The Treaty of Saadabad (or the Saadabad Pact) was a non-aggression pact signed by Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan on July 8, 1937, and lasted for five years. [1] The treaty was signed in Tehran's Saadabad Palace and was part of an initiative for greater Middle Eastern-oriental relations spearheaded by King Mohammed Zahir Shah of Afghanistan. Ratifications were exchanged in Tehran on June 25, 1938, and the treaty became effective on the same day. It was registered in the League of Nations Treaty Series on July 19, 1938. [2]
In Iraq, the left-leaning Bakr Sidqi military government of 1936–1937 was less Arab nationalist than other Iraqi governments. Sidqi was a Kurd and his prime minister, Hikmat Sulayman, was a Turkmen. [3] They were therefore interested in diplomacy with Iraq's eastern, non-Arab neighbours. Turkey sought friendly relations with its neighbours and was still recovering from its defeat in World War I and the costly victory in the Turkish War of Independence. [4]
In 1943, the treaty was automatically extended for a further five years because none of the signatories had renounced it. After the end of the extended treaty term, the pact officially ended.[ citation needed ]
After the First World War, and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Middle East saw the creation of several new independent states, one of the most significant of these being the Turkish Republic. A devout Turkish statesman named Mustafa Kemal Pasha (nicknamed Atatürk, meaning 'Father of the Turks' [5] ) rose as the predominant figure in the politics of the fallen Turkish empire. Under Atatürk, The Republic of Turkey was officially established with Atatürk as its first President. Atatürk's reign as president of Turkey saw many reforms, such as Industrialization, secularization, [6] and a particular foreign policy. This involved diplomacy between Turkey with mutually beneficial trade, and established diplomatic ties between nations. Turkish diplomats were specifically concerned with the security and protection of Turkey's sovereign borders, including Turkey's southern border to the Middle East. [7] Atatürk's administration would attempt to establish friendly relations with all bordering countries. In Europe, Turkey was able to do this by partaking in the Balkan Pact. [8] Turkey hoped just as the Balkan Pact established friendly relations with European neighboring countries, that a similar treaty or alliance could establish friendly relations with neighboring Middle-Eastern states, as good diplomacy was already underway between Turkey, Iraq and Iran. [7]
Mohammed Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan, had a policy of aiding neighboring Muslim countries and groups. [9] For example, he provided weapons, aid, and support to the First East Turkestan Republic, and other Muslim Chinese Turkic groups, such as the Uyghurs and Dungans. [10] Zahir Shah advocated for better Middle Eastern ties and a better cooperation in the Middle East. All four nations – Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Afghanistan were fearful of the encroaching colonial states, mainly the French in Syria and the British in India, Palestine, Oman and Yemen. With majority of the Middle East under colonial subjugation and the 'red threat' of the communist USSR in the North, [11] it seemed that the uniting of Middle Eastern non-colonial states was the biggest priority to avoid an invasion similar to the Persian campaign in World War I. All these factors contributed to the need of a document to collect non-colonial Middle Eastern interests.
The League of Nations was established on 10 January 1920. It was founded in the aftermath of World War I, and advocated for dialogue and diplomatic negotiations and relations between nations to avoid a repeat of the war. During the interwar period many networks of diplomacy formed as a result of the League of Nations platform for dialogue; this was one of the contributing factors of the betterment of relations between Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Afghanistan in the Treaty of Saadabad. [12]
The Treaty was signed on July 8, 1937, and later ratified on June 25, 1938. The treaty's name is eponymous to the palace it was signed and ratified in the Sa'dabad Complex in Tehran, Iran. Not much is known about the treaty, due to many historians considering it insignificant in comparison to other world events in the Interwar period, such as the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany. [13] [14] The Saadabad Treaty officially was signed as a non-aggression pact, in which international law forbade any of the signatories from acts of aggression toward one another, meaning Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan declared that they would not act aggressively to one another and work on the betterment of their relations.
