Marx-Engels |  Lenin  | Stalin |  Home Page

  Selected Secret Documents from Soviet Foreign Policy Documents Archives - 1919 to 1941

Concentrated on 1st and  2nd WW Correspondence and Meetings related to Turkey, Balkans and Iran, with some additions from Afghanistan and India.

Download PDF
 

Telegram of the plenipotentiary representative of the USSR in Turkey A.V. Terentyev to the peopleʹs commissioner for foreign affairs of the USSR V. M. Molotov

August 25, 1939 top secret

Today Saracoglu handed me the following answers to our five questions about the pact *:

1.                   As we have already explained to Mr. Potemkin and Mr. Ambassador Terentyev **, the Turkish‐Soviet pact should have a limited effect, and hence it must be with limited liability. A defensive pact to be concluded may be based on a broad understanding of aggression.

2.                   A pact can be both independent of both tripartite pacts, and in connection with them. Nevertheless, even in the first case, it is necessary that the Turkish‐Soviet pact was in accordance with the provisions of the tripartite pacts.

3.                   Bearing in mind the limited space and responsibility provided for in the first paragraph, mutual assistance can encompass both naval and land warfare.

4.                   In any case, within the same limits, the pact can also apply to wars started as a result of corresponding obligations.

5.                   At present, Turkeyʹs obligations are limited to two declarations: the Turkish‐British and Turkish‐French and the Balkan entente pact ***. With the reservation formulated in the first paragraph, these commitments should give effect to the Turkish‐Soviet pact. The final Turkish‐Anglo‐French tripartite pact, as well as the subsequent commitments of Turkey, provided that they were accepted by the Soviets, would automatically add to the commitments currently in force and produce the same actions (effects). It should have been the same with respect to commitments of the same kind made by the Soviets.

I asked Saracoglu a few clarifying questions: a) should, when speaking about the limited spread of the Soviet‐Turkish pact, keep in mind the ministerʹs past statements that Turkey cannot assume obligations on the northern and eastern borders of the USSR ****. Saracoglu replied that in general terms it was about this, but more precisely, the general staffs would agree on certain boundaries; b) under the words “broad understanding of aggression” the Turkish government thinks all definitions of aggression arising from the convention on the definition of aggression signed in London in 1933 *****; c) the answer to our second question, according to Saracoglu, should be understood in such a way that the provisions of the Soviet‐Turkish pact should not contradict Turkeyʹs commitments under other pacts; d) on point 5, Saracoglu said that the Soviet government is given to decide whether it agrees with the commitments undertaken by Turkey in accordance with the declarations with Britain, France and the Balkan pact: ʺwe only wanted the Soviet government to agree with our obligations under these agreements.ʺ Saracoglu added that all the answers to 5 points were drawn up with a view to aggression and the conclusion of a defensive pact against aggression.

Before starting my conversation with Saracoglu, he asked me if I had anything to tell him for a report to the government on the question of the Soviet‐German non‐aggression pact *. I replied to the minister that I have no special report on this issue, but “then the articles published in the press by Izvestia and Pravda **, as well as the text of the agreement, fully answer the question of interest to the minister.

Now Saracoglu is completely depressed, I have never seen him like this. In connection with the newspaper hype about the Soviet‐German pact and that ʺon Sunday, the 27th, a general war will begin,ʺ I tried to drag Saracoglu into conversation, but he decided to keep silent, noticing only that he was leaving for Ankara on the 26th , where ismet, prime minister Saydam and all the other ministers will arrive in a couple of days.

Terentyev, avp rf, f. 059, on. 1, p. 298, d. 2059, l. 201‐204.