British Interests Acquire a Claim to the Bagdad Railway
The Angora Treaty met with a distinctly heated reception from the British Government. During November and December, 1921, Lord Curzon carried on a lengthy correspondence with the French Embassy at London, in which he made it perfectly plain that the British Government considered the Franklin-Bouillon treaty a breach of good faith on the part of France, in the light of which Great Britain must possess greater freedom of action than would otherwise be the case.[25]
Lord Curzon called into question the moral right of the French Government to enter into separate understandings with Turkey or to recognize the Angora Assembly as the de jure government of the country. He insisted that a revision of the frontier of northern Syria “could not be regarded as the concern of France alone”:
“It hands back to Turkey a large and fertile extent of territory which had been conquered from her by British forces and which constituted a common gage of allied victory, although by an arrangement between the Allies the mandate has been awarded to France. The mandate is now under consideration by the League of Nations, and this important and far-reaching modification of the territory to which it applies altogether ignores the League of Nations, while the return to Turkey of territory handed over to the Allies in common without previous notification to Great Britain and Italy is inconsistent with both the spirit and the letter of the treaties which all three have signed.
“Further, the revision provides for handing back to Turkey the localities of Nisibin and Jezirit-ibn-Omar, both of which are of great strategic importance in relation to Mosul and Mesopotamia; the same consideration applies to the handing back to Turkey of the track of the Bagdad Railway between Tchoban Bey and Nisibin.... His Majesty’s Government cannot remain indifferent to the manifest strategic importance to their position in Irak of the return to Turkey of the Bagdad Railway or of the transfer to that power of the localities of Jezirit-ibn-Omar and Nisibin.”
In addition to disputing the territorial readjustments contemplated by the Angora Treaty, the British Government challenged the transfer to French capitalists of the former German concession for the Bozanti-Nisibin sections of the Bagdad Railway. Lord Curzon pointed out that Great Britain would not recognize the Franco-Turkish treaty as overriding the Treaty of Sèvres, “whereby Turkey was herself to liquidate the whole Bagdad Railway on the demand of the principal Allies”; neither would the British Government assent to the award to France of “a large portion of the railway without regard to the claims of her other allies upon a concern which both under the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Sèvres is the Allies’ common asset.”[26]
“Apart from the immediate and premature advantage gained by France by this transfer of a large portion of the Bagdad line to a French company in advance—and therefore possibly to the prejudice—of the reciprocal allied arrangements contemplated by Article 294 of the Treaty of Sèvres and Article 4 of the Tripartite Agreement, it is necessary to point out that these stretches of the railway which were previously in Syria, but are now surrendered to Turkey, although placed in the French zone of economic interest, ought naturally to be divided among the Allies in accordance with the above mentioned treaties.... The transfer to a French company of that part of the railway which still remains in Syria does not in itself fulfil the provisions of the Treaty of Sèvres, which stipulates for liquidation by the mandatory and the assignment of the proceeds to the Financial Commission as an allied asset.”
The correspondence was concluded by Lord Curzon with emphatic statements that “when peace is finally concluded the different agreements which have been negotiated up to date, including the Angora Agreement, will require to be adjusted with a view to taking their place in a general settlement”; that he was obliged “explicitly to reserve the attitude of His Majesty’s Government with regard to the Angora Agreement”; and that there must especially be reserved for further discussion “all articles of the Agreement which appear to infringe the provisions of the Treaty of Sèvres and the Tripartite Agreement.
Subsequent events did nothing to restore Anglo-French unity in the Near East. At the Washington Conference in December, 1921, Lord Lee and M. Briand engaged in a verbal war over submarines which created no little hard feeling and suspicion in both Great Britain and France. Differences of opinion regarding Russia and other questions discussed at the Genoa Conference, together with a clash over reparations in midsummer, 1922, strained relations still further. Charges by Greeks and Englishmen that France and Italy were supplying munitions to the Turkish Nationalists were received with counter-charges that British officers were aboard Greek warships and that British “observers” were directing Greek military operations in Asia Minor.[27] Feeling ran high in September, 1922, when—seeking to avoid a Near Eastern war—the French and Italian Governments withdrew their troops from the Neutral Zone of the Straits, leaving the British forces to face, alone, the victorious Nationalist army of Mustapha Kemal Pasha. British patriots were further irritated by the mysterious activities of M. Henri Franklin-Bouillon in the negotiations preceding the Mudania armistice and by the claims of the Paris press to a great victory thereby for French prestige at Angora and Constantinople. Fundamental differences of opinion regarding reparations—culminating in the French invasion of the Ruhr in January, 1923—made still more difficult coöperation by the former Allies in the Near East. In fact, it might be questioned whether the Entente Cordiale any longer existed.
