to cover this position:— [Page 1105]
(a)
The amount of approximately £18,000,000 out of a total of £25,000,000 credit has actually been spent. Orders totalling nearly £40,000,000 have, however, been placed in accordance with the offer made by the Foreign Office in its note of October 15th, 1941, to the Turkish Ambassador when the former expressed its willingness to grant a further credit when necessary. The Foreign Office propose that this undertaking should be automatically cancelled, but that goods which have been ordered in accordance with the terms of the credit and supply of which is only partially complete, should still be paid for out of the credit.
(b)
All other supplies of war-like goods will, in future, be sent on lend-lease terms even if they may have been provisionally allocated under the credit.
(c)
Goods, which according to the definition of non-military goods referred to above, are excluded from being delivered under lend-lease, will still be obtained under the terms of the credit. Certain orders of this type have already been placed.
(d)
Owing to partial completion of some orders and normal delay in getting orders, it is inevitable that debits will continue to be made to this credit for some little time to come.
(e)
There will nevertheless be an unspent balance or credit and it will be made clear to the Turkish Government that in the new circumstances the British Government will not expect to be held responsible to deliver goods to absorb this balance should such a balance exist at the end of hostilities.

It is the intention, as is the usual practice in lend-lease agreements, that a clause should be inserted in the agreement whereby the Turkish Government will undertake after the termination of hostilities to return such of the goods supplied as the British Government may request.

The question of the insertion of a specific clause in the text of the agreement dealing with reciprocal aid, is still under consideration. In view of the susceptibilities of Turkey as a neutral, it may be found preferable to cover this point in a separate note rather than by a clause in the agreement itself.

Yours sincerely,

Guy F. Thorold
  1. Agreement between the United Kingdom and Turkey regarding an armaments credit for Turkey, signed at London, May 27, 1938; British Cmd. 6119, Treaty Series No. 49 (1939).
  2. Special Agreement for a Credit, October 19, 1939; see footnote 90, above.