The German Railways Justify Their Existence

From the Turkish point of view, the best test of the wisdom of supporting the German railway concessions in Turkey was an examination of the results achieved in improving political and economic conditions in the Ottoman Empire. By 1914 the Anatolian Railways and part of the Bagdad Railway had been in existence a sufficient length of time to appraise their worth to Asia Minor, and the appraisal thus arrived at would be a fair prognostication of the value of the entire system when it should be opened to operation.

Dr. von Gwinner, in justification of the Bagdad Railway enterprise, summarized what he believed to be the chief services of the Anatolian Railways to Turkey. “More than twenty years ago,” he wrote in 1909, “my predecessor, the late George von Siemens, conceived the idea of restoring to civilization the great wastes of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, once and for long the center of the history of humanity. The only means of achieving that end was by building railways; this was undertaken, slowly but persistently, and with marvelous results. Constantinople and the Turkish army at that time were eating bread made from Russian flour; they are now eating grain of their own country’s growth. Security in Asia Minor at that time was hardly greater than it is to-day in Kurdistan. When the Deutsche Bank’s engineers reached a station a little beyond Ismid (Nikomedia) on the Sea of Marmora, the neighborhood was infested by Tscherkess robbers; the chief of those robbers is now a stationmaster of the Anatolian Railway Company, drawing about £100 per annum, a party as respectable as the late Mr. Micawber after his conversion to thrift. The railways brought ease to the peasantry, who are obtaining for their harvest twice to four times the price formerly paid, and the railways have brought revenue to the Treasury. The Anatolian Railway’s lines are in as good condition as any line in the United Kingdom, and their transportation charge is less than half the rates of any railway in England.”[15]

Although this was the statement of an avowed protagonist of the Anatolian Railway, the testimony of other observers must lead to the conclusion that it was not an overestimate of the value of the Anatolian system. As early as 1903, for example, the British Consul General at Constantinople wrote: “There is no doubt that the agricultural production of the districts traversed by the Angora Railway has increased largely. Before the Angora Railway was opened there was no export of grain from that district; the annual export of wheat and barley is now from £1,500,000 to £2,000,000. The Railway has attracted a large number of immigrants from Bulgaria and Russia, who have settled in the most fertile parts. They form a hardworking and intelligent population, accustomed to more civilized methods of cultivation than the Anatolian peasantry. Population, improved communications and security are the essentials required for the development of Asia Minor. The Railway attracts the one and creates the others. All agree that the country along the Railway is much safer than elsewhere. It would be surprising, therefore, if the production of the country did not increase.”[16]

The improvement in economic conditions in Anatolia became more marked as time went on. The Anatolian Railway Company established a special agricultural department for the education of the peasantry in more improved methods of farming; nurseries and experimental stations were maintained; demonstrations were given of the best systems of irrigation and drainage; attention was paid to the development of markets for surplus products of various kinds. American agricultural machinery was introduced and promised to become widely adopted. As a result of these improvements, the agricultural output of the country increased by leaps and bounds, and the cultivated areas in some districts were more than doubled. Famine, formerly a common occurrence, became a thing of the past, because irrigation eliminated the danger of recurrent droughts and floods. Increased production assured a plentiful food supply, and improved transportation enabled the surplus of one district to be transferred, in case of need, to another. All in all, the peasantry were developing qualities of industry, thrift, and adaptability which seemed to forecast great things for the future of Asia Minor.[17]

Furthermore, the German railways in Turkey, the failure of which had been freely prophesied, proved to be successful business enterprises. The directors took all possible steps to build up the earning power of the lines, rather than depend upon the minimum return guaranteed by the Ottoman Government. The railways were efficiently and intelligently administered—the operating expenses of the Anatolian and Bagdad lines never exceeded 47% of the gross receipts, although the operating expenses of the chief European railways, under much more favorable conditions, varied from 54% to 62% of gross receipts during the same period. Occasional dividends of 5% or 6% were paid by the Anatolian and Bagdad Railway Companies between 1906 and 1914, but only when the disbursements were warranted by earnings. In 1911, a notable advance was made by the introduction of oil-burning locomotives on the Bagdad lines; henceforth the German railways in Turkey were operated with fuel purchased from the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey![18]

