Word: pact
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Turkey clamored for help in its feud with the Greeks over Cyprus. Iran called for U.S. missiles and more economic aid. Pakistan was particularly annoyed because the U.S. had just proposed $225 million aid to India, its neutralist neighbor and rival claimant of Kashmir. Iraq, the Baghdad Pact's one Arab member, demanded action on the Palestine question -"the core of instability and restlessness in the Middle East." All four, who have dubbed themselves the "area" members of the Baghdad Pact to distinguish themselves from "donors" (meaning Britain and the U.S.), wanted more military and economic...
...Four. The U.S. could be grateful that it had so rugged an ally in so vital a location. As the one power that belongs to both NATO and the Baghdad Pact, Turkey is the anchor post in the chain of alliances that the free world has forged to head off Russian aggression. Possession of the Dardanelles gives the Turks the potential ability to close off the Red navy's only means of direct access to the Mediterranean.* If Turkey were not in the way, no substantial military force would stand between Russia and its dreams of domination...
Once committed to the West, Turkey has never looked back. In 1953 when the U.S. first began to talk about a "northern tier" alliance in the Middle East, Menderes promptly became its strongest local champion, set in train a series of mutual-assistance treaties that resulted in the Baghdad Pact...
...private conversation, even the delegates meeting in Ankara this week would probably not argue that the Baghdad Pact has been an unqualified success. It has aroused vast antagonism to the West-and to Turkey-among hysterically "anti-imperialist" Arab nations, and its members' hopes that more Arab states may one day be persuaded to join (Iraq is the only Arab member) still remain just hopes. The U.S.'s refusal so far to become a full member-largely because this would prompt an immediate Israeli demand for a separate mutual-defense treaty with the eyes...
...real importance of the Baghdad Pact is simply that it continues to exist. Thus it serves to deter Soviet aggression and, scarcely less important, to provide four major countries of the traditionally anarchic Middle East with practical experience in economic and military cooperation...