75 Years Ago | 1943 Adana Mülakatı
Mavi Boncuk |
The event came to be known as the Adana Meeting later. But in fact, the meeting was held, not in Adana, but in a railroad car on a storage track at the Yenice Railway Station, It is the main railroad junction of the Adana–Mersin Railway Line and the main railroad from the north (i.e. İstanbul-Bağdat Railway). Yenice is a town of Tarsus district in Mersin Province, Turkey. The choice of this location was decided after a series of talks between the Turkish Foreign Ministry and the British embassy in Ankara. The earlier choice of the British side was Cyprus (then a part of British Empire) and the choice of Turkish side was Ankara.
The teams were headed by İsmet İnönü and Winston Churchill. The other members of the Turkish side were Prime minister Şükrü Saracoğlu, Foreign minister Numan Menemencioğlu, Field marshal Fevzi Çakmak, and a group of advisers. The British team consisted of Harold Alexander, Henry Maitland Wilson, Sir Alan Brooke, Sir Wilfred Lindsell, Alexander Cadogan (foreign ministry), Air Marshal Drummond and Commodore Dundas.[6]During the meeting, the British tried to persuade Turkish side to join the Allies, but İnönü showed extreme reluctance to join the war. Churchill made lavish promises of military help (code-named operation 'Hardihood'). A list of military equipment was drawn up (the 'Adana Lists'), which – in the words of Churchill – would provide Turkey with war material 'to the full capacity of Turkish railways'. In turn, Churchill requested access to Turkish air bases for the RAF, so the British could bomb the oil fields of Ploieşti in Romania, the principal source of oil for Germany and the Italian positions in Dodecanese. To put pressure on the Turks to give up their neutrality, Churchill made clear that – should Turkey refuse to join the Allies – he would not try to check the Soviets if they made a move to control the Dardanelles.