Russia and the Middle East 269
December the Istanbul police arrested over seventy persons be-
longing to two 'Socialist' parties, suppressing the parties and six
newspapers and periodicals published by them. The American
offer of financial aid to Greece and Turkey in March 1947 greatly
changed the strategic situation on this important sector of the
Russian war-of-nerves. While Pravda denounced the American
action as 'the liquidation of Greek and Turkish sovereignty and the
brutal establishment of American hegemony', the Turks were at
once relieved of the 'crushing sense of insecurity and isolation'1
which had subjected them during the past two years to the econo-
mic and psychological strain of keeping under amis one million
men who had already been kept mobilized throughout the war.
When the steady consolidation of Russian power in the Balkans
caused a member of the Democratic party on 22 December to
inquire about Turkey's attitude to the two great ideological blocs,
Foreign Minister Hasan Saka replied that Turkey remained loyal
to the United Nations and refused to be drawn into ideological
quarrels; her policy was to rely on her own forces, to grasp hands
extended in a spirit of friendship, and to resist with all her strength
aggression from any quarter. This unexpectedly non-committal
statement gave rise to some concern in Ankara;2 and it produced,
as it was perhaps designed to do, an announcement from the U.S.
Navy Department on 9 January 1948 that fifteen warships,
including four modern submarines, would be handed over to
Turkey in April.
In October 1945 a new "Democratic Party* was formed in
Azerbaijan, the richest province of Persia, which produces the
bulk of its grain and contains about one-third the total population
of the country. The province had been under Soviet occupation
since 1941, and it appeared that a considerable number of Com-
munists had been introduced from Soviet Azerbaijan., divided
from Persian Azerbaijan only by an arbitrary frontier and not by
any linguistic or cultural differences. The new party was led by
Ja'far Pishevari, who had taken part in the formation of the Soviet
Republic of Gilan in 1920 and had returned to Persia with the
Soviet army in 1941. All the local members of the Tudeh joined
the new party and there followed an armed revolt of a peculiar
kind. 'A few Russians in a town or village would let it be known
1 Renter's Correspondent, Istanbul, 19 March 1947.
2 Observer special correspondent, 4 January 1948,