the beginnings of ottoman-german partnership - Bilkent University

extending the Anatolian Railroads to the southern end of Iraq. For the Germans, it
was a part of the penetration pacifique plan, which had been advocated and
supported since the 1870s by the German orientalists who hoped to dominate the
Arab portions of the Empire by colonizing them. Germany also worked to take over
the Baghdad Railway Project as a means of counteracting French and British
economic and political expansion elsewhere in the Middle East.
When Abdulhamid was convinced that Turkey should stop its dependency
on British diplomacy before it was too late, Germany presented itself as a good
option. Although far from being allied to Germany, the Ottoman Empire under the
Sultan’s leadership used German economic interests as a political and diplomatic tool
against Britain and France. In 1888, with the initiatives of Alfred Kaulla and Georg
von Siemens, a German syndicate had obtained a concession to build a railway from
İzmit to Ankara. In 1889, The Anatolian Railway Company (Societe du Chemin de
Fer Ottoman d’Anatolie) was established, with Otto von Kühlmann, a leading
official of the German Foreign Office, as its director. This was followed almost
immediately by Kaiser Wilhelm II’s first visit to the Ottoman Empire, culminating in
the signature of the Turkish-German Trade Agreement on August 28, 1890. 40
The 1888 concession marked the beginning of German economic
influence. Naturally the German government favored these developments,
which received powerful backing from the able ambassador sent to
Istanbul in 1897, Baron Marschall von Biberstein. Within a few years he
had acquired a dominant situation in the Turkish capital, while the
efficiency of German promoters, bankers, traders, engineers,
manufacturers, ship-owners and railway builders soon undermined French
and British interests and created something like a German economic
empire in the Near East. 41
40
Rathmann, Lothar. Alman Emperyalizminin Türkiye’ye Girişi, (İstanbul: Gözlem Yayınları, 1976),
pp.59-60.
41
J. P. T. Bury, ‘Diplomatic History (1900-1912)’ in The Shifting Balance of World Forces (1898-
1945), The New Cambridge Modern History (Vol. XII), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1968), p. 115.
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