Balkan Pact (1954)

The Balkan Pact is the common name of the Treaty of Alliance, Political Cooperation and Mutual Assistance between the Turkish Republic, the Kingdom of Greece and the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, signed at Bled on August 9, 1954. It built on the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation signed at Ankara on February 28, 1953, which its preamble describes as an initial step toward an alliance. In Article I the parties undertake to settle disputes peacefully, and in Article II they agree that armed aggression against one of them in any part of its territory is an aggression against all, so that each will go to the assistance of the party attacked, as an exercise of the right of self-defense under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. Article IV creates a Permanent Council of the foreign ministers, meeting twice a year and deciding substantive matters by unanimous agreement, and Article X keeps intact the obligations of Greece and Turkey under the North Atlantic Treaty. The treaty was concluded for twenty years, with automatic one year extensions unless a party denounced it, and it entered into force on May 21, 1955, once the last instrument of ratification was deposited.