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The Trans-Asian Pathways of ‘Oriental Products’: Navigating the prohibition of narcotics between Turkey, China, and Japan, 1918–1938

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2021

DANIEL-JOSEPH MACARTHUR-SEAL Open the ORCID record for DANIEL-JOSEPH MACARTHUR-SEAL [Opens in a new window]
DANIEL-JOSEPH MACARTHUR-SEAL*
Affiliation:
British Institute at Ankara Email: assistant.director@biaa.ac.uk
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Abstract

Patterns of opium production and distribution shifted immensely over the course of the twentieth century, with output falling by three-quarters, almost nine-tenths of which now takes place in Afghanistan. Supporters of drug prohibition trumpet the success of this long-term decline and hail the withdrawal of the four largest opium producers—India, China, Iran, and the Ottoman empire—from the non-medical market, but this seemingly linear trend conceals numerous deviations of historic significance. Among the most notable and little known is Turkey's prolonged resistance to international restrictions on the narcotics trade and the efforts of state and non-state networks to substitute Turkish opium for the diminishing supply of once-dominant Indian exports to a still opium-hungry China in the first half of the twentieth century. This article uses neglected League of Nations and Turkish government sources alongside international newspapers and diplomatic reports to demonstrate the extent of connections forged by state and non-state actors between Turkey and East Asia, expanding on recent research on trans-Asian connections in commerce and political thought.

Type
Research Article
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Modern Asian Studies , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , January 2022 , pp. 207 - 249
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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35 Poroy, ‘Expansion of opium production in Turkey’, pp. 192–194.

36 Schmidt, From Anatolia to Indonesia, p. 173.

37 Figures compiled from the League of Nations and United Nations Offices at Geneva Archives, Geneva [hereafter LoN] 727, ‘Opium questionnaire, reply of the Turkish Government’, 19 January 1922.

38 US National Archives, College Park, MD [hereafter NA], Records of the Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Turkey 1910–1929 (M 353), 867.114/6, ‘Opium Industry in former Ottoman Empire, memorandum for Mrs. Oliver Wright’, March 1923, p. 5.

39 NA, Records of the Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Turkey 1910–1929 (M 353), 867.114/5, G. Bie Randal to Secretary of State, 12 February 1923, p. 3.

40 Yahya Sezai Tezel, Cumhuriyet döneminin iktisadi tarihi (Ankara: İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2015), pp. 118–121.

41 Zafer Toprak, Türkiye'de ‘millı̂ iktisat’, 1908–1918 (Ankara: Yurt Yayınları, 1982), pp. 54–60; Ayhan Aktar, ‘Homogenising the nation: Turkefying the economy’, in Crossing the Aegean: an appraisal of the 1923 compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey. Studies in Forced Migration, Vol. 12, (ed.) Renée Hirschon (New York, NY; Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2003), pp. 90–93.

42 Tezel, Cumhuriyet döneminin iktisadi tarihi, p. 142.

43 İstanbul iktisat komisyonu tarafından tanzim olunan raporu (Istanbul: İstanbul Ticaret Odası, 1925), p. 21.

44 ‘Turkish opium’, The Chemist and Druggist, 26 September 1925, p. 419.

45 Ibid.

46 Cem Emrence, ‘Turkey in economic crisis (1927–1930): a panoramic vision’, Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 39, no. 4, 2003, pp. 67–80, at p. 70.

47 Figures compiled from LoN 3188, Malcolm Delevingne to Home Office, 19 October 1929.

48 W. T. B. McAllister, Drug diplomacy in the twentieth century: an international history (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 71.

49 LoN 791, Mehmed Sureya, ‘Memorandum on poppy growing and the production of raw opium in the republic of Turkey’, 9 December 1924.

50 Figures compiled from Afyon nedir? (Istanbul: Uyuşturucu Maddeler İnhisarı, n.d.), p. 100.

51 Harumi Goto-Shibata, ‘The international opium conference of 1924–1925 and Japan’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 36, no. 4, 2002, pp. 969–991, at p. 981.

