Key Slipped?

Turkish troops were scheduled this week to march peacefully over the southern border of Turkey into the 10,000-square-mile Sanjak (province) of Alexandretta, an autonomous district of French-mandated, soon-to-be-independent Syria. Sent back to Geneva on the demand of Turkey, at the request of France, was the League of Nations Commission which had been invited to supervise the election of a legislature which, if held, would have amounted to a plebiscite for Turkish or Syrian rule.

In Ankara, Turkey's capital, bespectacled, chubby, methodical Premier Jelal Bayar shouted to the one-party Grand National Assembly that Hatay--the name for the Sanjak affected by the Turks after the Hittite regime that ruled there over 3,000 years ago--"must be Turkish-ruled." In Syria's capital, Damascus, Arab leaders called for a policy of noncooperation with France. Throughout much of the Arab world -- from Asia Minor to Aden, from Tigris to Nile -- there was dismay over this latest of a long list of betrayals by the Big Powers. For Turkey, former master of the Arabs, was clearly about to gain, with the tacit consent of the French, a valuable economic key to Arab nations.

A detachment of 2,500 Turkish troops was to enter the Sanjak by agreement with France. There they were to "help" an equal number of French troops to "maintain order" when the often postponed elections are finally held. The date is not set yet. According to Arab sympathizers, the reason the League of Nations Commission's elections were not held was that France had secretly promised Turkey that at least 22 of the Sanjak's 40 assembly seats would go to Turks. Since Turks number no more than 40% of the population, since many Sanjak Turks dislike Dictator Kamal Atatuerk's regime, France found it impossible to deliver the votes to Turkey against a united anti-Turkish majority of mixed nationalities while an honest international commission was watching. With the commission gone, say anti-Turks, the elections can now be managed so as not to offend Kamal Atatuerk's troops.

In Paris last week, French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet and Turkish Ambassador Suad Davaz signed an accord on the long-smoldering Sanjak question. For France the accord represented a diplomatic rout, compensated only by the fact that by appeasing Turkey, France has weaned President-Dictator Kamal Atatuerk further away from Germany. For Turkey it was a victory for strong-man policies. For Syria, occupation of the Sanjak by Turkish troops means a loss of her one good harbor at Alexandretta. The Sanjak cannot legally become Turkish without League of Nations sanction, but with Turkish troops there it will be an easy matter to slip the strategic territory into Dictator Kamal Atatuerk's outstretched arms.

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