Eighty years ago this week Turkey fails to rise to Churchill's bait

 

 

 

The Turkish president Inonu met Roosevelt and Churchill in Cairo. The British flooded the media with reports suggesting that Turkey would soon be coming into the war on the allied side but these were spurious. Churchill entertained fantasies that  Turkey's entry into the war would revive his scheme for a full-scale attack on the Balkans which had been scotched by the active opposition of Stalin and the scepticism of Roosevelt at the Teheran conference. In reality Turkish neutrality was a sounder option for all concerned. German divisions were tied up protecting Bulgaria from opportunistic seizure by Turkey. Providing the Turkish armed forces with modern equipment would have drained allied resources for no immediate benefit.

The Czechoslovak government-in-exile signed a treaty with the Soviet Union grandiloquently named Treaty of Friendship and Mutual Collaboration. The Czechs hoped to escpe the fate of Poland where the Soviets were running their own alternative government. At that point the post-war spheres of influence had yet to be firmly agreed so there could be some hope of true independence