In the closing days of the conference, the question of Mosul and its oilfields—the last question which stood in the way of an Anglo-Turkish agreement—was temporarily settled by a decision to make it the subject of “direct and friendly negotiations between the two interested Powers.” But no agreement was possible between Turkey and France on concessions and capitulations. When the first Lausanne Conference broke up, therefore, it was because of the determination of the Turks not to accept economic, financial, and judicial clauses which they believed menaced their independence. “The treaty,” said Ismet Pasha, head of the Turkish delegation, “would strangle Turkey economically. I refuse to accept economic slavery for my country, and the demands of the Allies remove all possibility of economic rehabilitation and kill all our hopes.” On the other hand, the refusal of the Turks to sign was characterized by the chief of the French delegates as “a crime.”[31]
During the interim between the first and second Lausanne conferences French prestige in the Near East was dealt some severe blows. The Turkish press attacked the French Government for having insisted upon concessions and capitulations which were designed to keep Turkey under foreign domination in the interest of bondholders and promoters. Such conduct, it was pointed out, was altogether inconsistent with the terms of the Angora Treaty by which France agreed “to make every effort to settle in a spirit of cordial agreement all questions relating to the independence and sovereignty of Turkey.”[32] In the National Assembly hostility to French claims was so pronounced that no further action was taken toward the ratification of the Angora Treaty—and without such ratification the French title to certain sections of the Bagdad Railway would be invalid. The Turkish army on the Syrian frontier was reënforced for the purpose of bringing home to France the determination of the Angora Government to tolerate no foreign interference in its domestic affairs. The situation in Syria became so serious that M. Poincaré saw fit to despatch to Beirut one of Marshal Foch’s right-hand men, General Weygand, as commander-in-chief in Syria.
The breach between France and Turkey was widened when, on April 10, 1923, the Angora Government awarded to an American syndicate headed by Admiral Colby M. Chester, a retired officer of the United States Navy, concessions for almost three thousand miles of railway, together with valuable rights to the exploitation of the mineral resources of Anatolia.[33] The Chester concessions conflicted with certain French claims which had been under discussion at the first Lausanne Conference: the concession for a Black Sea railway system, which had been conferred upon French capitalists in 1913; and rights to the Arghana copper mines, to which a French group had been given a kind of priority under the Angora Treaty of 1921.[34] In part, at least, the award of the Chester concessions at this particular time was a shrewd political move on the part of the Nationalist Government. It was designed to serve notice on France that no treaty would be acceptable to Turkey which would require complete confirmation of pre-War concessions; from this decision there could be no departure without infringing upon American rights and without recognizing the acts of a former Sultan as superior to acts of the new government of Turkey. It was intended, also, to win for the Turks a measure of American diplomatic support. That the French Government understood the implications of the Chester concessions is evidenced by the fact that the Foreign Office despatched to Angora a note which characterized the award as “a deliberately unfriendly act, of a nature to influence adversely the coming negotiations at Lausanne.”[35]
When the second Lausanne Conference convened on April 22, 1923, therefore, it was France, not Great Britain, which was on the defensive. And the French position became steadily worse, rather than better. On May 15, it was announced that a syndicate of British banks had purchased a controlling interest in the Bank für orientalischen Eisenbahnen, of Zurich, the Deutsche Bank’s holding company for the Anatolian and Bagdad Railway Companies. Ismet Pasha, it was said, was kept fully informed of the British plans and expressed his pleasure at the consummation of the transaction. Thus, after twenty years of diplomatic bargaining, British imperialists had won possession of the “short cut to India”![36] Should Great Britain succeed in establishing her point that the Bank für orientalischen Eisenbahnen is a neutral Swiss, rather than enemy German, corporation and therefore exempt from seizure under the reparations provisions of the Treaty of Versailles; and should the Chester concessions be recognized as superseding the rights of the Black Sea Railways, French interests in the Levant will face a powerful Anglo-American competition which it will be very difficult for them to combat with any degree of success.[37] And the power of the French Government is so heavily invested in the Ruhr occupation that it is doubtful if it can do anything at all to coerce the Turks into full recognition of French claims.
Kaleidoscopic indeed have been the changes in the Near East since the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. The economic and political power of Germany in Anatolia, Syria, and Mesopotamia has been completely destroyed. The Ottoman Empire has disappeared, and in its place has risen a republican Nationalist Turkey. Tsarist Russia, with its consuming desire for aggrandizement in the Caucasus, in Asia Minor, and at the Straits, has given way to a proletarian Russia which foreswears imperialist ambition. Italy, which sought to transform the Adriatic and the Ægean into Italian lakes, has finally been compelled to recognize that she assumed imperial liabilities out of all proportion to her economic resources. France, after achieving a temporary victory in the New Turkey, has had to surrender her position to more powerful competitors. But Great Britain has emerged from the conflict in all her glory. She has obtained possession of another highway to the East. Alongside the Suez Canal, in the collection of British imperial jewels, will be placed the Bagdad Railway; alongside of Malta and Gibraltar and Cyprus must be placed Jerusalem and Basra and Bagdad.
No less remarkable than all these changes, however, is the entry of American interests into the tangled problem of the Near East.
America Embarks upon an Uncharted Sea
The Great War was accompanied by a definite growth of American prestige in the Near East. After the entry of Turkey into the war against the Allied Powers, American schools and missions were left practically a free hand in the Ottoman Empire; and inasmuch as the United States did not declare war against Turkey, American institutions were not disturbed even after 1917. Carrying on their work under the most trying circumstances, these educational and philanthropic enterprises established a still greater reputation than they formerly possessed for efficient and disinterested service. In consequence, an American official mission to the Near East in 1919 was able to report that the moral influence of the United States in that region of the world was greater than that of any other Power. President Wilson was looked upon as the champion of small nations and oppressed peoples. Americans were considered to be charitable and generous to a fault. The United States was hailed as the only nation which had entered the war for unselfish purposes.[38]