Some 80 years ago today: Turkish military observers checking out a brand new PzKpfw VI Ausf. H Tiger tank of the 503rd Heavy Panzer Battalion (s PzAbt 503) outside of Belgorod, Russia, 26 June 1943. This was just prior to Operation Citadel (Unternehmen Zitadelle) in the Kursk salient.
The tank’s armor likely had a Turkish twist.
Long a fan of Teutonic military gear, strategy, and tactics, besides being an outright German ally in the Great War, the Turks maintained a large group of General Staff observers with the Wehrmacht for much of WWII. In addition, the country’s intelligence service often actively produced background reports for the Germans in regard to the Soviet military, at least early in the war.
Plus, the bulk of the small arms used by Istanbul were German-pattern Mausers and Spandau-type MG08 machine guns, while every naval nerd remembers that the country’s flagship was the old battlecruiser SMS Goeben (as Yavuz Sultan Selim).
Also, fans of armored vehicle technology, the Turkish army had ordered Soviet-made T-26 light tanks, T-27 tankettes, and BA-3 armored cars in the 1930s, as well as Vickers Mk VI light tanks from the British and French Renault R-35s by 1940– the latter a product of a military alliance with Paris and London signed in October 1939. However, after the Fall of France in 1940, the Turks instituted a policy of strict neutrality.
At the time of the above images, Turkey was the largest supplier of chromite to Germany– a raw material desperately needed for the production of steel armor plates– sending 45,000 tons direct to Krupp in 1942 alone.
As noted by NARA:
In 1943 Turkey provided essentially 100 percent of German requirements. According to Albert Speer, Hitler’s Armaments Minister, the German war machine would have ground to a halt without chromite ore.
However, eager to join the forming United Nations, closely courted by the Allies, and well aware of Germany’s likely defeat, Turkey halted sales of chromite in early 1944, broke off relations with Berlin four months later, and made a somewhat perfunctory declaration of war in February 1945 with the Soviets across the Oder and the Western Allies in the Rhine.
No Turkish troops saw combat in WWII.