Çerkesseyhizade Halil Halit

“ The women's bath is always crowded, and free fights for the fixed basins are of not unfrequent occurrence. Shrill voices, mingled with the howlings and cryings of children anxious to be taken out of the almost suffocating hot room, may sometimes be heard from outside. ”

“ Wives are not all religiously obedient in the East, just as all men are not tyrants. Religion, law, and custom impose upon men many duties to be discharged towards their wives. An honest man must discharge these duties, and indeed it is very difficult to find many men who are able to fulfil their obligations as husbands towards more than one wife. It has been proved that in many parts of the Ottoman empire the number of women does not exceed that of men, a fact which alone is enough to show the absurdity of the notion prevailing in England about the plurality of wives in that country. ”

“ One day we were allowed to go over the Golden Horn to visit Pera, the European quarter of the capital, where we were amazed at the evident signs of the prosperity and richness of its population. While we were enviously imagining how happy these people must be, an old man, who was guiding our little party, warned us that to set our ambitions on such worldly progress was not in accordance with the ideals of contentment of the faithful, and reminded us that "This world is the heaven of infidels." ”

“ Not only the thousands of Young-Turks who are in exile and in prisons, but also many thousands who are actually in the service of the Government, would only be too glad to escape abroad if they could get a chance. There is not one of them who is for a moment safe from the spies, and their flimsy but deadly accusations. ”

“ This sacred caravan starts from the Sultan's capital every year, about the middle of the Mohammedan lunar month of Ramazan. The boxes in which are contained the presents and gifts for the holy cities of Mecca and Medina are carried by camels with gorgeously ornamented saddles through the streets of Constantinople, while about a dozen Arabs, who are supposed to go with the caravan to Mecca, display their skill in swordsmanship in every crowded centre, their drummer playing rapidly and violently the while. ”

“ I may be asked why, if the opinion of my country is ripe enough for at least a partial emancipation of women, it is necessary to withhold it now? The reason can easily be found when one reflects upon the political situation of Turkey. That unhappy country has been suffering for over twenty-six years from a tyranny almost unparalleled in the history of mankind. The Sultan understands perfectly well the influence women might have in educating and enlightening the rising generation. ”

“ An ultra-patriotic evening paper once said that there could not be a better Caliph than the 'British Raj.' To make the Mussulmans recognise the 'British Raj.' as the supreme religious head of their community is as impossible and ridiculous as to attempt to convert this country to Islam. If Englishmen are really patriotic in guarding and promoting the interests and prestige of their country in the Islamic world, they should not attack the Ottoman Caliphate, but make good use of its influence. ”

“ The seclusion of women cannot be wholly attributed to the precepts of the religion of Islam. In the time of Prophet Mohammed, and for generations after, women used to accompany the armies to the battlefield, singing stirring melodies to encourage the fighting men, and tending those who were wounded. Even nowadays among the tribal people, such as nomadic Arabs, and among the Circassians, there is no such absurdly strict seclusion of women as is fostered by the harem system; yet those primitive people are much more earnestly devoted to that religion than the advanced Ottomans. ”

“ Decoration and promotion are not the only methods by which his Majesty imagines that he can gain attachment to himself. He takes a different way when it is the sympathy of foreigners he desires to win. It may, perhaps, be possible for the Sultan to induce foreign correspondents and the editors of some Continental journals to write nice things about him by offering them bakhsheesh or stars, or by giving them commercial, industrial, or other concessions in Turkey. But how is he to gain the golden opinions of the foreign rulers and statesmen interested in the Eastern Question? ”

“ Many homeless young vagrants go to this underground place at night in winter and sleep on the heaps of dried horse droppings which are used as fuel along with the wood, and which are piled up opposite the fireplace. It is a dismal sight to see those poor young fellows lying in that foul and filthy place. ”

“ The Armenians are an adventurous race; they can go anywhere, settle anywhere, and become subject to any State. Some years before the troubles, many of the foreign subject Armenians came over to Turkey, styling themselves Frenchmen, Englishmen and Americans, sometimes in the shape of missionaries, sometimes as teachers. These adventurers, together with the revolutionary Russian subject Armenians, who came mostly from the Caucasus, began to stir up the people of their own race all over Asiatic Turkey in favour of a national independence. ”

“ Although no Western Power has ever played a greater part in the problems of the Ottoman Empire than Great Britain, yet in no other country in Western Europe is Turkey more grossly misunderstood. I have been many times asked by my English acquaintances to write a book on Turkey from a Turkish point of view, and two ways of writing were suggested to me: the one was to compile a detailed work, the other to write a small and light book. ”

