867.24/2–2445: Telegram
The Ambassador in Turkey (Steinhardt) to the Secretary of State
[Received February 25—5:48 a.m.]
260. My 240, February 20. As the Secretary General of the Foreign Office continued to evidence an intention to take advantage of his impending departure for London to oppose the Mutual Aid Agreement I took advantage of my farewell visit to the President31 on February 21, to express my regret that it would be necessary for me to leave Turkey on February 24 without having signed the agreement. The President expressed surprise that an agreement had not been reached and instructed the Minister for Foreign Affairs who was present at the interview to make a further effort to conclude the agreement before my departure.
The following day the Secretary General invited me to call at his office and at once raised objections to the changes in the proposed letter as suggested in the Department’s 197 of February 15. In the course of the ensuing discussion which continued for over 3 hours the Secretary General proposed no less than 10 new drafts of the letter. All of these drafts were either a rehash of the letter submitted to the Department in my 144, of January 27 or contained the word “retroactive”. When it became apparent to me that the Secretary General had succeeded in persuading the Prime Minister not to agree to the letter textually as suggested in the Department’s 197 of February 15, I suggested that he revise the text of the letter provided the change did not affect the sense and was made in the first part of the letter previously drafted by him and not in the concluding part of the letter as revised in the Department’s 197, of February 15. So modified the text as finally agreed upon reads as follows:
“Mr. Ambassador: In connection with the signature today of the agreement between the Government of the Republic of Turkey and the Government of the United States of America on the principles applying to aid under the Act of March 11, 1941 I consider it helpful to point out to Your Excellency that the extent of the deliveries made [Page 1304] by virtue of the Lend-Lease law of March 11, 1941 before the date of the signature of the said agreement is to be the subject of consideration at the time of the final determination of the aid furnished by virtue of the said Lend-Lease law.”
After the text of the letter had been revised as above I insisted that the Secretary General submit the letter to the Prime Minister while I waited in his office. After a lengthy wait the Secretary General returned to his office and said that the Prime Minister insisted that the word “retroactive” be incorporated in the letter. To this I replied that the Prime Minister had assured me that the Foreign Office would not insist on the inclusion of the word “retroactive” and that if he had now changed his mind I regarded any further discussion as useless. The Secretary General thereupon immediately inquired as to whether 1 o’clock on February 23 would suit my convenience for the purpose of signing the documents.
Insofar as concerns the text of the Mutual Aid Agreement the preamble and articles 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 are as drafted by the Department. Article 8 (formerly paragraph 4 of the proposed exchange of notes) reads as follows: “It is understood that in the implementation of the provisions of the agreement each Government will act in accordance with its own constitutional procedures”.
Article 9 provides that the agreement shall take effect “as from this day’s date” and shall continue in force until a date to be agreed upon by the two Governments and concludes “Done in duplicate in the English and Turk languages both authentic at Ankara this 23rd day of February 1945”.
The Mutual Aid Agreement together with the exchange of notes embodying the assurances authorized by the Department in October 194432 and the letter referred to above were signed at 1:30 p.m., on February 23 by the Turk Minister for Foreign Affairs and myself. At the last moment Saraçoǧlu’s legal advisers informed him to his disappointment that the Prime Minister was without legal authority to sign any such document.
Had time permitted I should very much have preferred to have submitted to the Department for its approval the modification made in the letter. In this connection I trust the Department will bear in mind that the Acting Secretary’s request of me to postpone my departure from Ankara was not received by me until after the time for the signing of the documents had already been fixed and that at so late a stage in the proceedings it would have been most embarrassing to delay the actual signature in order to obtain the Department’s approval [Page 1305] of a modification which my legal knowledge and common sense told me was not only relatively unimportant but to our advantage.
The documents33 are being forwarded to the Department promptly by airmail pouch.
- Ismet Inönü.↩
- See telegrams 880, October 10, 1944, 7 p.m., and 900. October 14, 1944, 8 p.m., to Ankara, Foreign Relations, 1944, vol. v, pp. 907 and 910, respectively.↩
- For text of agreement and accompanying exchanges, see Department of State Executive Agreement Series 465, or 59 Stat. (pt. 2) 1476. Negotiations for a final settlement were begun early in 1946.↩