Triumph & Triumph

With a satisfied glint behind his thick- lensed spectacles, stoop-shouldered Turkish Foreign Minister Dr. Tewfik Rushtu Aras left Geneva last week where he had been representing his country at the League Council's 96th session (TIME, Feb. 1). That suave diplomat, onetime obstetrician, had now delivered for Turkey a League settlement of the Turkish-French dispute over the sanjak (district) of Alexandretta which Dictator Mustafa Kamal Ataturk had demanded that France hand to him from her Syrian mandate (TIME, Jan. 18 et seq.).

The League Council had agreed that: 1) ,the Alexandretta district shall have its own administration under supervision of a League High Commissioner of French nationality, 2) it shall owe allegiance to Syria three years hence when France gives up her Syrian mandate, 3) Turkey and France shall "guarantee its international integrity." Foreign Minister Dr. Aras knew that this "strictly legal and just settlement" would give Dictator Kamal Atatuerk virtual dominion of Alexandretta, that Turks would have free access for their goods through Alexandretta's economically vital port.

By no means satisfied with this single feather in his cap, Dr. Aras did not go straight home but blinked his way across Europe, stopped off at Milan for a head-to-head with Mussolini's son-in-law, Count Galeazzo Ciano, Europe's youngest foreign minister. These two reached an accord ending much of the Italo-Turkish tension which has sprung from Kamal Atatuerk's closeness to Stalin. Turkish fears that operations against her might take off from Italy's Dodecanese Islands, and Italian nervousness about Turkey's refortification of the Dardanelles. In substance the Ciano-Aras accord is a pact of mutual good intentions.

Seeing Turkey move away from Russia, Dictators Mussolini & Hitler were overjoyed last week, but the real triumph was Dr. Aras'. He had converted a bad-blooded neighbor into an avowed friend. But even now he was not ready to go, home. Instead, he entrained for Belgrade to hatch plans with Yugoslavia's Premier Dr. Milan Stoyadinovich for the coming conference at Athens of the Balkan Entente (Turkey, Greece, Yugoslavia, Rumania).

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