52 Pamuk, Turkey's response to the Great Depression, p. 328.

53 Persian opium and Turkish opium, May 1928, Japan Center for Asian Historical Records, National Archives of Japan (hereafter JACAR), Ref. A06032558600. This archive is available online at: http://www.jacar.go.jp, [accessed on 16 February 2021].

54 Ziya Mümtaz, ‘Afyon meselesi’, Kadro, April 1932, p. 23.

55 Gregory Blue, ‘Opium for China: the British connection’, in Opium regimes, (eds) Brook and Wakabayashi, p. 44.

56 ‘L'Opium Turc’, Bulletin de la Chambre de Commerce et d'Industrie d'Istanbul, vol. 45, no. 6, June 1929, p. 101.

57 McAllister, Drug diplomacy in the twentieth century, p. 71.

58 James R. Rush, Opium to Java: revenue farming and Chinese enterprise in colonial Indonesia, 1860–1910 (Ithaca: Equinox, 1990), p. 217.

59 Mümtaz, ‘Afyon meselesi’, p. 22.

60 Harumi Goto-Shibata, ‘Empire on the cheap: the control of opium smoking in the Straits Settlements, 1925–1939’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 40, no. 1, 2006, p. 62.

61 ‘Decreased opium sales in Singapore’, The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, 14 May 1930, p. 317.

62 Norman John Miners, ‘The Hong Kong government opium monopoly, 1914–1941’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 11, no. 3, 1983, pp. 275–299, at p. 278.

63 For example, see Esad Mahmud Karakurd, ‘Ölünceye kadar’, Akşam, 17 June 1936, p. 6; Arif Ç. Denker, ‘Esrarengiz kervan’, Akşam, 3 December 1931, p. 7.

64 John M. Jennings, The opium empire: Japanese imperialism and drug trafficking in Asia, 1895–1945 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997), p. 28.

65 ‘Kiaochou's opium trade excused’, The North China Daily Herald, 10 June 1922, p. 744.

66 Figures compiled from LoN C.544.M.350, ‘Traffic in opium and other dangerous drugs, annual reports by governments for 1935, Japan’, 30 December 1936, p. 22; LoN C.550.M.387, ‘Traffic in opium and other dangerous drugs, annual reports by governments for 1936, Japan’, 22 November 1937, p. 49; LoN C.130.M.82, ‘Traffic in opium and other dangerous drugs, annual reports by governments for 1937, Japan’, 28 April 1939, p. 20.

67 Opium situation in Turkey, 8 December 1926, JACAR, Ref. A08072605200.

68 Persian opium and Turkish opium, May 1928, JACAR, Ref. A06032558600.

69 Hiroshi Shimizu, ‘The mandatory power and Japan's trade expansion into Syria in the inter-war period’, Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 21, no. 2, 1985, p. 21.

70 Ibid.

71 Hiroshi Nagaba, ‘Japan and Turkey historical process for diplomatic relations’, Perceptions, vol. 2, September–October 1997, p 4.

72 ‘Japonya ile ticaret’, Akşam, 16 October 1932, p. 5.

73 ‘Türk-Japon ticari münasebeti’, Cumhuriyet, 9 December 1932, p. 2.

74 Shimizu, ‘Rise and fall of Japan’, p. 21.

75 LoN 3188, ‘L'Opium Turc’, Attachment to Malcolm Develvigne to Duncan Hall, 19 October 1929.

76 ‘Japonya'ya afyon satacağız’, Cumhuriyet, 3 January 1933, p. 4; ‘Piyasi ve afyon mukavelesi’, Cumhuriyet, 7 January 1933, p. 4.

77 Signing the tentative trade agreement between Japan and Turkey, 30 November 1934, JACAR, Ref. A03033204000.

78 Shimizu, Anglo-Japanese trade rivalry, p. 238.

79 Shimizu, ‘The Japanese trade contact’, p. 26.

80 Katherine Meyer and Terry Parssinen, Webs of smoke: smugglers, warlords, spies, and the history of the international drug trade (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), p. 190.

