FOOTNOTES:
[189] Reliable estimates of the population of Albania are given by Petrovich in “Servia: Her People, History and Aspirations,” London, 1915, p. 175. According to this author the country is inhabited by:
| Arnauts (Mohammedans) | 350,000 |
| Tosks (Orthodox) | 350,000 |
| Mirdites (Roman Catholics) | 300,000 |
| Serbs (Orthodox) | 250,000 |
| Greeks (Orthodox) | 150,000 |
| Bulgarians (Orthodox) | 50,000 |
| Turks (Mohammedans) | 50,000 |
| Total | 1,500,000 |
[190] G. Gravier: L’Albanie et ses limites, Rev. de Paris, Jan. 1, 1913, pp. 200-224.
[191] L. Büchner: Die neue griechisch-albanische Grenze in Nordepirus, Pet. Mitt., Vol. 61, Feb. 1915, p. 68.
[192] Such migrations generally follow boundary revisions. The crossing of Alsatians into French territory since 1870 has been already mentioned. A large number of Danes abandoned their home in Schleswig-Holstein in 1865, and wandered into Denmark.
[193] D. M. Brancoff: La Macédoine et sa population chrétienne, Paris, 1905.
[194] The number of Serbians scattered in the highland region of northern Macedonia has been omitted, probably owing to its relative inferiority.
[195] D. M. Brancoff: La Macédoine et sa population chrétienne, Paris, 1905. The Serbian viewpoint is resumed by J. Cvijić in “Ethnographie de la Macédoine,” Ann. de Géogr., Vol. 15, 1906, pp. 115-132 and 249-266.
[196] R. A. Tsanoff in the Journ. of Race Develop. (Jan. 1915, p. 251) estimates that 1,198,000 Bulgarians have passed under foreign rule as a result of the treaty of Bucarest. Of those 286,000 have become subjects of Rumania, 315,000 of Greece and 597,000 of Serbia.
[197] A. Schopoff: The Balkan States and the Federal Principle, Asiat. Rev., July 1, 1915, p. 21.
[198] Brancoff: op. cit., p. 23.
[199] L’Écho de la Bulgarie. Dec. 20, 1914.
[200] R. T. Nikolić: Krajste i Vlasina, Naselia Srpskikh zemalia, Vol. 8, 1912, pp. 1-380.
[201] On the Asiatic side the valley of the Sakaria and a long fault revealed by the line of lakes east of the Marmora provide ready-made frontiers which could be conveniently extended to the Gulf of Adramyt on the Ægean. This line constituted the Asiatic boundary of the Latin Empire of Constantinople in the period intervening between the years 1204 and 1261.
[CHAPTER XI]
THE GEOGRAPHICAL CASE OF TURKEY
Turkey, by virtue of position, has always stood closely related to every section of the European mainland. The country’s fate has affected the destiny of every European nation. The modern importance of Turkish affairs in European international problems is a measure of the extensive influence of the Near East over Europe. A study of European nationalities cannot therefore be complete without reference to the empire of Turkish Sultans.
A strong contrast constantly engages attention in the history of Ottoman lands. Of old, the world’s highest civilizations, its purest religions, arose within their confines. In modern days decadence on the heels of a steady recessional marks their lot. The explanation usually advanced is that Mohammedanism has impeded Turkish progress. But this religion was no obstacle to cultural growth in the countries surrounding Turkey. In Egypt, as in Arabia, Persia and northern India, the thought of the natives grew to splendid maturity. The intellectual life of these Mohammedan countries is altogether beyond the grasp of the Turkish mind.
The foundation of Turkey’s weakness as a nation and the failure of the cause of civilization within its boundaries lie in the country’s situation. The land staggers under the load of misfortune which its central position in the eastern hemisphere has heaped upon it. Its native populations have never been able to develop freely. The country is an open road alongside or at the ends of which nationalities have blossomed. It has been the prey of invaders by which it has been overrun. The Turks find themselves on this land today because they are descendants of wanderers. They have occupied the road because they ignored the ways of stepping off its path. Having come in numbers sufficiently strong, they managed to subdue the original inhabitants, who in their groping for the higher life had given the world a number of great conceptions in learning, art and religion. But hardly had the easterners occupied the road before the process of clearing it began.
Turkey has been a highway of commerce and civilization between Europe on the one hand and Asia and Africa on the other. The history of this country and of its inhabitants cannot be understood unless one is thoroughly impressed by this fundamental fact. On the east the Persian Gulf followed by the Mesopotamian valley, its natural prolongation, formed a convenient channel for the northwesterly spread of human intercourse. To the west, land travel between Europe and Africa drained into the Syrian furrow. Both of these natural grooves led to the passes which carried the traveler into Asia Minor. The peninsula therefore was both an important center of human dispersal and a meeting place for men of all nations.
The through roads converging into Turkish territory are probably the oldest commercial routes of the world. At any rate they connected the sites on which the most ancient civilizations rose. The remotest past to which the history of humanity carries us centers around the large river valleys of the tropical and subtropical zone in the eastern hemisphere. The banks of the Nile, of the Euphrates, of the Indian rivers, or of the broad watercourses in Chinese lowlands were nurseries of human culture. Abundance of water, together with a profuse flora and fauna, gave early man ease of life. Hunters, fishermen and shepherds were naturally converted into farmers. A short wait and the seeds they planted would grow to maturity without exacting other attention than the preliminary act of sewing. The life men led afforded time for thought. Curiosity was awakened regarding lands beyond. Ample provision of natural products furnished them with stocks available for barter. These conditions favored the development of commerce and stimulated the creation of trade routes, which were coveted by many as they became more and more trodden.
Between Europe and Asia the great movements of peoples have followed two parallel directions north or south of the central belt of high Eurasian mountains extending from east to west. Men have traveled back and forth in these two lines from the earliest known period. But exchange of ideas has been practically confined to the southern avenue. In the cold of the Siberian or northern European lowlands men had little opportunity to acquire refinement. They were active and energetic, while the followers of the southern pathways were thinkers.
From the dawn of history to our day only two departures of importance have taken place from this east-west traffic. Both were modern events. One occurred in the middle of the fifteenth century as soon as the Turks acquired mastery of western Asia and the Balkan peninsula. The Christian sailor-trader of that time was then obliged to circumnavigate Africa in order to reach eastern seaports. The other change took place when the Suez Canal was completed. This waterway diverted to its channel much of the overland Asiatic traffic routed between the Black Sea and the Persian Gulf or the Indian Ocean. But even these two diversions failed to eliminate entirely the picturesque caravans which plied over Turkish roads. Thus it may be assumed that these routes have been used uninterruptedly for about 10,000 years at least, that is to say, before the time in which their known history begins.
The southeastern portal of these celebrated highways is situated at the head of the Persian Gulf. The broad Tigris and Euphrates thence mark the northerly extension of the routes. On the western river, the natural road leaves the valley above Mosul and penetrates into the Armenian highland through the gorges in the neighborhood of Diarbekir. The very name Mosul, a contraction of the Greek “Mesopylae” or Central Gates, suggests its origin. The city grew at the meeting point of routes from the Caspian, Black and Mediterranean seas and from the Persian Gulf. The through highway links once more with the Euphrates in its upper reaches around Keban Maden in order to reach the Anatolian plateau. The passes are precipitous and the waters flow southward closely hemmed in by steep and rocky barriers. Access to the billowy surface of Armenian mountain lands is obtained by means of either the Murad Su or the Kara Su. The union of these two rivers into the single watercourse known as the Euphrates at a short distance above Keban Maden has at all times attracted much of the traffic and travel between Armenia and Mesopotamia. The eastern affluents of the Tigris south of Lake Van, on the other hand, reach the uplifted core of Armenia where they are lost in the tangle of steep valleys and deeply broken surfaces.
Because it is a region of water dispersal, Armenia is also the gathering-site of the heads of outflowing watercourses. If the distance at the divide between the uppermost reaches of two divergent watercourses be short, it is hardly a barrier to human intercourse. This condition prevails in the uppermost reaches of the Euphrates and of the Aras. The important town of Erzerum is the symbol of this union. Within its walled area the traffic of the central plateaus of Asia joined with Mesopotamian or Black Sea and Mediterranean freight, after having followed the easterly approach to Turkey through Tabriz and the southern affluents of the Aras, north of Urmiah Lake. Through this eastern avenue of penetration Asiatic peoples and products have been dumped century after century into Turkish territory.
The valley of the Euphrates, rather than that of the Tigris, is therefore the main artery of communication between north and south in eastern Turkey. It is the avenue through which the ideas of Iran came into contact with Semitic thought. But the uniting influence of the great river was far from being exerted on Oriental peoples alone. In its broad southern course, the river provided ancient merchants with a short-cut which greatly facilitated land travel between the Ægean or Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. Another city, Aleppo, is the geographical monument which grew with the increase of travel in this stretch of the Euphrates or declined as the channel became less and less frequented. It is the western counterpart of Mosul in the sense that it also is a point of convergence for routes proceeding from every quarter of the compass.
The chief Turkish route leaves the Euphrates at the angular bend near Meskeneh. A two-days’ journey across the desert brought the traveler to Aleppo. Beyond, the ancient road hugged the shores of the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean and, passing over the dull gray of the broad Cilician plain, headed for the huge cleft in the limestones of the Taurus, known as the Cilician Gates. Past this breach it is the plateau of Anatolia—a region whose physical isolation has always influenced the life of its inhabitants. Today, south of the Cilician Gates, the land is Arabian in speech and Semitic in thought, while in the country to the north the prevailing language is Turkish, which differs from the refinement of Arabian as markedly as the crudity of the Turkish mind differs from the intellectuality of the Arabian.
Thus through mountain tract and mountain trough the east found its way into the Anatolian plateau. Conversely the west made several successful scalings of its slopes. The valleys leading westward into the Ægean or northward into the Black Sea acted as breaches which facilitated human travel. Among these the Meander, Gediz and Sakaria are noteworthy. The “Royal Road” of the Persian period connected Ephesus with Susa by way of the Cilician Gates. It is described by Herodotus. Official despatch-bearers traveled over it in the fulfilment of their missions. Ramsay places this road north of the desert center of Asia Minor[202] and considers the southern route as the highway of the Graeco-Roman period. This last road is the shortest and easiest between Ægean ports and the Cilician Gates.
