Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, The Near East, South Asia, and Africa, Volume V

Ankara Embassy Files: Lot 58F33: 400 MDAP: January–June 1950

Memorandum of Conversation, by the Chief of the Joint Military Mission for Aid to Turkey (McBride)¹

restricted

Ankara, 28 June 1950—3 p. m.

Present:	Fuad Köprülü, Minister of Foreign Affairs
	H. L. McBride, Major General, Chief/JAMMAT
	Secretary to Minister of Foreign Affairs, Interpreter

1. Purpose.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs requested General H. L. McBride to visit him and discuss the situation in the Turkish Military Forces.

2. Korean Situation.²

The Minister of Foreign Affairs was asked what his reactions were to the present situation in Korea. He explained he considered it a political move on the part of the Soviets and that in view of the positive action taken by the United States, the Soviets would not directly participate in any military action. He stated he did not consider this a Soviet opening of a worldwide military action; that should the Soviets decide to begin a world conflict, they would not initiate action in a remote and unimportant area such as Korea. He stated that now, the Soviets had lost all element of surprise and the U.S. was alerted to the possible danger of attack.

The Minister was asked what action had been taken by the Turkish Government in view of this situation. He stated that upon receiving news of the outbreak of hostilities in Korea, he had informed his Government. Also, the General Staff had been notified and directed to take all necessary measures. He indicated that no conferences had been held either by the Council of Ministries or with the General Staff to review the situation and to determine what steps could be taken by the military authorities.

The impression left was that the Turkish authorities considered this more or less a local affair and that it would not spread beyond the Korean area. The Minister also stated that he was very pleased by the positive action taken by the American Government.³

3. Changes in Command.

The Minister inquired whether or not cooperation between the American Mission and the General Staff had improved since the recent changes in high command.

He was informed that due to the shifting of personnel and the fact that numerous replacements had been named for those who had been relieved from duty resulted in a slackening of the work between the American Mission and the General Staff. General McBride stated that he was very much pleased with the appointment of General Yamut as Chief of Staff and was confident that there would be much better cooperation than formerly. However, it would take some time for the officers in the new position to become acquainted with their responsibilities and the organization and operation of their departments.

4. General Military Conditions.

The Minister asked for General McBride’s impressions as to general conditions in the military service as well as for corrections for any known deficiencies.

a. General McBride stated that in his opinion, conditions in the Turkish Forces could be considered alarming as there were no units in the Turkish Military forces that were capable of taking the field and making a creditable performance in combat.

b. It was pointed out that the problem in the Turkish Military Forces in time of peace is to effectively utilize the personnel available. The major difficulty is that the available personnel is not adequate to support all the units plus those presently existing in the Military Establishment.

The first step necessary to correct this condition is to deactivate many existing units which could contribute little to the defense of Turkey in the event of war, reassigning the personnel to the more important major units, and give them sufficient personnel to effectively maintain and train with the modern equipment supplied by the Aid Program. It was pointed out that this could be done immediately and that little or no expense would be involved.

It was further pointed out that these non-effective combat units require funds and maintenance facilities which are needed to support the major combat units in the Army.

c. Another vital deficiency in the Military Establishment is the lack of sufficient permanent non-commissioned officers. It was stated that the number of non-commissioned officers in the Turkish Defense Forces should be increased approximately sixfold.

It was observed that by reducing the number of gendarmes, there is the possibility of a great saving in manpower. This would result either in a saving to the budget, or, by assigning the surplus gendarmes to the military forces, it would increase the number of military personnel available.

d. The lack of command inspections by senior commanders and staff officers, and the inclination of subordinates to give a favorable picture in their reports, led to a false impression of the conditions in the military units. It was stressed that it is important that the officers of the higher headquarters make more inspections and visits to the field units, personally, to see the conditions in the units.

e. General McBride mentioned the need for full support of the School Training Program in order to provide trained personnel to maintain and operate the new equipment.

5. The Minister of Foreign Affairs expressed his concurrence in these observations and stated that action had already been initiated on some of them; that he would discuss them with the Prime Minister and the Chief of Staff, and direct that action be taken without further delay to correct the deficiencies mentioned.

6. Budget.

The Minister stated that action already had been started to decrease the expenditures for the Military Forces. General McBride commented that he did not believe it was feasible to reduce the size of the military budget but action should be taken to eliminate the wasteful use of money and apply the available moneys to the most important projects.

7. Conclusion.

The Minister stated that the present Government was determined that the work between the Americans and the Turkish authorities would be improved, that deficiencies pointed out would be corrected, and that we could expect immediate action to improve the general situation in the Military Establishment.

H. L. McBride

Major General, USA

1. This paper bears notations which indicate that Ambassador Wadsworth circulated this copy of the memorandum of conversation to William O. Baxter and Bertel E. Kuniholm, First Secretaries of the Embassy in Turkey and that the portion of the text beginning with the second paragraph was sent to the Department by despatch (not found in Department of State files).
2. For documentation relating to Korea, see volume vii .
3. Regarding the Korean crisis, Mr. Köprülü told Ambassador Wadsworth on June 28 the following: “We concur in what your government has done. That which was done at UN was the only proper thing to do. We will support it in any way we can.” (Telegram 343, June 29, from Ankara, 795.00/6–2950, not printed)