This agreement temporarily removed all French opposition to the Bagdad Railway. M. Constans, the French ambassador at Constantinople, joined Baron Marschall von Bieberstein in cordial support of the new “Franco-German syndicate.”[6]
Competition had arisen, however, from a third source. During the summer of 1899 British bankers, represented in Constantinople by Mr. E. Rechnitzer, petitioned for the right to construct a railway from Alexandretta to Bagdad and the Persian Gulf. The terms offered by the British financiers were considered more liberal than any heretofore proposed,[7] and they were endorsed by the Ministry of Public Works. Mr. Rechnitzer enlisted the aid of Mahmoud Pasha, a brother-in-law of the Sultan. He secured the assistance of Sir Nicholas O’Connor, the British ambassador. He attended to the niceties of Oriental business by sending the Sultan and his aids costly presents.[8] He engineered an effective press campaign in Great Britain to arouse interest in his project. Just how much success Mr. Rechnitzer’s plan might have achieved on its own merits is an open question. It definitely collapsed, however, in October, 1899, when the outbreak of the Boer War diverted British attention and energies from the Near East to South Africa.[9] It was under these circumstances that the Sultan, on November 27, 1899, announced his decision to award to the Deutsche Bank the concession for a railway from Konia to Bagdad and the Persian Gulf.[10]
The success of the Germans was not unexpected. They had a strong claim to the concession, for, in 1888 and again in 1893, the Sultan had assured the Anatolian Railway Company that it should have priority in the construction of any railway to Bagdad. On the strength of that assurance, the Anatolian Company had conducted expensive surveys of the proposed line.[11] After a short period of sharp competition for the concession in 1899, the Deutsche Bank group was left in sole possession of the field—the Russian promoters had withdrawn because of lack of support at home; the French financiers had accepted a share in the German company in preference to sole responsibility for the enterprise; the British proposals had lost support when the Boer difficulty temporarily obscured all other issues. The diplomatic situation, furthermore, was distinctly favorable to the German claims. The Fashoda Affair and the serious Anglo-Russian rivalry in the Middle East had served to put Russia, France, and Great Britain at sixes and sevens, leaving Germans practically a free hand in the development of their interests in Asia Minor.
Aside from these purely temporary advantages, however, there were excellent reasons, from the Ottoman point of view, for awarding the Bagdad Railway concessions to the German Anatolian Railway Company. The usual explanations—that the soft, sweet-sounding flattery of William II overcame the shrewdness of Abdul Hamid; that Baron Marschall von Bieberstein dominated the entire diplomatic situation at the Porte; that the German military mission exerted a powerful influence in the final result—are more obvious than convincing. These were all contributing factors in the success of the Germans, but they were not determining factors. The reasons for the award of the concession to the Deutsche Bank were partly economic, partly strategic, partly political.
The Germans alone submitted proposals which met the demands of the Public Debt Administration and the Ottoman Government. They proposed to extend the existing Anatolian Railway from Konia, across the mountains into Cilicia and Syria, down the valley of the Tigris to Bagdad and Basra and the Persian Gulf. The railway which they had in mind would reach from one end of Asiatic Turkey to the other; in connection with the railways of southern Anatolia and of Syria, it would provide continuous railway communication between Constantinople and Smyrna in the north and west, with Aleppo, Damascus, Beirut, Mecca, and Mosul in the south and east. There were serious technical and financial difficulties in the construction of such a railway, it is true, but there were political and economic considerations which warranted the expenditure of whatever effort and funds might be necessary to carry the line to completion.
