867.24/9–3044: Telegram
The Ambassador in Turkey ( Steinhardt ) to the Secretary of State
[Received October 1—5:40 a.m.]
1879. In conversation with the Prime Minister this morning, I again urged him to sign the mutual aid agreement. Saraçoğlu seemed [Page 906] embarrassed and then remarked, “Do you want me to speak frankly”, to which I replied, “Of course”. He then said that his failure to sign the mutual aid agreement was due to the fact that the British claimed that virtually all Lend-Lease deliveries to Turkey had been made by them and that while he was aware that a considerable quantity of Lend-Lease material had originated in the United States, receipts had been required by the British of the Turks for this material. In consequence, the British hold receipts from the Turks for virtually all Lend-Lease material that had been delivered by either Great Britain or the United States and the Turk Government was unwilling to formally acknowledge the receipt “of the same gun from two different sovereign governments”. Saraçoğlu then said that the “confused condition” which had been allowed to develop over nearly 3 years through no fault of the Turkish Government could only be cured by clear-cut statements by both the American and British Governments as to what part of the total quantity of Lend-Lease material actually received by Turkey should be regarded by the Turks as having originated with each country. He then remarked that of course it would be to the great advantage of Turkey if the amount decided to have originated in the United States were as large as possible in that deliveries made by the British had been made under the arms credit which Turkey must repay to Britain.93 Saraçoğlu said that for a long time the Turk Government had been confused as it had never been informed as to what part of the total quantities delivered was to be regarded as for British account and what part was to be regarded as for American account and that until this phase of the matter is cleared up it seemed to him unreasonable that the Turk Government should be asked to sign a mutual aid agreement which involved an acknowledgement for past deliveries in respect of which for all he knew the Turk Government was already obligated to pay Britain.
When I expressed surprise that this point had not been raised in the course of any of my previous talks with Turkish officials, Saraçoğlu indicated that the Turkish had feared that raising the point might annoy the British and perhaps bring about the discontinuance of Lend-Lease deliveries from Britain or the United States or both.
[Page 907]When I pointed out that the mutual aid agreement did not specify that the Turkish Government was obligated to the United States Government for any specific deliveries or in any specified amount, Saraçoğlu said that from what he had been able to learn the books of the Lend-Lease Administration in Washington indicated that about 125 million dollars of deliveries had been made by the United States to Turkey and that until the extent to which this sum was properly chargeable to Turkey or Great Britain or in part to each had been determined by the Lend-Lease Administration and accepted by the British Government he would be placing himself in an extremely dangerous position vis-à-vis the Turkish Parliament were he to sign the agreement.
At the close of our talk, Saraçoğlu said that he did not anticipate any difficulty in having the agreement approved by the Turkish Parliament once the matters referred to above have been cleared up.
- The terms establishing the arms credit of 1939 to Turkey were incorporated in the Special Agreement annexed to the Treaty of Mutual Assistance concluded between Great Britain, France, and Turkey at Ankara on October 19, 1939, League of Nations Treaty Series, vol. cc, p. 167. For a summary of the relationship between the military aid extended by Great Britain to Turkey under the 1939 credit from 1939 to 1942, and under Lend-Lease, including war material of American origin, following the Casablanca and Adana Conferences early in 1943, see letter from the First Secretary of the British Embassy in the United States (Thorold) to the Assistant Secretary of State (Acheson), May 31, 1943, Foreign Relations, 1943, vol. iv, p. 1104.↩