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(i) The Road to Adana: January 1943 (ii) Why Churchill Failed (iii) Consequences: The Foreign Office and the Record

'He had the feeling that the time had come to cash in on the Russian victories, and on the favourable turn of events in the Mediterranean, and to nail Turkey to the mast...He felt that a talk between him and the Turkish president would show the world clearly which way the wind was blowing.'

Ian Jacob, December 1942: JA C B 1/16p.94 in Churchill College Cambridge

This chapter traces Churchill's attempts, culminating at Adana at the end of January 1943, to persuade Turkey to join the Allies at a time when the military situation in the Soviet Union and North Africa, and the war at sea, had all after many perilous months improved. It also attempts to analyse the reasons why Churchill failed, and why his reading of diplomatic decrypts during this period (with the exception of the conference at Adana itself, when bjs could not be produced for security reasons) sheds light on both aspects of his endeavours.

By February 1943 the tide of war was beginning to turn against the Axis; in the Pacific, the Japanese had lost initiative to the Americans after Midway and Guadalcanal; in Africa the British had taken Tripoli, and in Russia the Soviet Army had just forces von Paulus to capitulate at Stalingrad. Churchill wrote at length to the Chiefs of Staff about Turkey: 'A supreme and prolonged effort must be made to bring Turkey into the war in the Spring...Turkey must be won if proper measures are taken. Turkey is an Ally...She has a great desire to be well armed. Her army is in good order, except for the specialised modem weapons in which the Bulgarians have been given so great an advantage by the Germans'.^ Recent Allied successes in Egypt, Cyrenaica and, above all, Soviet army triumphs in the Caucuses, had rendered pointless Turkey's successful dodging of her obligations hitherto. It was now possible 'to build up a powerful British land and air force to assist the Turks . . . [who] all through the winter from now on must be equipped from Egypt and from the United States with tanks, Anti-Tank and Anti-Aircraft guns, and active construction of airfields must be undertaken...Experts must be provided to assist the Turks in learning to use and maintain this material.' He repeated, 'A ceaseless flow of weapons and equipment ^ W. s. Churchill, The Second World War: The Hinge o f Fate Vol.4 (London: Cassell, 1951), pp.623ff.

must go to Turkey'. He also wrote to Stalin: 'A new Allied effort to get Turkey in' would 'help Russia by opening the shipping routes on the Black Sea and bomb the Roumanian oilfields at Ploesti.'^ Stalin agreed.

Elsewhere threats to Spanish as well as Turkish neutrality were being expressed: 'The Axis will take Gibraltar or invade T u rkey.'^ In London these two possibilities were canvassed by the Turkish ambassador: 'Turkey would resist with arms...Turkey believes the neutrals coming into the war depends at present more on the wishes and plans of the belligerents than on our respective governm ents'.^ The Turkish stance on entering the war was further commented on by Yamaji, the Japanese ambassador in Sofia. Kurihara in Ankara reported that the Turkish administration knew 'territorial aggrandisement was more a burden than a benefit' and would not be tempted to enter the war by offers of this sort by either side. Turkey would 'be an ally of no-one'.^ But Papen was reported as saying the Germans would not be rash enough to invade either Turkey or Spain. In Ankara the Japanese Ambassador Kurihara reported no change in Turkey's attitude: 'The Allies would occupy Turkish airfields without warning; bomb the Balkan oilfields while Germany was concentrating on the Eastern front'. He also reported a plot to oust Inonii from the Turkish Presidency and install a pro-Allied administration. The Inonii Government, he added, 'reckoned that if Turkey comes into the war the Axis will without delay carry out an advance from Bulgaria and Greece, and gain control of Western Turkey.'^

What became of this coup attempt is not known and Inonii himself never displayed any worry about his own position as virtual dictator. On 1 December he was re-elected President. Hitler was among the first to congratulate him. At the Foreign Office Glutton doubted whether he deserved a similar message from King George VI, but eventually that too was despatched.^ The next day Kurihara commented on Turkey's traditional self­ esteem. Oshima reported from Berlin that Germany saw no need to invade Turkey. This was confirmed to British decrypt readers by Yamaji in Sofia reporting on 11 December about Bulgarian preparations to defend herself should she be attacked from Turkey: 'It was not wise for Germany to seek out new enemies'.* Saraçoglu had told Germany that Turkey was the ally of Britain but now he was no-one's ally: 'Turkey relies on herself.^

2 Ibid., p.625.

^ PRO H W 1/1125( 1449), bj 111327, London to Ankara, decrypted 20 November 1942.

