Turkey and the Anglo-Soviet Alliance, June 1941 to September 1943

Abstract

We saw at the end of Chapter 1 how starkly divergent were British and Turkish responses to the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, and particularly how Turkish satisfaction with the outbreak of the Russo-German war convinced British officials that the partnership that had appeared to characterise Soviet-Turkish relations during the interwar period had been replaced by ‘axiomatic’ or ‘atavistic’ hostility. Given the strategic importance of Turkey on the Northern Front during 1941 and 1942, the British were therefore compelled to tread carefully in their relations with both powers. They must forge a working relationship — and subsequently a fully fledged military alliance — with the Soviet Union while attempting to assuage Turkish concerns about the Stalinist threat to Turkish independence and sovereignty lest fear of the Soviet Union prompted Ankara to seek reinsurance with Hitler — a recurring British anxiety since the summer of 1940. Turkey was increasingly and inevitably subordinate to the Soviet Union in the British strategic concept, however, and British officials grew increasingly frustrated with the anti-Soviet prejudices of the Turkish leadership, which they understood to be a consequence of German propaganda and a failure in Ankara to recognise the sea-change in Soviet foreign policy which the British perceived during 1942 and 1943.