TURKEY As the late afternoon sun fell gleaming on the domes and minarets of Istanbul one day this week, a bird of ill omen winged in from the west. It hovered above the city for a moment, then settled down at the airport. From the plane stepped dapper old Franz von Papen, German Ambassador to Turkey and the man whom Adolf Hitler expects to open for him the door to the rich Middle East, Germany's dreamland for half a century.
Franz von Papen did not tarry in Istanbul, but took off forty minutes later for Ankara, where Turkey's President Ismet Inönü awaited him anxiously. Turkey is the door that the old conspirator must open, and Turkey was about to learn whether he meant to burst it, pry it, or slip in the back way and unlock it.
Throughout the Middle East, where other Moslems awaited a hint of Hitler's intentions as anxiously, rumor flew, conspiracy grew.
> The British were beating the Iraqi. With reinforcements newly arrived at Basra they were breaking up troop concentrations, destroying the Iraq Air Force. But the British had not yet pacified the country—and Iraq's Defense Minister Naci Cevket was in Ankara, waiting to have a word with Franz von Papen.
> In Trans-Jordan pro-British Emir Abdullah was reported shot and badly wounded by his son just as he was about to march into Iraq to help the British.
> ln Syria pro-Vichy and pro-De Gaulle forces jockeyed for position in the face of repeated reports that Germany had demanded the right to land troops for passage to Iraq.
> Iran expected to see the Red Army before the German Army could march that far.
> In Saudi Arabia that wily chieftain, Ibn Saud, lay low, waiting to see which way the cat jumped.
Sooner or later Germany would try to consummate the Drang nach Osten begun by the Balkan campaign. Turkey stands in the way. If Germany could get around to the back door via Syria or Iraq, Turkey, encircled, would have to talk turkey.
But if Hitler's Moslem friends could not do any better than Iraq's Ra^hid Ali El-Gailani was doing last week, if the British Navy kept Nazi troops from reaching Syria, if the drive on Egypt stayed stalled, then Ambassador von Papen would have to try to get the Turkish front door open. Whether to burst or to pry would be decided by his boss, and would depend on Hitler's timetable.
Blitz Without Roads? If the decision is to burst, Russia must be reckoned with, and Russia has promised Turkey not to join in any attack on her. Against Germany alone Turkey could put up a respectable, though probably not a winning, fight. Chief of Staff Marshal Fevzi Cak-mak (pronounced Chockmock) says that Turkey is an infantryman's paradise, with hills, valleys and passes that crack riflemen and machine-gunners could hold. Infantry is the Army's pride, as it has been since the days of the Janizaries. The infantry is rendered stronger by the fact that the great Kamâl Atatürk modernized his country with a railway program and built scarcely a single good road.