The Republic of Estonia and the Republic of Turkey, present day NATO allies, signed a friendship agreement  in  December  of  1924  but  managed  to exchange instruments of ratification only three years later. Even without delving into the matter, the time interval between the two events seems long.

The grounds for the Turkish side’s postponement of the ratification have previously been considered to be only the mission undertaken on behalf of the League of Nations by General Laidoner to resolve border incidents between Iraq and Turkey, or also the  report  summarising  the  work  of  this  mission, which was critical of Turkey. These arguments have seemed to be too general. Another notion started taking shape: analysis of a broader base of sources than has previously been examined is needed.

The key question was: why did Turkey’s Grand National Assembly ratify the agreement as late as May of 1927? The following aspects are more im- portant than the remainder. The Turkish government reached the decision to approve the friendship agree- ment between Estonia and Turkey, along with the friendship agreements that Turkey had signed at more or less the same time with Latvia and Finland, on 8 February 1925, prior to Laidoner’s mission. The situa- tion changed after the general had been to Iraq. While the agreements signed with Estonia’s neighbours were ratified by Turkey’s parliament on 4 January 1926, the agreement with Estonia was put on hold. In May of 1926, the Turkish Prime Minister at that time, Tevfik Rüstü, admitted that he had not attempted the rati- fication of the agreement in the parliament that was hostile towards Estonia because of Laidoner’s deed since he feared that it would be voted down. The fact that even in the following spring, representative Ahmet Agaoglu demanded during the deliberation of the agreement by the foreign affairs commission either that the agreement be denied ratification or that the exchange of instruments of ratification be delayed – along with an indication of why this course of action was being adopted – demonstrates that op- position to the agreement really did exist. Whereas the Minister of Foreign Affairs himself was in favour of the rapid ratification of the agreement when he submitted it to the commission. Consequently, the ratification of the friendship agreement by Turkey’s parliamentary representatives was delayed because the Minister of Foreign Affairs simply did not even attempt to secure it before he was convinced that the result would be positive. This took time.

The six month delay in exchanging the instru- ments of ratification is also an important question. In July of 1927, Estonia’s ambassador in Warsaw Otto Strandman heard from his Turkish counterpart Yahya Kemal that the agreement had not yet been ratified… And the Estonian side was guided by this information until December when the agreement’s instruments of ratification were suddenly unexpectedly exchanged. The  question  of  whether  Y.  Kemal  really  did  not know the details of the matter or attempted in this way – as Ahmet Agaoglu had demanded – to delay the exchange of the instruments of ratification, may perhaps be settled in the future.

When would the friendship agreement have gone into effect if everything had proceeded as it should have?  The  point  of  comparison  here  is  Turkey’s friendship agreements with Latvia and Finland, the instruments of ratification of which were exchanged in October and November of 1926 respectively. In other words, Estonia lost a little over a year.

What was postponed further into the future as a result or did not transpire at all? Of the more im- portant developments, the beginning of negotiations towards  an  economic  agreement  between  Estonia and  Turkey,  and  the  establishment  of  diplomatic relations were delayed by about a year. The estab- lishment of Estonia’s consulate general in Greece instead of Turkey was, in turn, a consequence of the holdup concerning diplomatic relations.

It also took a long time to process the agreement in the foreign affairs commission of Estonia’s Riigikogu (parliament), nearly 3 months. The most important factor was the fear that this agreement would damage the interests of Great Britain. Whereas the British ambassador in Estonia and Latvia, Sir Tudor Vaughan, considered this fear to be groundless. At the end of March, a conflict arose for the above-mentioned reason between some members of the foreign affairs commis- sion, in other words between two representatives of the Democratic League and perhaps also including some of their supporters, and Minister of Foreign Affairs K. R. Pusta, who submitted his resignation after this inci- dent. The resolution of the conflict is also associated with Vaughan. On 21 April, Vaughan found out from Vienne, the French ambassador in Tallinn, that Pusta’s submission of his resignation was connected with the ratification of the friendship agreement with Turkey. Whereas Vienne did not favour Pusta’s resignation since he believed that it would have been difficult to replace him. On that very same day, Vaughan met with Riigivanem (head of state) J. Jaakson, who was also a member of the Democratic League. The agreement was ratified and Pusta remained in office.

Additionally, the difficulties in communication between  Estonian  and  Turkish  diplomats  arouses attention. The Estonians received at least four pre- mature notices of the ratification of the friendship agreement  in  Turkey’s  Great  National  Assembly and one notification, in which the ratification of the agreement was groundlessly denied.