Status quo ante bellum The Turkish Straits crisis was a Cold War-era territorial conflict between the Soviet Union and Turkey.

[a] After the war ended, Turkey was pressured by the Soviet government to institute joint military control of passage through the Turkish Straits, which connected the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.

At the request of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Vladimir Lenin provided crucial military and financial aid to the Turkish National Movement in its struggle against the Ottoman monarchy and Western occupiers; two million gold Imperial rubles, 60,000 rifles, and 100 artillery pieces were sent in the summer of 1920.

[10] In 1934, Soviet diplomats secretly urged their counterparts to assent to bases on the Straits, a demand which British Ambassador Percy Loraine credited with helping strengthen Turkey-United Kingdom relations in the interwar period.

[11] The issue regained relevance due to the expansionist ambitions of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, as well as a fear that Bulgaria would take it upon itself to remilitarize the straits.

[13] The Montreux Convention instituted rules for both merchant and military vessels which are stricter than international law typically allows, such as mandatory sanitation inspections and Turkish discretion to impose general fees on non-stopover voyages.

[15] Upon signing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov informed his German colleagues of his desire to forcefully take control of the straits and establish a military base in their proximity.

[16] Shortly after the Invasion of Poland began in September 1939, Turkish Foreign Minister Şükrü Saracoğlu traveled to Moscow, where he was snubbed by Stalin and pressured by Kremlin authorities to allow a Soviet military installation on the shore of the straits.

The ship had come to the region under the explanation that it was delivering the mortuary urn of the late Turkish Ambassador home, a claim which was dismissed by the Soviets as coincidental.

[18] On 7 August 1946, the Soviets presented a note to the Turkish Foreign Ministry which stated that the way Turkey was handling the straits no longer represented the security interests of its fellow Black Sea nations.

[20] As the argument heated up in the days preceding Potsdam, the United States decided it firmly did not want the straits to fall into Soviet hands, as it would give them a major strategic gateway between the Black Sea and Mediterranean and possibly lead to a Communist Turkey.

[24] On 26 October, the Soviet Union withdrew its specific request for a new summit on the control of the Turkish Straits (but not its opinions) and sometime shortly thereafter pulled out most of the intimidatory military forces from the region.

Deputy premier Lavrentiy Beria asserted to Stalin that a strip of Turkish-controlled territory stretching southwest from Georgia to Giresun (including Lazistan) had been stolen from the Georgians by the Turks under the Ottoman Empire.