Arnold Toynbee

“ The Arabs created a wonderful civilisation at the time when Medieval Europe was in its darkest age. Their discoveries in mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, medicine, are the foundations of modern science, as is witnessed by the Arabic words in our scientific vocabulary. This Arabic civilisation was swamped by the Turkish migrations from Central Asia in the 11th century, and blotted out by the Mongols, who followed in the wake of the Turks and sacked Baghdad, the Arab capital, in the 13th century. ”

“ In the settlement of Turkey, conspicuously, the Allies will be crowning a historic task, at which they themselves have laboured in former times. The liberation of the subject peoples of Turkey, and the reorganisation upon the principle of nationalities of countries under the Sultan’s murderous tyranny, began a century ago with the national struggles for independence of the Serbs and Greeks—struggles which were part of the general struggle for freedom in Europe, and which gave inspiration to the people of other subject lands. ”

“ Constantinople, since the Turks conquered it from its last Christian Emperor in 1453, has been the political capital of the Ottoman Empire. But ever since it has been a city at all, it has also been the strategical and economic key to the Black Sea, conditioning the security and dominating the economic development of all peoples bordering on the Black Sea coasts. It is the most cosmopolitan city in the world. ”

“ No one who has studied the history of the Near East for the last five centuries will be surprised that the Allied Powers have declared their purpose to put an end to the rule of the Turk in Europe, and still less will he dissent from their determination to deliver the Christian population of what is called the Turkish Empire, whether in Asia or in Europe, from a Government which during those five centuries has done nothing but oppress them. ”

“ In Syria there is a reign of terror. The Arab leaders have been imprisoned, executed, or deported already, and the mass of the people lie paralysed, expecting the Armenians’ fate and, dreading every moment to hear the decree of extermination go forth.
This wholesale destruction, which has already overtaken two of the subject peoples in Turkey, and threatens all that 60 per cent. of the population which is not Turkish in language, is the direct work of the Turkish government. ”

“ That is why the control of the Straits, as well as the dominion over subject peoples, must be taken from the Ottoman Turks in the reorganisation of Europe, guaranteed by a stable settlement, which is the aim of the Allies. But neutrals, rightly anxious for a peace as speedy as may be compatible with the attainment of the essential objects at stake, may ask whether either or both [26] of the objects essential to the settlement of the Turkish Empire are not attainable by less drastic measures than a redrawing of frontiers and a transference of territorial sovereignty. ”

“ It was to end it that the Young Turks entered the war on Germany’s side; for foreign control automatically breaks down if one Great Power, and still more if a group of two Powers, stands out of the Concert, renounces responsibility for the policy of the Turkish government towards the subject peoples and the economic highways which it holds in its power, and supports that government effectively in repudiating all claim to intervention on the part of the other Powers concerned. ”

“ British diplomacy was constantly exerted on this behalf, and British belief in this policy was so sincere that half a century ago Great Britain embarked in pursuit of it on a bloody war with one of her present allies. If Great Britain is now a convinced adherent of the alternative and more drastic settlement, it is because the system of joint European control, after a century of experiment which perpetuated and aggravated the ancient tyranny, bloodshed and despair, has been made finally impossible by the present War. ”

“ Actually, however, the Young Turks, after they had destroyed the Missionaries’ work by exterminating the subject peoples among whom it was principally carried on, dragging away to exile, shame and death the boys and girls in their schools, torturing to death the native professors whom the Missionaries had trained up to be their colleagues, have finally confiscated the American schools, colleges and mission-stations in many parts of the Empire, and have put the harshest pressure on the Missionaries themselves to quit the country of which they are the benefactors. ”

“ Debauching one of the Balkan States by gorging her with spoil from the rest, they hope to stamp out liberty in the Balkans altogether, to reconquer for Militarism the field which the 19th century won here for Democracy, and to build over it a bridge by which three tyrant peoples, the Prussian, the Magyar and the Turk, shall join hands in dominating and destroying without interference a multitude of smaller and weaker peoples from Alsace to Rumania and from Schleswig to Baghdad. ”

“ The non-Turkish peoples thus amount to more than 60 per cent. of the population of Turkey. They were all of them settled in the country before the Turks arrived—the Turks conquered Asia Minor about the time the Normans conquered England, while several of the conquered races have lived there from time immemorial—and all these races have been at their lowest ebb since and so long as they have been under Turkish Government.
The Greeks were leaders of civilisation in the Ancient World and in the Middle Ages, till the Greek Empire of Constantinople was conquered by the Turks in 1453. ”

“ The Arabs are still the most progressive race in the Islamic world; they are almost as numerous as the Turks in the population of the Ottoman Empire, and they are not divided from the Turks by difference of religion. Yet the Turkish government excludes them from all share of control, and has thwarted their revival as persistently as it has thwarted that of the Armenians and Greeks. ”

“ In the Balkan War of 1912-13, the Balkan nations carried on the work by their unaided strength, and expelled the Ottoman Empire from all the provinces over which it still tyrannised in Europe, with the exception of Constantinople and Thrace. In 1916, the Sherif of Mecca, at the opposite extremity of the Ottoman conqueror’s domain, liberated an Arab province and the Holy Arab City of which he is the legitimate head. It is for the Entente to liberate the Arabs of Syria and the Armenians, who cannot save themselves. ”