81 Suchetana Chattopadhyay, Voices of Komagata Maru: imperial surveillance and workers from Punjab in Bengal (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2018).

82 Frederic E. Wakeman, Policing Shanghai 1927–1937 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995), pp. 37–38.

83 LoN 764, Danish Vice Consul to Chinese Legation, Rome, 10 March 1924.

84 LoN 764, Chao Hsin Chu to Secretary of the Advisory Committee, 28 March 1924.

85 ‘Opium and the extra-territoriality problem’, The China Weekly Review, 28 March 1925, p. 94.

86 LoN 764, ‘Note by the Secretary General, operations of a syndicate for importing opium and narcotics’, 27 June 1925.

87 Transliterated in newspaper reports as Yih Ching-Woo, C. K. Yap, and Zung Tsz-Moo respectively.

88 ‘The great opium case’, The North China Herald, 21 February 1925, p. 317.

89 ‘Disclosures in opium case’, The South China Morning Post, 20 February 1925, p. 11.

90 Ibid.

91 Ibid.

92 LoN 764, ‘Note by the Secretary General, operations of a syndicate for importing opium and narcotics’, 27 June 1925.

93 ‘The anti-opium war’, The China Press, 23 January 1926, p. 12.

94 ‘The Ezra opium prosecution’, The North China Herald, 2 May 1925, p. 204.

95 ‘Ezra delivers dramatic statement in course of opium action’, The China Press, 22 August 1925, p. 1.

96 ‘Court holds seven guilty in $1,300,000 opium case’, The China Press, 28 February 1925, p. 1.

97 ‘The Canton Road opium case’, The North China Herald, 19 September 1925, p. 389.

98 Ibid.

99 ‘“Squeeze” by river police alleged’, The North China Herald, 22 August 1925, p. 220.

100 ‘Suggested attempt at blackmail in Canton Road opium case’, The North China Herald, 16 January 1926, p. 114; ‘Esra's libel suit is dismissed; judge's comment is caustic’, The China Press, 22 August 1926, p. 2.

101 LoN 764, ‘Note by the Secretary General, operations of a syndicate for importing opium and narcotics’, 27 June 1925.

102 Michelle U. Campos, ‘Imperial citizenship at the end of empire: the Ottomans in comparative perspective’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, vol. 37, no. 3, 2017, pp. 588–607, at p. 589.

103 For example, see Jonathan Marshall, ‘Opium and the politics of gangsterism in nationalist China, 1927–1945’, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, vol. 8, no. 3, 1976, pp. 19–48, at p. 28. Further discussion of the Ezra family can be found in Chiara Betta, ‘From Orientals to imagined Britons: Baghdadi Jews in Shanghai’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 37, no. 4, 2003, pp. 999–1023.

104 ‘Nationality issue’, The South China Morning Post, 4 February 1925, p. 1.

105 ‘Opium and the extra-territoriality problem’, The China Weekly Review, 28 March 1925, p. 93.

106 Ibid., p. 94.

107 Sarah A. Stein, ‘Protected persons? The Baghdadi Jewish diaspora, the British state, and the persistence of empire’, The American Historical Review, vol. 116, no. 1, 2011, pp. 80–108, at p. 89.

108 ‘The Ezra opium prosecution’, The North China Herald, 2 May 1925, p. 204.

109 Ching-Chun Wang, ‘China still waits the end of extraterritoriality’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 15, no. 4, 1937, pp. 745–749, at p. 747.

110 ‘Esra's libel suit is dismissed; judge's comment is caustic’, The China Press, 22 August 1926.

111 ‘Mr N. E. B. Ezra's libel suit’, The North China Herald, 24 April 1926, p. 168.

112 ‘Opium and the extra-territoriality problem’, The China Weekly Review, 28 March 1925, p. 93.

113 Giray Fidan, Cumhuriyet'in Çinli misafirleri (Istanbul: İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2019), pp. 58–59.

