The National Bank of Turkey was founded in 1909.Marian Kent (1975). Agent of Empire? The National Bank of Turkey and British Foreign Policy. The Historical Journal, 18, pp 367-389 doi:10.1017/ S0018246X00023736 The majority capital came from founding shareholders Sir Ernest Cassel, Lord Revelstoke and Sir Alexander Henderson.John Burman Politics and Profit:The National Bank of Turkey Revisited Oriens (Brill) Vol.37 (2009) pp = 225-236 jstor= 25759078 The initial impetus for the bank's creation came about as a result of the

Young Turk Revolution The Young Turk Revolution (July 1908) was a constitutionalist revolution in the Ottoman Empire. The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), an organization of the Young Turks movement, forced Sultan Abdul Hamid II to restore the Ottoman Consti ...

.Jonathan Conlin (2016): Debt, diplomacy and dreadnoughts: the National Bank of Turkey, 1909–1919, Middle Eastern Studies, DOI: 10.1080/00263206.2015.1124418

Background of British Interests

Britain and France had signed the

Entente Cordiale The Entente Cordiale (; ) comprised a series of agreements signed on 8 April 1904 between the United Kingdom and the French Republic which saw a significant improvement in Anglo-French relations. Beyond the immediate concerns of colonial de ...

in 1904; in Constantinople, the French financiers were predominant through the

Imperial Ottoman Bank The Ottoman Bank ( tr, Osmanlı Bankası), known from 1863 to 1925 as the Imperial Ottoman Bank (french: Banque Impériale Ottomane, ota, بانق عثمانی شاهانه) and correspondingly referred to by its French acronym BIO, was a bank ...

leading to an attempt to improve the British position via the creation of a new Anglo-French financial enterprise, the Ottoman Society. Progress was slow due to French reluctance to dilute their competitive position and then overtaken by news in late 1908 of the proposed National Bank of Turkey (NBT) which, according to the Foreign Office was "not initiated or suggested by us, and is carried out independently of us". Cassel, who was to have been involved in the Ottoman Society, also turned out to be involved with NBT, later bringing in Henderson and then Revelstoke. The Foreign office was kept informed at all stages and Edward Grey later in 1909 played a part in securing the services of

Henry Babington Smith Sir Henry Babington-Smith (29 January 1863 – 29 September 1923) was a senior British civil servant, who served in a wide range of posts overseas, mostly financial, before becoming a director of the Bank of England. He was related to the Babi ...

as President of NBT, later saying in a memorandum of an interview with a member of the London Committee of the Ottoman Bank:

"... we had no interest in Sir Ernest Cassel's Bank. The Turks had taken the initiative and had arranged the matter independently with Sir Ernest Cassel... I had certainly supported the scheme to the extent of encouraging Sir Henry Babington Smith to accept Sir Ernest Cassel's offer. The selection had been made by Sir Ernest Cassel himself."

and when asked whether the Foreign Office intended to give exclusive support to Cassel's Bank in obtaining concessions at Constantinople, Grey replied:

"..that if need be, we should certainly represent to the Turks that an institution which had been brought into existence as a direct result of their own initiative and representations ought not to be excluded from concessions. But when occasion arose for me to support the Bank's claims I should do what I could to encourage co-operation with French finance."

Founding

The Young Turks had asked

Boghos Nubar Boghos Nubar ( hyw, Պօղոս Նուպար), also known as Boghos Nubar Pasha () (2 August 1851 – 25 June 1930), was a chairman of the Armenian National Delegation, and the founder, alongside ten other Armenian national movement leaders, of th ...

Pasha and Calouste Gulbenkian to form NBT, as evidenced by a letter of 7 December 1908 that included an NBT prospectus, from Frederick Lane (shipping broker, Rothschilds’ agent and Gulbenkian associateMarian Kent 1976 Oil & Empire:British Policy and Mesopotamian Oil 1900-1920 Macmillan Press ) to Hugo Loudon of

Royal Dutch Shell Shell plc is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England. Shell is a public limited company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New Yo ...

Mesopotamian Oil

In the early 1900s

Deutsche Bank Deutsche Bank AG (), sometimes referred to simply as Deutsche, is a German multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Sto ...

, through the

Anatolian Railway Company The Chemins de Fer Ottomans d'Anatolie ( tr, Osmanlı Anadolu Demiryolları, en, Anatolian Railway), founded on 4 October 1888, was a railway company that operated in the Ottoman Empire.William D’Arcy, who had the Persian oil concession since 1901, also sought a concession in Mesopotamia and by 1907, were in the running due to the German side having been lax in procedure. The same year,

(RDS) opened a Constantinople office, run by Gulbenkian. In 1908, following the

Young Turk revolution The Young Turk Revolution (July 1908) was a constitutionalist revolution in the Ottoman Empire. The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), an organization of the Young Turks movement, forced Sultan Abdul Hamid II to restore the Ottoman Consti ...

, everybody had to start over. In 1908, D'Arcy incorporated as D'Arcy Exploration Co. and transferred all his oil claims in Mesopotamia and Persia to Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC). More interested parties and more schemes appeared on the scene, though by 1912, nothing had really changed. During 1912, Gulbenkian was setting the foundation for a new scheme, the

Turkish Petroleum Company The Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), formerly known as the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC), is an oil company that had a virtual monopoly on all oil exploration and production in Iraq between 1925 and 1961. It is jointly owned by some of the world's ...

, owned as to 50% by NBT (inclusive 15% nonvoting beneficial to Gulbenkian), 25% RDS and 25% Deutsche Bank (in consideration of their oil claims). On 19 March 1914, the British and German governments signed an agreement whereby the interest of NBT in TPC was transferred to APOC.Earle, Edward Meade (1924) The Turkish Petroleum Company:A Study in Oleaginous Diplomacy,

Political Science Quarterly ''Political Science Quarterly'' is an American double blind peer-reviewed academic journal covering government, politics, and policy, published since 1886 by the Academy of Political Science. Its editor-in-chief is Robert Y. Shapiro (Columbia U ...

, vol 39, no.2,pp.265-279

Later Developments

In 1918-1919 the NBT was acquired by the British Trade Corporation (BTC), an investment bank that had been created in 1917 to support the war effort. BTC in turn merged in 1926-1927 with the

Anglo-Austrian Bank The Anglo-Österreichische Bank (), in shorthand Anglobank, was a bank founded in Vienna in 1863 with an extensive branch network in the Habsburg Monarchy and later in its successor states, primarily Austria and Czechoslovakia. Following the c ...

(established in 1863) to form the Anglo-International Bank. What remained of the NBT was eventually wound up in 1931.

Notes

References

{{reflist 1909 establishments in the Ottoman Empire 1931 disestablishments in Turkey Banks established in 1909

Bank A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets. Because ...