^ PRO HW 1/1125, bj 111300, London to Ankara, decrypted 20 N ovem ber 1942.

^ PRO H W l/1145, bj X X X , Ankara to Tokyo, decrypted 24 N ovember 1942; also PRO HW 1/1148, Sophia to Tokyo, and PRO HW 1/1156, A nkara to Tokyo, decrypted 26 November 1942; and PRO H W l/1 164, bj

111598, decrypted 27 November 1942; also PRO H W l/1 171/383, decrypted 27 November 1942.

^ PRO H W l/1 178, bj 111713, and H W l/1 142, bj 111451, A nkara to Tokyo, decrypted 30 N ovem ber 1942.

2 PRO FO 371/37491, R 2 136/123/44, Glutton, 10 M arch 1942, and correspondence between Sir Alexander Hardinge, the King's Private Secretary and the FO.

* PR O H W l/1 182, bjs 111767, 70, 71, 78, A nkara to Tokyo, decrypted 2 D ecem ber 1942; PRO H W l/1210, bj 112093/249, Sophia to Tokyo, decrypted 2 December 1942.

Despite all this Churchill had been persisting in his shotgun wedding approach to Turkey. He told Stalin on 24 November that the Allies 'needed a new effort to have Turkey enter the war on our side.’ The Prime Minister considered that 'an Anglo-Soviet guarantee of territorial integrity should be offered Turkey, and much equipment. A large Allied army assembling in Syria could help Turkey if the Axis attacked her, and your operations in the Caucasus or north of it may also exercise a great i n f l u e n c e ' . T h e consequences would include more effective bombing of the Romanian oilfields.

Surprisingly in these evident half-truths, blandishments and hopes as yet unfulfilled, Stalin acquiesced. On 28 November he had replied that everything possible should be done to get Turkey in. 'This would be of great importance in order to accelerate the defeat of Hitler and his accomplices.'^ ^ There seems more politics than conviction in this exchange of views on Turkey, and anyway the Soviets had too much else to worry about. By 20 December Kurihara reported from Ankara that German circles 'here are considering a passage through Turkey by force but I understand that as a result of the most thorough investigations they have reached the conclusion that, owing to topographical conditions in Anatolia, inadequacy of communications and various other difficulties which they foresee, a move southward from the Caucasus would actually be a short cut and an easier route [i.e. to Egypt]'. Germany considered the Western Allies had no intention of laying hands on Turkey for the time being: 'but it is impossible to ignore the infiltration of US/UK influence into the Turkish army, the construction of airfields and roads with the guidance and collaboration of British and American engineer officers already present all the appearance of preparation for joint operations'. Another bj of the same date from Oshima shows Ribbentrop assuring him that 'this was not the time to go out of one's way to turn Turkey into an enemy'.

John Stemdale Bennett wrote to Sargent on 18 December, giving his appreciation of Turkish public opinion towards what all felt to be the coming war. In the Kayseri area an aircraft factory manager told his informant that 'undoubtedly Turkey would be in the war by May 1943', and that this belief was general. 'Turkey would settle affairs with Bulgaria in the Spring, but reckoned there was no danger of an invasion of Thrace by Germany.’ 'Coming into the war' was the main topic of mess talk. Aggressive gestures towards the inveterate enemy Bulgaria were soon to be superseded by more defensive and more fearful thoughts — about the newly successful bearlike neighbour to the North East — the Soviet Union.

All through this period Churchill's mind would have concentrated on Alhed shipping losses in the U-boat war. But on 15 December GCCS broke the four-rotor key

Churchill, op. cit.. Vol. 4, p. 625. 11 Ibid., p. 622.