“ In their case the Turks have not destroyed an existing civilisation, but have prevented them acquiring civilisation when they showed inclination to do so. The Kurd has been a lawless mountain shepherd for many centuries, but he becomes a hard-working, peaceable cultivator when he comes down into the plains. The Turkish government deliberately checked this tendency, which began to show itself in the Kurds about half a century ago, by serving out arms to them and licensing them to harry their Armenian neighbours. ”

“ The Greeks who have remained under Turkish government have also remained cut off from Greek national life.
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The Armenians were the first people to make Christianity their national religion. They are an intellectual people, clever and industrious in practical affairs and in the life of the spirit. When they possessed an independent kingdom they produced a fine literature and architecture, which Turkish conquest destroyed. Since then the Turks have repressed all symptoms of Armenian revival by massacres, the most terrible of which was perpetrated last year. ”

“ The third stage has been introduced by the Young Turks, and they have been destroying the subject races by systematic government action—a government employing its resources in the murder of its own people. And this has been carried on with redoubled vigour and ruthlessness since the Turkish Government entered the War, and has been sure of Germany’s support in defying the civilised world.
The Young Turks are “Nationalists” who have learnt in the German and Magyar school. Their national idea is to impose their own nationality by force on others. ”

“ That the faults of Turkish government are incurable, has been most clearly shown by the fact that the Young Turkish gang who gained power when they had deposed Abd-ul-Hamid, have surpassed even that monster of cruelty in their slaughter of the unoffending Armenians. ”

“ It is the Turk’s at present by right of conquest, but that right justifies his expulsion by war if it justifies his original intrusion, and on broader considerations of population, sentiments, traditions and monuments of the past, Constantinople is more truly the capital of all the Christian peoples of the East. ”

“ But this was the bargain struck between Germany and the Young Turks when Turkey attacked the Allies, without provocation, in October, 1914. The Young Turks placed all their economic and military resources at Germany’s disposal. Turkish troops (including of course the due percentage of conscripts from the subject peoples) , are fighting Germany’s battles on the Riga, Halicz and Dobrudja fronts. The vast undeveloped economic resources of the Empire are, in the event of victory, to be thrown open to German exploitation when peace returns. ”

“ To complete the elimination of every non-Turkish element in the Empire, they are now trying to rid themselves of the American Missionaries.
The Campaign Against the Missionaries.
The attitude of the Young Turks towards the Missionaries shows that their “Nationalism” [30] has made them not only criminal but insane. The American Missionaries have worked in Turkey for more than eighty years. Their aim has been to revive religion in the subject Christian peoples and to give them an enlightened modern education ”

“ If they had not had the moral and military support of Germany, the Young Turks would never have been able to wage this final campaign of extermination upon every element of good in the countries and the peoples that are in their power. ”

“ These crimes, and the phases of Ottoman History which lead up to them, demonstrate, in the language of the Allies’ Note, that “the Ottoman Empire has proved itself radically alien to Western Civilisation.” Where Ottoman rule has spread, civilisation has perished. While [18] Ottoman rule has lasted, civilisation has remained in abeyance. It has only sprung up again when the oppressed peoples, at the cost of their own blood and by the aid of civilised nations more fortunate than themselves, have succeeded in throwing off the Turkish yoke ”

“ If a Turkish Sultanate is to be left in being at all, it may, with least injury to the world, be suffered to exist in Central and Northern Asia Minor, where the population is mainly Mussulman, and there are comparatively few Christians—and those only in the cities—to suffer from its misgovernment. ”

“ Germany, who has not, like the Allies, met President Wilson’s request because she is ashamed of her aims and dare not face the reception they would have among all the free democratic peoples of the civilised world, will doubtless take what advantage she can of the Allies’ franker and more honourable rejoinder. In anticipation of such insidious manœuvres, the Murderous Tyranny of the Turks, both during the War and for centuries before it, has been set forth here for the judgment of the reader. ”

“ But even they are not the parties most vitally concerned in the economic status of Constantinople and the Straits. If conditions do not suit them, they can transfer their business elsewhere. The parties to whom the destiny of Constantinople is a matter of life and death are Russia and Rumania, two countries bound for ever by their geographical position to conduct their maritime trade through the Black Sea and the Straits that give entrance to it, and therefore at the mercy economically of any third power that holds the control of the Straits in its hands. ”

“ Only a third of the two million Armenians in Turkey have survived, and that at the price of apostatising to Islam or else of leaving all they had and fleeing across the frontier. The refugees saw their women and children die by the roadside, and apostacy too, for a woman, involved the living death of marriage to a Turk and inclusion in his harem. ”

“ Thanks to their schools, foreigners were able to exercise great influence over the young men of the country, and they were virtually in charge of the spiritual and intellectual guidance of our country. ”

“ It is a practical problem for the national economy of Russia every year, and introduces a factor of uncertainty into Russia’s national trading which is profoundly detrimental to her prosperity. As sovereign of the Straits, Turkey not only [24] possesses the technical right of closing the Straits to shipping ”

“ They ought to have come more than a century ago, because it had then already become manifest that the Turk was hopelessly unfit to govern, with any approach to justice, subject races of a different religion. ”