114 ‘Opium and the extraterritoriality problem’, The China Weekly Review, 28 March 1925, p. 95.

115 ‘The opium scandal’, The Japan Chronicle, 5 November 1925, p. 601.

116 Jennings, The opium empire, p. 806.

117 Timothy Yang, ‘Selling an imperial dream: Japanese pharmaceuticals, national power, and the science of quinine self-sufficiency’, East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal, vol. 6, no. 1, 2012, pp. 101–125, at p. 106.

118 The National Archives, London [hereafter TNA] FO 371/13973, f. 330, Consul General Shanghai to Commissioner of Customs, 15 October 1928.

119 John M. Jennings, ‘The forgotten plague: opium and narcotics in Korea under Japanese rule, 1910–1945’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 29, no. 4, 1995, p. 806.

120 Kathryn Meyer, ‘Japan and the world narcotics traffic’, in Consuming habits: drugs in history and anthropology, (eds) Jordan Goodman, Andrew Sherratt and Paul E. Lovejoy (London: Routledge, 2014), p. 191.

121 LoN 727, ‘Opium questionnaire, reply of the Turkish government’, 19 January 1922.

122 ‘Specialities in Turkey’, The Chemist and Druggist, 3 October 1925, p. 463.

123 NA, Records of the Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Turkey 1910–1929 (M 353), 867.114/14, S. Pinkney Tuck to Secretary of State, 30 October 1925.

124 TNA FO 371/12578, f. 60, P. Anselmino to Malcolm Delevingne, 11 February 1927.

125 LoN 3188, transliteration of L'Economiste d'Orient, 25 February 1931, p. 2.

126 TNA FO 371/13258, f. 166, H[arold] W[oods], Untitled memorandum, 11 January 1928.

127 TNA FO 371/13528, f. 173, George Mounsey to Malcolm Delevingne, 21 July 1928.

128 TNA FO 371/2015, f. 83, Memorandum attached to Malcolm Delevingne to G. A. Mounsey, 6 September 1929.

129 The planned reconstruction of these barracks, disused from 1920–1940 and demolished and replaced by Gezi park, prompted the protest movement of summer 2013.

130 TNA FO 371/12578, f. 60, R. H. Home to Austen Chamberlain, 16 March 1927.

131 TNA FO 141/470, ‘The Oriental Products Company, Constantinople’, n.d.

132 TNA 141/470, Gordon Ingram, Commandant Alexandria City Police, to Director General of Public Security, Ministry of Interior, Egypt, 28 June 1928.

133 Ibid.

134 TNA FO 141/470, ‘The Oriental Products Company, Constantinople’, n.d.

135 TNA FO 141/470, Lloyd to British Ambassador, Constantinople, 4 July 1928.

136 LoN 3119, ‘Seizure of heroin at Port Said’, 18 January 1929.

137 TNA FO 141/470, H[arold] W[oods], ‘Heroin’, 15 March 1928.

138 TNA FO 141/470, Gorton to British Consulate General, Saigon, 4 May 1928.

139 Centre des Archives Diplomatiques, Nantes [hereafter CADN] 353 PO/2/427, Ambassador Chambrun to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 3 October 1930.

140 LoN 4790, Bureau Centrale d'Informations des Narcotiques, ‘Rapport annuel 1932’, p. 32.

141 LoN C.498.M.251, Advisory committee on traffic in opium and other dangerous drugs, ‘Summary of illicit transactions and seizures reported to the League of Nations between October 1st, 1931, and January 1st, 1932’, p. 14.

142 LoN 4790, Memorandum attached to ‘Activities of the Eliopoulos-Del Gratio gang of traffickers’, 11 May 1933.

143 LoN 4790, Bureau Centrale d'Informations des Narcotiques, ‘Rapport annuel 1932’, p. 5.

144 Ibid., p. 6.

145 Meyer and Parssinen, Webs of smoke, pp. 118–120; Gingeras, Heroin, organized crime, and the making of modern Turkey, pp. 68–72; Alan A. Block, ‘European drug traffic and traffickers between the wars: the policy of suppression and its consequences’, Journal of Social History, vol. 23, no. 2, 1989, pp. 315–337, p. 327.

