Soviet territorial claims in Turkey

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Territorial claims of the Soviet Union to Turkey from 1945 to 1953.

Soviet territorial claims against Turkey , which led to a territorial conflict between the two states, were asserted in particular in the years 1945 to 1953 and included several proposals to redefine the Soviet - Turkish border. These proposals should satisfy several nationalities in the Eastern Anatolia region . According to the memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev , the Deputy Prime Minister Lavrenti Beria (1946-1953) urged the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to claim Eastern Anatolian territory, which had been stolen from Georgia by the Turks . For practical reasons, if successful, the Soviet claims would strengthen the state's position around the Black Sea and weaken the imperialist influence of the British Empire in the Middle East . The acquired territories were to be added to the former Soviet republics of Armenia and Georgia and were one of the main reasons Turkey belonged to the West .

The Soviet Union rejected the Straits Agreement of 1936, which granted Turkey, under state founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, sole control over shipping through the Bosporus - an essential waterway for Soviet exports. When the Soviet-Turkish Treaty of Friendship and Neutrality of 1925 expired in 1945, the Soviet side decided not to renew the treaty. Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov told the Turks that Georgian and Armenian claims over Turkish-controlled territory had to be met before a new treaty could be signed. The disputed area around Rize , Kars and Ardahan was controlled by the Russian Empire from 1878 to 1921 and later by Georgia and the Democratic Republic of Armenia before it was handed over to the Turks by Russia, but was still inhabited by members of the respective ethnic groups who later got their own Socialist Soviet Republics. Molotov argued that while the Soviets normalized their border with Poland since ceding territories to the country during Soviet weakness in 1921, similar ceding to Turkey has never been legitimized by renegotiation since that time.

There were three plans of the Soviet Union about the size of the area which Turkey should cede:

The Soviet government wanted to resettle and repatriate people from the Armenian diaspora , most of whom came from the claimed region and had lived scattered around the world since the Armenian genocide

The United States rejected the Soviet annexation of the Kars Plateau in order to stand by Turkey as an ally. Sections of the US government viewed the Soviet territorial claims as expansionism , reminiscent of National Socialist irredentism about the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia . Since 1934 the US State Department concluded that their previous support for Armenia since President Woodrow Wilson (1913–1921) had expired and was invalid with the end of Armenian independence. The determined resistance of the United States to the Soviet-supported self-determination movements in Turkey and Persia led to the breakup and re-annexation of the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad (1946–1947) and the Azerbaijani People's Government (1945–1946) by Persia. Because of these claims, Turkey joined the anti-Soviet military alliance NATO in 1952 . As part of an effort to forge friendlier relations with Turkey, the Soviet government renounced its territorial claims after Stalin's death (1953).

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d Ronald Grigor Suny: Looking Toward Ararat: Armenia in Modern History . Indiana University Press, 1993, pp. 169, 175-176 .
  2. ^ A b Geoffrey Roberts: Molotov: Stalin's Cold Warrior . Potomac Books, 2011, pp. 107-108 .
  3. ↑ a b Армянский вопрос в контексте русско-турецких и советско-турецких отношений. yerkramas.org, December 9, 2010, archived from the original on March 18, 2014 ; Retrieved March 13, 2016 (Russian).
  4. ↑ Yaacov Ro'i: From Encroachment to Involvement: A Documentary Study of Soviet policy in the Middle East, from 1945 to 1973 . Transaction Publisher, 1974, p. 106-107 .