İsmet Pasha offers his condolences on Stalin’s death
Despite his roughness, Soviet leader Joseph “Iron Fist” Stalin was initially liked by the majority of the Turkish public and considered “a friend of the Turks,” as he had sided with Turkey during the Turkish-Armenian conflict before World War II.
However, Stalin’s reluctance to extend the 1925 Soviet-Turkish Treaty of Friendship and Neutrality citing Turkey’s close ties with Germany destroyed his positive image in the public opinion. His endeavors in Eastern Europe, which he kept under occupation, also transformed Stalin into a feared and hated figure.
Upon the Soviet leader’s death on March 5, 1953, the Turkish daily Hürriyet published a full-page caricature of Stalin on his way to hell, demonstrating the extent of this hatred.
Unfazed by public pressures; however, İsmet İnönü signed, with full diplomatic courtesy, the condolence book for Stalin and thus performed his final duty to Stalin, who had once welcomed him.