146 Anastassios Tamis, ‘Greek migration and settlement in eastern and south Asia’, in The roads of the Greeks, (eds) K. Loukeris and K. Petrakis (Athens: Polaris Publishing, 2009), pp. 164–166. For an overview of the larger literature on Baghdadi Jews in East Asia, see Betta, ‘From Orientals to imagined Britons’, pp. 999–1001.

147 Shanghai Municipal Police Files IO 922D, S. Jones, Special Branch Report, 2 December 1935. This archive is available online at: https://www.gale.com/c/shanghai-municipal-police-files-1894-1945, [accessed 16 February 2021].

148 Thomas W. Gallant, ‘Tales from the dark side: transnational migration, the underworld and the “other” Greeks of the diaspora’, in Greek diaspora and migration since 1700: society, politics and culture, (ed.) Dimitris Tziovas (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009).

149 LoN 4790, Bureau Centrale d'Information des Narcotiques, ‘Rapport annuel 1932’, p. 7.

150 LoN C.716.M.304, Advisory committee on traffic in opium and other dangerous drugs, ‘Summary of illicit transactions and seizures reported to the League of Nations between October 9th, 1930, and March 31st, 1931’, pp. 31–33.

151 Ibid., p. 43.

152 Banu Eligür, ‘Ethnocultural nationalism and Turkey's non-Muslim minorities during the early republican period’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 46, no. 1, 2017, pp. 158–177, at p. 166.

153 LoN C.716.M.304, Advisory committee on traffic in opium and other dangerous drugs, ‘Seizure of 424 kilograms of heroin at Hong Kong on 8th October, 1930, ex. the MS Hilda’, 24 December 1930, p. 1.

154 ‘China's pressing narcotic problem’, The China Weekly Review, 22 November 1930, p. 448.

155 ‘Opium, valued at 1 million, is seized by customs here’, The China Press, 21 November 1930, p. 1.

156 ‘A record seizure of drugs’, North China Herald, 2 December 1930, p. 301.

157 Alan Baumler, The Chinese and opium under the Republic: worse than floods and wild beasts (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2007), p. 1.

158 LoN 3133, Italian Minister of Communications to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 3 May 1932.

159 LoN 4790, Bureau Centrale d'Informations des Narcotiques, ‘Rapport annuel 1932’, p. 53.

160 LoN 4790, Memorandum attached to ‘Activities of the Eliopoulos-Del Gratio gang of traffickers’, 11 May 1933.

161 LoN 4790, Bureau Centrale d'Informations des Narcotiques, ‘Rapport annuel 1932’, p. 15.

162 TNA FO 262/1755, G. Clerk to A. Henderson, 28 April 1930, p. 5.

163 Baumler, The Chinese and opium under the republic, p. 197; Liat Kozma, ‘White drugs in interwar Egypt: decadent pleasures, emaciated fellahin, and the campaign against drugs’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, vol. 33, no. 1, 2013, pp. 89–101, at p. 92.

164 ‘Traffic in drugs’, South China Morning Post, 20 October 1930, p. 11.

165 TNA FO 371/13258, Delevingne to Mounsey, 23 August 1928.

166 Harumi Goto-Shibata, ‘The International Opium Conference of 1924–25 and Japan’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 36, no. 4, 2002, pp. 969–991, at p. 990.

167 TNA FO 371/2015, George Mounsey to Foreign Office, 28 January 1929.

168 LoN C.509.M.214, ‘Records of the Conference for the Limitation of the Manufacture of Narcotic Drugs’, second meeting, 28 May 1931, p. 25.

169 Ibid., third meeting, 30 May 1931, p. 41.

170 Ibid., sixteenth meeting, 20 June 1931, p. 133.

171 LoN 3188, Report on mission to Turkey by the director of the Opium Traffic and Social Questions Sections, 26 February 1932.

