The
Adana Conference
[1]
or
Yenice Conference
(
Turkish
:
Adana Goru?mesi
,
Adana Mulakatı
[2]
or
Yenice Goru?mesi
,
Yenice Mulakatı
[3]
) was a meeting between Turkish President
?smet ?nonu
and British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill
in a
railway car
parking on a
storage track
at
Yenice
, near
Adana
[4]
on 30?31 January 1943,
[5]
where Churchill tried to persuade ?nonu to join the
Allied powers
and fight the
Axis powers
during
World War II
.
Location
[
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]
The event came to be known as the Adana meeting,
[2]
[6]
although it was held in Yenice, between Adana and
Mersin
.
[7]
Adana had the nearest airport to Yenice.
[8]
Yenice a town in
Mersin Province
is the junction of the
Adana?Mersin Railway Line
and the main railway from
Ankara
, the
?stanbul-Ba?dat Railway
.
The location was a compromise after a series of talks between the
Turkish Foreign Ministry
and the British embassy. The British had wanted it to be in
Cyprus
, then part of the
British Empire
, and the Turkish had preferred Ankara.
Background
[
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]
During World War II, all of Turkey's neighbours had joined the Axis or the Allies. In the west,
Bulgaria
was an ally of
Nazi Germany
, and
Greece
was occupied by German troops.
Dodecanese
, including
Rhodes
was part of
Italy
. The
USSR
was a neighbour in the northeast. To the south were
Syria
, which had joined the
Free France
; and
Iraq
, part of the British Empire. To the east,
Iran
was under joint
USSR-British occupation
. Turkey, however, managed to maintain its neutral status.
During the
Casablanca Conference
(14?24 January 1943), Churchill proposed to force Turkey to join the Allies in the war. General
George Marshall
and other high-ranking US military showed reluctance for fear that the extension of the war to a new Turkish front would "burn the Allied logistics down the line". However, US President
Franklin Roosevelt
gave Churchill the green light on 18 January to "play the Turkish hand". On 25 January, Churchill asked for an appointment from ?nonu, and the Adana Meeting was held just after the conference, between 30 January and 1 February 1943.
Meeting
[
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]
The teams were headed by ?smet ?nonu and Winston Churchill. The other members of the Turkish side were Prime Minister
?ukru Saraco?lu
, Foreign Minister
Numan Menemencio?lu
, Field Marshal
Fevzi Cakmak
and a group of advisers. The British team had Sir
Harold Alexander
, Sir
Henry Maitland Wilson
, Sir
Alan Brooke
, Sir
Wilfrid Lindsell
, Sir
Alexander Cadogan
(foreign ministry), Air Marshal
Peter Drummond
and Commodore
John Dundas
.
[8]
During the meeting, the British tried to persuade the Turkish side to join the Allies, but ?nonu showed extreme reluctance to join the war.
[9]
Churchill made lavish promises of military help (codenamed Operation Hardihood). A list of military equipment was drawn up, the Adana Lists, which Churchill later said would provide Turkey with war material "to the full capacity of Turkish railways".
[1]
In turn, Churchill requested access to Turkish air bases for the
Royal Air Force
so that the British could bomb the oil fields of
Ploie?ti
, Romania, the principal source of oil for Germany and the Italian positions in the Dodecanese. To put pressure on the Turks to give up their neutrality, Churchill made clear that if Turkey refused to join the Allies, he would not try to stop the Soviets from moving to control the
Dardanelles
.
The military advisors went in borrowed and ill-fitting plain clothes. Brooke was not impressed by the poor security for Churchill. He hoped that "Turkey’s neutrality will from now on assume a far more biased nature in favour of the allies", and while the Turkish forces could not have been trained to be of much use, the real value would have been the use of aerodromes and as a jumping-off place for future action. But he said that his "wild dreams" about Turkey remained that, as von Papen "fooled the Turks about fictitious concentrations of German troops in Bulgaria, which never existed."