This situation was brought into sharp relief at the first Lausanne Conference for Peace in the East.[28] Great Britain’s interests were chiefly territorial. She had abandoned all hope of destroying Turkish power by creating a Greek empire in Asia Minor; Greece was gone from Smyrna for good. But England was determined to maintain her hold in Mesopotamia—particularly in the oilfields of Mosul—and to hold out for neutralization of the Straits. These territorial questions occupied the major part of the first six weeks of the Conference. France had no interest in the decisions regarding the Straits and Mosul; therefore she supported the Turks and placed Lord Curzon in the position of appearing to be the real opponent of Turkish Nationalist ambitions and the principal obstacle in the way of an equitable settlement. Lord Curzon himself strengthened this impression, for many of his utterances were provocative and bombastic in the extreme—apparently he would not give up the idea that the Turks could be bluffed and bullied into submission.
While the conference as a whole was debating territorial questions and problems concerning the rights of minorities, a member of the French delegation was presiding over the sessions of the all-important Committee on Financial and Economic Issues. It was in this committee that questions of the Ottoman Public Debt and of concessions were to be threshed out; therefore it was in this committee that French imperialists hoped to achieve real successes. And while France was framing the economic sections of the treaty, her co-worker Italy was supervising the work of the Committee on the Status of Foreigners in Turkey, to determine the conditions upon which French and Italian schools and missions should continue their activities in Asia Minor. In this manner France hoped to protect adequately her economic and cultural interests in the Near East.
As the work of these committees progressed, the Turks became more and more suspicious of French aims. The Nationalist delegates—including Djavid Bey—were mindful of the price which their country had had to pay because of its economic exploitation by Germany, and they were determined not to permit another European Power to succeed to the position which Germany had left vacant. Friction developed, therefore, as soon as concessions came up for consideration. The French delegation asked for the incorporation in the treaty of provisions confirming all concessions to Allied nationals whether granted by the old Ottoman Government before the War, or by the Constantinople Government after the armistice, or by mandatory powers in territory subsequently evacuated (as in Cilicia, Smyrna, and Adalia). The Turks objected that they were not aware of the nature, the number and extent, or the beneficiaries of the concessions coming within the last two categories; confirmation of such would have to be the subject of independent investigation and negotiation, for the Turks would not sign any blank checks at Lausanne. They doubted whether they could accept the financial burden which would be involved in validating concessions granted by the Sultan’s Government before the War, especially if the National Assembly was to be obliged to honor Ottoman pre-War debts in full. In any case, the Turkish delegates insisted, no concessions would be confirmed if they in any way limited the sovereignty of Turkey or infringed upon its financial and administrative integrity. Between the French and Turkish views was a chasm which it would be difficult, indeed, to bridge. The French stood upon the rock of the old imperialism; the Turks were fortified in their new nationalism. The French were seeking to intrench certain important vested interests; the Turks were striving to preserve a precious independence, recently won at great price.
In these circumstances, it was to be expected that the British and the Turks should seek to effect an understanding. The claims of Great Britain, it appeared, were more easily reconcilable with the Turkish program than were the claims of France. Concessions obtained by British nationals between 1910 and 1914 were largely in areas detached from Turkey during the War—chiefly in Mesopotamia—whereas many of the most important French concessions were in Anatolia, the stronghold of the Turkish Nationalists.[29] To Great Britain, therefore, it was a matter of comparative indifference whether all concessions within Turkey were specifically confirmed; to France it was a matter of the utmost importance. According to the proposed Lausanne treaty the Turkish Government was to expropriate the former German railways in Turkey, with a view to incorporating them into a state-owned system, and was to pay therefor to the Financial Commission, on reparations account, a sum to be fixed by an arbitrator appointed by the League of Nations.[30] It suited British interests thus to prevent a rival Power from obtaining control of the former Bagdad line; it suited French interests not at all to be deprived of a considerable share in a highly important enterprise. In the settlement of questions regarding the Ottoman Public Debt, likewise, the French were more obdurate than the British.
