667.113/4: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the High Commissioner in Turkey (Bristol)
9. Your 4, January 19, 5 p.m. While the Department is prepared to adopt the suggestion of the Minister for Foreign Affairs with respect to an exchange of communications confirming the understanding already existing as to extension of mutual most-favored-nation treatment in commercial matters, it would appear preferable to effect an agreement of more detailed character and containing definite provisions for its termination.
If the requirement of Turkish law for “provisional commercial agreements” would be satisfied by an exchange of notes such as that of the United States with Greece of December 9, 1924, Treaty Series No. 706,32 using the Greek note as a basis and inserting in the fourth line from the bottom of the second paragraph, after “decree or commercial treaty or agreement, to” the words “the products of”, you may propose to the Turkish authorities a similar exchange of notes subject to the final revision by the Department.
In making this proposal you may point out that similar agreements have been concluded between this country and nine other countries, those in Europe being Greece, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Poland and Esthonia.
[Page 996]Should the Turkish Government raise objection to the special treatment accorded by this agreement to the commerce of Cuba or any of the dependencies of the United States33 or the Panama Canal Zone, you may state that this Government is willing to include in the exchange of notes provision that similar treatment may be accorded by Turkey to those territories mentioned in the last paragraph of Article 11 of the Treaty of August 6, 1923 avoiding however reference to that article of the Treaty.
Your 8, February 4, 4 p.m. will be answered separately.
- See American Minister’s note No. 74, Dec. 9, 1924, and footnote, Foreign Relations, 1924, vol. ii, p. 279.↩
- The phrase used in the exchange of notes with the Greek Government was “territories or possessions” of the United States.↩