767.68119/6–1445: Telegram
The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant) to the Secretary of State
[Received June 14—10:52 a.m.]
6019. We learned from Sir Orme Sargent that Ambassador Peterson has reported from Ankara that Molotov recently raised with the [Page 1235] Turkish. Ambassador in Moscow the question of revision of the 1921 Turkish-Soviet treaty,39 the granting of bases in the Straits to Russia, and revision of the Montreux Convention.40 Peterson obtained this info from Turkish Acting MinFonAff.
Molotov tried to justify revisions of the 1921 treaty, we were told, on the ground that treaty had been negotiated under duress.
Turkish Amb replied in effect to Molotov that 1921 treaty had been freely negotiated and that its validity had never been questioned; that granting of bases in the Straits was out of the question; and that revision of the Montreux Convention was a matter for a number of interested govts and not one to be discussed solely by Turkey and Russia.
Turk Govt has approved the way Turk Amb handled this situation but as Peterson pointed out Molotov’s move has created considerable nervousness in Turk Govt circles.
Sent Dept as 6019, rptd Moscow as 199, rptd Ankara as 50.
- The treaty of March 16, 1921, was signed in Moscow between the Government of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey and the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic. In a Turkish account of the negotiation of this treaty sent by the Turkish Ambassador in London, Cevat Acikalin, to the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Ernest Bevin, on March 4, 1946 (a copy of which was furnished to Secretary of State James F. Byrnes on March 26 by the British Ambassador, Lord Halifax), it was explained that “the definitive establishment of the frontier line was made by the Treaty of Moscow and it was M. Stalin who personally played … the important role in the settlement of this question.” (761.67/3–2646) This frontier line was described in article I of the treaty, and in article XV Soviet Russia undertook “to take the necessary steps with the Transcaucasian Republics with a view to securing the recognition by the latter, in their agreement with Turkey, of the provisions of the present treaty which directly concern them”. This was accomplished in the Treaty of Friendship signed at Kars on October 13, 1921, between the Government of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey and the Governments of the Socialist Soviet Republics of Armenia, Azerbaidjan, and Georgia, with the participation of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic. The Turkish account mentioned above stated that during the negotiation of the treaty “it was severally repeated by the delegates of the Transcaucasian Republics that their Governments agreed totally to the demarcation of the frontier line, as fixed in Moscow, and that they intended to conform strictly to the terms of the Treaty.” (761.67/3–2646) For the texts of the Treaty of Moscow, see British and Foreign State Papers, vol. cxviii, p. 990, and for the Treaty of Kars, ibid., vol. cxx, p. 906. The final demarcation of the frontier was done in 1926. See Max Beloff, The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia 1929–1941, vol. ii, 1936–1941, p. 40.↩
- For the account of the three specific demands raised by Molotov in his conversation with the Turkish Ambassador, Selim Sarper, on June 7, see his telegram 817, from Ankara, June 18, 1945, in Foreign Relations, The Conference of Berlin (The Potsdam Conference), 1945, vol. i, p. 1020. For the report of the second Conference on June 18, when Sarper informed Molotov that the Turkish Government “could not accept as a basis for discussion the three points proposed”, see telegram 844, from Ankara, June 22, ibid., p. 1024.↩