In the closing days of the conference, the question of Mosul and its oilfields—the last question which stood in the way of an Anglo-Turkish agreement—was temporarily settled by a decision to make it the subject of “direct and friendly negotiations between the two interested Powers.” But no agreement was possible between Turkey and France on concessions and capitulations. When the first Lausanne Conference broke up, therefore, it was because of the determination of the Turks not to accept economic, financial, and judicial clauses which they believed menaced their independence. “The treaty,” said Ismet Pasha, head of the Turkish delegation, “would strangle Turkey economically. I refuse to accept economic slavery for my country, and the demands of the Allies remove all possibility of economic rehabilitation and kill all our hopes.” On the other hand, the refusal of the Turks to sign was characterized by the chief of the French delegates as “a crime.”[31]
During the interim between the first and second Lausanne conferences French prestige in the Near East was dealt some severe blows. The Turkish press attacked the French Government for having insisted upon concessions and capitulations which were designed to keep Turkey under foreign domination in the interest of bondholders and promoters. Such conduct, it was pointed out, was altogether inconsistent with the terms of the Angora Treaty by which France agreed “to make every effort to settle in a spirit of cordial agreement all questions relating to the independence and sovereignty of Turkey.”[32] In the National Assembly hostility to French claims was so pronounced that no further action was taken toward the ratification of the Angora Treaty—and without such ratification the French title to certain sections of the Bagdad Railway would be invalid. The Turkish army on the Syrian frontier was reënforced for the purpose of bringing home to France the determination of the Angora Government to tolerate no foreign interference in its domestic affairs. The situation in Syria became so serious that M. Poincaré saw fit to despatch to Beirut one of Marshal Foch’s right-hand men, General Weygand, as commander-in-chief in Syria.
The breach between France and Turkey was widened when, on April 10, 1923, the Angora Government awarded to an American syndicate headed by Admiral Colby M. Chester, a retired officer of the United States Navy, concessions for almost three thousand miles of railway, together with valuable rights to the exploitation of the mineral resources of Anatolia.[33] The Chester concessions conflicted with certain French claims which had been under discussion at the first Lausanne Conference: the concession for a Black Sea railway system, which had been conferred upon French capitalists in 1913; and rights to the Arghana copper mines, to which a French group had been given a kind of priority under the Angora Treaty of 1921.[34] In part, at least, the award of the Chester concessions at this particular time was a shrewd political move on the part of the Nationalist Government. It was designed to serve notice on France that no treaty would be acceptable to Turkey which would require complete confirmation of pre-War concessions; from this decision there could be no departure without infringing upon American rights and without recognizing the acts of a former Sultan as superior to acts of the new government of Turkey. It was intended, also, to win for the Turks a measure of American diplomatic support. That the French Government understood the implications of the Chester concessions is evidenced by the fact that the Foreign Office despatched to Angora a note which characterized the award as “a deliberately unfriendly act, of a nature to influence adversely the coming negotiations at Lausanne.”[35]
When the second Lausanne Conference convened on April 22, 1923, therefore, it was France, not Great Britain, which was on the defensive. And the French position became steadily worse, rather than better. On May 15, it was announced that a syndicate of British banks had purchased a controlling interest in the Bank für orientalischen Eisenbahnen, of Zurich, the Deutsche Bank’s holding company for the Anatolian and Bagdad Railway Companies. Ismet Pasha, it was said, was kept fully informed of the British plans and expressed his pleasure at the consummation of the transaction. Thus, after twenty years of diplomatic bargaining, British imperialists had won possession of the “short cut to India”![36] Should Great Britain succeed in establishing her point that the Bank für orientalischen Eisenbahnen is a neutral Swiss, rather than enemy German, corporation and therefore exempt from seizure under the reparations provisions of the Treaty of Versailles; and should the Chester concessions be recognized as superseding the rights of the Black Sea Railways, French interests in the Levant will face a powerful Anglo-American competition which it will be very difficult for them to combat with any degree of success.[37] And the power of the French Government is so heavily invested in the Ruhr occupation that it is doubtful if it can do anything at all to coerce the Turks into full recognition of French claims.
Kaleidoscopic indeed have been the changes in the Near East since the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. The economic and political power of Germany in Anatolia, Syria, and Mesopotamia has been completely destroyed. The Ottoman Empire has disappeared, and in its place has risen a republican Nationalist Turkey. Tsarist Russia, with its consuming desire for aggrandizement in the Caucasus, in Asia Minor, and at the Straits, has given way to a proletarian Russia which foreswears imperialist ambition. Italy, which sought to transform the Adriatic and the Ægean into Italian lakes, has finally been compelled to recognize that she assumed imperial liabilities out of all proportion to her economic resources. France, after achieving a temporary victory in the New Turkey, has had to surrender her position to more powerful competitors. But Great Britain has emerged from the conflict in all her glory. She has obtained possession of another highway to the East. Alongside the Suez Canal, in the collection of British imperial jewels, will be placed the Bagdad Railway; alongside of Malta and Gibraltar and Cyprus must be placed Jerusalem and Basra and Bagdad.
No less remarkable than all these changes, however, is the entry of American interests into the tangled problem of the Near East.