Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/363

 3. A line from Oulu Kishla, on the Bagdad Railway, to Sivas via Kaisarieh.

4. A trans-Armenian railway from Sivas to Kharput, Arghana, Diarbekr, Mosul, and Suleimanieh, including branches to Bitlis and Van.

5. A railway from Kharput to Youmourtalik, a port on the Gulf of Alexandretta.

No more elaborate project for railway construction in Asiatic Turkey has ever been incorporated in a definitive concession. That it should be entrusted to American promoters and American engineers is one of the most significant developments in the long and involved history of the Eastern Question.

But the Chester concessions do not stop at railway construction alone. As in the case of the Bagdad Railway, the Turkish Government is obliged to offer the financiers powerful inducements to the investment of capital in railway enterprises which, in themselves, may be unremunerative for a time. The German promoters of the Bagdad Railway obtained a kilometric guarantee, or subsidy; the American promoters of the Chester lines are granted exclusive rights to the exploitation of all mineral resources, including oil, lying within a zone of twenty kilometres on each side of the railway lines. The Bagdad Railway mortgaged the revenues of Imperial Turkey; the Chester concessions mortgage the natural resources of Nationalist Turkey. The Ottoman-American Development Company, furthermore, is authorized to carry out important enterprises subsidiary to the construction of the railway lines and the exploitation of the mines aforementioned. It may, for example, lay such pipe lines as are necessary to the proper development of the petroleum wells lying within its zone of operations. It is permitted to utilize water-power along the line of its railways and to instal hydro-electric