5. In order further to protect British interests the German Government assumed responsibility for the election to the Board of Directors of the Bagdad Railway Company of “two English members acceptable to His Britannic Majesty’s Government.”
6. Both Powers pledged themselves unreservedly to observe the principle of the economic open door in the operation of railway, ports, irrigation, and navigation enterprises in Turkey-in-Asia.
7. Great Britain recognized German interests in the irrigation of the Cilician plain, and Germany recognized British interests in the irrigation of the lower Mesopotamian valley.
8. Both signatory Powers took cognizance of and agreed to observe the Anglo-Turkish agreement of July, 1913, conferring important navigation rights in Mesopotamia upon British subjects; the agreements between Lord Inchcape and the Bagdad Railway Company, regarding navigation and port and terminal facilities on the Tigris and Euphrates; the agreement between the Smyrna-Aidin Railway and the Bagdad Railway regarding important extensions to the former line.
9. Great Britain and Germany agreed to “use their good offices with the Imperial Ottoman Government to the end that the Shatt-el-Arab shall be brought into a satisfactory navigable condition and permanently maintained in such condition, so that ocean-going ships may always be assured of free and easy access to the port of Basra, and, further, that the shipping on the Shatt-el-Arab shall always be open to ocean-going ships under the same conditions to ships of all nations, regardless of the nationality of the ships or their cargo.”
10. It was agreed, finally, that any differences of opinion resulting from the convention or its appended documents should be subject to arbitration. If the signatory Powers were unable to agree upon an arbitrator or a special court of arbitration, the case was to be submitted to the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague.
From both the German and the British points of view the foregoing convention was an admirable solution of the Turkish problem. Had the agreement been reached ten years earlier, it might have avoided estrangement between the two nations. Had it come at almost any other time than on the eve of the Great War, it would have been a powerful stimulus to an Anglo-German rapprochement.
Germany, it is true, was obliged to abandon any hope of establishing a port on the Persian Gulf. But there were grave uncertainties that Koweit could ever be developed as a commercially profitable terminus for the Bagdad Railway, whereas its very possession by a German company would have been a constant source of irritation to Great Britain. Basra, on the other hand, had obvious advantages. Like many of the great harbors of the world—Hamburg, Bremen, Antwerp, London, New York—it was on a river, rather than the open sea; and inasmuch as Great Britain had agreed that the freedom of the open sea should be applied to the Shatt-el-Arab, German ships were assured unrestricted access to the southern terminus of the Bagdad Railway. In return for surrendering the Basra-Persian Gulf section of the Bagdad system and for admitting British capitalists to participation in the Bagdad and Basra ports company, Germany received full recognition of her economic rights in Anatolia, Syria, and northern Mesopotamia, together with a minor share in Lord Inchcape’s navigation enterprises and in the newly formed Turkish Petroleum Company. Above all, British opposition to the Bagdad Railway, which had been so stubbornly maintained since 1903, was to be a thing of the past. For these considerations Germany could well afford to accept a subordinate place in southern Mesopotamia and to recognize British interests in the Persian Gulf.
Great Britain gained even more than Germany. She abandoned her policy of obstruction of the Bagdad Railway and consented to an increase in the customs duties of the Ottoman Empire. These considerations had never been ends in themselves, but rather pawns in the great game of diplomacy, to be surrendered in return for other valuable considerations. For them England secured guarantees of equality of treatment for British citizens and British goods on the German railway lines in Turkey. In addition, English capitalists received a monopoly of navigation on the Tigris and Euphrates, a 40% interest in port and terminal facilities at Bagdad and Basra, control of the oil resources of the Mesopotamian valley, extensions to British-owned railways in southern Anatolia, and other valuable economic concessions. British political control was recognized as dominant in southern Mesopotamia; therefore the Bagdad Railway no longer could be said to be a menace to the safety of India. As for Britain’s new position in the Persian Gulf, one of her own publicists said, “England has virtually annexed another sea, one of the world’s highways.”[33]