Dictator Mustafa Kemal Offers Turkey To Britain

Martin Gilbert
Jewish Founders of Modern Turkey
(Source: The Sunday Times (London), February 11, 1968, page: 8)

In November 1938 Kemal Ataturk, President of Turkey, lay dying. During the 15 years of his stern dictatorship, he had dragged a reluctant Turkey forcibly into the 20th century. He had outlawed the fez and the veil. He had broken the powers of Islam. He had introduced the Latin alphabet.

Now, on his deathbed, Ataturk feared it would be impossible to find a successor able to continue his work. He summoned Sir Percy Loraine, the British Ambassador, to the presidential palace in Istanbul. What passed between them has remained secret for nearly 30 years.

It is revealed for the first time by Piers Dixon, about the life of his father, Sir Pierson Dixon (“Double Diploma,” to be published by Hutchinson this week). Among Pierson Dixon’s papers was a telegram from Percy Loraine to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax. In what is surely one of the strangest of all documents of recent British history, Loraine recounts his bizarre interview with the dying dictator:


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