TURKEY IN BRITISH POLICY TOWARDS SYRIA AND LEBANON IN 1940 – 1941

After collapse of metropolitan France in June 1940, the French in the Syria and Lebanon swore allegiance to the Vichy Government. This situation was hard to accept by the British. According to the Chiefs of Staff Committee, the occupation of these territories by enemy forces could have had most serious strategic consequences since it would cut of land communications with Turkey and would immediately threaten the whole of British interests in the Middle East. Due to that threat, London was forced to rethink its policy towards French Levant. One of the discussed measures was a proposition to involve Turkey in solving this problem. Turkey was bound with Britain with reciprocal security pact since October 1939. Moreover, the situation in Syria and Lebanon was also a threat for Turkish security. It was thought that these arguments would act in favor of Turkish involvement. Although in London everyone counted on active attitude of Turkey, there was no agreement as to its nature. While Churchill, Eden and the Chiefs of Staff were willing to agree on Turkish occupation of Syria and Lebanon, the Foreign Office was definitely against this solution. The first option eventually won. The first serious talks about Turkish involvement in Levant question took place in Ankara in January 1941, during the Anglo-Turkish military conversations. It was agreed then that if Turkey had entered the war, Turkish and British armies would have occupied Syria and Lebanon. The deteriorating military situation on the Eastern Mediterranean forced the United Kingdom to intervene in the French Levant in June 1941. Th e British government encouraged Turks to take part in that operation (“Exporter”). However, Turkish government rejected that offer. Turkey was still out of war and did not want to worsen her relations with the Third Reich.

It is difficult to speak of a historical dispute in the case of Greek compensation claims for losses suffered during WWII by Nazi Germany. This is because the German side has repeatedly taken responsibility for the harm done to the Greek people. Germany is also a country that has paid over 75 billion in damages by 2016 with various categories of victims from different countries, including Greece (Barcz & Kranz, 2019, p. 155). In the discourse on Greek demands against Germany, metaphors of the Cold War (Kalpouzos, 2015) or a symbolic battlefield (Christodoulakis, 2014, p. 20) appear, suggesting primarily a significant importance of this issue for internal political decisions made at the Acropolis and the local historical awareness. Despite this, since the “outbreak” of this “Cold War” in Germany, both on the political and expert’s levels, and primarily in historical research, many efforts have been made to constructively “resolve the dispute”. In author’s opinion, both terms coined during Greek-German historical controversy characterize duality of position of the contemporary states in discussion about impact of the past on current relations between nations in general. On the one hand, ‘Cold War’ term refers to political and economic levels (compensations demand) of the contemporary historical conflicts. On the other hand, ‘symbolic battlefield’ suggests moral superiority or righteousness on one side.

The issue of Turkish accession to the Second World War in British foreign policy (December 1943–January 1944)

During the Cairo negotiations (December 4–7, 1942), the British, supported by the Americans, tried to persuade the Turks to make the air bases on their territory available to the Allies on February 14, 1944. This date was correlated with British preparations for attacking Rhodes as part of Operation Hercules. Throughout the rest of December and mid-January 1944, the British tried to convince the Ankara government to accept the terms of cooperation. The staff consultations which proceeded in early January highlighted the differences in the perception of the war situation by both sides, which eventually led to the breakdown of negotiations and the suspension of British military aid to Turkey. Nevertheless, the British government did not decide to break the treaty of mutual aid with the Turkey and this decision was influenced by political and military factors that was not directly related to the plans of capturing the Dodecanese.