Turkish Straits crisis | |||||||
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The location of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits. | |||||||
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Soviet Union | |||||||
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The Turkish Straits crisis was a Cold War-era territorial conflict between the Soviet Union and Turkey. Turkey had remained officially neutral throughout most of the Second World War. [lower-alpha 1] After the war ended, Turkey was pressured by the Soviet government to institute joint military control of passage through Turkish Straits, which connected the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. [2] When the Turkish government refused, tensions in the region rose, leading to a Soviet show of force and demands for territorial concessions along the Georgia–Turkey border. [3]
This intimidation campaign was intended to preempt American influence or naval presence in the Black Sea, as well as to weaken Turkey's government and pull it into the Soviet sphere of influence. [4] The Straits crisis was a catalyst, along with the Greek Civil War, for the creation of the Truman Doctrine. [2] At its climax, the dispute would motivate Turkey to turn to the United States for protection through NATO membership.
The two gateways between the Black Sea and Mediterranean, the Dardanelles and Bosphorus, were important as a trade route from the Black Sea into ports all over the world for Turkey and its other Black Sea neighbors: the USSR, the Romanian People's Republic, and the People's Republic of Bulgaria, which were militarily aligned with one another. [5] The straits also served as an important component of military strategy; whoever wielded control of traffic through the straits could use them as an exit or entry point for naval forces to navigate the Black Sea while preventing rival powers from doing so.
Before the crisis, Russia had historically desired control of the Turkish straits, being one of the main reason for most of the later Russo-Turkish wars.
Until the latter half of the 1930s, Soviet-Turkish relations were cordial and somewhat fraternal. At the request of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Vladimir Lenin provided crucial military and financial aid to the Turkish National Movement in its struggle against the Ottoman monarchy and Western occupiers; two million gold Imperial rubles, 60,000 rifles, and 100 artillery pieces were sent in the summer of 1920. [6] Before they had even established official governments, the countries' revolutionary movements – the Turkish Government of the Grand National Assembly and the Bolsheviks of the Russian SFSR – recognized each other and pledged cooperation in the 1921 Treaty of Moscow. [7] The parties agreed to defer the final settlement on the status of the Black Sea and the Turkish Straits to a future conference. [8] The Straits resolution at Lausanne, signed on 24 July 1923 by the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Turkey, called for demilitarizing the Straits Zone and forming an international commission to control them. [9] The Soviets were never satisfied with this. In 1925, Turkey and the Soviet Union committed to abstain from participating in alliances or coalitions directed against each other. This "treaty of friendship and neutrality" was extended in 1935 for a ten-year term, with optional renewal intervals of two years scheduled after 1945. [10]
In 1934, Soviet diplomats secretly urged their counterparts to assent to bases on the Straits, a demand which British Ambassador Percy Loraine credited with helping strengthen Turkey-United Kingdom relations in the interwar period. [10] The Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Straits was convened in 1936, with the governments of Australia, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Greece, Japan, the Soviet Union, Turkey, the United Kingdom and Yugoslavia represented, to determine both military and regulatory policy for the Turkish straits. [11] The issue regained relevance due to the expansionist ambitions of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, as well as a fear that Bulgaria would take it upon itself to remilitarize the straits. [12] Under the terms of the treaty, signed on 20 July 1936, Turkey was given sole responsibility for regulating passages through the straits. [13] The Montreux Convention instituted rules for both merchant and military vessels which are more strict than international law typically allows, such as mandatory sanitation inspections and Turkish discretion to impose general fees on non-stopover voyages. [14] The treaty required all states to give prior notice to Turkish authorities before their warships transited the straits, while imposing limits on the size, quantity and type of warships eligible for entry to the Black Sea. Such blanket provisions contravene prevailing norms of innocent passage and transit passage. [14]
Joseph Stalin repeatedly challenged the agreements reached by the 1936 convention, asking as early as 1939 for an alternative arrangement. He proposed joint Turkish and Soviet control of the straits. [15] Upon signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov informed his German colleagues of his desire to forcefully take control of the straits and establish a military base in their proximity. [16]
Shortly after the Invasion of Poland began in September 1939, Turkish Foreign Minister Şükrü Saracoğlu traveled to Moscow, where he was snubbed by Stalin and pressured by Kremlin authorities to allow a Soviet military installation on the shore of the straits. [13] [17]
Tensions between the USSR and Turkey grew over Turkey's allowing non-Black Sea powers naval vessels, including those of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, with civilian crews to traverse the straits during WWII. After the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany, the Soviets returned to the issue in 1945 and 1946. Throughout 1946, American and Turkish diplomats frequently conversed on the issue. The 6 April 1946 visit of the American battleship USS Missouri further angered the Soviets. The ship had come to the region under the explanation that it was delivering the mortuary urn of the late Turkish Ambassador home, a claim which was dismissed by the Soviets as coincidental. [18]
On 7 August 1946, the Soviets presented a note to the Turkish Foreign Ministry which stated that the way Turkey was handling the straits no longer represented the security interests of its fellow Black Sea nations. This drew attention to the occasions in which Italian and German warships had passed through the straits without conflict (the German ships were only detained by Turkish forces once the country declared war on Germany on 23 February 1945). The note concluded that the regime of the straits was no longer reliable and demanded that the Montreux Treaty be re-examined and rewritten in a new international conference. [19]
When the issue was brought up at the Potsdam Conference, the President of the United States, Harry S. Truman, said the question of the straits was a domestic political issue pertaining to Turkey and the USSR, and should be solved by the two involved parties. [20] As the argument heated up in the days preceding Potsdam, the United States decided it firmly did not want the straits to fall into Soviet hands, as it would give them a major strategic gateway between the Black Sea and Mediterranean and possibly lead to a Communist Turkey. In a secret telegram sent by US Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson to diplomats in Paris, he explained the American position on the matter. [21]
In our opinion the primary objective of the Soviet Union is to obtain control over Turkey. We believe that if the Soviet Union succeeds in introducing into Turkey armed forces with the ostensible purpose of enforcing the joint control of the Straits, the Soviet Union will use these forces to obtain control over Turkey…. In our opinion, therefore, the time has come when we must decide that we shall resist with all means at our disposal any Soviet aggression and in particular, because the case of Turkey would be so clear, any Soviet aggression against Turkey. In carrying this policy our words and acts will only carry conviction to the Soviet Union if they are formulated against the background of an inner conviction and determination on our part that we cannot permit Turkey to become the object of Soviet aggression.
