Dinner With Churchill: Policy-Making at the Dinner Table (12 page)

The meeting must be classified as a success, at least from Churchill’s point of view. Stalin remained unhappy with the refusal of the US and Britain to create a second front, but did in the end respond positively to Churchill’s detailed
description
of plans for Operation Torch by saying: “May God prosper this undertaking.”
27

C
HAPTER
5

Adana January 1943

I
n January 1943, Churchill travelled to Turkey to “make a new effort to have Turkey enter the war on our side”.
2
This meeting with President Ismet Inönü would be
code-named
Operation Satrap. Not for the first time, and not for the last, the Cabinet opposed the trip, although conceding: “Your special trips have been recognised to be of the highest importance.”
3
That opposition notwithstanding, Churchill, accompanied by a large staff that included Cadogan, General Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and a bevy of top brass, flew to Adana, a city in
southern
Anatolia, close to the Mediterranean coast. In his newly
outfitted B-24 Liberator, equipped up front with side blister windows that could be opened to vent the inevitable cigar smoke,
4
Churchill could sit in the co-pilot’s seat and puff away. The Prime Minister, always attentive to the details of these personal meetings, left his many military outfits
behind
as a sign of respect for Turkey’s neutrality. On
meeting
President Inönü, Churchill handed him a letter
reminding
him that when he had been in Turkey in 1909, he had met “many of the brave men who laid the foundations of the modern Turkey”, including Atatürk.
5

From the airport at Adana, he was driven to a railway siding where an “extremely comfortable” special train waited,
6
complete with lunch. This then steamed a few miles to the Yenice station, fifteen miles outside of Adana, where it was coupled to the President’s train, nicknamed by Churchill the enamel caterpillar.
7
All the houses along the train route had been whitewashed before the dignitaries passed by.

After lunch in the President’s railway carriage, the
meetings
started, meetings made easier by the fact that President Inönü spoke English, but more difficult by the fact that he, his Prime Minister and his Foreign Minister were all a little deaf. The British party “shouted cheerfully” throughout.
8

After a long meeting, dinner was served, consisting of Turkish cuisine that a contemporary observer characterises as “very curious … rich and varied … open to improvisation”.
9

Chicken soup was the starter, followed by a cheese pie with a flaky pastry, steak with side dishes, lettuce, and cauliflower in a white sauce. The dessert of chocolate pudding followed 
by fruit may not have been of interest to Churchill whose taste in desserts seem to have favoured ice cream.

Menu for the Prime Minister, Turkey, January 1943

If the President’s train carriage was up to the standards of the diners built in Birmingham for Turkey’s railways, it would have been built to accommodate “gleaming
silverware
… spotless napery – even the double racks for hats and umbrellas”.
10

Dining with Turkish President Inönü in his private railway carriage, January 1943

The meeting was cordial, the food fine. General Sir Alan Brooke recorded in his diary:

Disconcerting, too, to the Turkish hosts must have been the sight of General Brooke indulging in a spot of
impromptu
birdwatching through the carriage windows. He thought he had spotted a pallid harrier but as he could not be sure, he continued to stare intermittently over the shoulder of his Turkish counterpart rather than concentrating on the
discussions
.

Agreement was reached on a variety of post-war issues, but the Prime Minister did not get what he came for. Although Turkey did agree to enter the war “when the circumstances are favourable”
12
, as Churchill put it in his telegram to Attlee, it did not agree to join the Allies at that time.