867.24/1–2745: Telegram
The Ambassador in Turkey (Steinhardt) to the Secretary of State
[Received January 28—3:40 a.m.]
143. I have had three conferences with the Secretary General of the Foreign Office21 and four with the Prime Minister since my 2427 of December 29, 2437 of December 30, 1 of January 1, and the Department’s [Page 1295] 1121 of December 1, 1208 of December 21,22 7 of January 1 and 11 of January 2, with the object of concluding the mutual aid agreement.
My talks with the Prime Minister were rendered necessary by the insistence of the Secretary General on incorporating in the mutual aid agreement an additional paragraph containing a provision that the agreement should not have any retroactive effect and specifically stating that none of the Lend-Lease deliveries heretofore made should be regarded as covered by the agreement. This new proposed paragraph was handed me by the Secretary General after the Prime Minister had instructed him to incorporate paragraph 4 of the proposed exchange of notes into the agreement. I stated to the Secretary General that I must decline to submit to the Department for inclusion in the agreement a provision which I was reasonably certain would be rejected. The Secretary General accepted my statement with undisguised satisfaction as indicating our abandonment of the mutual aid agreement and gave every evidence that he considered the matter closed. Under these circumstances and being aware of the fact that virtually the entire Foreign Office including the Minister for Foreign Affairs23 share the Secretary General’s view that the Turkish Government should not sign any mutual aid agreement covering past deliveries since Lend-Lease deliveries to Turkey have been discontinued, I deemed it necessary to appeal again to the Prime Minister who in the course of my talks with him gave evidence of being under extreme pressure from the Foreign Office as well as from some of the party leaders not to intervene in the matter. I pointed out to the Prime Minister that insistence on an affirmative statement that the agreement is not to have any retroactive effect was meaningless when embodied in an agreement under the terms of which the Turkish Government merely assumed a general obligation without undertaking any specific commitment. I argued that from a practical point of view the delivery by the United States after the signing of an agreement containing the desired non-retroactive provision of a single item of nominal value would obligate the Turkish Government to identically the same extent as it would be obligated were it to sign an agreement without the non-retroactive provision. I referred to the unfortunate impression that has already been created in Washington by his Government’s delay in signing the agreement and urged him to remove the probability of a charge of bad faith in accepting Lend-Lease deliveries over a period of two and a half years and then declining to formally acknowledge the same. The [Page 1296] Prime Minister replied that while the Turkish Government appreciated the war material it had received from the American and British Governments his Government had been placed in what he described as a “unique and extraordinarily difficult position” by the manner in which Lend-Lease deliveries from the United States had been made to Turkey. He said that while the Turkish Government had reason to believe that a substantial part of the war material it had received had had its origin in the United States as indicated by the manufacturers marks, insofar as the Turkish Government had been formally advised, virtually all Lend-Lease deliveries had been made to Turkey by Great Britain. He pointed out that the British had required Turkey to pay for Lend-Lease deliveries including those of American origin by charging the same against the arms credit extended to Turkey by Great Britain24 and that in consequence insofar as the Turkish Government was aware American Lend-Lease deliveries to Turkey had already been paid for. He said that while he had been informally told that this situation would be adjusted as between the United States, Great Britain and Turkey at some time in the future and that Turkey would not be required to pay in cash for Lend-Lease war material of American or British origin, as matters stood today the Turkish Government had nothing more than a verbal assurance to this effect as to a substantial part of all the material received, and that having lived through the period of intergovernmental financial disputes after the last war he was in no position to assure the Turkish Parliament that Turkey might not even be asked to pay twice for the same material.
