“In the course of Ottoman history, all the efforts employed, all the activities of her statesmen, have had as their aim, not to satisfy the desires of the people nor to realize their aspirations, but rather to appease petty yearnings and personal ambitions. Comrades, if one examines closely the reigns of Mohammed II, of Selim and of Suleiman, one finds that these great and powerful monarchs based their foreign policy on their desires to satiate their personal leanings and ambitions. They had thus to regulate their internal organization in accordance with their foreign policy. Now foreign policy ought to be, on the contrary, subordinated to the internal organization—that is to say, foreign policy should be dominated by the internal economic situation.”
Kemal Pasha went on to explain that the monarchical policy of subordinating internal organization to foreign policy, had led to the necessity of allowing conquered elements to retain their national organizations in which they devoted themselves peacefully to economic pursuits while the “essential element” protected them, wielding the sword against their enemies on every frontier of the Empire. “Gentlemen, those who effect conquests by the sword finish by being beaten by those who employ as their arm the plow, and by ceding their place to them. In the struggle between the sword and the plow, it is always the plow which comes out on top.”
As soon as Rauf Bey returned from Malta, he was given the Ministry of Public Works at Angora, where the elaboration of a scheme of railway development was given immediate attention. Negotiations ensued with the representatives of the Ottoman-American Development Company, backed by Rear Admiral Colby M. Chester, U. S. N. (retired), who had been in previous negotiation with the old Ottoman Government in Constantinople. On April 11, 1923, the development scheme which the Government had formulated, was made over to the Ottoman-American Company by the Grand National Assembly and on April 30, the Minister of Public Works signed a convention with two representatives of the Company for what has long been famous as the Chester Concession.
This Turkish program falls into three parts—the construction of 2,714 miles of new railway line, the construction of a new capital city at Angora and of ports at Samsun, Yamurtalik and Trebizond together with the re-construction of towns and villages wrecked by the Greeks, and the exploitation of mineral rights within twenty-kilometer zones on each side of the new railway lines. The convention with the Chester group runs for a term of ninety-nine years unless the Turkish Government chooses to exercise its right of purchase after thirty years. The Turkish company which is to operate the new railway lines is to pay thirty percent of its profits to the Government and is to be subject to all Turkish taxation except customs duties on its construction materials and its coal, the latter of which is to be exempt for a period of ten years only. The company may employ foreign experts (the original Chester project of 1909 stipulated that they were to wear the fez and a Government uniform), but Turks are to be trained to take their places and the labor gangs are to be purely Turkish. There is no kilometric guarantee, nor does the Concession add any financial burden to the burdens which the Turkish Government already bears, until such time as the Government may decide to take over the lines.
The backbone of this Turkish program is its railway scheme, and in this respect it differs widely from the original Chester project of 1909. Czarist Russia having disappeared, the Turkish Government now revives the central Anatolian scheme which was first suggested for the Bagdad Railway and vetoed by Russia. It proposes to extend the Eski-Shehr-Angora line which was orginally intended for the main line of the Bagdad Railway, to Sivas, Kharput, Diarbekr and Mosul, but it adapts its railway program to the needs which have developed during the last four years. It may be assumed that military considerations have played a part in the framing of the Government’s railway scheme, for the war in Europe is not yet ended, and nobody knows how long a breathing space Turkey is to be permitted.
The first line to be built is to be the Yamurtalik-Kharput-Bitlis line, with a branch dropping to Mosul, Kirkuk and Suleimanieh. If and when this line is completed, it will strengthen the Syrian and Mesopotamian frontiers, and its western end, terminating in an excellent harbor at Yamurtalik on the Turkish side of Alexandretta Bay, will afford the Government a port which it sorely needs on the Mediterranean.
The second line to be built is to be the Angora-Erzerum line with branches dropping to Samsun and Trebizond on the Black Sea. At present the Government has no access by rail to any of its Black Sea ports. Possibly if it had had speedy access to the “Pontus” provinces, they would not have been devastated by irregular warfare during these last four years.
The final lines to be built are embodied in a group by which the Angora-Sivas line is to be connected via Caesarea with Ulu Kishla on the Bagdad Railway, and the Erzerum line is to be extended to Bayazid on the Persian frontier. The Erzerum and Bayazid lines in the eastern provinces are of obvious bearing on any future Russian attempt to repeat the great invasion of 1915-’16. They are of more meaning than that. At present Soviet Russia and Turkey are at peace with each other, and if and when the railway program which the Turkish Government has made over to the Chester group is completed, Russia may be afforded an overland outlet to the Mediterranean at Yamurtalik. The Russian and Turkish gauges differ, the former being 5 feet and the latter 4 feet 8½ inches, but the political possibilities in affording Soviet Russia peacefully what Czarist Russia sought by force, are incalculable. Peaceful access to the Mediterranean over the Chester lines might easily reduce the Straits to a very small factor in Russia’s foreign policy. While Turkey is not a Socialist State and presumably will not be, Russo-Turkish peace is the very foundation of any world peace and if the Chester group is able to contribute effectively to an enduring Russo-Turkish peace, it will perform a service of incalculable worth to the cause of world peace.
A month after the grant of the Chester Concession, Allied concessionaires began filtering into Angora from Constantinople, to begin economic negotiations with the Turkish Government simultaneously with the political negotiations which were dragging toward an end at Lausanne. These economic negotiations comprised four subjects: (1) the status of pre-war concessions; (2) the status of modifications authorized by the Ottoman Government after the Mudros armistice; (3) compensation for war damage to the property of concessionaires; and (4) the extension of concessions for a period equal to that in which they had been non-operative during the war. By the middle of June, the Constantinople Telephone Company (British) had reached agreement with the Turkish Government. Early in July, similar agreements had been reached by the Smyrna-Aidin Railway (British) and the Mudania-Brussa Railway (French).
Meanwhile, the Assembly adjourned for new elections. Peace not yet having been signed at Lausanne, the Nationalist Party went to the country on the basis of the National Pact and was returned by an overwhelming majority. It was a war election, somewhat reminiscent of Mr. Lloyd George’s “khaki election” of 1918, and party government with a strong Opposition in the Assembly is hardly to be expected at Angora until after an assured peace has come to Turkey.