AN AMITY PACT

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 170, 21 July 1941, Page 6

AN AMITY PACT

TURKS LOOK AHEAD

FRONTING ALL WAYS

THE SILENCE OF RUSSIA

(By PERTINAX)

WASHINGTON, June 19.

The treaty signed yesterday in Ankara by Franz von Papen, the German Ambassador, and Shukru Saracoglu, Turkish Foreign Minister, does not commit the Turkish Government to any definite obligation to Germany. Nevertheless, it must be regarded as an important step of Turkish policy, because it certainly makes of Turkey a neutral in the full sense of the word, and, at any rate, relaxes, if it does not destroy, the diplomatic solidarity which had obtained between England and Turkey since October 16, 1939, and between Russia and Turkey since December 17, 1925.

Turkey is, so to speak, broughl back to the morrow of her national revolution, when she had a clear diplomatic slate and, in international affairs, had not yet cast her lot with any other nation. The implicit consequence of course, is that in the future she will stand rather with Germany than with the enemies of Germany until the latter succeed in reversing the tide of the Nazi conquest. Turco-Russian Relations The truly mysterious side of yesterday s agreement does not concern Turco-British, but Turco-Rus-sian relations. The British Government was told, as early as the end of April, when its troops had to b° evacuated from Greece that, sooner or later, the Ankara Government would have to propitiate Adolf Hitler, at least to remove from his mind the notion that Turkey was irretrievably connected with Great Britain. The London Cabinet did not protest. When France fell, it had released Turkey from the letter of her pledges on the understanding that she would try to live up to the 1939 according to her possibilities. No wonder, therefore that in the preamble of the new agreement with Germany, Mr. Saracoclu inserted a pious reference to the convention with England, a convention so elastic, indeed, that victorious Germany need not bother about it. But the treaty with Russia made it compulsory for President Ismet Inonu and his Ministers not to sien any contract with a third Power unless they had secured Moscow's approval. Then arise the following questions: Did the Turks acquaint their Russian partners before it was too •5L^J th the negotiation in progress with Germany? if Joseph Stklin and his advisers waived all objections, a natural inference is that they do not take very seriously their present controversy with the Nazi Empire. Otherwise can it be conceived that they would not have endeavoured to safeguard their association with Ankara? Russia's Cautious Attitude nf T ,hl k 'S- v 1° that u V usua l behaviour of the Tin ks may be found in »he recent past Last March thev suddenly turned their back on whatever prospect they had, then, to revive the Balkan League, and the new adopted, instead, was to their national defence to the military power of the Soviet Union But the Moscow rulers, so far as can be perceived from afar refused ™ ®°ü b^' onc i th ? ir declaration of March 24, wherein they had nrrvmised their "complete neutrality and understanding if Turkey had to enter the war for the purpose of d e fending her territory " On the face of " it, the Turcon T, agreemen 1 d oes not show Soviet Russia m a very militant mood. She does not seem to W c seriously attempted to hold bark Ankara from the GermJV pince?Auckland Stan" \t * -k*K —