In 1943, the treaty was automatically extended for a further five years, because none of the signatories had renounced it. After the end of the extended treaty term, the pact officially ended.[ citation needed ]
The treaty's impact is not considered greatly significant,[ according to whom? ] but it did play a part in establishing diplomatic channels between the modern day countries of the Middle East and was hoped to set a framework of security between minor nations at the time, [15] and contributed to the neutrality of the four states in the Middle Eastern theater of World War II, until the Rashid Ali al-Gaylani government in Iraq. [16]
Turkey | Iran | Iraq | Afghanistan |
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk | Reza Shah Pahlavi | Hikmat Sulayman | Mohammed Zahir Shah |
The Kellogg–Briand Pact or Pact of Paris – officially the General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy – is a 1928 international agreement on peace in which signatory states promised not to use war to resolve "disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them". The pact was signed by Germany, France, and the United States on 27 August 1928, and by most other states soon after. Sponsored by France and the U.S., the Pact is named after its authors, United States Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg and French foreign minister Aristide Briand. The pact was concluded outside the League of Nations and remains in effect.
The Shatt al-Arab is a river about 200 kilometres (120 mi) in length that is formed at the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in the town of al-Qurnah in the Basra Governorate of southern Iraq. The southern end of the river constitutes the Iran–Iraq border down to its mouth, where it discharges into the Persian Gulf. The Shatt al-Arab varies in width from about 232 metres (761 ft) at Basra to 800 metres (2,600 ft) at its mouth. It is thought that the waterway formed relatively recently in geological time, with the Tigris and Euphrates originally emptying into the Persian Gulf via a channel further to the west. Kuwait's Bubiyan Island is part of the Shatt al-Arab delta.
The Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), formerly known as the Middle East Treaty Organization (METO) and also known as the Baghdad Pact, was a military alliance of the Cold War. It was formed on 24 February 1955 by Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. The alliance was dissolved on 16 March 1979.
A non-aggression pact or neutrality pact is a treaty between two or more states/countries that includes a promise by the signatories not to engage in military action against each other. Such treaties may be described by other names, such as a treaty of friendship or non-belligerency, etc. Leeds, Ritter, Mitchell, & Long (2002) distinguish between a non-aggression pact and a neutrality pact. They posit that a non-aggression pact includes the promise not to attack the other pact signatories, whereas a neutrality pact includes a promise to avoid support of any entity that acts against the interests of any of the pact signatories. The most readily recognized example of the aforementioned entity is another country, nation-state, or sovereign organization that represents a negative consequence towards the advantages held by one or more of the signatory parties.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, also known as Mustafa Kemal Pasha until 1921, and Ghazi Mustafa Kemal from 1921 until the Surname Law of 1934, was a Turkish field marshal, revolutionary statesman, author, and the founding father of the Republic of Turkey, serving as its first president from 1923 until his death in 1938. He undertook sweeping progressive reforms, which modernized Turkey into a secular, industrializing nation. Ideologically a secularist and nationalist, his policies and socio-political theories became known as Kemalism.
After the Russian Revolution, in which the Bolsheviks took over parts of the collapsing Russian Empire in 1918, they faced enormous odds against the German Empire and eventually negotiated terms to pull out of World War I. They then went to war against the White movement, pro-independence movements, rebellious peasants, former supporters, anarchists and foreign interventionists in the bitter civil war. They set up the Soviet Union in 1922 with Vladimir Lenin in charge. At first, it was treated as an unrecognized pariah state because of its repudiating of tsarist debts and threats to destroy capitalism at home and around the world. By 1922, Moscow had repudiated the goal of world revolution, and sought diplomatic recognition and friendly trade relations with the capitalist world, starting with Britain and Germany. Finally, in 1933, the United States gave recognition. Trade and technical help from Germany and the United States arrived in the late 1920s. After Lenin died in 1924, Joseph Stalin, became leader. He transformed the country in the 1930s into an industrial and military power. It strongly opposed Nazi Germany until August 1939, when it suddenly came to friendly terms with Berlin in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Moscow and Berlin by agreement invaded and partitioned Poland and the Baltic States. Stalin ignored repeated warnings that Hitler planned to invade. He was caught by surprise in June 1941 when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The Soviet forces nearly collapsed as the Germans reached the outskirts of Leningrad and Moscow. However, the Soviet Union proved strong enough to defeat Nazi Germany, with help from its key World War II allies, Britain and the United States. The Soviet army occupied most of Eastern Europe and increasingly controlled the governments.
