Hazal Yalın’s footnote

I have published several interrelated articles on this blog about the Soviet Union’s demands in 1945 for territory from Turkey and bases in the Straits. In these articles, I sought to challenge the Stalinists who claim that these demands were a "Cold War fairy tale" by drawing on a range of sources: Molotov’s interviews, Khrushchev’s memoirs, accounts in official Soviet histories and diplomatic documents from the period.

This time, I would like to approach the same issue from a slightly different angle. I shall discuss a long footnote on page 206 of Hazal Yalın’s book 1945: Türkiye–SSCB İlişkileri (1945: Turkey–USSR Relations).[1]

I have read the book. In the coming days, I shall read it again, this time more carefully and with notes. I may then write a separate article about it. Here, however, without attempting to assess the book as a whole, I would like to focus on the footnote that caught my attention while reading.

Hazal Yalın is also a Stalinist writer. Yet on the question of the Soviet Union’s demands for territory and bases from Turkey, she takes a different position from many Stalinists in Turkey. She does not deny that these demands were made; she also criticises the arguments used to justify that denial.

The footnote appears at the very beginning of the section entitled ‘Molotov’s Official Statement on the USSR’s Withdrawal of Its Territorial Demand’ (Molotov’un, SSCB’nin Toprak Talebinden Vazgeçtiğine Dair Resmî Açıklaması). The heading itself contains a phrase that deserves some attention: withdrawing a territorial demand. If no such demand had been made, why would it have been withdrawn?

A post denying the Soviet Union’s territorial demand on Turkey: Çağlar Tekin, 26 March 2021. 

Çağlar Tekin’s response:

“Stalin made no territorial demands on Turkey. The Soviet archives are open — consult them instead of relying on gossip… This lie belongs to the pro-American bureaucrats Feridun Cemal Erkin and Selim Sarper. The Soviets said, ‘Let us defend the Straits together’, which was an implicit warning because Nazi weapons had been allowed to pass through!”

Post by ‘Tarihte O An’:

“1948: Turkish tanks heading towards the border after Stalin demanded Kars.”

Yalın notes that the Soviet Union’s territorial demand is generally not acknowledged within the Turkish left, out of concern about providing ammunition for anti-communist propaganda. She also points out that this is not confined to circles seeking to defend the Soviet Union.

I shall not discuss the full scope of this observation here. But the problem it points to is important. Opposing anti-communist propaganda is one thing; denying a historical fact that has been used in that propaganda is another. The former does not require the latter.

Indeed, I emphasised the same distinction in my latestarticle. We must oppose attempts by Turkey’s ruling classes and their political representatives to whip up anti-communist hysteria. But this does not require us to disregard the demands for territory and bases made by Stalin’s government. The fact that a demand was used for propaganda does not prove that it was never made. Moreover, these demands, put forward as a result of Stalin’s irrational insistence in disregard of the reservations conveyed to him, undoubtedly deserve extremely harsh criticism.

The passage in Yalın’s footnote that gave me particular pause is the following. She sets out an argument frequently used by those who have discussed this issue with her:

If there had been a demand for territory and/or bases, there would at least have been a Soviet note submitted to Turkey — in other words, an official document. Yet there is no such document. Therefore, there was no demand for territory or bases.

A familiar line of reasoning, isn’t it?

This was also one of the central points at issue in Behlül Özkan’s article. He acknowledged that Molotov had put forward conditions involving border changes and bases in response to Turkey’s proposal for an alliance. Yet because there was no written diplomatic note and these conditions were presented as terms of an alliance, he did not regard them as ‘demands’.

Yalın does not mention Özkan by name in this footnote. I am therefore not suggesting that she is engaging in a direct polemic with him. But the reasoning she criticises clearly overlaps with Özkan’s approach.

Conditions conveyed by a foreign minister to another country’s ambassador cannot be treated as though they had never been communicated simply because no separate diplomatic note was drawn up. We must also consider to whom a written document was presented and in what context. The Soviet delegation’s proposal for bases, submitted at Potsdam in July 1945, was in writing; but it was not an ultimatum sent to Ankara. I specifically emphasised this distinction in my latest article as well.

Yalın lays bare the contradiction in this denialist reasoning with the following sentence:

According to this mindset, the Soviet Union withdrew its demands for territory and bases, but this does not mean that it ever made those demands!

Indeed, this was exactly what went through my mind when I wrote about the official Soviet publication of 1974. How can one acknowledge that the demands were withdrawn in 1953 while maintaining that no such demands had been made before then?

Another important aspect of the footnote is its explanation of how Khrushchev’s and Molotov’s testimony is dismissed. Yalın explains that Khrushchev’s attitude towards Stalin and the fact that Molotov served for a time as foreign minister under Khrushchev are used as grounds for rejecting what the two men said. She also specifically points out that Molotov continued to defend Stalin and stand by him.

Of course, we cannot accept testimony uncritically simply because it comes from an insider. Memoirs and interviews must be checked against contemporary documents. But assessing the reliability of sources is not the same as dismissing them out of hand because they say things we would rather not hear.

I have fundamental disagreements with Hazal Yalın over Stalin and Stalinism. This footnote does not resolve those differences. But I consider her criticism of the rejection of historical facts on ideological grounds to be well founded.

It would therefore be quite wrong to equate her approach with that of Yalçın Küçük, who categorically denies that the demands were made, or that of Behlül Özkan, who accepts their substance but denies that they constituted demands.

This is where the value of the footnote lies: a writer who defends Stalin acknowledges that the Soviet Union demanded territory and bases from Turkey and criticises the reasoning used to deny this fact. So even among Stalinists, a voice can be heard that does not resort to denial or to devising arguments to sustain it.

[1] Hazal Yalın, 1945: Türkiye–SSCB İlişkileri, Istanbul: Kırmızı Kedi Yayınevi, 2021, p. 206, footnote 220.

See also:

Crashing into the hard truth while trying to turn history on its head

Molotov Speaks: territorial and Straits base demands on Turkey in 1945

What do Khrushchev’s memoirs tell us?

The Kremlin’s mid-1970s “diplomatic” manoeuvre

Stalin looking at the map

A demand predating 1945: Bases in the Straits