Hunger was widespread. Medicine was running short. A brutal army had swept through the land causing great destruction. The people were living in constant hunger, fear and hopelessness. A blockade was preventing the delivery of aid.
In Turkey a campaign was organized, and the people of Turkey donated large amounts of food, medicine and other humanitarian aid.
The aid was collected and prepared for loading in Istanbul.
After the ship was loaded, thousands cheered it from the dock as it set sail from Istanbul on its perilous journey.
The year was 1941.
The aid was for Greece which had just been brutally invaded and occupied by Nazi German, Bulgarian and Italian troops.
The blockade of Greece had been imposed by the British government who believed that any aid for the people of Greece would only help the occupying Nazi Germans.
The ship was the Turkish ship the SS Kurtuluş.
- * -
In October, 1940, Greece was invaded by Italy. Initially Greece was able to halt and push back Italy’s advance, but in April, 1941 Italy’s allies, Nazi Germany and Bulgaria, also invaded and Greece was quickly defeated and occupied.
The situation of the people of Greece quickly became precarious; it was often not possible to plant or harvest crops, the occupying Germans also confiscated most of what was harvested, and hundreds of thousands of Greeks were in danger of dying from famine and lack of medicine.
As conditions in Greece grew worse in the summer of 1941 the Turkish government, the British government and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) began discussing how humanitarian aid could be sent to Greece. The Turkish government also began negotiating with the German government, through the German Embassy in Ankara, for permission to ship humanitarian aid to Greece.
The British government refused to allow ships carrying aid through its blockade of Greece. They felt that doing so would only strengthen the occupying Germans. As negotiations with the British continued the Turkish government asked the Turkish Red Crescent Society to organize a campaign to collect food, medicine and other humanitarian aid for shipment to Greece.
Even though the food, medicine and other humanitarian aid needed in Greece were items which were necessary and in short supply in Turkey, thousands of tons of aid were collected and prepared for shipment.
The aid was ready to be shipped, the Germans had agreed to allow the shipments, the ICRC was ready to accept and distribute the aid in Greece, but the British were still refusing to give permission for the ship to sail to Greece, so the Turkish government simply informed the British government through the Turkish Embassy in London that a ship would be sailing with the aid on board.
The SS Kurtuluş(Liberation) sailed on October 6, 1941 with about 2,000 tons of aid. The British reluctantly allowed it to pass through its blockade, the Nazi Germans occupying Greece allowed it to dock and unload, the ICRC took delivery of the shipments in Greece, and the SS Kurtuluş returned to Turkey.
A few weeks later the SS Kurtuluş sailed a second time with about 2,000 more tons of Turkish aid and 51 tons of aid from the British Red Cross.
In the following months the SS Kurtuluş delivered aid two more times but sank in a storm in the Sea of Marmara on January 20, 1942 on its way to Greece to deliver aid for the fifth time.
But the aid continued, now on a larger ship, the SS Dumlupınar, which immediately took the place of the SS Kurtuluş. Later other Turkish ships were also used to deliver aid to Greece.
One event which increased Turkish resolve to do what they could was when the crew of the SS Kurtuluş asked the Greeks if they could take the empty crates back with them to Turkey so that they could be used again, the Greeks who were helping unload the ship told the crew that the empty crates were needed in Greece, they were being used as coffins for the hundreds of Greeks who were dying every day.
In addition to delivering humanitarian aid to Greece, the SS Dumlupınar was also able to bring about 1,000 Greek children who needed medical treatment back to Turkey when it returned from Greece in February, 1942. These children were given medical treatment and taken care of in Turkey until the end of the war.
With each return from Greece the crew, passengers and reporters on the SS Kurtuluş and the SS Dumlupınar brought back news that the situation in Greece was growing much worse during the winter and spring of 1941-1942. This prompted the ICRC to intensify its efforts and in September, 1942 larger shipments, on larger Swedish ships, which had been arranged by the ICRC with the help of the Swedish, Canadian, U.S. and British governments began.
Following the first or second shipment on the SS Kurtuluş, the ICRC began providing financial assistance to the Turkish government and the Turkish Red Crescent Society and both Turkish aid and aid which had been shipped to Turkey from the U.S. and Europe continued to be sent from Turkey to Greece and the Dodecanese Islands during the war.
From the ICRC website:
From the time of their arrival in Greece in 1941, the Italian and German occupying forces took possession of all the available food resources, thereby creating great difficulties. The ICRC entered into negotiations with the occupying powers, and with the United Kingdom and Turkey, in order to organize relief work in Greece.
From October 1941 to August 1942, the ICRC managed to bring 45,000 tonnes of food into the country. But during the terrible winter of 1941-1942, only 7,500 tonnes arrived safely. The famine then grew to terrible proportions -- in Athens and several other cities, the rate of mortality was four or five times higher than it had been the previous winter.
The ICRC subsequently obtained authorization from London to deliver 15,000 tonnes of Canadian wheat to Greece every month.
