RUSSIA & TURKEY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 October 1943, Page 4

RUSSIA & TURKEY

HANDS ACROSS CAUCASUS PAST AND PRESENT RELATIONS. HOPES OF CO-OPERATION AFTER THE WAR. (By Eleanor Bisbee, in the “Christian Science Monitor.”) Reports that a new Russo-Turkey pact is in the making, with United States diplomacy helping it along, brightens the prospects for a better defined alliance not only to win the war but to insure peace. Russia and Turkey must always either suspect or trust each other. The third alternative —to ignore each other —has no possibility. Russia and Turkey share the Black Sea, but Turkey controls the way out. Russia can control the Bosporus-Dar-danelles straits only by forcible seizure, or, a friendship basis, she can share their use while they remain under Turkish control. Germany's aim has been to forstall either seizure or friendship. Now the Turks know, by the Russian success in turning the Germans back, that their relations will continue to be with a self-sufficient Russia and not an Axis-subjugated Russia. The Red Army has barred to the Nazis the section of Russia in which Turkey has her greatest stake, the Trans-Caucasus. MANY TURKS IN RUSSIA. A common saying in Turkey is that there are “more Turks in Russia than in Turkey.” This refers to all in the Turanian racial group. An old estimate, which has been quoted constantly enough to have great influence in Turkey, is that there are 28,000,000 Turks in Russia as contrasted to 18,000,000 credited to Turkey in the 1940 census. Allowing for considerable error, this bespeaks still a considerable proportion of kin to be cut off from the sovereignty of their own people. The two greatest concentrations of Turks in Russia are in Turkestan and in Azerbaijan. The capital of the latter is Baku, and the language of the people is Turkish. The boundary line between Russia and Turkey has switched back and forth in the Trans-Caucasus. When any part of that region is in Turkey, the geographers map it in Asia; when the same part is in Russia they map it in Europe. The last time that the line became uncertain, after World War One, the Western Powers did their best to chop the whole region up into small independent Republics, presumably enough indebted to the Great Powers to give them great advantages in oil, harbours, and other assets. Russia and Turkey, both totally defeated in the war, were then in violent convulsions, ridding themselves of all vestiges of their former governments. Each country soon had an “illegal” new government trying to legalise itself in spite of foreign interference. These new “governments,” on their own, proceeded to settle the boundary line by the 1921 treaty of Moscow. Without changing anybody’s place of residence, this boundary produced the anomaly of “a maporicy of Turks outside of Turkey.” Subsequently the U.S.S.R. incorporated all of Trans-Cau-casia, with its “independent” Republics of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, into its national structure. Turkey accepted this situation. Any upset of this agreed status, however, such as Nazi enslavement, would be quite sure to 'bring into the open the unity of these Turks with Turkey, the political homeland which the world now concedes to the Turks as their own. OLD ENEMY & NEW FRIEND. That homeland, however, might never have been conceded to the Turks except for Russia’s help. Only from the new Russia was the new Turkey able to get help in her efforts to save herself as an independent, sovereign state after defeat in World War One. The U.S.S.R. was the first to recognise the new Turkish Government. The U.S.S.R. has never forced repayment of loans made to Turkey during that struggle. Turkey thus entered the era of this war. with Russia as her traditional enemy but also her recent friend. Russia had become more powerful than over, so either her enmity or her friendship could mean more than ever. Russia first joined Germany, and Turkey did not know what to expect, but she withstood all early pressure to seek cover for herself on the Axis side. Then Germany turned on Russia, and Turkey could not foretell which would be the survivor. As between her traditional friends, the Germans, who dragged her down to defeat in the last war, and whose force continuously hangs over her head in this war, and her traditional enemies, the Russians, whose support made her present existence possible, but whose force is a future threat, Turkey chose neutrality. Now that the U.S.A, is helping to clear the atmosphere and to secure a strong pact between Russia and Turkey, it brightens the prospect for cooperation from both countries for world security after the war.