Aftermath
[
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]
In April 1943, a British military delegation of General Sir
Henry Maitland Wilson
requested access for 25 RAF fighter squadrons to Turkish airports. In the latter stages of the operation, the British planned on sending two full armoured divisions to Turkey. The Turks, however, were very fearful of the strong German military presence in Bulgaria and drowned the British military delegation with red tape. While giving Maitland Wilson every courtesy, the Turks started 'tortuous and interminable negotiations'. Wilson urged Turkish commanders to teach their men mechanical skills but noted that meant that prospective tank crews 'had to be taught the workings of the
internal combustion engine
from page one of the book'. When the construction of Turkish airfields went ahead of schedule, ?nonu was warned that work was proceeding too rapidly.
[11]
The British frustration about the Turkish stalling tactics led to a serious deterioration of diplomatic relations between the two countries in the summer of 1943.
However, the disastrous British
Dodecanese Campaign
on 13 September 1943, where the Germans easily fought off a British assault, ended the strife. The display of German strength only 20 km (12 mi) southwest of the Turkish coast convinced the Turkish government that it been right to keep its neutrality. After the fiasco, the British were now anxious to keep Turkey neutral.
See also
[
edit
]
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Alanbrooke, Field Marshal Lord (2001). Danchev, Alex; Todman, Daniel (eds.).
War Diaries 1939?1945
. Phoenix Press.
ISBN
1-84212-526-5
.
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
Selim Deringil (2004).
Turkish Foreign Policy During the Second World War: An 'Active' Neutrality
. Cambridge University Press. p. 146.
ISBN
978-0-521-52329-5
.
- ^
a
b
Sonraları bu goru?me Adana Mulakatı diye anılır oldu. Fakat hakikatte iki devlet adamının telakisi Adana'da de?il, Yenice istasyonunda ve vagon icinde olmu?tu. Yenice, Tarsus'a ba?lı kucuk bir Nuseyri koyudur ve Adanaya yirmi uc kilometre mesafededir. Konya istikametinden gelen trenler burada, Adana ve Mersin cihetine gitmek uzere, ikiye ayrılır. ?stasyon, yuksek okaliptus a?aclarının golgelendirdi?i ?irin bir yerdir...
, Hilmi Uran,
Hatıralarım
, Ayyıldız Matbaası, 1959,
p. 388.
(in Turkish)
- ^
Hurriyet newspaper online (17.1.2003)
(in Turkish)
- ^
William M. Hale (2000).
Turkish Foreign Policy, 1774-2000
. Psychology Press. p. 95.
ISBN
978-0-7146-5071-5
.
- ^
30?31 Ocak 1943'te Adana'da, Yenice istasyonu'nda duran Cumhurba?kanlı?ı ozel treni icinde, Cumhurba?kanı ?nonu'nun ba?kanhgindaki Turk Heyeti ile Churchill ve yanındaki generallerle diplomatlardan olu?an ?ngiliz heyeti goru?tuler.
,
Erdal ?nonu
,
Anılar ve Du?unceler
, ?dea, 1998,
p. 153.
(in Turkish)
- ^
"1943 ?nonu Churchill Yenice meeting"
(in Turkish). Mehmet Ali Suluta?. 29 January 2011
. Retrieved
14 October
2016
.
- ^
"1943 ?nonu Churchill Yenice meeting"
(in Turkish). Mehmet Ali Suluta?. 29 January 2011
. Retrieved
14 October
2016
.
- ^
a
b
?cel sanat Kulubu page
(in Turkish)
- ^
?zzet Oztoprak,
"?kinci Dunya Sava?ı Doneminde Adana Goru?melerinin Siyasi Yonu"
, ATATURK ARA?TIRMA MERKEZ? DERG?S?, Sayı 46, Cilt: XVI, Mart 2000
(in Turkish)
- ^
Selim Deringil,
Turkish Foreign Policy During the Second World War: An 'Active' Neutrality
, pp. 148?49.
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