In 1920-1922, Bolshevik Russia supported and armed Kemalist Turkey, just as Putin’s Russia today is arming and supporting Azerbaijan which had been established by the Bolsheviks. In both cases, it has been done against Armenia and Armenians.
On August 16-18, 1920, Russia granted the warships “Zhutkiy” (“Eerie”) and “Zhivoy” (“Living”) to Turkey for the purpose of the further delivery of weapon supplies.
On August 24, according to a prior agreement, Russia granted Turkey 10 million rubles in gold. The amount was transferred in several parts. The first 500 thousand rubles in gold were handed over personally.
In September, Khalil Pasha delivered one million rubles in gold to Turkey. In the same month, another million rubles in gold was delivered to Ankara by Yusuf Kemal Pasha.
On October 4, Soviet diplomatic representatives who arrived in Ankara handed over to Kemal the promised 200.6 kg of golden ingots (about 400 thousand rubles), six thousand rifles, more than 5 million rounds, and 17,6 thousand shells.
The Ukrainian Ambassador to Turkey Mikhail Frunze, in his turn, granted 100 thousand rubles in gold to build an orphanage for the children of the Turks who had died during WWI.
With the support of the Bolsheviks, two gunpowder factories were built in Ankara. Russia also presented Turkey with factory equipment and resources for the production of ammunition.
After the signing of the Moscow Treaty, the Bolsheviks presented Turkey with another 10 million rubles in gold, more than 33 thousand rifles, about 58 million rounds, 327 machine guns, 54 howitzers, more than 129 thousand shells, 1,5 thousand sabers, 20 thousand gas masks, and many more other weapons.
In addition, at the beginning of 1922, Russia granted several other batches of arms to Turkey.
In April 1922, Ambassador Semyon Aralov handed over 20 thousand liras to Turkey for printing machines and film projectors. On May 3, 1922, in Ankara, Aralov handed to Turkey the remaining 3,5 million rubles in gold promised under the treaty.
In total, Turkey received 6 tons of gold from Russia, a country which had been torn by WWI, the 1917 revolution, and has been suffering from hunger.
Soviet “ambassadors” Mikhail Frunze, Budu Mdivani (Soviet state and party leader, one of the leaders of the Georgian opposition), and Semyon Aralov took part in the training of the Turkish army and the development of military operations.
Undoubtedly, thanks to this assistance, the Turkish army was able to defeat Armenians and Greeks, after which the birth of the Turkish Republic became possible.
2 thoughts on “Russian Assistance to Turkey in 1920-1922 – Chronology of the Supply of Gold and Weapons”
I wish the author had explained why Russia–which was defeated in the war and starvation was widespread–was so generous with its gold and weapons to Turkey.
When it came to the wishes of the Russian workers in the Donbass, or the Armenians who were suffering a genocide, Lenin’s “Right of National Self Determination”, so loudly proclaimed and vigorously debated against Rosa Luxemburg, seemed to take a back seat to the needs of the emerging Bolshevik state in Moscow. As should be obvious, that transfer of traditional Russian land to Ukraine, without the consent of the people affected, haunts us today.
German General Hans von Seekt, who was the fascist leader most in sympathy with German-Russia friendly relations, was advising the Turkish army at the time of these weapons sales while overseeing transfers of arms from the USSR to Germany in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Part of his advice was for the Turkish army to eliminate “surplus populations” in Armenia, as the Germans had done in the lands of present day Namibia.
Von Seekt later remarked that he had feared the secret arming of German fascist militias by the Bolshevik government that resulted might be disrupted by the transition from the government of Lenin and Trotsky to that of Stalin and Bukharin; but to his pleasant surprise the arms continued to flow uninterrupted. Those arms were used to shoot striking workers throughout Germany in 1923.
Draw your own conclusions about the principles of the early Bolshevik government, which at the time of these events was suppressing the rights of its own working class through control of the soviets and trade unions, and expulsions of worker militants from the Bolshevik Party. Not after Lenin’s death – before it. Not after Trotsky went into opposition – when he was in the leadership. Read the biography of Alexander Shlyapnikov.