“ Thus the Young-Turkish movement is disorganised, but it has not been wholly suppressed. It may reorganise its forces, and continue its campaign against the Yildiz monsters, though in a pacific manner; because an armed uprising against the tyranny of Abd-ul-Hamid by the Turks alone would be represented in Europe as prelude to a 'massacre of the Christians.' Moreover, such a revolution would be a bloody one, for Yildiz Kiosk is guarded by armed men of different races, hostile to one another. ”

“ Before the reign of the present Sultan the centre of the ruling power in Turkey was the 'Sublime Porte' but since his accession, Yildiz Kiosk (his palace) has absorbed every scrap of authority in the country. Although, in diplomatic and journalistic language, the 'Porte' or 'Sublime Porte,' is still used as the name for the Government of Turkey, it can no longer be regarded as a correct one. ”

“ If the Turkish Government would make the women of harems discard their 'barbarous' veils, and go about like European women, and urge all its subjects to put on European costumes, and also hats instead of the fez or turban, its action would doubtless be hailed in many quarters as the real beginning of the civilisation of Turkey. ”

“ Each community speaks its own language, each native Christian community entertains, nowadays more or less without disguise, sentiments of animosity towards the Osmanlis, and even sympathises with the enemies of the Turkish empire in time of international trouble or war. These sentiments of the Eastern Christians are known to many politicians in this country, and they excuse these treasonable sentiments of their 'Christian brethren' by maintaining that they are the natural outcome of long years of oppression and persecution. ”

“ There are many blocks of barracks, thirty or forty yards apart from one another, all along the line of the wall In these barracks are quartered troops of various nationalities—Arab, Albanian, and Turkish. There is little friendliness or intercourse between the men of the different battalions; but all these simple-minded privates of the guard have been so carefully and systematically inspired with unhesitating loyalty towards their 'father,' as they call the Sultan, that they would quite willingly sacrifice the last drop of their blood in the defence of his precious life. ”

“ Shortly before the massacres, I heard many Turkish people, who had lived side by side with the Armenians for centuries, saying that it was a mistake to be angry with the Kurds for their treatment of the Armenians in Eastern Asia Minor, and that it was the right thing to crush these people. Then there came the dark days of those terrible massacres. The Armenian revolutionists, who ultimately managed to go abroad scot-free, gave great provocation by throwing dynamite bombs in many places and killing women and children of the Mussulman population. ”

“ Another plea for the admission of Christian subjects of Turkey into the army is that, as they are free from conscription, their men stay at home, work without hindrance, and look after the prosperity and welfare of their families uninterruptedly, and their number is on the increase as a consequence. It is quite true that compulsory military service is telling upon the Turkish nation alarmingly. A man is liable to fight from his twentieth year to his fortieth whenever he may be called upon to do so, and he is, of course, always liable to be killed. ”

“ In every international dispute Europe always regards you as in the wrong. Do you understand the reason of this universal hostility?" The diplomatist replied, "Because we are not Christians." "Exactly," said the Pontiff. "Then why do you not embrace Christianity?" ”

“ It is almost impossible for these people to comprehend that the present Sultan does not possess any of these good qualities, and is therefore quite unworthy of his office. The Sultan employs subtle methods that he may pose before the Mohammedans as the true Caliph and the sole champion of the Islamic cause, and spends immense sums of money for the same purpose. In reality, however, he should be known as the worst enemy of Islam, as no Moslem ruler has ever brought by his misdeeds so much shame upon his faith as he has. ”

“ The stove-room, where a huge fire is kept up day and night all the year round, is situated at the back of the bath building. It is underground, and a large portion of its floor is covered with piles of logs, the fuel used for heating the water of the bath. The furnace itself is very much like an oven upon which is placed a huge boiler. ”

“ The public baths in Turkey are mostly very old buildings, for, as in most towns, the Turkish population has not increased for many generations, only very few new baths have been erected. But in all the new houses of the well-to-do families there are miniature Turkish baths of two or three rooms. Still, notwithstanding their stuffy atmosphere, and the horrid-looking little vermin called 'bath locusts' that infest them, even rich people prefer to go to the large public baths. The baths in private houses are only occasionally heated, and so the temperature cannot be kept steady. ”

“ What the Circassian women do possess in distinction from those of other races of Eastern Europe and Western Asia is a greater animation of face, to which may be added a figure uniformly handsome and a bolder demeanour. They are for the most part slender; a fat woman is quite uncommon among Circassians of unmixed blood. Their complexions are usually fair; and it is more on account of her fair skin that the Circassian woman is so much admired by the comparatively dark people of Western Asia and Egypt than for her other physical qualities. ”

“ Although military service is obligatory in the Turkish empire, conscription is not universal; that is to say, the privileged natives of Constantinople, the inhabitants of all frontier districts, such as the Albanians and Kurdish clans and Arab tribes, are not forced to serve in the army. Moreover, the Armenians, Greeks, and non-Mussulman natives of the country are completely exempted from military service, and instead of serving as soldiers, each male member of these peoples pays a yearly exemption tax, the amount of which, if I am not mistaken, is about five or six shillings. ”