The history of inland Asia Minor is the record of travel over the network of the region’s roads. Its chief events consist of military marches and trade travels. Urban life on this section of the peninsula had its origin in caravan halts. The cities of inner Anatolia represent successive stages of east-west travel. Their alignment serves to trace the course of the road. To our own day this part of Turkey has not been a land of settlement.
In the southeastern half of Turkey human life has also been confined to highway regions. This part of the world is known to us as Syria or Mesopotamia. Both are depressed regions—channels of human flows—bordering the western and eastern sides of the Great Syrian desert which, wedge-like, interposes its shifting solitude of sand between the two as far as the foothills of the mountains on the north. West of Syria lies the Mediterranean; east of Mesopotamia the mountains of Persia. With such a pattern of land carving, it was natural that life and activity should have gathered in the precise regions where the historian finds them.
A dominant fact recurs in every stage of the region’s history. Turkey is so placed that its possession is the goal of every nation which has risen to eminence in or around Turkish lands. Its control ushers in a period of great prosperity in every instance. Trade flows freely in the highways, carrying prosperity in its wake. The energy of the fortunate nation is spent to maintain the economic advantages secured. The loss of the highway zone is accompanied by national decline. A new nation rises and obtains the mastery of the road, and the cycle is repeated. The western Asiatic highway may aptly be named a highway of wealth or of misfortune.
At the beginning of the first pre-Christian millennium the struggle for the possession of this highway was as keen and sanguinary as it is at present. The empires of the Nile and Mesopotamian basins, of the Syrian strip and of the Hittite mountain lands mustered the flower of their manhood in yearly arrays for the purpose of seizing or guarding the great arteries of west Asiatic traffic. The short-lived prosperity of the Jewish empire, at the time of Solomon, was attained immediately after the country’s boundaries extended from the Red Sea and the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. Judea grew to splendor by becoming sole mistress of the international routes which traversed Syria and Mesopotamia. Her greatness was transmitted to Assyria with the loss of the land routes to that same empire in the eighth century B.C. A hundred years later the Chaldeans obtained possession of the highways. It is now their turn to impose their will on neighboring nations. Another century slips by and with it the greatness of Semitic states. In the east, men of Aryan speech, mostly Persians, have begun to value the present Turkish land routes. In 560 B.C. Cyrus is at the head of cohorts which soon after give him mastery of Turkish Asia from the Ægean to the Persian Gulf. To this conquest Darius adds Egypt and India.
All these events center around one of the greatest struggles ever fought between men. It is the conflict between Europeans and Asiatics immortalized in Hellenic literature,—the clash between two continents, each battling for the exclusive control of the highway connecting them. The contestants met on this Turkish highway, they fought over its plains and defiles, and battled for its possession in the realization that the economic prosperity upon which national wealth and greatness rest could be secured only by its conquest.
A significant fact of the celebrated struggle is revealed by the inability of the Greeks to conquer the Persians. They defeated them and checked their westerly advance. The Ægean and Eurasian waterways of Turkey proved an impassable moat to the Persian invaders. As long as the Persians retained control of the highways the menace of their brutal despotism faced the liberal spirit of the Greeks. The danger was dispelled by Alexander’s conquest of the highway. No better instance of the power vested in the effective hold of these lines of communication between the east and west can be found.
All the history of Turkish lands is conditioned by their location on the map. The region has occupied a conspicuous position on the stage of world events since the earliest known times. Faint rays of prehistoric light reveal it as the bridge over which the race of round-headed men crossed into Europe from Asia. During antiquity we find it to be the original seat of civilizations which radiate outward in every direction. In medieval times it is the great half-way station of the main artery of world trade. We know of it in modern days as the center of a mighty international struggle familiarly known as the Eastern Question.
A world relation of such an enduring character must obviously rest on exceedingly firm foundations. A search for its causes leads us straight into the field of geography. Three elements, namely, those of position, form and natural resources are primarily accountable for the extraordinary interest which Turkey has always awakened. The region is the Asiatic extension of Mediterranean lands nestling against the great central mountain mass of Asia. It is sharply separated from the rest of the continent by a mountain wall which extends continuously from the Black Sea to the Persian Gulf and is made up of the Armenian and Zagros ranges. It is a peninsula, itself formed by two distinct peninsulas, and one of the unit divisions of the Asiatic continent in the sense that it is the only part of the entire Asiatic continent subject to Mediterranean climatic influences.
By position first, at the junction of three continents and therefore on the main field of history; secondly, as the site of convergence of the main avenues of continental travel and, thirdly, by its situation in one of the two regions in which climatic conditions proved most favorable for the early development of humanity, Turkey, at first glance, appears to have been eminently favored by nature. These advantages made it the meeting place of races which are generally associated with the three continents which the country unites. Aryan, Tatar and Semitic peoples therefore are strongly represented in the land.
In considering Turkey as the meeting place of three continents it is necessary that we should confine our conception of this fact to the strictly literal sense of the term. The country is a meeting place and nothing more. It has never been a transition zone physically and, as a consequence, there has been very little mingling of the different elements in its population. The very shape of the land prevents fusion of the inhabitants into a single people. The interior upland rises abruptly above a narrow fringe of coastal lowland. Its surface features, consisting partly of deserts and saline lakes, recall the typical aspect of central Asia. On the other hand, the rich vegetation of the maritime fringe reflects European characteristics. No better relic of Asia Minor’s former land connection with Europe exists than this strip of the west soldered to the eastern continent. But the physical union is clean-cut and, as a result, the change from the low-lying garniture of green scenery to the bare tracts of the uplands is sharp. These features make of Turkey a land of strange contrasts. Its coasts are washed by the waters of half a dozen seas and yet in places a journey of barely twenty-five miles from the shore lands the traveler squarely in the midst of a continental district.
So diversified a country could not be the land of patriotism, and as we pick up the thread of its troubled history we find a woeful absence of this spirit. In Byzantine times as in Ottoman a selfish bias towards local interests, a parochial attachment of the sordid type, pervades its population. A medley of peoples, each filling its particular geographical frame and animated by widely divergent ideals, are constantly engaged in looking abroad rather than toward the land for the attainment of their hopes. Nature fostered this condition. Communications between the different regions have always been difficult. From the narrow fringe of coastland to the interior plateau the ascent is steep. More than that the maritime dweller of the lowland dreaded the total lack of comfort which he knew awaited him on the arid highland. Conversely the indolent inhabitant of this elevated district realized that were he to settle near the coast he could not compete successfully with the more active seafarers. As time went on the coastal peoples—mainly Greeks—accustomed themselves to look beyond the sea for intercourse with the outside world while the Turkish tenants of the interior land still kept in their mind’s eye the vast Asiatic background out of which they had emerged.
In the same way the imposing barrier of the Taurus prevented contact between the occupants of the districts lying north and south of the mountain. The significance of this range to Europeans cannot be overestimated. The mountain has proved to be the chief obstacle to the northward spread of Semitic peoples and their civilizations. Successive waves of southern invaders, invariably of Semitic descent whether highly civilized or drawn from tribes of savages, spent themselves in vain dashes against the rocky slopes. The fact is verified historically whether we consider the failure of Assyrians in antiquity, of the Saracens during Middle Ages, or of the Egyptians and Arabs led by Mehemet Ali in modern days. At present the linguistic boundary between Turkish and Arabic occurs in this mountain chain and Hogarth has expressed the fact in a realistic phrase by stating that, at an elevation of about 2,000 ft., the Arabic speech is chilled to silence.
To come back to the factor of Turkey’s geographical position, we find that while this feature has generated an attracting force the shape of the land, on the other hand, promoted a constantly repellent action. We have in this situation a remarkable conflict which has exerted itself to the detriment of the inhabitants. The centripetal action of position was always reduced to a minimum by the centrifugal effects of form. The mountainous core made up by the Anatolian table-land and the western highland of Armenia was a center of dispersal of waters, and hence to a large degree of peoples. Furthermore, however much the land was a single unit with reference to the broad divisions of Asia, the fact remains that it was greatly subdivided within itself. The six main compartments into which it may be laid off have fostered totally divergent civilizations. All of these conditions were fundamentally fatal to the formation of nationality. They only favored intercontinental travel and trade. In this respect the country has been of the highest importance in the history of the eastern hemisphere, and at present commands world-wide attention.
In only one respect did position and form operate harmoniously. Both agencies combined to create Turkey’s relation with the world beyond its borders. This relation was facilitated by the admirable set of natural routes which led in and out of the country. Beginning with the broad band of the Mediterranean Sea, land and water routes succeed each other in close sequence. The inland sea itself is prolonged through the Ægean and the Turkish straits into the Black Sea, the shores of which are closely dotted with the terminals of great avenues from northeastern Europe, as well as all of northern and central Asia. On the European mainland, the far-reaching Danube has an outlet into Turkey through the Morava-Maritza valleys in addition to its own natural termination. The Dnieper valley plays an exceedingly important share in connecting Turkey to northern lands. To the east the trough-like recesses in the folds of the mountains of Armenia and Kurdistan lead to the great Tabriz gate beyond which the Persian Gulf affords sea travel to centers of civilization of the monsoon lands or westward to the African coast. Land connection with this continent also exists in the rift valley of Syria where the beginning of the African rift system is found. Through the occurrence of all these channels of penetration the history of Turkey finds place as a special chapter in the history of the world’s great nations. A greater share of responsibility falls on the land for this relation than on the Turks themselves.
The world relation of Turkish lands antedates, however, the coming of the Turks by many a century. Problems summarized in the familiar term Eastern Question have their origin in the existence of the narrow waterways consisting of the Dardanelles, Marmora and Bosporus. This water gap has exerted profound influence in shaping the relation of Turkish territory to the outside world. The Eastern Question is as old as the history of civilization on this particular spot of the inhabited world. It could not be otherwise because, fundamentally, this momentous international problem is merely that of determining which people or nation shall control the strait. Who shall gather toll from the enormous transit trade of the region? This is the economic problem which has always deeply agitated the leading commercial nations of the world. Its continuity is a proof of its geographical character. As long as these straits exist at the point of nearest convergence of the Balkan and Anatolian peninsulas, identical problems are bound to recur on their site. Beneath the shifting scenes of human events the abiding stage persists in directing them into its own channels.
Accordingly as early as in late Minoan times and surely in full Mycenean period, some fifteen hundred or two thousand years before our era, we find the Eastern Question already vexing the world. It centers first around Troy, because the city commanded the southwestern outlet of the straits and played the same leading part in the history of its day as Constantinople has played since then. The shifting of the site to the northeastern end of the waterway represents the gradual spread of Hellenic influence in northeastern maritime territory.
