Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/104

 determined, also, that the concession, far-reaching as were its implications, should not lead to additional extra-territorial rights, or "capitulations," in favor of foreign powers. The concessionaires were forbidden to contract for the transportation of foreign mails, or to perform other services for the foreign post offices in Turkey, without the formal approval of the Ottoman Government. It was specified, also, that, inasmuch as the Anatolian and the Bagdad Railway Companies were Ottoman joint-stock corporations, all disputes and differences between the Government and the Companies, or between the Companies and private persons, "arising as a result of the execution or interpretation of the present Convention and the Specifications attached thereto, shall be carried before the competent Ottoman courts." It was further provided that the concessionaires "must correspond with the State Departments in Turkish, which is the official language of the Imperial Ottoman Government!"[56]

The Government was sincere in its determination that the railway should become a powerful instrument in the economic development of the backward provinces of the empire. A significant clause specified that the section between Bagdad and Basra should not be placed in operation before the section between Konia and Bagdad should have been opened to traffic, although immediate operation of trains on the former section would have enabled the Company to compete with the valuable trade of the Lynch Brothers on the Tigris. The traffic between Bagdad and Basra would have been profitable and would thus have decreased by a considerable figure the total subsidies the Treasury might be obliged to pay for railway operation. It was of more immediate concern to the Turkish Government, however, that southern Mesopotamia should be connected by an economic and political link with the rest of the Sultan's dominions. Elaborate regulations