The Rebirth Of Turkey 1923.pdf/262

Exported from Wikisource on September 6, 2024

by which the Angora-Sivas line is to be connected via Caesarea with Ulu Kishla on the Bagdad Railway, and the Erzerum line is to be extended to Bayazid on the Persian frontier. The Erzerum and Bayazid lines in the eastern provinces are of obvious bearing on any future Russian attempt to repeat the great invasion of 1915-'16. They are of more meaning than that. At present Soviet Russia and Turkey are at peace with each other, and if and when the railway program which the Turkish Government has made over to the Chester group is completed, Russia may be afforded an overland outlet to the Mediterranean at Yamurtalik. The Russian and Turkish gauges differ, the former being 5 feet and the latter 4 feet 8-1/2 inches, but the political possibilities in affording Soviet Russia peacefully what Czarist Russia sought by force, are incalculable. Peaceful access to the Mediterranean over the Chester lines might easily reduce the Straits to a very small factor in Russia's foreign policy. While Turkey is not a Socialist State and presumably will not be, Russo-Turkish peace is the very foundation of any world peace and if the Chester group is able to contribute effectively to an enduring Russo-Turkish peace, it will perform a service of incalculable worth to the cause of world peace.

A month after the grant of the Chester Concession, Allied concessionaires began filtering into Angora from Constantinople, to begin economic negotiations with the Turkish Government simultaneously with the political negotiations which were dragging toward an end at Lausanne. These economic negotiations comprised four subjects: (1)

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The Rebirth Of Turkey 1923.pdf/262

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