which the Government had formulated, was made over to the Ottoman-American Company by the Grand National Assembly and on April 30, the Minister of Public Works signed a convention with two representatives of the Company for what has long been famous as the Chester Concession.
This Turkish program falls into three parts—the construction of 2,714 miles of new railway line, the construction of a new capital city at Angora and of ports at Samsun, Yamurtalik and Trebizond together with the re-construction of towns and villages wrecked by the Greeks, and the exploitation of mineral rights within twenty-kilometer zones on each side of the new railway lines. The convention with the Chester group runs for a term of ninety-nine years unless the Turkish Government chooses to exercise its right of purchase after thirty years. The Turkish company which is to operate the new railway lines is to pay thirty percent of its profits to the Government and is to be subject to all Turkish taxation except customs duties on its construction materials and its coal, the latter of which is to be exempt for a period of ten years only. The company may employ foreign experts (the original Chester project of 1909 stipulated that they were to wear the fez and a Government uniform), but Turks are to be trained to take their places and the labor gangs are to be purely Turkish. There is no kilometric guarantee, nor does the Concession add any financial burden to the burdens which the Turkish Government already bears, until such time as the Government may decide to take over the lines.
The backbone of this Turkish program is its
