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 of a concession for a comprehensive system of railways in northern Anatolia. It was proposed to construct elaborate port works at the Black Sea towns of Heraclea, Samsun, and Trebizond, and to connect the new ports by railway with the inland towns of Erzerum, Sivas, Kharput, and Van. Connections were to be established at Boli and Sivas with extensions to the Anatolian Railways, and at Arghana with a branch of the Bagdad line to Nisibin and Diarbekr. Thus adequate rail communications would be provided from the Ægean to the Persian Gulf, from the Black Sea to the Syrian shore of the Mediterranean.[12]

Simultaneously, negotiations were being carried on between the Ottoman Ministry of Public Works and the Imperial Ottoman Bank for extensive concessions to the French Syrian Railways, owned and operated by La Société du Chemin de Fer de Damas-Hama et Prolongements. Provision was made for the construction of port and terminal facilities at Jaffa, Haifa, and Tripoli-in-Syria; a traffic agreement was negotiated with the Ottoman-owned Hedjaz Railway, pledging both parties to abstain from discriminatory rates and other unfair competition; tentative arrangements were made for the construction of a line from Homs to the Euphrates. Provisional agreements embodying the Black Sea and Syrian railway and port concessions were signed in 1911, but technical difficulties of surveying the lines, together with the political instability occasioned by the Tripolitan and Balkan Wars, postponed the definitive contract.[13]

After the Treaty of Bucharest, August 10, 1913, the Ottoman Government was more determined than ever to do everything in its power to eliminate French opposition to railway construction in Asia Minor and to secure French aid in the further economic development of Turkey. Crushing defeats at the hands of the Italians and the Balkan states had emphasized the deficiencies of Ottoman