Dr. Kaerger was especially concerned lest Germany might be anticipated by Russia or England in the realisation of her own designs on Asia Minor. Should, he declared, either of those countries acquire any further territory from Turkey, or increase in any way Turkey's dependence upon them, the result would be the most serious disturbance of the prevailing situation in Europe that had occurred since 1870.
The development of all these ideas went so far that in 1895 the Alldeutscher Blätter recommended that Germany should establish a Protectorate over the Turkish possessions in Asia Minor; and in the following year the Alldeutscher Verband published a manifesto on "German claims to the Inheritance of Turkey" ("Deutschlands Anspruch an das türkische Erbe"), making a formal statement of Germany's alleged rights to the Turkish succession.
Germany had by this time already secured a footing on the soil of Asiatic Turkey by virtue of the Anatolian Railway. The first section—a length of about seventy miles, extending from Haidar Pacha (situate on the north-eastern coast of the Sea of Marmara, and opposite Constantinople) to Ismidt—was built in 1875 by German engineers to the order of the Turkish Government. It was transferred in 1888 to a German syndicate, nominees of the Deutsche Bank. Under the powers then conferred upon them, the syndicate opened an extension, on the east, to Angora, in 1892, and another, on the south, to Konia, in 1896, the total length of line being thus increased to 633 miles.
As the result of the visit of the German Emperor to Constantinople in 1898, followed by negotiations between the Porte and the director of the Deutsche Bank, authority was given to a new German Company—the Imperial Ottoman Baghdad Railway Company—under conventions of 1889, 1902 and 1903, to continue the existing Anatolian Railway from Konia to the Persian Gulf, via Adana, Nisibin, Mosul and Baghdad. This extension was to constitute the main line of the Baghdad Railway proper; but the Company also acquired control over most of the branch railways already in operation. One of these was the French Smyrna—Afium Karahissar line, which constitutes the direct trade route between Smyrna and places served by the Anatolian railway, and has, also, a branch to Panderma, on the southern shores of the Sea of Marmara. Another was the short line from Adana to Mersina, giving access to the Mediterranean. This meant the substitution of German for French interests, while the course taken by the Anatolia-Baghdad Railway from the Bosporus to Adana shut off the possibility of an extension of the British line from Smyrna via Aidin to Egerdir (west of Konia) into the interior.
Then in 1911 the Company acquired the right to build a new port at Alexandretta, with quays, docks, bonded warehouses, etc., and to construct thence a short line of railway connecting with the Baghdad main line at Osmanieh, east of Adana. By these means the Germans acquired the control over, if not an actual monopoly of, the traffic between one of the most important ports on the eastern sea-board of the Mediterranean—a port where a trade valued at three and a half million sterling is already being done—and the vast extent of territory in Asia Minor designed to be served by the Baghdad Railway.
From Muslimiyeh, a little town on the north of Aleppo, there is a short branch connecting the Baghdad Railway with the Hedjaz line from Damascus to Medina, which is eventually to be carried on to Mecca; while from Rayak, north of Damascus, a branch built in a south-westerly direction was to be carried to within a short distance of the Egyptian frontier.
From the junction for the Aleppo branch, the main line was to continue across the Mesopotamian plain to Baghdad (whence a branch to Khanikin, on the Persian frontier was projected) and so on to Basra, for the Persian Gulf.
Thus the scheme for what passes under the title of the Baghdad Railway embraces three separate and distinct regions of Asiatic Turkey—(1) Anatolia, (2) Syria and (3) Mesopotamia. In other words, whereas in their first phase, German aspirations for Turkish territory were based on the economic advantages of settlement in Anatolia—a region in itself large enough to accommodate all the Germans who were likely to want to settle there—in the second phase those aspirations were based on an extension of the Baghdad Railway towards Egypt in the one direction and the Persian Gulf in the other. This dual extension became the more noticeable, also, inasmuch as for the passage of the Taurus range of mountains a total of nearly 100 miles of blasting and tunnelling would have to be carried out, the cost of construction on certain sections of the line rising to between £35,000 and £40,000 a mile. The extension, therefore, was likely to be a costly business, the total length of the Baghdad Railway proper, apart from the Anatolian system, being, as projected, about 1,350 miles, of which, however, only about 600 miles were, in June, 1915, available for traffic.[76] Admitting the desirability of opening up Mesopotamia to commercial and agricultural development, it may, nevertheless, be asked, were there other motives—and motives to which still greater weight might have been attached—for this expansion of the earlier designs?
Abdul Hamid's reason for granting the concession is said to have been that the extension of the line to the Persian Gulf would greatly strengthen the military position of Turkey, since it would enable her to effect a speedy transfer of troops between the Bosporus and the Gulf, or intermediate places, as against the many months that might be occupied by marching on foot across plains and mountains.
Germany's reasons for seeking to construct the Baghdad Railway, its branches and connections, to the full extent of the programme laid down, were, not simply the development of new trade routes, as certain inspired representations have sought to make the world believe, and not simply the gain of various other economic advantages, but (1) a desire to increase German influence over Turkey; to strengthen her military and other resources with a view to employing them eventually in the advancement of Germany's own interests; and to ensure the realisation of that eventual Protectorate over Turkey which would convert the country into practically a German province; and (2) the furthering of Germany's aims against Great Britain in the belief that she, too, was a decadent country whose possessions, when we could no longer defend them effectively, Germany would be the more likely to secure for herself if, with a concentration of Turkish forces to assist her, she were established within striking distance of some of the most vulnerable points of the British Empire, ready to take instant advantage of any favourable opportunity that might present itself, whether in a prospective break-up of that Empire or otherwise.