Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/348

 Turkey and France." In particular, the Turkish Government agreed to take under advisement the award to French capitalists of concessions for the exploitation of the Arghana copper mines and for the development of cotton-growing in Cilicia.[21]

Thus France sought to make herself heir to the former German estate in Asiatic Turkey. Her capitalists became the recipients of the kilometric guarantee for which German concessionaires had been so freely criticized. And in some respects the conditions of French tenancy were questionable. The old Bagdad Railway concession had prohibited the Germans, under any and all circumstances to grant discriminatory rates or service to any passenger or shipper.[22] The conditions of French control of the line, however, recognized only a limited application of the principle of the "open door": "Over this section and its branches," reads Article 10 of the Angora Treaty, "no preferential tariff shall be established in principle. Each Government, however, reserves the right to study in concert with the other any exception to this rule which may become necessary. In case agreement proves impossible, each party will be free to act as he thinks best."[23]

During the spring of 1922 the concession for the operation of the French sections of the Bagdad Railway, as defined by the Angora Treaty, was assigned to the Cilician-Syrian Railway Company (La société d'exploitation des chemins de fers de Cilicie-Nord Syrie.) The Mesopotamian sections of the line, from Basra to Bagdad and Samarra, were under the jurisdiction of the British Civil Administration for Irak. From Haidar Pasha to the Cilician Gates the Railway was being operated by the Turkish Nationalist Government, although its utilization for commercial purposes was seriously curtailed by the Greco-Turkish War.[24]