We can only come to an adequate conception of the rôle of Troy in history by a clear understanding of the value of its site. The city was a toll-station. Its citizens accumulated wealth in the manner in which the burghers of Byzantium laid the foundations of their vast fortunes. Schliemann’s excavations brought to light amazing treasures of precious metals and jewelry. These riches may well be regarded as the price paid for the right of the passage of vessels and their freight through the straits. Nor is it strange to find that coincident with the decline of the Homeric city, the earliest mention of Byzantium, its successor, appears. Consistently with this method of viewing Trojan history it becomes possible to reach a rational understanding of Homer’s classic epic as the account of a secular struggle for the possession of an eminently profitable site.[203] The testimony of history on the number of sieges which Constantinople has undergone is at least precise, although no literary masterpiece sheds lustre on the events. It is impossible to escape from the parallelism in the histories of Byzantium and Troy simply because the geographical background of both sites is similar in every respect. In the case of Troy, it meant convenient access to the Pontine rearland, probably the first El Dorado recorded by history—the land of fabulous treasures, in search of which the Argonautic expeditions were equipped. With Byzantium, it meant access to the luxuries which Asia could supply as far as the Pacific.
So much for the antiquity of the Eastern Question. Passing to another phase of Turkey’s world relation we find that the land’s influence has even affected the discovery of America. We now stand on the threshold of modern history and deal with a broad economic problem which affected late medieval commerce and which is an ever recurrent theme in that splendid period of active human enterprise known as the Age of Discovery. The dominant idea of the day was to find means of facilitating east-west trade in the eastern hemisphere.
From earliest times commercial relations between the land of Cathay and Europe had been one-sided. The east sold and the west purchased. There was very little exchange. The products which came from the east could all be classed as luxuries. They constituted freight of small volume such as precious stones, fine woods, essence and spices, the value of which generally ran high. These commodities had been shipped to Europe for about two millenniums prior to the fourteenth century of our era. Overland the caravans plowed their way across the southern expanse of Russia’s interminable steppeland and penetrated finally into the plateaus of Iran and Anatolia. Their home stretch lay in Turkey. By sea the traders were accustomed to end their journeys at the head of the Persian Gulf, whence the valuable wares would be shipped farther west via Mesopotamia. In this case again the home stretch is found on Turkish soil. It was not until about the end of the fourth century B.C. when the Egyptian hamlet of Rhaecotis changed its name into that of Alexandria, that this sea route was extended into the Red Sea and Mediterranean. At this time the vision of acquiring wealth through the eastern trade began to dawn on the minds of the inhabitants of the Mediterranean seaboard. Many centuries were to elapse, however, before westerners realized that fortunes could be made by venturing into eastern fields. The profits and the splendor of the eastern trade were popularized by Christendom when the accounts of Marco Polo and the friar travelers of his time became available. Then the ambition of every adventurous merchant was to act as middleman in the trade with Cathay.
The bulk of the east-west trade in medieval time flowed through the same two main arteries. The northern land route from China through central Asia passed through the Tabriz and Erzerum gates and ended at Trebizond, the rest of the journey being made by sea through the Bosporus-Dardanelles passage. The southerly course was an all-water route from the sea of China to the Mediterranean.
The incentive to reduce cost of transportation was as strong in those days as it is at present. The northern route being mainly overland was a source of incessant worry to the trader. The unrest which followed the appearance of Mohammedanism, the reluctance of the adherents of Islam to deal with infidels, rendered commerce more and more risky. Transportation by land was slower and less profitable than by sea, as it is now. Caravans could not avoid brigands as easily as ships could escape pirates. It was not only a case of argosies reaching port but also of camels escaping highwaymen. In addition, duties had to be paid at four or five different points of transshipment. If we examine the pepper and ginger trade alone—the supply of both of which came from the east—we find that from Calicut, the great emporium of trade on the Malabar coast, these spices were carried by the Arabs to Jiddah and thence to Tor, on the Sinaitic peninsula. Overland journeys began at the last point and extended to Cairo. From the city a river journey on the Nile to Rosetta followed, after which the freight was packed on camels and sent to Alexandria. All these conditions made for the increase of cost of the eastern wares which were supplied to Europe.
With the cost of eastern commodities rising higher and higher, as land transportation became more and more hazardous, the minds of navigators naturally turned to the possibility of discovering a sea-way to India and Cathay. The discovery of America in the course of these endeavors to lower prevailing freight rates was an inevitable consequence of economic conditions. The chief point of interest resides in the fact that the discovery which immortalized Columbus’ name was accelerated by fully half a century through the falling of Constantinople into the hands of the Turks in 1453.
The capture of the Byzantine capital came as the death-blow to an already declining commercial intercourse. Henceforth the Moslem was to stand guard at the western gate through which east-to-west intercontinental trade had passed; and there seemed to be no doubt that he was firmly resolved to prevent the Christian from traveling back and forth through his dominions. It meant the definite closing of the western gate to eastern commerce. The first evil effects of the Turkish conquest were felt by the Venetians and Genoese. The Venetians especially incurred the wrath of Mohammed the Conqueror on account of the aid they had rendered to the beleaguered capital. Greater leniency was shown by the Turks to the Genoese, who had refrained from open manifestations of sympathy with the Byzantines.
The Sultans themselves as well as their ministers were willing to foster the trade which traversed their lands. It left a share of its proceeds in the Turkish treasury. As a matter of fact, commerce between Turkish lands under Mohammedan rule and the west existed only because of the income it brought to the Turkish government. But the Turk could not compete successfully with the Christian in the markets of the world and this proved a barrier to commerce. The significance of the Turkish conquest of the Byzantine Empire is to be found therefore in the fact that it practically cut off land communications between western Europe and eastern Asia. Incentive to western exploration was intensified. Before the fall of Constantinople the discovery of a western sea route to the east was regarded as highly desirable. It now became a necessity.
The possibility of reaching the Far East by a voyage through the pillars of Hercules had suggested itself to the active intellect of the Greeks and Romans, yet the incentive to undertake exploration did not acquire intensity until the latter half of the fifteenth century. The Turkish advance into western Asia came, therefore, as a shock whose impact forced trade out of the Mediterranean through the straits of Gibraltar into the wide Atlantic.
But there was another important result of the Turk’s conquests in the Balkan and Anatolian peninsulas. The diversion of the eastern trade from European land routes into sea lanes impoverished the German-speaking inhabitants dependent on the Danube artery of continental life. The land on either side of this main highway was blessed with natural wealth, but its treasures had been drained by the Vatican. The reformation, which combined religious and political aspirations, was an excellent opportunity for the chiefs of the small states scattered in the long valley of the great river to pounce upon the landed property owned by the Roman church and establish economic conditions favorable to themselves.
The present world relations of Turkey may be summarized by the statement that the country lies squarely in the path of both Teutonic and Slavic advance. A natural course of expansion is leading Germany to the southeast across the Balkan peninsula into Turkey. The extension of frontiers required by Russia likewise impels Slavic conquest of Turkey. Overpopulation in the one case and the need of access to ice-free waters in the other make the contest inevitable. The Teuton is answering the call of the land, the Slav that of climate. In both the problem is mainly economic. At bottom it is the modern phase of the Homeric struggle idealized in the Iliad.
The dismemberment of Turkey into European colonies is the goal steadily held in view since the loss of the Holy Land to Christendom. It will be the last chapter in the long history of Europe’s commercial conquest of western Asia. Three causes militate in favor of an eventual partition. The country is rich in natural resources. It is held by a people whose incompetence to convert nature’s gifts into use or profit is historically patent. It also happens to occupy a commanding situation with reference to the trade of Europe with Asia and Africa. These three points are fundamental in the solution of the Turkish problem.
The European nations most vitally concerned in the dismemberment of the Sultan’s dominions are four in number. Great Britain’s interest is born of the Empire’s relation to Egypt and India. The cause of Russian progress depends on the country’s access to warm seaports. Germany is the newcomer on the scene and, as a land power, is engaged in extending her land area. To her sons Turkey offers an attractive colonization area and at the same time the land route which will render them independent of the sea-way passing through Suez to the east. As a colonial power of the first magnitude, no less than on account of her millions of Mohammedan subjects, France cannot be disinterested in the fate of the corelands of Islam.
Turkey is the Asiatic pendant of the intercontinental highway represented in Europe by the Balkan peninsula. Through Asia Minor the land provides a convenient causeway between Asia and Europe. Through Arabia it connects Asia to Africa. Again, through the combined position of Asia Minor and Syria it becomes possible to maintain continuous land travel from Europe to Africa. Turkey is thus the ideal center of the eastern hemisphere. Mastery of its territory is bound to turn the flow of intercontinental trade into the lap of its holders. The entire history of European conflict over Turkish lands is wrapped up in this geographical fact.
Italians were the pioneers of European trade with Turkey after the consolidation of Ottoman power. In this Genoese and Venetian traders merely followed in the footsteps of their fathers, whose dealings with the Byzantines had been considerable. French merchants were not slow to compete with Italians. In the fifteenth century British drapers and commissioners begin to appear in the Levant. Germans show signs of activity a hundred years later, but confine their operation mainly to the European dominions of the Sultans. From these beginnings to the twentieth-century territorial claims of the great powers is but a natural economic unfolding.
Turkey’s remarkably central position in the eastern hemisphere makes the country the threshold of Great Britain’s Asiatic dominions as well as the natural land connection between British Africa and British Asia. From India westward and from the British zone in southern Persia as defined by the Anglo-Russian convention of 1907, to the Sultanate of Egypt, southern Turkey, represented by Lower Mesopotamia and Arabia, is the only stretch of territory in which the British government does not exercise direct control; and the task of consolidating British influence in these two regions of the Turkish Empire is well advanced.
In the economic life of modern Mesopotamia British influence is paramount. About 90 per cent of the trade of Basra and Bagdad is in British hands. Steam navigation on the Euphrates and Tigris with its attendant privileges of transportation is a monopoly exercised by the British. This means that all the Persian trade which enters or leaves the country through its southern Turkish border must pay toll to British capital. Most important of all, the stupendous task of reclaiming the great twin-river valley has been undertaken by British enterprise.