172 CADN 258 PO/B/42, Le Saunier to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1 March 1933.

173 LoN C.575.M.282, ‘Advisory Committee on Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs, minutes of the 15th session’, 18 August 1932, p. 71.

174 CADN 258 PO/B/42, Memo by N. I. B., 11 August 1932.

175 Ibid., 23 December 1931.

176 Başbakanlık Cumhuriyet Arşivleri, Ankara [hereafter BCA], 30.18.1.2/20.33.4, Kararname, 21 May 1931.

177 Gingeras, Heroin, organized crime, and the making of modern Turkey, p. 72.

178 ‘Türkiye'de ön yıl cumhuriyet hayatı, 1923–1933’, Cumhuriyet Ticaret ve Sanayı Odası Mecmuası, vol. 49, no. 7, July 1933, p. 99.

179 ‘Nasıl kaçakçılık ederler? Kaçakçılığın önüne nasıl geçilir?’, Ulus, 30 November 1934, p. 6.

180 Afyon nedir?, p. 30.

181 Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclis, 4. Dönem, 15. Cilt, 64. Birleşim, p. 468.

182 LoN C.653.M.254, ‘Commission of Enquiry into the Control of Opium Smoking in the Far East’, November 1930, p. 146.

183 Carl A. Trocki, Opium, empire and the global political economy: a study of the Asian opium trade, 1750–1950 (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 9.

184 Jennings, ‘The forgotten plague’, p. 803.

185 Miriam Lynn Kingsberg, ‘The poppy and the acacia: opium and imperialism in Japanese Dairen and the Kwantung Leased Territory, 1905–1945’, PhD thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 2009, p. 327.

186 Meyer, ‘Japan and the world narcotics traffic’, p. 196.

187 Edward R. Slack, Opium, state, and society: China's narco-economy and the Guomindang, 1924–1937 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001), p. 146.

188 LoN C.315.M.211, ‘Advisory Committee on Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs, minutes of the 22nd session’, 23 July 1937.

189 Miriam Kingsberg, ‘Legitimating empire, legitimating nation: the scientific study of opium addiction in Japanese Manchuria’, The Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 38, no. 2, 2012, pp. 325–351, at p. 327; Turkey's defence of its monopoly policy can be found in LoN C.221.M.123, ‘Report to the Council’, 24 June 1938.

190 BCA 30.10.0.0/178.230.8, Yugoslavya ile akdedilen afyon anlaşmasının tasdikine dair kanun layıhası, 17 May 1935.

191 Kakegawa Akirashu quoted in Norman Smith, Intoxicating Manchuria: alcohol, opium and culture in China's North-East (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2012), p. 171.

192 Aydin, The politics of anti-Westernism in Asia, p. 201.

193 BCA 30.0.18.1.2/37.44.0.7, Kararname, 11 June 1933.

194 Janis Mimura, Planning for empire: reform bureaucrats and the Japanese wartime state (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2016), pp. 71–72.

195 ‘Japonlar afyon aliyorlar’, Cumhuriyet, 16 May 1935, p. 4.

196 ‘Japonya'ya afyon ihraç ettik’, Cumhuriyet, 9 October 1934, p. 4.

197 ‘Harçlar odenmeyen beratlar’, Kurun, 23 January 1935, p. 2.

