The Turks and Europe

by Gaston Gaillard

Moreover, according to the 1914 agreements, the ports of Ineboli and Heraclea on the Black Sea, and the ports of Tripoli, Jaffa, and Haïfa in Syria, were to be built exclusively by French capital. So it was with the intended concessions of the ports of Samsun and Trebizond.

At Beyrut a French group in 1909 bought up the English concession for the building of the waterworks and pipelines, and formed a new company. French capital, together with Belgian capital, also control the Gas Company, Tramway Company, and Electric Company of Beyrut. Only at Smyrna, where the gasworks are in the hands of an English company and the waterworks are owned by a Belgian company has France not taken part in the organisation of the municipal services.

Only the port of Haïdar-Pasha, the terminus of the Anatolian Railway, has been ceded by this company to a financial company whose shares are in German hands.

To these public establishments should be added such purely private industrial or commercial concerns as the Orosdi-Back establishments; the Oriental Tobacco Company; the Tombac Company; the “Société nationale pour le commerce, l’industrie et l’agriculture dans l’Empire ottoman”; the concession of Shukur-ova, the only French concession of landed property situated in the Gulf of Alexandretta on the intended track of the Baghdad Railway, including about 150,000 acres of Imperial land, which represent an entirely French capital of 64 million francs; the Oriental Carpet Company, which is a Franco-British concern; the Joint Stock Imperial Company of the Docks, Dockyards, and Shipbuilding Yard, which is entirely under British control, etc.

During the war, the share of France and that of England were increased, as far as the Public Debt is concerned, by the amount of the coupons which were not cashed by the stockholders of the Allied countries, while the holders of Ottoman securities belonging to the Central Powers cashed theirs.

Beyond this, Turkey borrowed of Germany about 3½ milliards of francs. An internal loan of 400 million francs had also been raised. To these sums should be added 2 milliards of francs for buying war supplies and war material, and the treasury bonds issued by Turkey for her requisitions, which cannot be cashed but may amount to about 700 million francs. As the requisitions already made during the Balkan wars, which amounted to 300 or 400 million francs, have not yet been liquidated, the whole Turkish debt may be valued at over 10 billion francs.

Finally, in the settlement of the Turkish question, the war damages borne by the French in Turkey should also be taken into account, which means an additional sum of about 2 milliards of francs.

The French owned in Turkey great industrial or agricultural establishments, which were wholly or partly destroyed. At Constantinople and on the shores of the Marmora alone they had about fifty religious or undenominational schools, which were half destroyed, together with everything they contained, perhaps in compliance with the wishes of Germany, who wanted to ruin French influence for ever in that country.

In order to keep up French influence in the East, the High Commissioner of the Republic had, in the early days of the armistice, warned his Government it was necessary to provide a fund at once to defray the expenses of the schools and other institutions established by the French in Turkey in pre-war time—which sums of money were to be advanced on the outstanding indemnity. For want of any existing law, this request could not be complied with; but, as will be seen later on, the Peace Treaty, though it says nothing about this urgent question, states that the indemnities due to the subjects of the Allied Powers for damages suffered by them in their persons or in their property shall be allotted by an inter-Allied financial commission, which alone shall have a right to dispose of Turkish revenue and to sanction the payment of war damages. But all this postpones the solution of the question indefinitely.

In the settlement of the Turkish question, the chief point is how Turkey will be able to carry out her engagements, and so, in her present condition, the policy which England and America, followed by Italy and France, seem to advocate, is a most questionable one.