The area of agricultural lands in Lower Mesopotamia is generally calculated at ten times the total surface of farming land in Egypt. The territory suited for cultivation extends northward from the Persian Gulf roughly to a line drawn from the bend of the Euphrates at Anah to Tekrit on the Tigris. Its eastern boundary is defined by the Zagros and Pusht-i-Koh mountains. On the west it reaches the Great Syrian desert as far as its junction with the plateau of Arabia. Thus defined the region is the great alluvial plain of Mesopotamia. A stretch of land remarkably rich in humus, it only needs a just rule and competent engineers in order to become highly productive.
In olden days the entire district was one vast field. Its fertility had earned it the name of granary of the world. Herodotus extols its productivity: “ ... In grain it is so fruitful as to yield commonly two-hundred fold. The blade of the wheat plant and barley plant is often four fingers in breadth.”[204] In their present state the once productive lands present the appearance of a desert. The old irrigation ditches are in ruins. Mile upon mile of parched, cloggy soil or dreary marsh take the place of ancient fields.
The reclamation of this arid country was undertaken in 1908 by British engineers headed by Sir William Willcocks. In the Delta region of Mesopotamia, comprising the entire drainage valley extending south of Hit on the Euphrates and of Samarra on the Tigris, between 12 and 13 million acres of first-class irrigation land were to be converted into productive areas. In spite of Turkish opposition the work advanced with sufficient rapidity for the Hindiyeh Barrage to be inaugurated in 1914. At a distance of twenty centuries a handful of plucky northerners had, notwithstanding well-nigh insurmountable obstacles, put the last touches to a drainage project begun on the same spot by Alexander the Great, the construction of a new head for the Hindiyeh branch or Pallocopas having been that monarch’s first public work in Babylonia.[205]
In the Persian Gulf British influence advanced by great strides during the present century. Within the last ten years the policing of the gulf waters and harbors has been undertaken by Britain’s men-of-war. An appreciable curtailment of the trade in firearms followed the tracking of gun-runners by British captains. The important towns of the Persian and Arabian coast are virtually British possessions. Bushire[206] on the eastern shore, Koweit on the west are protectorates. The trend of it all is to advance India’s western frontier to the line of the Euphrates.
For Great Britain’s attitude toward Turkish politics is dictated by Delhi rather than London. As ruler of the most numerous political group of Mohammedans in the world, the king of England’s residence in his European capital cannot affect India’s geographical needs, among which the maintenance of a clear road from its shores to the mother island is of prime import. Thus the establishment of a British zone in southern Persia and the attempt to substitute British law in Mesopotamia where, after all, the Sultan’s authority is most precarious in character, merely reveal England’s necessity of consolidating her power over the approaches to her great Asiatic colony.
In dealing with Indian geography and the vast body of Mohammedan Hindus, attention is necessarily riveted on the question of Arabia. British stewardship of the peninsular table-land seems inevitable. Not that those huge wastes of burning sand contain resources convertible into profit; but Arabia represents a wedge of barbarism driven in between the civilizing influences exerted by Great Britain in Egypt and India. The danger of its becoming a generating center of revolutionary currents involving British colonial policies in destruction is not mythical. Millions of Indian Moslems turn daily in prayer toward the direction of the Kaaba. A glance at India’s history suffices to reveal the extent to which the Sea of Oman has linked the two peninsulas.
To detach Arabia from a shadowy allegiance to the Sultan of Turkey and bring it within the uplifting sphere of British activity was part of the political program elaborated at Downing Street after the bombardment of Alexandria in 1882. In pursuance of this policy British influence is now markedly felt along Arabia’s three coasts. It is firmly planted on the southeast, where Arabia is nearest to India. From Koweit to Muscat every petty potentate exercising an antiquated patriarchial authority has learned to rely on British protection against Turkish encroachments. Aden, on the southwest coast, is a lone outpost of civilization from which western ideas radiate and occasionally reach the plateau land of Yemen or the niggardly wastes of Hadramut. This British seaport is the natural outlet of Yemen. Products of the favored districts around Kataba, as well as between this town and Sana’a, can be transported with greater facility to Aden than by the arduous routes which lead to Red Sea harbors.
The question of Arabia involves other considerations. Mecca and Medina, its holy cities, are essentially the religious center of the Islamic world. From their sites Mohammedanism has spread about 4,000 miles both east and west. Among Arabs as well as the majority of Mohammedans outside of Turkey desire for the restoration of the Caliphate at Mecca is strong. Arabs especially consider the Sultans as usurpers of the title. Selim I had been the first to adopt it after the conquest of Egypt and Arabia in 1517. Arabs however refuse to recognize the right of any but descendants of the Prophet’s family to this supreme post of the Mohammedan ecclesiastical hierarchy. According to Islamic traditions the Caliph must be a member of the Koreishit tribe. This explains why any ambitious leader who succeeds in circulating the report of his relationship with Mohammed’s progeny has always secured a following among his co-religionists in Asia or Africa.
The Arabs have aired this chief grievance of theirs in English ears. They found ready sympathy among British officials no less than among the leaders of their faith in Egypt or India. The complete severance of the Mohammedan Caliphate from the Turkish Sultanate will, therefore, be a probable result of Franco-British success in the present war. The reëstablishment of the Prophet’s family in its hereditary right and capital will have the advantage of providing Islam with a geographical center at the very point of its birth.
Modern German ascendancy in Turkey has constituted the gravest menace to the British project of uniting Egypt to India by a broad band of British territory. German diplomacy has exerted its best efforts during the past generation in the attempt to defeat this design. In overcrowded Germany the need of land for colonization is felt as keenly as the necessity of providing new markets for the country’s busy industries. Germany does not contain within its borders an agricultural area of sufficient extent for the requirements of its fast-growing populations. Against this it has been estimated that with adequate irrigation Asia Minor can turn out a million tons of wheat annually, as well as at least 200,000 tons of cotton. The basis of Teutonic southeasterly expansion lies in these facts. The immediate aim of German imperialism is to spread through Austria and the Balkan peninsula into Turkey down to the Gulf of Alexandretta and the shallow waters of the Persian Gulf. But its realization implies the shattering of British projects.
This rivalry in the west Asian field became inevitable from the moment that men of German speech became conscious of the power they had acquired in 1870 by banding together in a single state. The task of national consolidation once accomplished, the thought of German leaders naturally turned eastward in the direction in which land extended. Eight years later the prestige acquired by the newborn empire gave it a decisive voice in the treaty of Berlin. The first peg in the line of the Teutons’ southeasterly march was driven then by the revision of Bulgarian frontiers delimited by the treaty of San Stefano. The Slavic obstacle seemed removed from the Teutons’ path and its place filled by the more easily negotiable Turkish obstruction.
From the date of that treaty to the events of these years of war Germany’s conduct in Turkey has been determined entirely by the call of the land. In 1882 a German military commission undertakes to reorganize the Turkish army. In 1889 the Deutsche Bank—whose directors are leaders of Germany’s oversea affairs—is granted a concession for a through line from Constantinople to Konia. This concession has since been modified so as to comprise the trans-Anatolian trunk railway which connects the capital with Bagdad. In 1898 the Kaiser visits Damascus in person, there solemnly to proclaim assurances of his unalterable good-will to the millions of Mohammedans scattered over the surface of the earth. In 1902 the Bagdad line is definitely awarded to a group of capitalists, among whom Germans represent the majority of investors. From that date on, railroad, mining and irrigation concessions in Turkey seemed to have been reserved exclusively for Germans. The transfer of Turkey’s unexploited riches to German ownership became almost an accomplished fact.
It was the “Drang nach Osten,” a movement directed primarily by the valleys of the Danube and the Morava, and forking out subsequently along the Vardar and Maritza gaps. To clear this road to Turkey, Serbia was wiped off the map of Europe in the fall of 1915 by Teutonic armies. For this too had Serbian nationality been split into three separate bodies at the behest of Teutonic diplomatists. Bosnia and Herzegovina, lands Serbian in heart and logic, were administered by Austria, an empire in name like Turkey but virtually ruled by Prussia since the day of Sadowa. Montenegro, of old the refuge of martyred Serbia, had always been prevented by Austria from uniting with its sister state. In truth Serbia lay under the bane of a geographical curse. It was always in the way.
The misfortune of position is shared fully by Turkey. Coming at right angles to Germany’s southeasterly drive, Russia’s steady southwesterly advances in the nineteenth century foreshadowed the conversion of all the Black Sea and its Bosporus entrance into Russian waters. With the most inaccessible parts of the Armenian mountains in Russian hands since 1878, further expansion through western Armenia into Anatolia cannot be delayed much longer.
The Russian viewpoint deserves every consideration. Russia lies benumbed by the cold of her frozen land. She has had one long winter since the dawn of her nationality. The chief reason why her sons have been laggards in the liberal progress of the past hundred years must be sought in this simple fact of geography. Russia does not need more land or fresh resources. She only seeks the warmth of the sun’s rays. Geographically it is Russia rather than Germany who is entitled to “her place under the sun.” Today more than ever, and because of her newly-won liberty and democratic institutions, Russia needs a window on the sunny side of her national dwelling.
Russian access to the open sea in the southwest can be secured either at Constantinople or Alexandretta. The Bosporus route is the more advantageous, as the markets for products of the plains of southern Russia are strewn along Mediterranean coasts. But mastery of the Bosporus is of little value to Russia without possession of the Dardanelles strait. The Marmora is but the lobby of the Black Sea. The entire Bosporus-Dardanelles waterway must, therefore, be Russian in order to allow the country to reap the full advantages of attaining ice-free seas. If fifty years ago the question was merely one of political foresight, today it has assumed vital importance, for southwestern Russia’s economic development, in the present century, has made the country absolutely dependent on Balkan and Mediterranean markets.
As an alternative, the harbor of Alexandretta finds favor among Russians. It lies at a distance of only 450 miles from the southern Caucasus frontiers. Moreover, it is part of the ancient land of Armenia, which sooner or later is destined to become a Russian province in its entirety. Such an extension of Russian territory to blue water on the Mediterranean has significance in two ways. It would redeem a land that has remained Christian in spite of centuries of Mohammedan yoke and it might effectively bar German access to the Persian Gulf.
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood
Fig. 54—View of the harbor of Odessa.
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood.
Fig. 55—Export wheat ready to be loaded at Odessa.
