Abstract
This is a study on a subject that has been long neglected in both Western and Turkish scholarship. Literature on Turkey's entrance into the League of Nations is almost non-existent. The object of the present article is to detail and analyse the gradual stages in Turkey's admission to the League of Nations. After first examining the aloofness of the Turkish leadership to the Geneva institution, the article traces the developments leading to the Ankara government's decision to join this international organization. It deals with the origins of Turkey's involvement in the activities of the League of Nations. It also identifies the linkage between Turkey's relationship with the Soviet Union and its entry to the League. Following their defeat in the First World War Turks signed the Moudros Armistice with the Allied Powers on 30 October 1918, convinced that the Fourteen Points fonnulated by the American President Woodrow Wilson on 8 January of the same year would be heeded. Insofar as the future of Turkey's international relations was concerned, the Turks placed great hopes on the last of the Fourteen Points, which stated that 'A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike'.' The form the Covenant of the League of Nations took at Versailles dashed these hopes. Even before the signing of the peace the Ottoman Empire was being divided and, in accordance with Article 22 of the Covenant, certain territories to be detached from this state were to be administered as 'mandates'.2 When mandatory rule began to assume the appearance of a tool invented to disguise outright annexation, the prestige of the League of Nations was not enhanced. In this connection the methods that were used in putting down the Iraqi revolt of 1920 as well as the maladministration of the Palestine mandate contributed to the harm done to the League's reputation. The promise that mandated territories would be administered by the League of Nations was not kept. The Allies divided the territories of the vanquished powers among themselves during the war and all that was left for the
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