PACT OF FRIENDSHIP

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 2, 2 July 1938, Page 9

PACT OF FRIENDSHIP

FRANCE AND TURKEY

SANJAK DISPUTE SETTLED

MILITARY PARITY

United Press Association—By Electric Tele-

graph—Copyright. (Received July 2, 9.45 a.m.)

PARIS, July 1.

Negotiations between France and Turkey resulted in a pact of friendship and a military agreement ensuring the internal security of the Sanjak of Alexandretta on the basis of parity of the French and Turkish troops stationed there.

A declaration of collaboration relating to frontier questions in Asia Minor will be valid for six months, after which it will be renewable.

The Sanjak of Alexandretta, which includes Antibch, is on the TurcoSyrian frontier, and its population of 107,000 Arabs, 85,000 Turks, and 23,000 Armenians and Christian Arabs has made a special status necessary. Under an agreement signed by France and Turkey in 1936, the Sanjak is guaranteed the status of an autonomous demilitarised territory for which the Republic of Syria (under French mandate) is responsible as regards foreign relations and customs. This agreement was a comprqmise between the Turkish demand for, an independent State and the French proposal to make the Sanjak a part of Syria. Trouble developed after rioting in Antioch, which is in the Sanjak, and last month the Turks were reported to have sent troops to the border. The trouble dated back to May last year when the League of Nations experts began drafting the fundamental law for the Sanjak. Turkey protested against the regulations for the first elections, complaining that a commission which had done the work had paid too much attention to local French officials who were under anti-Turkish influence. Discrimination against Turks was claimed to have resulted.