Russian influence in Turkey differs signally from the control exerted by its three western competitors. British, German and French encroachments on Turkish sovereignty have increased in proportion to the amount of capital expended by each of these countries for the development of Turkish resources. In this respect Russia, which is not a country of financiers, stood at a disadvantage. To overcome this handicap Russians resorted to borrowing from France and England, mainly the former, and invested the funds thus obtained in Turkey. Such transactions have in reality been the means of strengthening French and British ascendancy in the Ottoman land. The northeastern region of Anatolia, which, owing to its contiguity to Russia, was regarded as a sphere of Russian influence, has lately been looked upon often as a zone of French interests, owing to the participation of French capital in its development. But from a geographical standpoint this French zone is artificial. Its dependence on Russia cannot be altered as long as its position on the map remains unchanged.
France’s natural sphere of interest in Turkey will be found in the Syrian vilayets. This is not due to the financing of Syrian public utilities and industries by French capitalists as is often alleged. It is the offspring of the Mediterranean which, since the dawn of history, has connected the southern French coast to Syrian harbors. Phœnician oversea trade in the first millennium before the Christian era had reached the coasts of Provence and Languedoc. Marseilles, a city born of this intercourse, has maintained commercial relations with Syria uninterruptedly down to the present time.
Fig. 56—French states in Syria at the
time of the Crusades. Scale, 1:11,500,000.
Based on Pl. 68, Historical Atlas, by W. R.
Shepherd, Holt, New York, 1911.
Franco-Syrian ties were strengthened considerably during the Crusades. The conquest of Syria and Palestine by the Arabs diverted the thoughts of Christendom from the economic importance of these lands to their religious appeal. France, “the eldest daughter of the Church,” took the lead in the attempt to wrest the Holy Land from its Mohammedan conquerors,—“Gesta Dei per Francos.” Many of the petty states founded by noblemen who took part in the Crusades were ruled by Frenchmen. Antioch and Tripoli had French princes, Jerusalem a French king. The title of Protector of Oriental Christians conferred by the Papacy on French kings had its origin in the active part played by France in the Crusades.
France has exercised a dominant intellectual influence in the Levant for at least seven centuries. Turks bestow the appellation “Frank” on Europeans without discrimination of nationality. Western ideas which have trickled down to Turkish soil are French in character. French schools in Turkey are more numerous than any other. The civilizing power of French culture showed its strength by the readiness with which it asserted itself in the midst of uncongenial Turkish thought. France’s hold on Turkey is thus of a high moral order. It differs in this respect from the material claims of the other European powers.
At the same time through the investments of French capitalists a well-defined zone of French interests has been created in Syria. Excepting the Hejaz line every railroad in the province has been financed in France. The silk factories of the Lebanon, around which the whole industrial life of Syria clusters, were started by French citizens. Their annual product, usually estimated at half a million kilograms of silk, is exported to France. Syrian silk farmers in need of funds for the annual purchase of cocoons raise their loans exclusively among the banking houses of Lyons. French interests are not confined to Syria alone; fully one-half of the amount of one billion dollars representing Turkey’s official debt to Europe has been advanced by French financial institutions.
It is difficult to assign a place to Italy in the array of European claimants for Turkish territory. The trade between Italian and Turkish seaports has lost the relative importance it had acquired in medieval times. Italian pretensions to Adalia Bay and its rearland are of quite recent date and the result of conquests in Libya. But beyond vaguely formulated promises for railway concessions from the Turkish government no ties bind the region to Italy. Italy however created its own sphere of interest somewhat unintentionally by the occupation of the islands of the Dodecanesia. By this act it distanced every other European country in the race for a share of Turkey.
The group of islands lying off the southwestern coast of Anatolia is now held by Italy in virtue of stipulations covenanted with Turkey at the treaty of Lausanne. According to the terms agreed upon, Italy was to occupy the islands in guarantee of Turkish good faith pledged to prevent anti-Italian agitation in Libya. Upon complete pacification of the latest territorial addition to Italy’s African domain, the political fate of the islands was to be determined jointly by the six Great European Powers.
The islands, between twelve and fifteen in number, are peopled exclusively by Greeks. Hellenic customs, language and religion have survived upon each in spite of centuries of Turkish rule. Italian sovereignty, however benevolent or likely to promote the welfare of the islanders, is disliked equally at Patmos, Leros, Cos and Rhodes. The remaining islands are relatively unimportant, some consisting of mere uninhabited rocks emerging two or three hundred feet above the sea. But to the smallest inhabited islet, annexation to Greece is keenly desired. The Italians were hailed as liberators from the Turkish oppression by the hardy fishermen who labored under the impression that their island homes had been rescued in order to be annexed to Greece. Their disappointment was expressed in mass meetings at Patmos and Cos in 1913.
Racial and historical considerations add their weight to the linguistic claims advanced by Greeks in Greece and the Dodecanesia. As sailors the islanders have maintained to this day classical traditions of Hellenic maritime activity in the region. The islands in fact constitute lands of unredeemed nationality whose natives are without a single exception akin to the continental Greeks.
This fact combined with a distribution of a numerically preponderant Greek element along the western coast of Anatolia makes the Ægean a truly Greek sea. Structurally the coast lands encircling this body of water are identical. In the east as in the west they constitute the warped margin of a subsided area. Identity of land and peoples has given rise to Greek claims on western Turkey. Greece, therefore, keeps in line with other European nations in expecting a share in the inheritance of the moribund Turkish state.
The claim is historical no less than economic. The association of the Ægean religion with centuries of Hellenism and fully one millennium of Byzantinism is by no means severed in modern days. For the second time in its glorious history the ancient city of Athens has become the social, political and intellectual center of the Greek world. In one and the same prospect the Greek capital can point with pride to the Hellenic splendor exhaled from Anatolian ruins and to her modern sons achieving daily economic victories over the Turk in his own land.
In this spectacle of nations lying athwart each other’s path the clue to the adequate settlement of the Turkish problem may be found. Turkey is before anything else a roadway—a bridge-land. As soon as this point of practical geography is recognized it will be easy to provide international legislation in which the claims of interested powers will be harmonized. But no solution of the political problem involved can ever be attained without full consideration of its geographical aspects. Failure to recognize this would leave the Eastern Question in the hopeless tangle in which it has lain for over a century.
As the seat of through routes Turkey and its railroad play a great part in international transportation. Hence it is that the Turkish lines, with exception of the Hejaz railroad, are controlled by financiers grouped according to nationality. At present the majority of shareholders in each of the concessions belong to one or the other of the great European powers.
The American Geographical Society of New York
Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe, 1917, Pl. V
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RAILROADS IN TURKEY SHOWING THEIR CONNECTIONS AND EXTENSIONS
The broad Eurasian landmass contains three densely populated areas. Of these central Europe is the westernmost. The Indian peninsula follows, situated approximately midway between the European area and the coastlands and islands of eastern Asia, which form the easternmost of the three. In these three regions only does the average density of population exceed 64 inhabitants to the square mile. The speediest and most convenient routes between the westernmost and the two Asiatic regions must inevitably cross Turkey. This feature, together with the fact that Asiatic Turkey is a land richly endowed with natural resources and that, although lying at Europe’s very door, it is still undeveloped, confer upon Turkish railroads an importance which has always been keenly realized by enterprising business men the world over.
All travel between Europe and Asia is deflected into northern and southern channels by a central mass of mountains which separate a vast lowland of plains and steppes on the north from the tablelands of southern Asia. Age-old avenues of human migration and of trade in the northern area have the disadvantage of traversing sparsely inhabited regions. To build trans-continental railroads along this route implies scaling some of the highest mountain ranges in the world in order to tap the populous centers of India. Although this is not beyond the engineer’s ability, capitalists decline to consider it. Southern routes, on the other hand, link with the seas that set far inland on Asiatic coasts. The function of the Turkish trunk lines is to provide the shortest connection between European railways and the steel tracks of southern Asia or to connect with the sea routes that link harbor to harbor from the Persian Gulf to the China Sea.
Although lying at Europe’s very door and in spite of its extreme antiquity as the abode of civilized man, Asia Minor presents the strange anomaly of being one of the world’s least developed regions. It was only after the Crimean War that railroad construction was undertaken within the peninsula. The granting of railway concessions enabled the Sultan to pay his debt of gratitude to the western nations which had assisted him in checking the natural efforts of the Russians to add a strip of ice-free coast to their country’s southwestern boundary. With the exception of a single line every kilometer of track in the peninsula has been built by Europeans. As is always the case in undeveloped areas, the districts tapped by the various lines became economically dependent on the roads that hauled their products and supplies. This circumstance induced tacit recognition of spheres of foreign influence in which commercial, and attendant political, preponderance leaned strongly towards the country which supplied the capital with which the railroads were built. Wherever, as in Syria, vaguely defined spheres of European influence had previously existed, the advent of engines and cars contributed to strengthen them considerably. The routes determined by the steel-clad tracks may therefore be considered as approximate center-lines of these spheres of foreign influence. It is on this basis that six distinct spheres may be marked out as follows:
(1) A British sphere extending over the entire drainage basin of the Meander and traversed by the British-owned Aidin railway.
(2) A French sphere which was originally confined to the drainage of the Gediz river, the ancient Hermos, but which, through privileges acquired as a result of the successful operation of the French-owned Cassaba railway, now extends northwards to the Sea of Marmora. This additional sphere is divided into two equal east and west areas by the French-owned Soma-Panderma railroad.
(3) A German sphere—the most important of these spheres of foreign influence—which, beginning at the Bosporus, traverses the entire peninsula diagonally by way of the inviting routes provided by surface features and extends southeasterly through Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf.
(4) A Franco-Russian sphere which was originally allotted to Russia and which comprises all of the area north of the German zone described above. Russia’s inability to finance railway enterprise in this area, no less than political ties which bind this country to France, led to French participation. As a result of this dual arrangement construction on the French-owned Samsoun-to-Sivas line was begun in 1913.
(5) A second French sphere comprising all of Syria. It is considered by Frenchmen as their most important sphere of influence in Turkey. The French-owned Beirut-Aleppo, Tripoli-Homs and Jaffa-Jerusalem lines are operated in this area.
(6) An Italian sphere extending inland from the extreme southwestern coast of Asia Minor so as to include the hinterland of the Gulf of Adalia. Italy is a recent invader of this field. Its ambitions were revealed in the fall of 1913, after it became known that negotiations had been carried on between the representative of the Italian bondholders of the Ottoman Public Debt and the Turkish government for the concession of a railway line to connect the seaport of Adalia and the town of Burdur, the southeasterly terminus of the Aidin railway.
