Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/134

 of ninety-nine years to the Haidar Pasha Port Company the exclusive rights of constructing port and terminal facilities at Alexandretta—including quays, docks, warehouses, coal pockets, and elevators. As in the case of the Bagdad Railway itself, public lands were to be at the disposal of the concessionaires without charge, and private lands were to be subject to the law of expropriation if essential for the purposes of the Company. Within the limits of the port the Company was authorized to maintain a police force for the maintenance of order and the protection of its property.[36]

Because of the refusal of the Powers to permit an increase in the customs, the Turkish Government was unable to assign further revenues to the payment of railway guarantees. The Bagdad Railway Company thereupon agreed to proceed with the construction of the sections from El Helif to Bagdad without additional commitments from the Imperial Ottoman Treasury. The Company likewise renounced its right to build the sections beyond Bagdad, including its concession for the construction of port works at Basra, with the proviso, however, that this section of the line, if constructed, be assigned to a Turkish company internationally owned and administered.[37] This surrender by the Bagdad Railway Company of its rights to the pledge of additional revenues by the Ottoman Treasury and its surrender of its hold on the sections of the railway beyond Bagdad are by far the most important provisions of the conventions of March 21, 1911.

German opinion, as a whole, considered these self-denying contracts of the Company an indication of the willingness of the Deutsche Bank and the German Government to go more than half way in removing diplomatic objections to the construction of the Bagdad Railway.[38] There were Englishmen, however, who felt that the conventions of 1911 were a mere gesture of conciliation; in