Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/118

 *tating negotiations, that the Powers agreed to a three per cent increase, effective in July of the following year. Even then, however, the higher duties were assented to under a number of restrictions which rendered difficult the diversion of the increased revenue to the payment of railway guarantees; elaborate regulations were incorporated in the treaties prescribing expensive reform of the government of Macedonia and costly readjustments in the customs administration.[11]

By 1908, nevertheless, Turkish fiscal affairs were in a sufficiently satisfactory state to enable the Government to conclude arrangements for the construction of succeeding sections of the Bagdad Railway. On June 2 of that year an imperial iradé was granted authorizing the extension of the line from Bulgurlu to Aleppo and thence eastward to El Helif (near Nisibin), a distance of some eight hundred and forty kilometres. The completion of this portion of the line would bring the railway to a point about eleven hundred miles from Constantinople and only a little over seven hundred miles from Basra. Arrangements were effected for the immediate issue of the Imperial Ottoman Bagdad Railway Four Per Cent Loans, Second and Third Series, to an amount of one hundred and eight million and one hundred and nineteen million francs respectively, to provide the capital necessary for the building of the railway. Interest and sinking fund payments on these loans were guaranteed from the surplus of net revenues accruing to the Imperial Government from the Ottoman Public Debt. In case of emergency, certain taxes (notably the cattle tax) of the vilayets of Konia, Adana, and Aleppo were pledged for this purpose.[12]

Only a month after the conclusion of this convention the Near East was thrown into a state of turmoil as a result of the outbreak of the first of the Young Turk revolutions. Under these circumstances it appeared inex