(7) With these six spheres a contested seventh should be mentioned, which is constituted by the exceedingly rich mineral district situated at the northern convergence of the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates. Russian, French and German interests claim respective rights of priority to its exploitation.
None of these divisions would be recognized officially as such in Turkey. But then ethnographic boundaries are likewise strictly ignored by the rulers of that country. Definite official recognition of these spheres is nevertheless implied in the terms of a number of commercial covenants signed by Turkey and various European powers according to which the right to operate railroads, and even mines sometimes, is granted by the Turkish government exclusively to a single company which in almost every instance is owned by capitalists of the same nationality. The Russo-Turkish convention of 1900, which reserved to Russians rights of preëmption on railroad building in the area called the Franco-Russian sphere, may be mentioned as an example. Similarly the Bagdad Railway Convention of 1902, formally signed by the German ambassador and the Turkish Minister of Public Works, recognized the exclusive rights of the Bagdad Railway Company—a German enterprise—to build the important trans-peninsular route which will link Europe to Asia and Africa.
One might infer that the existence of these six spheres should be attributed to Turco-European agreements. Closer scrutiny brings to light, however, the working of purely natural forces, explanation of which is to be found in the geography of Asia Minor. These international railroad conventions, and the areas determined by their text, represent in reality the outcome of the geographical conditions which are grouped here under the two major heads of world relation and regional features.
World relation is an attribute of geographical location. Situated as a junction area, a bridge as it were, between two continents, Asia Minor stands out as an excellent type of an intermediate region which has participated in the life of both. This two-fold influence has been particularly marked whenever general progress in either continent culminated in an overflow beyond continental boundaries. The feats of Greeks and Persians, and of Byzantines and Turks, may be considered as successive cycles in which the spirit of Europe or of Asia predominated in turn. At the end of each cycle life on the peninsula would revert to conditions determined largely by regional influences. The past sixty years have witnessed the beginning of a process of slow liberation from the effects of the last cycle of Asiatic invasion. The spirit of the west is ushered in once more for the simple reason that it has become necessary to maintain a clear road over which the products of overworked European factories will be transported to populous markets in southern Asia. The primary cause of European influence must therefore be traced back to Asia Minor’s location, by virtue of which the peninsula has always been the site of an important world route. Aryans of the present century are merely preparing themselves to travel by rail the highway over which their far-removed ancestors tramped on foot.
Besides offering the shortest overland route between the Baltic Sea and the Indian Ocean, Asia Minor’s favored location affords the same convenience with regard to land communication between Europe and Africa. Any line diverging southwards at a suitable point on the main trunk which traverses the peninsula diagonally may be prolonged through Syria to the Turco-Egyptian frontier and extended in Africa so as to connect with the Cape-to-Cairo railroad. While no definite steps have yet been taken to secure this desirable connection, the project has been under consideration for over a decade and it may be surmised that its execution will not be deferred much longer.
But world relation is also determined by a region’s natural resources. Notwithstanding its undeveloped state, Asia Minor is known to have been abundantly endowed with all the primary products required by modern man’s complex life. The valleys connecting its coast line with the inland ranges are exceedingly fertile. This is particularly true of its western and northern area. The high plateau of the interior needs only to be irrigated in order to become a vast granary. Its mineral wealth is so abundant and varied that it may be asserted that no other area of the same dimensions can be compared to it. Its flora is extremely diversified. Its forest belts are still considerable, despite a lack of legislation for insuring their conservation and rational exploitation. The slopes facing its three seas from the upper coniferous belts to the lower olive tree zone, support a great variety of economic species. We have here all the elements which satisfy man’s natural desire for space after he has reached a given stage of development. This desire is imposed by economic requirements which impel activity in fields that must be kept expanding. The zones must be hence regarded as spheres of economical rather than political influence. They indicate natural foresight on the part of powerful political agglomerations preparing the way for future industrial and commercial advantages. At bottom it is an expression of man’s growing ability to shape his destinies according to his requirements and free himself from the limitations imposed by frontiers. The economic phase of Asia Minor’s geography thus contributes its full share in the determination of these spheres of foreign interests.
Asia Minor may be considered as the eastern emergence of the continental shelf supporting the European peninsula. Its salient physical features are a central plateau surrounded by a rim-like succession of ranges which are fringed in turn by a coastal strip of land. A gradual ascent from west to east can be observed. The western ranges have a mean altitude of about 2,000 feet above sea level. The plateau has an average height of 3,000 feet. The Armenian upland generally exceeds 4,000 feet. Access from the sea to the interior is impeded by the mountainous barrier reared as a natural bulwark. The gaps made by watercourses alone permit communication. As most of the rivers are not navigable, an important method of exploration is thus closed to adventurous roamers, whether native or foreign. This lack of fluvial communication has greatly hindered intercourse. Rivers have constituted the ancient ethnic boundaries between the inhabitants of the peninsula.[207] Communication between districts has been carried on mainly from harbor to harbor. Although the peninsula is in direct contact with three seas its mountainous rim prevents benign maritime influences from extending to its interior. Its climate may therefore be classed as extreme Mediterranean in type. All these combined factors annul to a large extent the effects of peninsular conditions.
The region is not as salubrious as its elevation might imply. It is an area which has been occupied by communities of men actively engaged in human pursuits at various periods of history, and which has been subsequently abandoned to itself or rather to the working of causes in which man had no part. Gradual desiccation of the plateau is evinced by the presence of desert wastes coated with alkaline precipitates, by receding lakes and all the manifestations accompanying the decline of a hydrographic system. The salt lake occupying the central part of the plateau is in reality nothing but a vast marsh. Hydrographic changes are not confined merely to the interior of Asia Minor but exert their action on the coast itself. The bays of Tarsus and Ephesus are now much shallower than they were two thousand years ago.[208] The general result is to impair settlement. Reoccupation of the soil must often be preceded by sanitation and it is only within recent times that this important tool has been perfected by man so as to enable him to wield it effectively in the conquest of fresh sites of occupancy.
Viewed therefore from its broadest aspect the problem of European control of Asia Minor resolves itself into one of renewed settlement. It is therefore pertinent to inquire how this condition coupled with regional influences has affected each of the six spheres.
Englishmen were the first to engage in Turkish railway building. The Aidin railway, which links the thriving port of Smyrna to the Anatolian plateau at Dineir, represents an investment of about $50,000,000, or about a third of all the money invested in Turkey by the British public. This road taps the fertile Meander valley and has proved a remunerative undertaking to its owners, although it has not been subsidized by the Turkish government. The line is credited with the best management in Turkey. Its well-ballasted track and the splendid condition of its rolling stock impress the traveler most favorably. English capital is also represented in other lines built in Turkey, though only as minority holdings.
This British zone of influence is at present the best developed region in Asia Minor. Its northern boundary is determined by the divide separating the watersheds of the Gediz and the Meander rivers. The Aidin railway follows the course of the last-named river to its very sources at about 1,000 feet below the general western level of the plateau.[209] The eastern boundary of the sphere is defined by the end of the natural road at one of the abrupt slopes leading to the plateau in the vicinity of lakes Burdur and Ajituz. Its southern frontier reaches the districts which supply the railroad with traffic drawn from the border line of the Carian ranges and the foot of the northern slopes of the Lycian Taurus.
The sound establishment of Great Britain’s commercial influence in this locality dates from the year 1856, when construction on the Aidin railway was inaugurated. Its real beginning can be traced back to the dawn of the nineteenth century, when English naval supremacy replaced France’s hitherto paramount maritime influence in the Levant. In recent years an interesting expansion of British trade ascendancy in this zone can be detected since the products of the area tapped by the Aidin railway, whether they consist of cereals, fruit, ores or local manufactured goods such as rugs, are mainly exported nowadays to Great Britain, the United States and Australia.
Throughout history the valley of the Meander has constituted a region in which natural features of the surface have been eminently favorable to man’s development. In addition to the wealth of its natural resources it is provided with a deeply indented coast line, in which commodious natural harbors occur. Here is found the maximum density of population for the entire peninsula—70 inhabitants to the square mile.[210] Within this restricted area Greek influence first took root about 2,600 years ago before spreading throughout Asia Minor. The origin of this movement must be ascribed to the local advantages which invited human activity by the display of favorable regional features. It is safe to surmise that the same geographical agencies have been again responsible for the striking parallel afforded by the first establishment within contemporary times of a sphere of western influence in the region.
Italy’s connection with Turkish railroads has consisted in providing labor and in laying claim to franchises in southern Asia Minor. These claims are of recent date, and have been put forth since the occupation of the islands of the Dodecanesia by Italian troops. Specifically the claim is made for the right to build a railroad from Adalia northwards to Burdur. The region to be tapped by this line is a strip of broken lowland intervening between the Lycian and Cilician Taurus. The valleys of the Aksu and Keuprusu, bordering the east and west slopes of the Ovajik massif, join in forming a deltaic area in which sub-tropical cultures, rice, cotton and tobacco thrive. Plains and wide valleys, which are probably ancient lakebeds, occur between the smaller ranges of the zone. They contain arable lands which might be turned to account were the region more thickly settled. A number of smaller rivers discharge their contents into the gulf of Adalia. The gulf itself is shallow, devoid of harbors, and open to southerly winds. Lack of natural harbors and remoteness from the main highways of the peninsula have contributed to the sphere’s isolation. It is still imperfectly known through a few route surveys and occasional descriptions.
The most important road in Turkey is the partially completed trunk line running diagonally across Asia Minor and beyond into Mesopotamia. The line is German-owned, although French and English capital is represented. The concession for the first stretch, extending from Constantinople to Konia, had been granted to German and Austrian railroad builders in 1888. The celebrated Bagdad railroad is the prolongation of this line. Its construction was turned over to German promoters by a firman (decree) dated January 21, 1902. The financial burden of the enterprise was estimated at about $200,000,000.
The Bagdad railroad is the final link of the shortest overland route between Europe and Asia. In the minds of Germans it is destined to compete with the sea-way controlled by England. The road was conceived in order to connect Teutonic centers of industry and Asiatic markets. The speediest sea route between Europe and Asia passes through straits guarded by British sentinels. As long as Gibraltar, Suez and Aden form part of Great Britain’s colonial domain, they can be closed at will to competitors of British manufacturers.
