File No. 367.116/511
If the Department approves, this Embassy will reply to the Sublime Porte
and will call its attention to the fact that what the American
Government complains of most seriously is the violation of the American
consular seals which had been placed upon these consulates in conformity
with the acceptance by the Sublime Porte of the protection of the
various belligerent interests in Turkey by the American
representatives.
[Enclosure—Translation]
The Turkish Ministry of Foreign
Affairs to the American
Embassy
No. G1. 84252/191
Constantinople,
July 2, 1916
.
Note Verbale
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has had the honor of receiving the
three notes which the Embassy of the United States of America was
pleased to address to it under date of October 15, November 4 and
16, and December 14, 1915, Nos. 836, 892, and 1032, concerning the
archives of certain consulates of the states with which the Imperial
Government is now at war.
It is true that in time of peace according to the terms of
international consular conventions, consulates do not enjoy
exterritoriality, but their official archives are inviolate.
In time of war, no engagement exists between the belligerent states
and if, in practice, the aforesaid inviolability can continue to be
respected as a measure of reciprocity, that is a simple tolerance,
an act of pure courtesy with respect to an enemy state which is
correct in its actions, and is not an obligation.
As the Imperial Ministry has already had occasion to inform the
Embassy of the United States, the Imperial Government had the
intention of respecting the said archives.
But in the light of the numerous violations committed by the enemy
states with regard to its own consulates, not only in its own
territories but also in neutral countries, it considered itself
justified, as a measure of reprisal, in departing from the line of
conduct which at the beginning it had fixed in this connection.
The Imperial Ministry could conceive how the enemy states should make
protests based upon universal international law if they themselves
had deserved [observed] the same.
The Imperial Ministry has been obliged on many occasions, as the
Embassy of the United States is aware, to protest concerning
violations committed against international law by said states.
It therefore considers it unnecessary to enumerate these violations
here.
It seems moreover that in the premises the enemy states could not be
justified in formulating complaints since they are not unaware that
the archives of Ottoman consulates have not been respected in
Russia, in Serbia, and even in Persia and at Saloniki. Still more
the said states have not even respected personal property of the
holders of these posts, which can not be justified from any point of
view.
One has therefore to ask how they can now complain against an act the
responsibility for which falls upon the states which were the first
to attack Ottoman consulates. In addition, the Imperial Government
is all the more justified in its behavior in this connection since,
although the archives of the Ottoman consulates did not contain any
compromising document, it has been demonstrated that in certain
regions of the Empire where certain powers had political aims, their
consulates observed an attitude which can not be reconciled with the
attributions which international law accords to them.
It is for the Embassy of the United States to bring the foregoing to
the knowledge of the interested Governments.