On the other hand, the groups other than the Germans proposed the construction of a trans-Mesopotamian railway which did not come up to specifications. They submitted plans calling for the building of a line from some Mediterranean port—such as Alexandretta or Tripoli-in-Syria—down the Euphrates valley to the Persian Gulf.[12] Such a line would have had obvious advantages, from the point of view of the concessionaires, over the projected German railway. The cost of construction would have been materially less, for it would have been unnecessary to build the costly sections across the Taurus and Amanus mountains. The prospects of immediate earning power were better, for the railway would have been able to take over some of the caravan trade from Arabia to the Syrian coast and from Mesopotamia to Aleppo. From the Ottoman point of view, however, the proposal was altogether unsatisfactory. The railway would have developed the southern provinces of the empire without connecting them with Anatolia, the homeland of the Turks themselves and the heart of the Sultan’s dominions. It might have promoted a separatist movement among the Arabs. Its termini on the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf could have been controlled by the guns of a foreign fleet. From every standpoint—economic, political, strategic—the acceptance of such a proposal was out of the question.
Even had all other things been equal, it is probable that the German bankers would have been given preference in the award of the concession. The Turkish Government was determined that the Anatolian lines should be made the nucleus of the proposed railway system for the empire. That being the case, no purpose, other than the promotion of confusion, would have been served by awarding the Bagdad plum to interests other than those which controlled the Anatolian Railway Company. This reasoning was fortified by the fact that the Company had made an enviable record in its dealings with the Ottoman Ministry of Public Works. The existing lines were well constructed and were being operated in a manner entirely satisfactory to the Ottoman Government and to the peasantry and business men of Anatolia. And M. Huguenin, Assistant General Manager of the Anatolian system, announced that his Company would observe a similar policy in the construction and operation of the proposed Bagdad Railway. “We are determined,” he said, “to build a model line such as exists nowhere in Turkey, able in all respects to undertake efficiently an international service involving high speeds over the whole line.”[13]
From the political point of view, too, there were reasons for giving preference to German capitalists. Abdul Hamid was seeking moral and material assistance for the promotion of his favorite doctrine of Pan-Islamism. He sought to foster this movement, which looked toward the unification of Islamic communities for resistance to Christian European domination over the Moslem world. As Caliph of the Mohammedan world, Abdul Hamid placed himself at the head of those defenders of the faith who had been propagating the idea that Mussulmans everywhere must resist further Christian encroachment and aggression, be it political, economic, religious, cultural. That the Sultan’s primary motives were religious is doubtful. Apparently he believed that the Pan-Islamic movement could be utilized to the greater glory of his dynasty and his empire. As the tsars of Russia had utilized their position as head of the Orthodox Church for the purpose of strengthening the power of the autocracy, so Abdul Hamid proposed to exploit his position as Caliph for purposes of personal and dynastic aggrandizement.[14]
In awarding the Bagdad Railway concession, which was of such considerable economic and political importance, it was essential to choose the nationals of a power which would be sympathetic toward Pan-Islamism. Would it be Russia, whose tsars had set fires in Afghanistan, sought to destroy the independence of Persia, and threatened all of the Middle East? Would it be Great Britain, whose professional imperialists were holding in subjection more than sixty million Mohammedans in India alone? Would it be France, whose soldiers controlled the destinies of millions of Mussulmans in Algeria and Tunis? These nations could have no feeling for Pan-Islamism other than fear and hatred,[15] for it threatened their dominion over their Moslem colonies. Germany, however, had everything to gain and nothing to lose in lending support to Abdul Hamid’s Pan-Islamic program. She had practically no Mohammedan subjects and therefore had no reason to fear Moslem discontent. She had imperial interests which might be served by the revolt of Islam against Christian domination.[16]
Turkish patriots, as well as Moslem fanatics, would have preferred to see Germans favored in the award of economic concessions in the Ottoman Empire. The Germans came to Turkey with clean hands. Their Government had never despoiled the Ottoman Empire of territory and appeared to have no interests which could not be as well served by the strengthening of Turkey as by its destruction. On the other hand, Russia, traditional enemy of the Turks, sought, as the keystone of her foreign policy, to acquire Constantinople and the Straits. France, by virtue of her protectorate over Catholics in the lands of the Sultan, sought to maintain special privileges for herself in Syria and the Holy Land. Great Britain held Egypt, a nominal Turkish dependency, and was fomenting trouble for the Sultan in the region of the Persian Gulf.[17] Germany, it appeared, was the only sincere and disinterested friend of the Ottoman Empire!