This scrupulously careful management eventually brought its reward. In 1911, the earnings of the Angora line exceeded the kilometric guarantee and, in accordance with the terms of the concession, the Ottoman Government received a share of the receipts. In 1912, the returns of the Eski Shehr-Konia line also exceeded the sum guaranteed by the Government, the Ottoman Treasury receiving a share of the earnings of the Anatolian system to an amount of more than $200,000. After 1913, no further payments to the Anatolian Railway Company were required under the kilometric guarantees.[19]

The results on the completed sections of the Bagdad Railway were equally promising, as will be indicated by the following table:[20]


Year		Kilometres
in
Operation
Passengers		Freight
Tons		Gross
Receips per
Kilometres
(Francs)		Total
Govenment
Subsidy
(Francs)
190620029,62913,6931,368.83624,028.21
190720037,14523,6431,754.44546,129.77
190820052,75915,9411,839.86529,443.12
190920057,02615,3641,936.72509,565.45
191020071,66527,7562,571.43381,135.58
191123895,88438,0463,379.34238,166.59
1912609288,83357,6705,315.67278,785.25
1913609407,47478,6453,786.53216,295.17
1914887597,675116,194 8,177.972,939,983.00

Figures in italics indicate payments to the Turkish Government of its share of the receipts in excess of the guarantee of 4,500 francs per kilometre.

The improvement in the economic conditions of Anatolia, and the success of the German railways as business enterprises, were sources of great satisfaction and profit to the Imperial Ottoman Government. Not only was the Treasury receiving revenue from the railway lines which had formerly been a drain upon the financial resources of the empire, but the receipts from taxes in the regions traversed by the railways were constantly increasing. As early as 1893 the Ottoman Ministry of Public Works announced that the increase in tithes and the increased value of farm lands in Asia Minor had more than justified expenditures by the Sultan’s Government in subsidies to the Anatolian Railway.[21] For those portions of Anatolia which were served by the Railway, the amount of the tithes had almost doubled in twenty years: in 1889, the year after the award of the Anatolian concession, $639,760 was collected; in 1898, $948,070; in 1908, $1,240,450. In certain districts the amount of the tithes collected in 1908 was five or six times as great as the yield before the construction of the Railway.[22]

The economic prospects of Turkey never were brighter than they were just before the outbreak of the Great War. The new régime had removed many of the vexatious restrictions on individual initiative which had characterized the rule of Abdul Hamid. The country’s losses in men in the Italian and Balkan wars had been made up by an immigration of Moslem refugees from the ceded territories. Numerous concessions had been granted for the exploitation of mines, the construction of public utilities, and the improvement of the means of communication. “There was a feeling abroad in the land that an era of exceptional commercial and industrial activity was about to dawn upon Turkey.” The Ottoman Empire was in a fair way to become modernized according to Western standards.[23]

Thus the Anatolian and Bagdad Railways achieved all that was claimed for them by their sponsors. They increased political security in Asia Minor; they brought about an economic renaissance in the homeland of the Turks; they justified the investment of public funds which was necessary to bring the system to completion. Beyond the Amanus Mountains lay the plains of Syria and the great unexploited wealth of Mesopotamia. A development of Mesopotamia, even as modest as that achieved in Anatolia, would pay the cost of the Bagdad Railway many times over. Were the Ottoman statesmen who supported this great project to be condemned for so great a service to their country? Or would they have been short-sighted had they failed to realize the great potentialities of railway construction in Asiatic Turkey? That the Bagdad Railway contributed to the causes of Turkish participation in the Great War—and to the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire—was not so much the fault of the Turks themselves as it was the blight laid upon Turkey, a “backward nation,” by European imperialism.