198 BCA 490.1.0.0/1454.34.5, Uyuşturucu Maddeler Inhisari, ‘Aylik raporu Nisan 1935’.

199 Compiled from LoN C.629.M.250 ‘Permanent Central Opium Board, Report to the council on the work of the Central Board during its sixth and seventh sessions and on the statistics for the year 1929’; LoN C.439.M.186 ‘Permanent Central Opium Board, Report to the council on the work of the Central Board during its eighth, ninth and tenth sessions and on the statistics for the year 1930’; LoN C.624.M.307, ‘Permanent Central Opium Board, Report to the council on the work of the Central Board during its eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth sessions and on the statistics for the year 1931’; LoN C.495.M.250 ‘Permanent Central Opium Board, Report to the council on the work of the Central Board during its fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth sessions and on the statistics for the year 1932’; LoN C.390.M.176 ‘Permanent Central Opium Board, Report to the council on the work of the Central Board during its nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first sessions and on the statistics for the year 1933’; LoN C.1.M.1 ‘Comité Central Permanent de l'Opium, Rapport au counseil, statistiques relatives à l'année 1934 fournies au Comité Central de l'Opium aux terms des conventions de 1925 et de 1931’; LoN C.449.M.265 ‘Permanent Central Opium Board, Report to the council, statistics relating to the year 1935 furnished to the Permanent Central Opium Board under the terms of the 1925 and 1931 conventions’; LoN C.353.M.240 ‘Permanent Central Opium Board, report to the council on the statistics for narcotics for the year 1936 and the work of the Board during 1937’; LoN C.482.M.325 ‘Permanent Central Opium Board, report to the council on the statistics for narcotics for the year 1937 and the work of the Board during 1938’. Discrepancies between Turkish export returns were acknowledged by League of Nations officials.

200 LoN C.544.M.350, ‘Traffic in opium and other dangerous drugs, annual reports by governments for 1935, Japan’, 30 December 1936, p. 22.

201 LoN C.550.M.387, ‘Traffic in opium and other dangerous drugs, annual reports by governments for 1936, Japan’, 22 November 1937, p. 49.

202 LoN C.130.M.82, ‘Traffic in opium and other dangerous drugs, annual reports by governments for 1937, Japan’, 28 April 1939, p. 20.

203 TNA, FO 262/1889, f. 14, Austin to Butler, 22 March 1934.

204 ‘Afyonlarımız’, Kurun, 22 March 1935, p. 3.

205 ‘Uzakdoğuda Turk afyonun mevkii’, Cumhuriyet, 16 August 1935, p. 4.

206 ‘Türk afyonlar’, Cumhuriyet, 21 May 1935, p. 12.

207 BCA 30.18.1.2/85.105.7, ‘Fransız Hindiçini'ne Uyuşturucu Maddeler İnhisar idaresi'nce 200 sandık afyon satılması’; BCA 30.18.1.2/85.105.7, ‘Hollanda makamlarıyla ödeme konusunda anlaşmaya varılarak’; BCA 30.18.1.2/85.113.6, ‘Uyuşturucu Maddeler İnhisar idaresi'nin Batavya'ya 400 sandık afyon satması’.

208 Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclis, 4. Dönem, 15. Cilt, 64. Birleşim, p. 471.

209 CADN 36PO/1/323, ‘Note’, 6 February 1936.

210 Hansen, ‘Learning to tax’, p. 103.

211 ‘Afyon anlaşması için konuşmalar’, Akşam, 18 January 1935, p. 5.

212 ‘Afyon anlaşması’, Akşam, 25 January 1935; LoN C.149.M.247, ‘Advisory Committee on Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs, minutes of the 23rd session’, p. 84.

213 ‘Afyon anlaşması’, Akşam, 9 March 1936, p. 5.

214 BCA 490.1.0.0/1454.34.5, ‘Uyuşturucu Maddeler Inhisari, Aylik Raporu, Mart 1935’.

215 ‘Afyon satışı’, Akşam, 29 December 1935, p. 5.

216 ‘Tahran'a gidecek heyet’, Akşam, 23 September 1936, p. 1.

217 LoN C.290.M.176, ‘Advisory Committee on Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs, minutes of the 21st session’, p. 40.

218 Brian G. Martin, ‘“In my heart I opposed opium”: opium and the politics of the Wang Jingwei government, 1940–45’, European Journal of East Asian Studies, vol. 2, no. 2, 2003, pp. 365–410, at pp. 370–371.

219 Jennings, ‘The forgotten plague’, p. 807.

220 LoN C.290.M.176, ‘Advisory Committee on Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs, minutes of the 21st session’, p. 40.