— Dean Acheson, Telegram to the Secretary of State at Paris – August 8, 1946
On 20 August 1946, Undersecretary Acheson met with fifteen journalists to explain the urgency of the situation and make the opinions of the United States Government known. [22]
In the summer and autumn of 1946, the Soviet Union increased its naval presence in the Black Sea, having Soviet vessels perform manoeuvres near Turkish shores. A substantial number of ground troops were dispatched to the Balkans. Buckling under the mounting pressure from the Soviets, in a matter of days Turkey appealed to the United States for aid. After consulting his administration, President Truman sent a naval task force to Turkey. [23] On 9 October 1946, the respective governments of the United States and United Kingdom reaffirmed their support for Turkey. [24] On 26 October, the Soviet Union withdrew its specific request for a new summit on the control of the Turkish Straits (but not its opinions) and sometime shortly thereafter pulled out most of the intimidatory military forces from the region. Turkey abandoned its policy of neutrality and accepted USD $100 million in economic and defence aid from the US in 1947 under the Truman Doctrine's plan of ceasing the spread of Soviet influence into Turkey and Greece. The two aforementioned nations joined NATO in 1952. [25]
The Turkish government appointed a new ambassador to Moscow, Faik Akdur, in November 1946. Turkish President İnönü instructed Akdur to focus solely on further development of relations with the Soviet Union. Akdur was also specifically forbidden to engage in talks regarding the straits if they did occur. [26]
The United States proposed that an international conference be held to decide the fate of the Dardanelles and Bosphorus once and for all. Then-Soviet Ambassador to Turkey, Sergei Vinogradov, responded in the form of a memorandum sent to the Soviet capital on 10 December 1946, asserting that a conference held in such a climate as described by the United States was unacceptable, in that the Soviet Union was certain to be outvoted. He predicted that, instead of a regime change, which was the steadfast and undying goal of the Soviet Foreign Ministry, the current infrastructure with which the straits were regulated would survive, albeit with some changes. [27]
The Soviet ambassador to Turkey during the first year and a half of the crisis, Sergei Vinogradov, was replaced by the Soviet Politburo in 1948. His successor, Aleksandr Lavrishev, came with a set of instructions from the Soviet Foreign Ministry which would prove to be the last momentous Soviet document on the straits.
If the Turks want to know our stand on the straits, an answer would be as follows: the Soviet position has been thoroughly stated in the notes dated August 7 and September 24, 1946.
— Soviet Foreign Ministry, Point No. 4 of the "Instructions for the Ambassador to Turkey" – March 29, 1948 [28]
The Soviet Union wished for its border with Turkey to be re-negotiated so as to benefit to the Armenian and Georgian SSRs. Deputy premier Lavrentiy Beria asserted to Stalin that a strip of Turkish-controlled territory stretching southwest from Georgia to Giresun (including Lazistan) had been stolen from the Georgians by the Turks under the Ottoman Empire. [30] In 1945, the Soviets declined to extend the 1925 non-aggression treaty, as Molotov conditioned its renewal on negotiations over Turkish-controlled territory. [31]
After the death of Joseph Stalin, motivation for a regime change declined within the Soviet government. On 30 May 1953, Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov discontinued the Russian claims over the Bosphorus and Dardanelles, as well as the other territorial disputes along the Turkish-Armenia-Georgian border. [32]
When Turkey joined Western-aligned NATO in 1952, Soviet hopes for a substantive thaw in relations were dashed. [33] The Montreux Treaty of 1936, with revisions, is still in place in the present day between the successor states of the USSR and Turkey. [34]
The Cold War (1947–1953) is the period within the Cold War from the Truman Doctrine in 1947 to the conclusion of the Korean War in 1953. The Cold War emerged in Europe a few years after the successful US–USSR–UK coalition won World War II in Europe, and extended to 1989–91. In 1947, Bernard Baruch, the multimillionaire financier and adviser to presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Harry S. Truman, coined the term “Cold War” to describe the increasingly chilly relations between three World War II Allies: the United States and British Empire together with the Soviet Union.