The Republic of Turkey (Türkiye) and the United States of America established diplomatic relations in 1927. Relations after World War II evolved from the Second Cairo Conference in December 1943 and Turkey's entrance into World War II on the side of the Allies in February 1945. Later that year, Turkey became a charter member of the United Nations. Since 1945, both countries advanced ties under liberal international order, put forward by the US, through a set of global, rule-based, structured relationships based on political, and economic liberalism. As a consequence relationships advanced under G20, OECD, Council of Europe, OSCE, WTO, the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, IMF, the World Bank and the Turkey in NATO.
Iran–Turkey relations are the bilateral relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of Turkey. The two states' relationship is complex and characterized by periods of both tension and cooperation, as both Iran and Turkey are fighting for influence in the Middle East through supporting opposing proxies as part of a proxy conflict. The two countries are also major trade partners and are perceived as mutually interdependent due to geographical proximity as well as historically shared cultural, linguistic, and ethnic traits.
The following lists events that happened during 1937 in Afghanistan.
The following lists events that happened during 1939 in Afghanistan.
The following lists events that happened during 1943 in Afghanistan.
Iraqi–Turkish relations are foreign relations between Iraq and Turkey. From late 2011 relations between the two countries have undergone strained turbulence. The two countries share historical and cultural heritages.
Iran–Iraq relations are the diplomatic and foreign relations between the two sovereign states of Iran and Iraq.
Ahmet Davutoğlu has described bilateral relations between Afghanistan and Turkey as "exemplary" even if the two countries do not border, but are close. A recent survey in Kabul of 1,259 people shows that Afghanistan relies mostly on Turkey, and considers Turkey to be Afghanistan's one and only true friend. Afghanistan was also the second nation to recognize the Republic of Turkey, after the Soviet Union, on 1 March 1923.
Syria and Iran are strategic allies. Syria is usually called Iran's "closest ally", notwithstanding the conflict between the Arab nationalism ideology of Syria's secular ruling Ba'ath Party and the Islamic Republic of Iran's pan-Islamist policy. Iran and Syria have had a strategic alliance ever since the Iran–Iraq War, when Syria sided with non-Arab Iran against neighbouring Ba'ath-ruled Iraq. The two countries shared a common animosity towards then-Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and coordination against the United States and Israel.
Soviet Union–Turkey relations were the diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the Republic of Turkey.
The Treaty of Ankara (1926), also known as the Frontier Treaty of 1926, was signed on 5 June 1926 in Ankara by Turkey, the United Kingdom and Mandatory Iraq. The treaty aimed to solve the so-called "Mosul Question" by determining a mutually satisfactory border between Turkey and Iraq and to regulate their neighbourly relations. One important aspect of the treaty was that Turkey would have the right to engage in militarily conflict in the border region in the event of it being destabilised. This sphere of influence which is beyond Turkey's modern boundaries mainly covers the northern part of Iraq, notably the Mosul and Kirkuk region.
The Shatt al-Arab dispute was a territorial dispute that took place in the Shatt al-Arab region from 1936 until 1975. The Shatt al-Arab was considered an important channel for the oil exports of both Iran and Iraq, and in 1937, Iran and the newly independent Iraq signed a treaty to settle the dispute. In the 1975 Algiers Agreement, Iraq made territorial concessions—including the Shatt al-Arab waterway—in exchange for normalized relations. In return for Iraq agreeing that the frontier on the waterway ran along the entire thalweg, Iran ended its support for the Peshmerga in the Second Iraqi–Kurdish War. The Iraqi government reneged on the Agreement shortly before launching the Iran-Iraq War in 1980, but accepted it once more after the war.
Jordan–Turkey relations are the bilateral relations between Jordan and Turkey. Both nations share a relatively close relationship due to long historical commons, as both are majority two Sunni Muslim nations and sharing strong historic ties. Both countries are members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.
The Iran–Turkey border is 534 kilometres in length, and runs from the tripoint with Azerbaijan in the north to the tripoint with Iraq in the south.
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