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  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.

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Recording of the conversation of the first deputy peopleʹs commissioner for foreign affairs of the USSR A. Vyshinsky with the ambassador of Turkey in the USSR a. Aktay

June 26, 1941 secret

The ambassador said that the third Diya comrade Molotov asked him about the position of the Turkish government in relation to the SovietGerman war. Then the ambassador could not immediately answer the question posed. However, sometime later, he received a clerical telegram that on June 22 the Turkish government had proclaimed ʺTurkeyʹs neutrality in relation to the situation created by the outbreak of the German‐Soviet war.ʺ the ambassador informed the peopleʹs commissariat of this with a note.

At the same time, comrade Molotov raised the question of the nature of neutrality that Turkey can adhere to.

The ambassador received instructions from his government to reply to the Soviet government that Turkey would adhere to strict and absolute neutrality. The ambassador stressed that this message is completely official, and he makes it on behalf of his government. I tried to get Aktay to clarify the formula of his statement, to get an explanation of what the expression ʺneutrality in relation to the situationʺ should mean. Aktay could not answer. In response to my subsequent question about what exactly should be understood by absolute neutrality, Aktay explained that absolute neutrality means that Turkey will seek to establish absolutely equal relations with both belligerents.

I asked if this neutrality makes any changes to the position that Turkey has held until now.

Aktay replied that there were no changes in Turkeyʹs position and asked that his statement be brought to the attention of the Soviet government. I promised to do it.

A. Vyshinsky wua rf. F. 06. On. 3. P. 3. D. 29. L. 73‐74.