The (Montreux) Convention regarding the Regime of the Straits, often known simply as the Montreux Convention, is an international agreement governing the Bosporus and Dardanelles Straits in Turkey. Signed on 20 July 1936 at the Montreux Palace in Switzerland, it went into effect on 9 November 1936, addressing the long running Straits Question over who should control the strategically vital link between the Black and Mediterranean seas.
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Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov was a Russian politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik, and a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s onward. He served as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars from 1930 to 1941 and as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1939 to 1949 and from 1953 to 1956.
The Cold War originated in the breakdown of relations between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc, in the years 1945–1949.
The Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact, also known as the Japanese–Soviet Non-aggression Pact, was a non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and the Empire of Japan signed on April 13, 1941, two years after the conclusion of the Soviet-Japanese Border War. The agreement meant that for most of World War II, the two nations fought against each other's allies but not against each other. In 1945, late in the war, the Soviets scrapped the pact and joined the Allied campaign against Japan.
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In the London Straits Convention concluded on 13 July 1841 between the Great Powers of Europe at the time—Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Austria and Prussia—the "ancient rule" of the Ottoman Empire was re-established by closing the Turkish Straits, which link the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, from all warships whatsoever, barring those of the Sultan's allies during wartime. It thus benefited British naval power at the expense of Russia as the latter lacked direct access for its navy to the Mediterranean.
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The Turkish Straits are two internationally significant waterways in northwestern Turkey. The straits create a series of international passages that connect the Aegean and Mediterranean seas to the Black Sea. They consist of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. The straits are on opposite ends of the Sea of Marmara. The straits and the Sea of Marmara are part of the sovereign sea territory of Turkey and subject to the regime of internal waters.
The Anglo-Soviet Treaty, formally the Twenty-Year Mutual Assistance Agreement Between the United Kingdom and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, established a military and political alliance between the Soviet Union and the British Empire.
The Percentages Agreement was a secret informal agreement between British prime minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin during the Fourth Moscow Conference in October 1944. It gave the percentage division of control over Eastern European countries, dividing them into spheres of influence. Franklin Roosevelt was consulted tentatively and conceded to the agreement. The content of the agreement was first made public by Churchill in 1953 in the final volume of his memoir. The US ambassador Averell Harriman, who was supposed to represent Roosevelt in these meetings, was excluded from this discussion.
Russia–Turkey relations is the bilateral relationship between Russia and Turkey and their antecedent states. Relations between the two are rather cyclical. From the late 16th until the early 20th centuries, relations between the Ottoman and Russian empires were normally adverse and hostile and the two powers were engaged in numerous Russo-Turkish wars, comprising one of the longest wars in modern history. Russia attempted to extend its influence in the Balkans and gain control of the Bosphorus at the expense of the weakening Ottoman Empire. As a result, the diplomatic history between the two powers was extremely bitter and acrimonious up to World War I. However, in the early 1920s, as a result of the Bolshevik Russian government's assistance to Turkish revolutionaries during the Turkish War of Independence, the governments' relations warmed. Relations again turned sour at the end of WWII as the Soviet government laid territorial claims and demanded other concessions from Turkey. Turkey joined NATO in 1952 and placed itself within the Western alliance against the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War, when relations between the two countries were at their lowest level. Relations began to improve the following year, when the Soviet Union renounced its territorial claims after the death of Stalin.
German–Soviet Axis talks occurred in October and November 1940. The negotiations, which occurred during the era of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, included a two-day conference in Berlin between Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and Adolf Hitler and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. The talks were followed by both countries trading written proposed agreements.
Jamil Hasanli is an Azerbaijani historian, author and politician. He served as a professor at Baku State University in 1993–2011 and a professor at Khazar University in 2011–2013. He was advisor to the President of Azerbaijan in 1993 and served two terms in the Parliament of Azerbaijan between 2000 and 2010. He was the main opposition candidate in the 2013 Azerbaijani presidential election where he came in second with 5.53% of votes. He has been the leader of National Council of Democratic Forces of Azerbaijan since 2013.
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Soviet Union–Turkey relations were the diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the Republic of Turkey.
The deportation of the Meskhetian Turks was the forced transfer by the Soviet government of the entire Meskhetian Turk population from the Meskheti region of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic to Central Asia on 14 November 1944. During the deportation, between 92,307 and 94,955 Meskhetian Turks were forcibly removed from 212 villages. They were packed into cattle wagons and mostly sent to the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. Members of other ethnic groups were also deported during the operation, including Kurds and Hemshins, bringing the total to approximately 115,000 evicted people. They were placed in special settlements where they were assigned to forced labor. The deportation and harsh conditions in exile caused between 12,589 to 50,000 deaths.
Deportation of Azerbaijanis from Armenia – is the resettlement of the Azerbaijani population of the Armenian SSR in 1947-1950, which was carried out in accordance with the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 4083 dated with 23 December 1947.
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