Page:The Rebirth Of Turkey 1923.pdf/230

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the Ministry of Public Works but in a re-shuffle of the Cabinet, he presently displaced Fevzi Pasha as Prime Minister, a position more nearly commensurate with his very high abilities. The Ministry of Finance was elevated to an actual, as distinct from a figurehead, authority and the Near East Relief's representatives who had been accustomed to consulting Rafet Pasha on matters of mutual interest, now found themselves referred to Hassan Tahsin Bey, Minister of Finance, when they desired to obtain exemption of relief supplies from the payment of customs duties. Rafet Pasha had been accustomed to pass on their applications as if they were personal matters, but Tahsin Bey was a stranger. With the regime of the Capitulations ended, Americans were finding themselves in a position in which it became necessary to treat a Government official in Turkey as though he were a Government official. For some Americans, the change has proven, and is still proving, a difficult one.

In the meantime, the Foreign Office which had been housed in the old Public Debt building, had signed a treaty of mutual recognition with Soviet Russia on March 16, 1921, at the same time as a similar Russo-Persian treaty was being signed. In the Russo-Turkish treaty, full Russian recognition was given to the Erzerum program, including that clause of it respecting Constantinople and the Straits. No more vivid illustration exists of the meaning of the Russian Revolution than the contrast between the Russo-Turkish Treaty of 1921 and the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1907.

The application of the provisions of the 1921