The great trade routes which link Europe to Asia have always crossed Turkish territory. One of the most widely traveled of these highways formerly connected the classic shores of Ionia to the fever-laden coast of the Persian Gulf. It was the road to India. The spices, gems and silk of the East reached European buyers by way of this trunk land route. For countless centuries caravans have plied back and forth over the barren plateau of Asia Minor and the sweeping plains of the Mesopotamian depression. This traffic is still maintained although it is now much on the wane. Long files of camels proceeding leisurely at a swinging gait are met occasionally by the traveler in Anatolia. A patient ass leads the way as of old. The turbaned driver plods along unmindful of the historical associations accumulated over his path. He knows however that the steam engine, devised by western ingenuity, is about to deprive him of the scanty pittance which his journeys yield.
Germany is essentially a land power. It was natural that the country should seek to establish land routes over which its control would prove as effective as England’s oversea highways. With this aim in view, the German government lent unreserved support to German captains of industry striving to obtain sole mastery of the great Turkish trunk line. Asia, teeming with thickly populated districts, lay at hand. Britain’s unrivaled sea power afforded its people adequate transportation to these centers of consumption. The Germans realized that a land power could not compete successfully with rulers of the waves. They resolved to acquire commercial supremacy in Asia by the creation of a land route. The Bagdad railroad is the outcome of this realization.
The road starts at Konia at the southeastern terminal of the Anatolian railroad, also a German line, whose tracks reach the Asiatic suburbs of Constantinople. Konia lies in the very heart of the Anatolian plateau, a stern and melancholy land, destitute of trees and sparsely peopled. Here at an average elevation of 2,500 feet above sea-level, the tracks are laid over the ancient highway which leads to Syria. In spite of its mournful scenery, the region is a veritable paradise to the archeologist. It is studded with prehistoric ruins and contains secrets of Hittite history which await the scholar’s investigation. Here and there along the line the dilapidated remnant of a Seljuk building reminds the traveler of the peculiar charm of Mohammedan art.
Beyond the plateau the road plunges into a tangled mountainous district known as the Taurus. The famous Cilician Gates are the only practicable gap provided by nature among bold and abrupt peaks in this region. The armies of Pagan, Christian and Mohammedan monarchs have marched through this gorge in the long struggle between the East and the West which enlivens the history of the ancient East. Cyrus with his retinue of Persian lords and his bands of Greek soldiers found it a convenient opening. Alexander the Great stepped between its narrow walls on his way to conquer the world. Detachments of Crusaders under Tancred and Baldwin bore the banners of the cross through the rugged pass. Later Mongolian hordes sang of loot as they swarmed through the mountain cut.
Unfortunately the ride through this mountain section of the Bagdad line will not be made uninterruptedly in broad daylight. The engineering problems involved are of considerable magnitude. The mountain can be conquered only by means of tunnels and the cost of this method of advance is naturally enormous. It has been estimated at a minimum of $140,000 per mile. In addition to tunnels considerable stretches of very heavy earth-work are required. If the undertaking delights the engineer’s heart, it is on the other hand apt to dismay the capitalist.
The drive through the Taurus does not end the difficulties of construction. This mountain is succeeded immediately by the equally lofty and precipitous Amanus range. Another arduous tunneling section is encountered. Of the two the last is the most difficult and costly. An idea of the heavy expense incurred in this construction work is conveyed by the cost of the wagon road built to reach the mouth of the first tunnel. It has been estimated that over one million dollars have been spent in this preliminary work.
The descent towards the Cilician plain is steep. To the west Tarsus, the birthplace of the Apostle Paul, looms a blot of white over the grayish green of the surrounding land. The change from the dreary scenery of the plateau is a delight to the eye. The valleys leading to the Mediterranean coast are wooded. Vegetation soon assumes a southern aspect of luxuriance. The sensation of finding oneself in an altogether different country is especially felt on hearing the sonorous accents of Arabic now spoken in place of Turkish.
From the site of the Amanus tunnels to Aleppo the line was completely built in 1915. Thence it strikes eastward only to turn south after reaching the Euphrates river. From here on to Bagdad trains will run through the great alluvial flood plains of Mesopotamia. This is a rainless district. The present large cities, Mosul, Bagdad and Basra, have no important share in world affairs in comparison with the political and cultural influences which radiated far outward from the precincts of ancient Nineveh and Babylon.
Between Konia and Bagdad the railroad is 1,029 miles long. For convenience of operation it is divided into sections of approximately 130 miles in length or more correctly of 200 kilometers. Construction on the first section was begun shortly after the award of the concession. This portion of the road was opened to traffic in 1904. Building was abandoned until 1910 owing to lack of funds. In May of that year operations were resumed at different points of the line. By the middle of 1913 about 400 miles had been completed.
Since the beginning of the European war, construction has been pushed with increasing speed. In northern Mesopotamia the construction of a bridge over the Euphrates at Jerabluz allows the laying of tracks with a fair degree of rapidity in the northern stretches of the Syrian desert. Work was also undertaken at Bagdad in a northerly direction. In the last days of 1914 trains were running regularly in the valley of the Tigris between this city and Samarra. Since then, according to reports, the tracks have advanced farther north.
Work on the sections in northern Mesopotamia does not present great difficulties. There is reason to believe that construction here proceeded with feverish haste during the European war. The main obstacles to rapid track-laying are found in the mountainous district which intervenes between the Anatolian plateau and the plains of Syria and Mesopotamia. According to reports the tunnels in the Amanus mountains were driven from end to end by the summer of 1915. It will probably take longer to complete construction through the mountainous wall which connects the Chakra valley to the Tarsus river in the Cilician Taurus. This section of the road is only 22 miles long. It crosses however an extremely rugged district and requires four separate tunnels which together measure some 10½ miles. In May, 1914, three tunnels had been started and the ground cleared at the approach of the fourth.
A number of branch lines are included in the concession of the Bagdad railroad. The products of some of Turkey’s most promising districts will pass over their tracks toward the trunk line, thence to be finally transported overland through the Balkan peninsula and Austria to German manufacturing centers. A side line projected to extend northeast of Aleppo will tap eventually an exceedingly rich mineral belt situated at the northern convergence of the Tigris and Euphrates. In this district the celebrated copper mines of Argana are found. They are worked in desultory fashion by the Turkish government. In spite of crude methods of extraction and long camel-back hauls the ore is of sufficiently high grade character to yield ample returns. Silver, lead, coal and iron also exist in the same zone of mineralization.
An important branch connecting the trunk line with the Mediterranean at Alexandretta has been in operation since 1913. The line is only about fifty miles in length and traverses the heart of a rich orange-growing district. The northern track of this branch crosses the plain of Issus where Alexander battled against Darius. At about six miles from its southern terminal the line hugs Mediterranean waters and crosses the spot where, according to statements of the natives, the whale relieved itself of the indigestible burden of the prophet Jonah.
In central Mesopotamia, branch lines extending in easterly directions will tap rich oil-fields and may eventually provide connection with future trans-Persian railroads. The history of this Mesopotamian region abounds in stirring chapters. The most favored section is found in the narrow neck of land extending for a short distance at the convergence of the courses of the Tigris and Euphrates. This site was marked by nature for the heart of great empires. After the fall of Babylon, the neighboring cities of Seleucia and Ctesiphon became in turn the capitals of Greek emperors and of Parthian and Sassanid sovereigns. Here Bagdad, rich in human history, grew to world fame. The farms and palm groves surrounding the city spread on the east and west until they almost reached the banks of the rivers which carried life and fertility in their waters. At the time of Arab prosperity Bagdad was one of the most magnificent cities of the Mohammedan world. As a center of Mussulman art the city had no peer. The Turkish conquest, which swept light a blight over the land, put an end to the city’s prosperity.
In modern times, Persians and Turks have vied with each other to retain possession of the land. Bagdad then became the center of the struggles waged between Caliphs and Imams. The conflict which splits Islam into the two rival camps of Sunnis and Shiites revolved around the city. The mausoleums and mosques which annually attract thousands of pilgrims are the sanctuaries in which upholders of the divergent beliefs elbow each other oftener than in any other Mohammedan city.
Should the Bagdad railroad be destined to remain German property the line is bound to become the backbone of German supremacy in western Asia. Germania, helmeted and carrying sword and shield, will ride over its rails to conquer Palestine and to wrest the wealth of the Nile and Ganges from British grip. But the foreign interests of every European nation are affected by the construction of this celebrated railway. It is the most direct route to Asia for all of Europe. The question of its internationalization is therefore one of the problems of European diplomacy.
Fig. 57—One of the many shops in a Turkish bazaar. All commerce in Oriental cities was formerly centered under a single roof. This feature of Oriental commerce is gradually disappearing.
The extensive zone traversed by this railway comprises the fertile and well settled valleys of the Sakaria and the Pursak, practically the whole of the interior plateau to the foot of its surrounding mountains and the eastern section of the Mesopotamian valley. Within this belt the most populous inland towns of the peninsula succeed each other at regular intervals. This circumstance indicates their former importance as stages on the long journey between the Bosporus and the Persian Gulf. Casual inspection of their crowded bazars would dispel doubt on this score. Attention must be called here to the geographical significance of these bazars in the Orient. Every urban center is provided with one. It is usually a roofed inclosure within which the city’s business is carried on. Caravans proceeding from remote sections of the continent have their rendezvous outside their gates. The size of these bazars and the activity displayed in each is the measure of an eastern city’s intercourse with the rest of the world. In the geographer’s mind their significance is the same as that of railroad stations.
By acquiring this trunk line the Germans succeeded in taking a first mortgage on Turkey. It was the first signal success of the policy of directing Teutonic ambitions into eastern channels which Bismarck had adopted immediately after the consolidation of the German Empire. He had a vision of an all-German line of traffic starting at Hamburg and crossing the Bosporus towards the Far East. In one direction German calculations miscarried. Germany was unable to finance the undertaking without the support of British and French capitalists. The international character of the line became more and more pronounced between the years 1908 and 1911. During this period a number of agreements were signed between Great Britain, France, Germany and Turkey in which a notable percentage of German interests passed over to the two rival countries, the Germans emerging out of the transaction with a bare control.
The project of an all-German route received another setback when England was awarded the final section of the Bagdad line. This successful stroke of British diplomacy consolidated British influence in the Persian Gulf. Koweit and the environing districts ruled by petty Arabian chiefs became British protectorates and the long-planned German through line merely butted against a solid wall raised by British ability.
The French have invested twice as much capital as the English in Turkish railroads. The lines they manage and own directly are the Syrian railroads and the Smyrna-Kassaba line. They are also interested in the construction of roads in the northeastern districts of the country where concessions have been awarded to Russians. Muscovite inability to provide capital is responsible for the transfer of the building and operating grants to Frenchmen.
