İnönü and Churchill Meet in Adana
President İsmet İnönü and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill convened in Adana on 30-31 January 1943 to discuss Turkey’s possible participation in World War II. After this meeting –as he duly told the Turkish delegation– Churchill informed Soviet leader Stalin about the status quo. In a telegraph he sent to Stalin on 1 February 1943, Churchill noted that he made no political engagements or promises to convince Turkey to join the war and that the Turkish government was free to act as it chose. Churchill wrote the following lines with respect to the position of the Soviet Union and Turkey’s perspective of the Soviets:
They are, of course, apprehensive of their position after the war in view of the great strength of the Soviet Union. I told them that in my experience the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had never broken an engagement or treaty; that the time for them to make a good arrangement was now, and that the safest place for Turkey was to have a seat with the victors as a belligerent at the peace table. All this I said in our common interest in accordance with our alliance, and I hope you will approve. They would, I am sure, be very responsive to any gesture of friendship on the part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
In fact, the role Churchill played here was the typical British diplomacy tactic of “run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.” Stalin replied to Churchill’s telegraph on 6 February 1943. As of this date, the Allies agreed that Turkey would be pulled into the war, even if “by force.”