The Prime Minister then referred to the fact that the American Government had never deemed it necessary to explain to the Turkish Government the reasons for extending American Lend-Lease aid to Turkey through the British. He pointed out that the war material received by Turkey from the United States and Great Britain had never been definitively allocated as between the countries of origin, that no accounts, statements or records had been presented to the Turkish Government by the American Government, and that short of the [Page 1297] fact that the Turkish Government had been required to receipt to the British Government for all war material received from either Britain or the United States, the Turkish Government was entirely uninformed as to what it might be called upon by the United States to pay for some day or for that matter to whom the payments would have to be made. He said that while he desired to acknowledge the valuable aid and assistance Turkey had undoubtedly received from the United States indirectly through the British, he felt that the position his Government had been placed in, as he had outlined it to me, was probably different from that of any other country which had received American Lend-Lease aid and that in consequence some reservation must be made at the time of the signing of a mutual aid agreement which would not place him in what he described as “an impossible position vis-à-vis the Turkish Parliament”.
The Prime Minister then referred to the concluding sentence of the agreement which provides that the agreement shall take effect as from the date of signature and inquired as to whether in my opinion this language fairly interpreted did not have a non-retroactive effect. I admitted that it might be so interpreted observing that the sentence “spoke for itself”, but remarking that I doubted the Department would be willing to incorporate any such interpretation in the body of the instrument itself. The Prime Minister then inquired as to whether I thought the Department would agree to my addressing a letter to the Foreign Minister interpreting the sentence as meaning that the agreement was not to have a retroactive effect, I said I did not believe the Department would agree to my writing the letter, to which he replied that such unwillingness would go far to justify the insistence of the Foreign Office that the Turkish Government would be well advised not to sign any mutual aid agreement.
As it became increasingly apparent in the course of my last talk with the Prime Minister that I was losing ground and that he had about made up his mind to follow the advice of the Foreign Office and to decline to sign any mutual aid agreement I suggested that while I did not believe the Department would approve of a letter from me in which I undertook to interpret the sentence in question it might conceivably be willing to agree that the Foreign Minister address a letter to me giving his interpretation and that if the letter was so printed as to make it unmistakably clear that the deliveries made in the past were to be the subject of future discussion and settlement there was a remote possibility the Department might agree thereto. I added that I would not be willing to submit the draft of such a letter to the Department [Page 1298] unless he would give me his personal assurance that should the Department agree to the letter, paragraph 4 of the proposed exchange of notes would be incorporated in the agreement, no further changes of any kind would be sought by the Turkish Government and the agreement signed without further discussion. To this the Prime Minister agreed. The text of the proposed letter is set forth in my next numbered telegram.
While I have no way of anticipating the Department’s reaction to the understanding which I have arrived at with the Prime Minister and which he clearly understands is subject to the Department’s approval I feel it my duty to point out that in accepting the letter we will at least have a mutual aid agreement with Turkey whereas by refusing to accept the same it seems reasonably certain the Turkish Government will take advantage of my impending departure from Ankara to decline thereafter to enter into any mutual aid agreement covering past deliveries. I have little doubt that personal embarrassment of which the Prime Minister gives evidence whenever I discuss the subject with him will disappear with my departure.
I hope the Department will give serious consideration to the acceptance of the Prime Minister’s proposal which I am convinced he has offered in good faith in a final endeavor to bridge the gap between the Department and his Foreign Office.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
- Cevat Açikalin.↩
- Telegram 1208 not printed; for other telegrams of 1944 dates, see Foreign Relations, 1944, vol. v, pp. 911–915.↩
- Hasan Saka.↩
- The terms establishing the arms credit of 1939 to Turkey were incorporated in the Special Agreement annexed to the Treaty of Mutual Assistance concluded between Great Britain, France, and Turkey at Ankara on October 19, 1939, League of Nations Treaty Series, vol. cc, p. 167. For a summary of the relationship between the military aid extended by Great Britain to Turkey from 1939 to 1942 under the 1939 credit, and under Lend Lease following the Casablanca and Adana Conferences early in 1943, see letter from the First Secretary of the British Embassy in the United States (Thorold) to the Assistant Secretary of State (Acheson), May 31, 1943, Foreign Relations, 1943, vol. iv, p. 1104.↩