In June 1940 with France's defeat, İnönü abandoned his pro-Allied neutrality as
he became convinced that Germany was going to win the war, and as such, Papen's influence in Ankara dramatically increased.
[289] On 28 June 1940, Papen reported to Ribbentrop that "The game has been won".
[290]
In July 1940, the Germans published documents captured from the Quai d'Orsay showing that İnönü was aware of
Operation Pike, the Anglo-French plan in the winter of 1939-40 to bomb the Soviet oil fields in the Caucasus, which seriously strained Soviet-Turkish relations, and as intended drove the Turks to look to Germany as a counterweight
In May 1941 when the
Germans dispatched an expeditionary force to Iraq to fight against the British as the Iraqis had joined the war on the Axis side, İnönü refused Papen's request that the German forces be allowed transit rights to Iraq across Turkey.
[298] Papen had offered the Turks parts of Bulgaria, Greece, Iraq and Syria in exchange for exchange for transit rights to Iraq, an offer that led to a draft treaty according to German records while the Turks denied having signed such a treaty.
[299] The
Auswärtige Amt's records state that the treaty was aborted shortly after being signed when the Turks become frightened as the British swiftly gained the upper hand over the Iraqis.
In August 1941, Papen arranged for Nuri Pasha, the younger brother of Enver Pasha, together with several Pan-Turkic leaders to visit Berlin in a semi-official visit, where the
Turks asked for German support for Turkey to annex the Caucasus, Soviet Central Asia and the Chinese province of Xinjiang in exchange for attacking the Soviet Union, a demand that Germans dismissed