The sphere of French influence comprising the Gediz valley and its adjacent territory to the Sea of Marmora lies entirely out of the beaten track of intercontinental travel. Its economic prosperity is therefore governed by purely regional influences. The valley of the Gediz river itself compares in fertility with that of its southern consort, the Meander. Tracts of arable land in its northern area and the occurrence of extensive mineral deposits, a few of which are among the most heavily exploited in Asia Minor, combined with genial climate and the accident of position which places the zone directly opposite the European mainland, all tend to impart elements of economic significance which have allured French enterprise.
As has been shown already, the zone of paramount French influence in Asiatic Turkey lies, south of Asia Minor, in Syria. “La France du Levant” is a term which is not uncommonly applied by Frenchmen to this Turkish province. The origin of this intercourse may be traced to the trade relations between Gaul and Syria in the fourth century B.C. During antiquity a widely traveled road, albeit of lesser importance than the peninsular highway of Anatolia, connected the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. This route started from Egypt and Syrian harbors and skirted the western and northern edges of the Arabian desert before assuming a southerly strike which led it through the Mesopotamian basin. The populous cities of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo lie on this ancient avenue of trade. Here, as in the case of the Anatolian cities mentioned, their present population is altogether out of proportion to their resources or activity. It can only be regarded as a sign of the importance they once had as stages in this southern east-west route. The Syrian littoral, described by Hogarth as the garden of Arabia,[211] must be regarded therefore as an intermediate region connecting Asia and the country lying west of its Mediterranean border. This influence of location prevailed throughout history.
The conquest of Syria by Frankish Crusaders gave renewed impetus to commercial relations between Syria and France. A regular trade route between Marseilles and Syrian ports was established. The treaty of alliance between the Sultan of Turkey and the King of France in the first half of the sixteenth century contributed to bind this province more firmly to France. At the end of the seventeenth century French trading-centers had been established in all the important cities of Syria. Napoleon’s invasion of this province as a result of the Egyptian campaign and French intervention in the Lebanon in 1859 likewise increased French prestige in the region. The confinement of this western hold to Syria can be ascribed to the influence exerted by the boundaries of the province. It forms with Palestine an excellent type of regional unit consisting of an elongated mountainous strip barely 50 miles wide. With the Mediterranean on the west, and deserts on the south and east, its only outlet to the world lay on the north.
French builders first undertook to connect the province of Lebanon with the sea by constructing the Beirut-Damascus line. The tracks were subsequently extended to Aleppo, a city whose greatness was founded on its situation along the natural road which connects the Mediterranean with the Persian Gulf. As a railroad center Aleppo’s future looms bright, for the city lies also in the path of the tracks which will connect the Black Sea with the Mediterranean.
In southern Syria, the outlook for French enterprise was dimmed for a few years by the construction of a Turkish line from Damascus southwards. Branch lines were carried to the sea. Harbor concessions, however, were granted to French firms. French interests thus retained a notable share of the control over the traffic in and out of Syria. Furthermore, a concession for a line from Rayak to connect with the Jaffa-Jerusalem road which they obtained in 1914 will enable them to compete with the Hejaz line.
The last railroad agreement between the French and Turkish governments was signed on April 9, 1914. Concessions on the part of the Turkish government are bestowed in return for French financial support. The lines granted will tap northern Anatolia and Armenia. Connection with the German lines will be made at Boli and at Argana. The area tributary to this line contains fertile plains and plateaus. It is known to be rich in mines, notably in copper. The advent of the railroad will undoubtedly brighten the outlook of the Turkish mining industry.
In southern Arabia a railroad concession was awarded to French promoters in 1908. The line was to connect the seaport of Hodeida with Sana’a. It was intended to divert into Turkish territory the large trade with the interior which now passes through Aden. Strategic reasons also weighed heavily in the decision to build this road. At no time have the Arabs of the Yemen shown sympathy for their Turkish rulers. Every commander sent to quell their incessant rebellions ascribed his failure to lack of transportation facilities. It was mainly in view of this condition that steps were taken to connect this section of the Arabian table-land with the sea.
The Franco-Russian sphere is the outcome of privileges originally conceded to Russia by Turkey. The terms of the agreement under discussion call for the construction of railroad lines as follows: The trunk line is to start at Samsoun and to end at Sivas.[212] A westerly branch line will diverge from Tokat towards Yozgat without reaching this city, however, or extending beyond the divide between the Yechil and Kizil rivers. A second branch will start at Tokat and reach Erzindjian, whence it will be turned northwards to Trebizond. Beyond Sivas the line will be extended to Kharpout and the vicinity of the important Argana copper mine. Connection with the Bagdad railway will be made beyond this point. Finally an important branch will leave the trunk line at Kazva to extend to Kastamuni and Boli.
The American Geographical Society of New York
Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe, 1917, Pl. VI
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EUROPEAN SPHERES OF INFLUENCE AND TERRITORIAL CLAIMS IN TURKEY
The zone defined by these projected lines covers the greater part of northern Asia Minor. It forms a region in which relief and the rigor of the climate have retarded the development of the population.[213] These geographical disadvantages are compensated by ample natural resources. The eastern section is known to contain a rich copper belt which bids fair to become the site of a thriving industry. The deltaic strips and river valleys will permit extensive tobacco culture and fruit raising. The passing of this zone under the sphere of western influence is a mere result of Russia’s constant endeavor to obtain a coast line which will not be closed to navigation during the winter.
The only line owned by the Turks in their country is the narrow-gauge railway known as the Hejaz line which starts from Damascus and is intended to reach the holy town of Mecca. The financing of this line has been unparalleled in the annals of railroad building. Ostensibly the purpose of the construction was to provide traveling conveniences to 250,000 pilgrims who, it is estimated, came annually from all parts of the Mohammedan world to worship at the Kaaba. In the belief of many, the line was built for strategical reasons and to enforce Turkish sovereignty among the Arabs, who have always been loath to admit the Sultan’s claims to the Caliphate.
The funds for the construction and equipment of the road were obtained by appealing to the religious feelings of the 230,000,000 Mohammedans scattered in widely separated regions of the globe. Stress was laid on the pious character of the undertaking. According to reports, $14,000,000 were collected soon after the enterprise was launched. Thereafter about $12,000,000 were contributed annually for several years. The operation involved no responsibility to the promoters, headed by Abdul Hamid, the former Sultan of Turkey, all the funds being bestowed in the form of donations. The road has thus no shareholders and no bonded indebtedness, its capital being spontaneously wiped off.
The religious character of the undertaking is apparent in the mosque-wagon attached to each train. Seen from the outside, the prayer carriage is distinguished only by means of a diminutive minaret six and a half feet high. The interior is fitted out according to religious custom with rugs on the floor and framed Koranic verses in letters of gold on the walls. The direction of Mecca is indicated by a map at the end of the car, so as to enable the faithful to orient themselves properly when engaged in prayer.
A hopeful view of the future of Turkey’s economic position may be entertained by remembering that the land is still unexploited and that the resources of its soil and subsoil await the handling of western energy. It is expected that as fine a cereal crop as can be obtained anywhere in the world will be raised in the region between Eskishehir, Angora and Konia. Five million dollars spent by Germans on irrigation at Chumra in the vicinity of the last-named city has proved conclusively that a thriving agricultural industry can be established on the interior plateau of Asia Minor. The Cilician plain, where cotton and cereals are cultivated, contains vast tracts of swamp land which can be reclaimed. Here, too, irrigation would greatly improve cotton culture. Many of these rich soils are parts of Turkish crownlands which have been estimated by some to amount to one-tenth of the entire area of Turkey. The lands owned by the Evkaf, or Ministry of Religious Foundations, also cover vast areas. Estates held under either of these forms of tenure can be rendered highly productive under western management. The southernmost end of the Bagdad line taps rich oil fields which are situated in the area of transition between the plateau of Iran and the Mesopotamian depression. The railroad traverses the western end of this oil basin. Its eastern section in Persia has been developed since 1908 by British firms.
The international control of Turkish railroads reflects the transitional character of the land over which they are built. Ownership in Turkish lines is of practically no value to so backward a people as the Turks have proved themselves to be. It is of vital importance to the industrial communities of the countries which hold the extremities of the roads of which the Turkish system is but a link. Germany, Austria and France at the western extremity of the transcontinental line, Great Britain in India at its eastern end, have interests which affect a large proportion of their population. In the west the great through line starts in some of the busiest industrial centers of the world. In the east it taps coveted markets. The attention of European manufacturers is directed towards densely populated India or China simply because profitable trade is found where numbers exist.
A comprehensive glance at the spheres of foreign influence in Turkey shows that the most satisfactory evidence of the control of geography over the development of railway zones and spheres of foreign influence in Asia Minor is obtained by mere reference to the regions in which adverse geographical conditions prevail. The Italian and Russian spheres are both characterized by physical and climatic conditions which have stood in the way of human development. The map reveals the absence of railways in both.
In the more favored zones western influences are shown by the presence of modern surface features. Striking examples of German enterprise can be observed along their extensive sphere of action. Grain warehouses at Polatli on the Angora line receive the crops of the environing country. In the plains of Konia canals and locks of varying dimensions have been built and the former swampy area is fast becoming a heavy producer of wheat. Farther south near Adana over 200,000 acres have been reclaimed mainly for cotton growing. In this district important harbor works have been undertaken at Alexandretta which it is planned to make both the outlet of all southern Asia Minor and the terminal of the sea route from Europe to the east.
Similarly French influence in Syria is observable in the macadamized highways of the Lebanon no less than in the development of a thriving silk industry. In the British zone of the Meander valley mines have been opened up by British capital. Along with this economic progress education is also advancing. Numerous European and American schools were in existence in Asiatic Turkey prior to the European war. The mere presence of European employees of the railroads in the Anatolian towns is enough to infuse new thoughts into the minds of the inhabitants. On the whole the locomotive is performing its civilizing work and Asia Minor is gradually becoming Europeanized.
Summing up we find that we have dealt with a connecting region which may justly be considered as the classical type in geography. A land which by its position was everyman’s land, and which, because of its geography, was of greater interest to the outsider than to its own inhabitants. Being a part of three continents it became part of the life which flourished in each. A nation formed on such a site belongs more to its neighbors than to itself. In this respect its future will resemble its past.