221 Temel, Mehmet, ‘Atatürk devrimlerinin Çin aydınlarınca algılanışı ve XX. yüzyılın ilk yarısındaki Türkiye-Çin ilişkilerine yansıması’, Selçuk Üniversitesi Türkiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi, vol. 21, 2007, pp. 105–123Google Scholar, at pp. 116–117.

222 Köni, Hasan, ‘Genel dış politika ışığında cumhuriyet dönemi uzak-doğu ilişkileri: 1933–36’, Ankara Üniversitesi Türk İnkılap Tarihi Enstitüsü Atatürk Yolu Dergisi, vol. 3, no. 11, 1993, pp. 271–277CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 274.

223 ‘Dünyanın bir tarafında milyonlar harb ediyor’, Vakit, 9 December 1932, p. 9.

224 LofN C.661.M.316, ‘Advisory Committee on Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs, minutes of the 17th session’, p. 24.

225 BCA 30.10.0.0/178.230.8, Afyon hakkında Birleşmiş Milletlerin, TBMM'nin, çeşitli bakanlıkların ve Atatürk’ün başkanlığı altında toplanan Vekiller Heyeti'nin kararlarını belirten rapor, p. 14.

226 Ibid.

227 LoN 4294, translation of Yakugyhijo [The Pharmaceutical Journal], 12 May 1935; The Manchuria Times, 12 April 1935, p. 2; The Manchuria Times, 29 July 1935, p. 2.

228 ‘Tokyo ve Cenevre’, Ulus, 11 November 1937, p. 6.

229 Jennings, The opium empire, p. 86.

230 LoN C.249.M.147, ‘Advisory Committee on Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs, minutes of the 23rd session’, 15 August 1938, p. 61.

231 Ibid., 15 August 1938, p. 55.

232 Walker, William O., Opium and foreign policy: the Anglo-American search for order in East Asia (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), p. 129Google Scholar.

233 Misawa, ‘Japanese commercial museum in Istanbul’, p. 243.

234 LoN C.130.M.82, ‘Traffic in opium and other dangerous drugs, annual reports by governments for 1937, Japan’, 28 April 1939, p. 20.

235 LoN C.78.M.70, ‘Traffic in opium and other dangerous drugs, annual reports by governments for 1939, Turkey’, 26 June 1940, p. 7; LoN C.32.M.29, ‘Traffic in opium and other dangerous drugs, annual reports by governments for 1940, Turkey’, 23 May 1941, p. 6.

236 Jennings, The opium empire, p. 143.

237 Pedersen, Susan, ‘Back to the League of Nations’, The American Historical Review, vol. 112, no. 4, 2007, pp. 1091–1117CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 1110.

238 Goto-Shibata, ‘The League of Nations, Washington and internationalism in East Asia’, p. 65.

239 The history of Turkey's principal anti-addiction charity, the Green Crescent, is told in Cihat Tanış, Hilal-i Ahdar cemiyeti (Yeşilay) (Ankara: Akademisyen Kitabevi, 2019).

240 Edward R. Slack, ‘The national anti-opium league and the Guomindang state, 1924–1937’, in Opium regimes, (eds) Brook and Wakabayashi, p. 250.

241 McAllister, Drug diplomacy in the twentieth century, p. 115.

242 Esenbel, Japan, Turkey and the world of Islam, p. 41.

243 Coşar, Nevin and Demirci, Sevtap, ‘The Mosul question and the Turkish republic: before and after the frontier treaty, 1926’, Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 42, no. 1, 2006, pp. 123–132CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 127.

244 Watenpaugh, Keith David, ‘“Creating phantoms”: Zaki al-Arsuzi, the Alexandretta crisis, and the formation of modern Arab nationalism in Syria’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 28, no. 3, 1996, p. 369CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

245 Deringil, Selim, Turkish foreign policy during the Second World War: an ‘active’ neutrality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 3Google Scholar.