Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/241

 autocrats of the autocrats, Abdul Hamid and William II. As such, it was certain to draw the fire of the reformers. The concession of 1903 had never been published in Turkey. Only fifty copies had been printed, and these had been distributed only among high officials of the Palace, the Sublime Porte, and the Ministries of War, Marine, and Public Works. It was generally supposed by the Union and Progress party, therefore, that the summaries published in the European press were limited to what the Sultan chose to make public. "The secrecy which thus enveloped the Bagdad Railway concession gave rise to the conviction that the contract contained, apart from detrimental financial and economic clauses, provisions which endangered the political independence of the State."[4] And Young Turks were determined to tolerate no such additional limitations on the sovereignty of their country.

The opening, in the autumn of 1908, of the first parliament under the constitutional regime in Turkey gave the opponents of the Bagdad Railway their chance. A bitter attack on the project—in which hardly a single provision of the contract of 1903 escaped scathing criticism—was delivered by Ismail Hakki Bey, representative from Bagdad, editor of foreign affairs for a well-known reform journal, and a prominent member of the Union and Progress party. Hakki Bey denounced the Railway as a political and economic monstrosity which could have been possible only under an autocratic and corrupt government; in any event, he believed, it could have no place in the New Turkey. He proposed complete repudiation of the existing contracts with the Deutsche Bank. In this proposal he received considerable support from other members of the parliament.

An equally ringing, but more reasoned, speech was delivered by the talented Djavid Bey, subsequently to become Young Turk Minister of Finance. He agreed that