"Turkish colleagues worked perfectly!": Ankara's secret contribution to the British suppression of German-Polish diplomatic contacts in 1940-1941

Abstract

The historiography of the Second World War traditionally points to the position of neutrality, which was emphatically adhered to by official Ankara until the beginning of 1945. It is generally believed that it was she who allowed the Turkish republic to avoid being drawn into a global conflict, as well as the seizure of the country's territory by the troops of one of the conflicting parties. The British and German archival documents discovered by the author of the article indicate that the Turks were far from neutral in the intelligence sphere. Their close secret cooperation with the British allowed them to prevent Berlin's attempt to end the war in Europe on favorable terms already in 1941. Thus, the Turkish state had a much more significant influence on the course of the Second World War than previously assumed.