File 1356/1912 Pt 1 'Turco-Persian Frontier:- negotiations at Constantinople.' [‎413r] (835/885)

CONFIDENTIAL.
This Document is the 'property of the Secretary of State for India in
Council.
India Office The department of the British Government to which the Government of India reported between 1858 and 1947. The successor to the Court of Directors. ,
2* June 1911.
Sir, f
In continuation of tlie letter of this Office dated the 12th inetent^
as to arrangements for the con
servancy of the Shatt-al-Arab, I am
directed by the Secretary of State
for India to address you regarding
the further correspondence mar
ginally quoted* that is now before
the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
In so far as concerns the wording of the Treaty of Erzeroum (1848),
the Earl of Crewe recognizes that it might be taken to imply the right of
* Admiralty letter to India Office The department of the British Government to which the Government of India reported between 1858 and 1947. The successor to the Court of Directors. ,
M 6550, dated 17tli May 1911. (Duplicate
to Foreign Office).
Telegram of Political Resident A senior ranking political representative (equivalent to a Consul General) from the diplomatic corps of the Government of India or one of its subordinate provincial governments, in charge of a Political Residency. , Persian
Gulf, to Government of India, dated 25th
April 1911,
Viceroy’s telegram, dated 16th May
1911.
Turkey to control the Shatt-al-Arab from bank to bank, subject only to
free liberty being accorded to Persia to navigate it.
This view might find support in the suggestions of the Mediating
Commissioners in 1850, regarding the boundary in the neighbourhood of
Mohammera. In this connexion I am to solicit reference to the corre
spondence ending with this Office letter of 26th August 1910, and to say
that the Earl of Crewe does not altogether share the opinion of his
predecessor on the question therein discussed. That the Turks are in
possession of the Commissioners’ map, which would appear to assign to
them the whole of the river, is undoubtedly inconvenient, as is also the
circumstance that the two Powers pressed the Porte in 1850 to accept the
Commissioners’ line. But the Porte declined to do so, and in His Lord-
ship’s opinion the situation thus created must be held to be governed by the
communication made to them in 1869, when the representatives of the
Powers handed in a map on which no line at all was drawn. This
identic map seems to have been the basis of all subsequent discussions,
and Lord Crewe sees no reason for going behind it, or for permitting the
Turks to go behind it to an earlier map, which their own ill-judged
action had caused to be superseded. It might further be pointed out to
the Turkish Government, if necessary, that by their rejection of the line
proposed in 1850, they have allowed a situation to grow for 60 years in
which mid-channel has, without challenge, been accepted by local
usage as the boundary, and that this is consequently the status quo on
the observance of which His Majesty’s Government must insist.
As regards the approaches to the Shatt-al-Arab, as distinct from the
channel, there may be presumed to be no question but that Turkish and
Persian rights are regulated by general considerations of international
law, instead of exceptional treaty stipulations. Subject, therefore, to
The Under Secretary of State,
Foreign Office.