Turkey, the Great Powers, and the Bagdad Railway: A study in imperialism

by Edward Mead Earle

To the Victors Belong the Spoils

During 1919, the Allied Governments set about possessing themselves of the spoils which were theirs by virtue of the secret treaties and by right of conquest. In April, Italian troops occupied Adalia and rapidly extended their lines into the interior as far as Konia. In November, French armies replaced the British forces in Syria and Cilicia. Great Britain began the “pacification” of the tribesmen of Mesopotamia and Kurdistan. And in the meantime there was plentiful evidence that German rights in the Near East would be speedily liquidated in the interest of the victorious Powers. For example, on March 26, the Interallied Commission on Ports, Waterways, and Railways announced at Paris the adoption of “a new transportation agreement designed to secure a route to the Orient by railway without passing through the territories of the Central Empires.” Accordingly, a fast train, the “Simplon-Orient Express,” was to be run regularly from Calais to Constantinople via Paris, Lausanne, Milan, Venice, Trieste, Agram, and Vinkovce. Later this service was to be extended into Asiatic Turkey, over the lines of the Anatolian, Bagdad, and Syrian railways. To meet a changed situation one must provide new paths of imperial expansion, and the French press spoke glowingly of the prospect that the slogans “Hamburg to the Persian Gulf” and “Berlin to Bagdad” would be speedily replaced by “Calais to Cairo” and “Bordeaux to Bagdad”![35]

All German rights in the Bagdad Railway and other economic enterprises in the Near East were abrogated by the Treaty of Versailles, signed June 28, 1919. The German Government was obligated to obtain and to turn over to the Reparation Commission “any rights and interests of German nationals in any public utility undertaking or in any concession operating in ... Turkey, Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria” and agreed, as well, “to recognize and accept all arrangements which the Allied and Associated Powers may make with Turkey and Bulgaria with reference to any rights, interests and privileges whatever which might be claimed by Germany or her nationals in Turkey and Bulgaria.”[36]

The Treaty of Sèvres, August 10, 1920—together with the accompanying secret Tripartite Agreement of the same date between Great Britain, France, and Italy—carried still further the liquidation of German interests in the Near East. The Turkish Government was required to dispose of all property rights in Turkey of Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, or their respective nationals and to turn over the proceeds of all purchases and sales to the Reparation Commission established under the treaties of peace with those Powers. The Anatolian and Bagdad Railways were to be expropriated by Turkey and all of their rights, privileges, and properties to be assigned—at a valuation to be determined by an arbitrator appointed by the Council of the League of Nations—to a Franco-British-Italian corporation to be designated by the representatives of the Allied Powers. German stockholders were to be compensated for their holdings, but the amount of their compensation was to be turned over to the Reparation Commission; compensation due the Turkish Government was to be assigned to the Allied Governments toward the costs of maintaining their armies of occupation on Turkish soil. German and Turkish property in ceded territories of the Ottoman Empire was to be similarly liquidated. The Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Sèvres left hardly a vestige of German influence in the Near East.[37]

The Sèvres settlement, furthermore, destroyed the Ottoman Empire and sought to give the Allies a stranglehold upon the economic life of Turkey. Great Britain and France received essentially the same territorial privileges as they had laid out for themselves in the Sykes-Picot Treaty, with the vague restrictions that they should exercise in Mesopotamia and Palestine and in Syria and Cilicia respectively only the rights of mandatory powers. Great Britain was confirmed in her oil and navigation concessions in Mesopotamia, France in her railway rights in Syria; in addition, the Hedjaz Railway was turned over outright to their joint ownership and administration. Italy received only a “sphere of influence” in southern Anatolia, including the port of Adalia, but, as a consequence of one of the most sordid of the transactions of the Paris Conference, she was deprived of the bulk of the privileges guaranteed her under the Treaty of London and the St. Jean de Maurienne Agreement.[38] Greece was installed in Smyrna—the most important harbor in Asia Minor, a harbor the control of which was vital to the peasantry of Anatolia for the free export of their produce and for the unimpeded importation of farm machinery and other wares of western industry. Constantinople was put under the jurisdiction of an international commission for control of the Straits, and the balance of the former Russian sphere of interest was assigned to the ill-fated Armenian Republic. The Hedjaz was declared to be an independent Arab state. The Ottoman Empire was no more.

Even the Turkey that remained—a portion of Anatolia—enjoyed sovereignty in name only. The Capitulations, which the Sultan had terminated in the autumn of 1914, were reëstablished and extended. Concessions to Allied nationals were confirmed in all the rights which they enjoyed before Ottoman entry into the Great War. Because of the reparations, and because of the high cost of the Allied armies of occupation, the country was being loaded down with a still further burden of debt from which there appeared to be no escape—and debts not only mortgaged Turkish revenues but impaired Turkish administrative integrity. To assure prompt payment of both old and new financial obligations of the Turkish Government, an Interallied Financial Commission was superimposed upon the Ottoman Public Debt Administration. The Financial Commission had full supervision over taxation, customs, loans, and currency; exercised final control over the Turkish budget; and had the right to veto any proposed concession. In control of its domestic affairs the new Turkey was tied hand and foot. Here, indeed, was a Carthaginian peace! And all of this was done in order “to help Turkey, to develop her resources, and to avoid the international rivalries which have obstructed these objects in the past!”[39]