With the help of the Swedish government (which supplied the means of transportation) and the Canadian authorities (who provided the goods), ships made 94 trips from Canada to Greece, bringing 17,000 tonnes of food there each month between September 1942 and March 1944. From April to November 1944, the monthly deliveries rose to 29,000 tonnes.
Supplying the Dodecanese
Although Greece was liberated in October 1944, the Dodecanese islands remained under German occupation until 8 May 1945. During this period, the population received no further supplies from outside, and its situation became catastrophic.
With the agreement of the belligerents and Turkey, the ICRC undertook to bring relief to the archipelago in small boats which it hired in Izmir. Four operations took place between February and May 1945, and a total of 2,700 tonnes of food, clothing and medicines, supplied by the British government and Greek settlers abroad, were delivered to these islands and distributed among the population.
http://www.icrc.org/...
From page 221 of The Road to Foreign Policy written by the American diplomat Hugh Gibson in 1944:
Ambassador Gibson was involved in the negotiations for, and the organization of, aid shipments to Europe during and after World War II.
Democratic Control of Policy
We might do well to single out one example of a matter of policy involving a moral issue and calling for spiritual leadership. The question of food relief for the small occupied democracies of Europe stands out clearly in this category. When this question arose, the obvious starting point of the government should have been the desire of any decent person that suffering should be relieved if it could be done without hampering the war effort or helping the enemy. Any enlightened government should have adopted that approach. Instead, our government apparently took the position that as the British Government had expressed unwillingness to consider the question nothing could be done. Since 1940 all appeals for consideration have been met either with repetition of arguments ignoring known facts, or with blank silence. It might be remarked in passing that there is nothing sacred about a decision by the British Government or any other, our own included, and that if a great moral issue were at stake we had not only the right but the duty to seek to make our point of view prevail. Other governments frequently seek to persuade us to modify our position; we on our side do as much. It is part of the give and take of international life and need not have the slightest tinge of unfriendliness. And when there is a moral issue at stake there should be no hesitation.
The Turkish Government suffered from no such inhibitions. In 1941 it addressed to the British Foreign Office a request for permission to send food to the suffering Greeks. In reply it received a statement of the old arguments that have stopped us in our tracks. But the Turkish Government, instead of washing its hands of the Greeks, set us an example of human compassion by notifying the Foreign Office that on a specified date it was sending certain ships designated by name to certain Greek ports. This amounted to forcing the blockade, but it got food to the Greeks'. Other Allied Powers decided to participate in the work, and food has been sent uninterruptedly to Greece from that day to this. Our own government has gone clearly on record in writing to defend the Greek operation, maintaining that the food reaches the Greek population, that the Nazi authorities do not take it, and generally advancing in support of Greek relief the very arguments put forward in vain on behalf of the other sufferers among our Allies.
http://hdl.handle.net/...
The following is said to have been written by former U.S. President Herbert Hoover and to have appeared in the January, 1943 issue of the Reader’s Digest – Volume 42. I have not been able to confirm this.
“When disaster overtook Greece and starvation spread, Turkey considered it had a moral obligation to its neighbor and a former enemy.
The Turkish Ambassador was instructed by his government to urge the British government that the relief operations be allowed for the Greek people. Yet, he received the customary reply enumerating the usual arguments against any help for populations under the Nazi occupation. A short time later, frustrated by the inaction of the British Foreign Office, the Turkish ambassador in London received instructions from his own government to inform the British that ‘on such and such date and such and such ship loaded with foodstuff will sail from a Turkish port for Greece.’ That decision was a courageous act; as no neutral county’s ships dared or allowed to go through that hellfire. Later, the experience proved that the operations had not at all benefited the Nazis. Later, the volume of relief was increased and the additional facilities were provided by Great Britain and the United States to make this venture work better. Civilization here will be grateful to the Turks for opening the door to reason and compassion.”
- * -
The Republic of Turkey and Greece 1924 - 1954
Turkish-Greek relations improved during the late 1920s, and in October, 1930 Greek Prime Minister Venizelos visited Turkey and while there the Greek and Turkish governments signed the 1930 Treaty of Ankara which affirmed the borders between Turkey and Greece, settled the property claims of repatriated populations, and established naval parity in the eastern Mediterranean.
In 1933 the Greek and Turkish governments signed a ten-year Non-Aggression Pact and agreed to close coordination in foreign policy formulation.
In 1934 the governments of Turkey, Greece, Yugoslavia and Romania signed the 1934 Balkan Pact and agreed to maintain the current borders in the Balkans and to coordinate their policies towards each other and towards Albania and Bulgaria, the two Balkan countries which did not sign the Pact.
In 1938 the Greek and Turkish governments signed a Treaty of Friendship designed to promote security in the eastern Mediterranean.
On February 18, 1952 both Greece and Turkey became members of NATO.
In the summer of 1952 King Paul and Queen Frederika of Greece made a state visit to Turkey.
In 1953 the governments of Turkey, Greece and Yugoslavia signed the 1953 Balkan Pact in an attempt to build cooperation between the three counties in response to the power exerted by the USSR in the region and to possibly draw Yugoslavia closer to the west.
Relations between the two countries began to deteriorate in 1954 as disputes in and about Cyprus grew.