PRO H W l/1 240, bj 112341 and 369/400, A nkara to T okyo, decrypted 20 D ecem ber 1942, bjs 112341/369 and 112370, Berlin to Tokyo, decrypted 20 D ecember 1942.

SHARK, so the blackout on U-boat traffic was lifted and the only major impediment to eventual Allied victory was r e m o v e d . 1942 was the year which might have seen Turkey enticed by Churchill out of the arms of Germany. Increasing Allied success on all fronts should have pointed the way. Yet, curiously, the Turks derived little comfort from the battering Germany was getting in the Caucasus and the Ukraine, while the eclipse of Italy in the Mediterranean signalled less the departure of one menace, and more the arrival of another one, Britain. Germany, with one shrewd diplomatic move orchestrated by von Papen, Ribbentrop and Hitler, paralysed Turkey’s wish to join the eventual winner for another two years of war by pointing out that allowing Britain landing rights for her combat aircraft on Turkish soil would be construed in Berlin as an act of war that would bring immediate retribution on Istanbul. Eden’s view of Turkey had deteriorated still further: ’The Turks seem to be playing pretty double even for them...Is it not time that we were a bit rough?’^^ But Churchill, released at last from his overriding worry about the war at sea, had more precise plans for Turkey in his mind.

1942-43 saw a milder winter than 1941-1942 and more diplomatic activity. The build-up to Churchill’s stay on Turkish soil produced a flood of diplomatic decrypts which dominate DIR/C through much of 1943. Differences again emerged between London and GHQ Cairo, who wanted to handle supplying Turkey and all Turkey-related military matters themselves, despite the Prime Minister’s ruling that Turco-British relations, being political, were the responsibility of the Foreign Office. In London Churchill was at odds with both Eden and Attlee over the wisdom of his inspirational trip to Turkey, while in Washington the State Department sought to minimize the extent to which Britain should be the sole player of the Turkish hand, and distinguished political from military handling. The Foreign Office view was that Steinhardt in Ankara ‘had much better leave these matters to us. ’ They accepted the military arguments but were concerned about the political risks of Churchill’s Turkey policy and had no interest in his Eastern Mediterranean plans. William Strang, a senior Foreign Office official then in Washington, pleaded ignorance of British assertiveness, though he conceded that recent conferences reflected that view, and had to beat a hasty retreat as the Southern Department grabbed the whole hand again, using the division of responsibihties over Turkey recently established by Roosevelt and Churchill at the Washington conference.

F. H. Hinsley, et al., British Intelligence in the Second World War Vols. 1-2 (London: HM SO, 1979- 81) Vol. 1, p.226, and Vol. 2, p.667.

PRO FO 371/37489, R3421/95/G44, Eden to Southern Department, 18 April 1943.

PRO F 0 3 7 1/37509, R2336/55/G44, Glutton to D epartm ent 17 M arch 1943. For Strang, see PRO F0371/37647, R3029, Strang to FO, 11 April 1943.

Foreign Relations o f the United States: D iplom atic Papers. 1943 Vol.4 (W ashington, D C., Government Printing Office, 1964), p. 1065.

(ii) The Road to Adana: January 1943

The reasons for the Foreign Office's possessiveness about Turkey lie at the heart of this thesis. For many years, under the aegis of Sargent, it had pursued interventionist policies in the Balkans, and Turkey was for Britain the key to the Balkans, so playing the Turkey hand was seen merely as a continuation of existing policy. But there was more to it than this. All through the 'thirties, friendship with Turkey, as has been shown, had been the cornerstone of Foreign Office policy in the Eastern Mediterranean. But by 1939, despite Loraine's personal friendship with Atatiirk, this policy had only generated the Mutual Assistance Pact of 12 May 1939 and some fairly glutinous expressions of mutual esteem. It was never put to the test until 1942-43, when it emerged that it had failed. But the Foreign Office mandarins would not admit defeat and hand over to the military because that would have meant a serious loss of face in one of its main wartime areas of responsibility. They sought Churchill's support for continuing to handle Turkey and he gave it, albeit reluctantly, since Eden had failed to follow through on his Turkish initiatives. The alternative, for Churchill, would have been even worse, because he would have had even less direct access via GHQ Middle East, which wanted Turkey to be part of Macmillan's bailiwick. Playing office politics in wartime is a dangerous pursuit, where the people on the spot are the ones who win. And the spot, unquestionably, was London, while the person was Churchill.

