Even before the negotiation of the Potsdam Agreement the Young Turks had smiled upon French financial interests in the hope that the French Government might adopt a more friendly attitude toward the new régime in Turkey. In June, 1910, for example, the Smyrna-Cassaba Railway was authorized to extend its existing line from Soma, in western Anatolia, to Panderma, on the Sea of Marmora. The concession carried with it the highest kilometric guarantee (18,800 francs) ever granted a railway in the Ottoman Empire, although the construction of the line offered fewer engineering and financial difficulties than other railways which had been constructed under less favorable terms. From the standpoint of the Turkish Government, however, the Soma-Panderma railway offered economic and strategic returns commensurate with the investment, for it was part of a comprehensive plan for the improvement of commercial and military communications in Asia Minor.[11]
The acceptance of this concession by French capitalists—presumably with the approval, certainly without the opposition, of their Government—was an interesting commentary on the official attitude of the French Republic toward the Bagdad Railway. If it was unprincipled for Germans to accept a guarantee for the construction and operation of their railways in Turkey, it is difficult to ascertain what dispensation exempted Frenchmen from the same stigma. If the Anatolian and Bagdad systems were anathema because of their possible utilization for military purposes, little justification can be offered for the Soma-Panderma line, which, completed in 1912, was one of the principal factors in the stubborn defence of the Dardanelles three years later.
Shortly after the promulgation of the Soma-Panderma convention additional steps were taken by the Ottoman Government toward the further extension of French railway interests in Anatolia and Syria. Negotiations were initiated with the Imperial Ottoman Bank for the award to a French-owned company, La Société pour la Construction et l’Exploitation du Réseau de la Mer Noire, of a concession for a comprehensive system of railways in northern Anatolia. It was proposed to construct elaborate port works at the Black Sea towns of Heraclea, Samsun, and Trebizond, and to connect the new ports by railway with the inland towns of Erzerum, Sivas, Kharput, and Van. Connections were to be established at Boli and Sivas with extensions to the Anatolian Railways, and at Arghana with a branch of the Bagdad line to Nisibin and Diarbekr. Thus adequate rail communications would be provided from the Ægean to the Persian Gulf, from the Black Sea to the Syrian shore of the Mediterranean.[12]
Simultaneously, negotiations were being carried on between the Ottoman Ministry of Public Works and the Imperial Ottoman Bank for extensive concessions to the French Syrian Railways, owned and operated by La Société du Chemin de Fer de Damas-Hama et Prolongements. Provision was made for the construction of port and terminal facilities at Jaffa, Haifa, and Tripoli-in-Syria; a traffic agreement was negotiated with the Ottoman-owned Hedjaz Railway, pledging both parties to abstain from discriminatory rates and other unfair competition; tentative arrangements were made for the construction of a line from Homs to the Euphrates. Provisional agreements embodying the Black Sea and Syrian railway and port concessions were signed in 1911, but technical difficulties of surveying the lines, together with the political instability occasioned by the Tripolitan and Balkan Wars, postponed the definitive contract.[13]
After the Treaty of Bucharest, August 10, 1913, the Ottoman Government was more determined than ever to do everything in its power to eliminate French opposition to railway construction in Asia Minor and to secure French aid in the further economic development of Turkey. Crushing defeats at the hands of the Italians and the Balkan states had emphasized the deficiencies of Ottoman communications, Ottoman economic and military organization, Ottoman financial resources. The national treasury, emptied by the drain of three wars, needed replenishment by an increase in the customs duties, to which French sanction would have to be obtained, and by a foreign loan, for which it was hoped French bankers would submit a favorable bid. All of these questions were so closely associated with the question of political influence in the Near East, however, that it was obviously desirable to arrive at some modus vivendi between French and German interests in Ottoman railways and in Ottoman financial affairs. Accordingly, the Young Turk Government prevailed upon the Imperial Ottoman Bank and the Deutsche Bank to discuss a basis for a Franco-German agreement, and Djavid Bey was despatched to Paris to conduct whatever negotiations might be necessary with the French Government.
On August 19 and 20 and September 24, 25, 26, 1913, a series of important meetings was held in Berlin to ascertain upon what terms French and German investments in Turkey might be apportioned with the least possibility of conflict. German interests were represented by Dr. von Gwinner and Dr. Helfferich; the chief of the French negotiators were Baron de Neuflize, a Regent of the Bank of France, and M. de Klapka, Secretary-General of the Imperial Ottoman Bank. Supposedly the conferences were conducted only between the interested financiers, but the discussions were participated in by representatives of the French, German, and Ottoman foreign offices. Obstacles which, at the start, seemed insurmountable were overcome at the Berlin meetings and a series of minor conferences which followed. The result was one of the most important international agreements of the years immediately preceding the Great War—the secret Franco-German convention of February 15, 1914. The terms of this agreement, heretofore unpublished, may be summarized as follows:[14]
1. Northern Anatolia was recognized as a sphere of French influence for purposes of railway development. Arrangements were concluded for linking the Anatolian and Bagdad systems with the proposed Black Sea Railways, and traffic agreements satisfactory to all of the companies were ratified and appended to the convention. It was agreed that the port and terminal facilities at Heraclea should be constructed by a Franco-German company.
2. Syria, likewise, was recognized as a French sphere of influence. In particular, the right of the Syrian Railways to construct a line from Tripoli-in-Syria to Deir es Zor, on the Euphrates, was confirmed. A traffic agreement between the Bagdad and Syrian companies was ratified and appended to the convention.
3. The regions traversed by the Anatolian and Bagdad Railways were defined as a German sphere of influence. A neutral zone was established in Northern Syria to avoid infringement upon German or French rights in that region.
4. The Deutsche Bank and the Imperial Ottoman Bank each pledged itself to respect the concessions of the other, to seek no railway concessions within the sphere of influence of the other, and to do nothing, directly or indirectly, to hinder the construction or exploitation of the railway lines of the other in Asiatic Turkey.