711.00 Statement July 16, 1937/159
Memorandum by the Chargé in Turkey (Washington)60
I called by appointment on the Minister for Foreign Affairs at 12:30 p.m. today. He received me in his private suite at the Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul. Our conversation was carried on in French.
I told him that I had received, as stated to his Chief of Cabinet on Saturday, a telegram from Mr. Cordell Hull, Secretary of State, making reference to the latter’s statement issued on July 16, 1937, and that I would be glad to transmit to Washington any comments he would like to make on the principles set forth in this statement and also any information he might wish to give me as to the attitude which the Government of Turkey might have toward keeping alive and to making effective the principles featured in this statement. He said that he had studied the statement very carefully and had also discussed it with President Atatürk and Prime Minister, Ismet Inönü. He stated that not only was he himself in perfect accord with the principles enunciated by the Secretary of State, but that they were almost identical to those frequently advocated by members of the Turkish Government. He asked me to reply to the Secretary in the above sense and in this connection he invited attention [Page 733] to three addresses recently made by officials of the Turkish Government. The first was the address of Prime Minister, General Ismet Inönü, before the Turkish Grand National Assembly on June 14, 1937 (a translation was transmitted with the Embassy’s despatch No. 287 of June 25, 193761). The second was his own speech made at Teheran on his recent visit to the Iranian capital, and the third was the speech which he made a few days later (July 15) at Moscow. He then said that his study of the Secretary’s statement led him to believe that the policy of the Turkish Government coincides in every detail with the principles enunciated therein with the possible exception of the idea contained in the last sentence where the phrase “alliances or entangling commitments” is used. He said that he had studied the use of the word “entangling” as used in various declarations of the American Government but that he would like to understand it better. He said that he had studied the exchange of letters between former Secretary of State Kellogg and M. Briand, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, at the time of the promulgation of the Anti-War Pact,62 and had come to the conclusion that the United States would enter into no agreement where the parties are not left free to make an independent decision. I told him that I could not attribute anything unusual to the word “entangling” as used by the Secretary in his statement of July 16th, but I thought that the interpretation that he himself had arrived at came very close to being a proper one. He requested me to ask the State Department to furnish him with a further explanation of this phrase. (He repeated this request several times). He said that he had many times been struck by the identity in the viewpoints of the United States and Turkey regarding world affairs and spoke particularly of their agreement on international economic matters. He said that he had first noticed this when he had attended the Economic Conference at London.
The Minister spoke at length about the desire of the Turkish Government to let every other country of the world decide what form of government it wished for itself. He said that it is the aim of his Government to be friendly with all the other governments of the world and to show other countries, especially its own neighbors, that it entertains for them only the friendliest of sentiments.
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- Copy transmitted to the Department by the Chargé in his despatch No. 313, July 29; received August 10.↩
- Not printed.↩
- The reference is presumably to the collection of correspondence transmitted upon signature of the treaty of August 27, 1928, to the several non-signatory Governments; see telegram of August 16, 1928, 11 p.m., Foreign Relations, 1928, Vol. i, p. 149.↩