“ In one town, a man who, from the reports he had heard, was deeply in love with his betrothed, actually left the house and ran away when he drew up the long and beautifully embroidered veil that covered the lady, now his wife, and discovered that she was the ugliest creature his imagination could picture. ”

“ Every foreign colony forms a distinct imperium in imperio more markedly in Constantinople than in any other city of the Ottoman empire. Every individual foreigner enjoys extra-territorial privileges, such as in other countries could only be afforded to the diplomatic representatives of Foreign Powers. Whatever crime a foreign subject may commit, he is not amenable to the authority of the Ottoman Government The capitulation privileges of the foreign subjects granted in bygone centuries by the Ottoman rulers to European visitors, who were then few in number, were in reality acts of hospitality. ”

“ At present there are only two ways in which Turkish subjects can obtain a livelihood. Either they must be content to pocket their pride, and labour as workmen, small tradesmen, ordinary craftsmen, farm labourers, and so forth, or else they must somehow get a Government appointment A man of education must make a Government salary his ambition in life, and must direct all his energies to increasing it. It therefore follows that the number of unnecessary officials in Turkey is enormous, and consequently their salaries are small, and also constantly in arrears. ”

“ All members of my mother's family have a practical business-like instinct, a quality which is so conspicuously lacking in those Turks who have no strain of foreign blood. I am convinced that there is some European blood in the veins of my mother's ancestors. She belongs to a family of soldiers who for generations were charged by the Ottoman Sultans with the defence of the provinces and the frontiers of Bosnia and Herzegovina In those days the Turks used to make slaves of their captives in war, just as their enemies used to carry Turks into permanent captivity when invading their territory. ”

“ As a matter of fact, the sound of this instrument, like much other Oriental music, appears to European listeners dull and discordant, but it pleases the uncultivated taste of the ordinary Orientals. At the popular fêtes it is a very common thing to see many people, middle-aged as well as young, dancing together in a circle, while pipe and drum fill the air with ceaseless clamour. ”

“ Spies, who may be recognised by their treacherous and suspicious appearance, wander about in the immediate neighbourhood. The wretched public can nowadays see nothing but the arrival and the return of the troops. Woe to any educated-looking 'Young-Turk' who may be suspected by these dirty spies of attempting to approach the lines! Students of the military colleges are ordered not to go to the neighbourhood of the palace on that day. ”

“ The evils of the present Hamidian tyranny have destroyed all the confidence of the people in the new courts. Legal officers of capability and integrity are either exiled or appointed to courts in obscure corners of the empire, and the central courts are filled with the favourites of the Palace clique, and these creatures deal out 'justice' according to the will of the Palace. The Sultan has given them orders recently to condemn all opponents of his misrule. ”

“ There is a set of old women who make it their business to perform the operation every autumn, in the month of September, when the great heat is abated. People send to one another to know if any of their family has a mind to have the smallpox; they make parties for this purpose, and when they are met (commonly fifteen or sixteen together) the old woman comes with a nutshell full of the matter of the best sort of smallpox and asks what veins you please to have opened. ”

“ As I have been endeavouring to show throughout these chapters, the administration in the reign of Abd-ul-Hamid has been the most corrupt that our unfortunate country has ever known. No one, however highly qualified he may be, can get any employment in any Government department unless he is connected with some highly-placed creature of the Sultan, or unless he is able to bribe high officials, or is cunning enough to concoct some grave political charge against others and denounce them to the tyrant at Yildiz Kiosk. ”

“ If there had ever been a serious persecution particularly directed against the native Christians, there would not now be many Armenians or Greeks left alive in Turkey. In past ages they were entirely at the mercy of the Ottomans; there was no European Power, and no Concert of Powers, strong enough to stop the conversion or extermination of the non-Mussulman population of the Ottoman empire. ”

“ The Sultan's personal power—The unimportance of territories—"Après moi le deluge"—Interested Europe—The poor native Christians—'Squeezability' of the Sultan—Every man has his price—Bakhsheesh and decorations—The Sultan's vast ability—His favourite literature.
The object of the Sultan in sacrificing so much money, and in making such strenuous efforts to concentrate all the ruling power in his own hands, is simply that he may satisfy his extraordinary and insatiable lust of tyranny. ”

“ This indifference on the part of Englishmen is the chief reason why the prestige of Great Britain is doomed to disappear in the Levant. If the editors or writers of such productions as those I have quoted are also of the opinion that Englishmen do not now take an interest in the Turkish empire, I should think that, instead of filling up their pages with ridiculous inaccuracies, they would be better advised not to write anything on Turkey at all. ”