A Mechanic's Return

One wintry day in 1939, a short, thick-chested man who said he was a mechanic and looked as if he might be, signed the register at Istanbul's Continental Hotel as Spiridon Yanko Mekas. Mekas, who had just returned from Moscow on a Canadian passport, loafed around the lobby for nearly three months before he went on to Yugoslavia to make history under a different alias: Tito. Last week Marshal Tito--preceded by 200 armed bodyguards --returned to Istanbul for the first time since he checked out of the Continental 14 years ago.

Tito was in Turkey this time to try to convert the Yugoslav-Greek-Turkish treaty of friendship, signed last year in Ankara, into a military-assistance pact. Arriving in Istanbul aboard a Yugoslav training ship, Tito barely had time to deposit his luggage at Dolmabaghche Palace before he was whisked off to Ankara to confer with President Celal Bayar and Prime Minister Adnan Menderes.

The talks were informal, to the point, and fruitful. Before the week was out, Tito's Foreign Secretary Koca Popovic announced that Yugoslavia and Turkey had agreed, "in principle," on a three-nation Balkan military alliance. Greece, left out of the week's talks, protested that the agreement had been reached without consulting her, but the Little Three's Big Two were confident that their junior partner's ruffled feathers would be smoothed out when Tito visits Athens shortly.

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