Since the Southern Department had unlimited access to Turkish intercepts secretly provided to GCCS via its Istanbul office, it was always up-to-date on what the leadership in Ankara was thinking. Intelligent study of these, as we have seen, gave the department accurate information on the chief characters involved: their intentions, their prejudices, their trustworthiness, their hopes and their fears. Since Turkey was run by oligarchs with only formal reference to the National Assembly, what the Department knew on a daily basis was far more valuable than anything GHQ Middle East might glean from reports from British attachés in Ankara and neighbouring capitals. The intercepts were circulated widely within the Southern Department, and reports and minutes on them from quite junior officials would end up as British policy, signed off by the Secretary of State himself. Churchill's access to the intercepts through Desmond Morton, strengthened when he became Prime Minister and when the supply of DIR/C grew to a daily delivery, encouraged him to insist that the Southern Department should be responsible for Allied policy towards Turkey but that he, in this respect, was the department. This goes some way towards explaining his determination to fly to Turkey in January 1943. Reading Turkey-related bjs in the run-up period with something of the same care as Churchill himself did, enables the historian to study the subsequent months of negotiation with a new interest. It may have been

Churchill’s refusal of 'gists' and summaries, and insistence on ipsissima verba in DIR, that is the key to this new explanation of HMG's policy towards Turkey in the war. The actual bj was what he needed. Perhaps it was for this reason that in January 1943 he sought to explain to Menzies and the Head of Hut 3 at Bletchley Park just why 'documents [decrypts] needed to be authentic: 'The whole force is destroyed in the paraphrase....As I have told you before you greatly weaken the value of your information by paraphrasing'. C passed this to Group Captain Eric Jones, in charge of Hut 3 at BP, who commented pacifically: 'It is generally felt that few men rival the M inister of Defence in this mastery of language...few of our recipients [i.e. of Ultra] would detect points raised by him...' But 'matters of major strategic importance are sent ipsissima verba,

Turkey, Hugessen reported, seemed to be coming out of its s h e l l . O n 5 January the Portuguese ambassador in Bucharest reported to Lisbon 'that the Turkish ambassador drew me aside and said Turkey might join the Allies in attacking the Balkans from the Black Sea.’^o Two days later Clutton minuted that 'the best means of drawing the Turks into the open is to make a combined plan of their fear of Russia and their inveterate hatred of Bulgaria in the hope of thereby embroiling Turkey and Bulgaria'^!. But Oshima reported that 'Bulgaria was terribly frightened of Turkey...Turkey wanted Germany to retain her position as a great power...There would be no change in Turkey's a t t i t u d e ' . O n 9 January Cadogan noted that Eden was 'in his usual weekend flat spin about Turkey, but was convinced by Snatch's reports that it might be a disaster to get Turkey into the war'. Cadogan convinced Eden of this.^3 On 15 January Sargent expressed surprise that Hugessen did not produce the detailed report on Turkey's readiness for combat prepared by the military attachés in Ankara. He left it behind on a routine visit to Whitehall, where officials read it with interest and may have felt confirmed in their view that Hugessen's competence was not entirely without question.^4

It was the sudden change in the balance of power in the Mediterranean that caused Churchill, intent as ever on the accession of 40 Turkish divisions to the Allied cause, to

PRO H W l/1281, Jones to C, 3 January 1943. The security of Ultra is a recurring theme of the DIR file. The main question was, what was and what was not, to be sent to the Russians, and through what channel. W hat no-one at BP or the FO knew is that the DIR was available to the least m entioned but possibly most im portant members of the Famous Five Cambridge Soviet spies, John Caim eross. W e may never know the volum e and extent to which Stalin used his knowledge of DIR via this route, but it has been asserted that without it the Battle of K ursk would have been lost. See Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story o f its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (London: Hodder