Ottoman Government

“ France had been on the friendliest terms with the Ottoman Government since the time of Francis I and her financiers naturally felt that the much coveted concession should be awarded to them as citizens of the most favored nation. ”

“ The Ottoman Government and its allies, whose good name is almost as seriously compromised as the Ottoman name by the facts, may be expected to make what capital they can out of the precautions imposed by their own treatment of their Christian subjects, and to impugn the genuineness of the documents that have been edited in the way here described. ”

“ The object of the 'Corps de Droit Ottoman' is, within the restrictions indicated above, to bring within reach of the most inexperienced, and to render of easy reference to the expert, the domestic legislation of the Ottoman Government, which plays so large a part in the everyday life of the Levant and which has hitherto only been ascertainable, if at all, in inconvenient and incomprehensible forms at an extravagant expenditure of time, money, and influence. ”

“ Yet many still think that the Ottoman Empire is a great one, a powerful government. They look at the Sultan and his dominion through a magnifying glass. This shows ignorance. The Turks are decayed and are decaying. The sick man of Turkey is the dead man of Turkey, and ought to be buried, but the European powers do not bury him because there are precious stones and jewelry in the coffin; no matter how bad the corpse smells, they will endure it. And the bad smell of the Sultan is killing hundreds of thousands of Christians ”

“ This people, still nomad, has taken nothing from the West but a misunderstood, misapplied idea of representative Government which failed at its inception and has hastened the downfall of the Ottoman Empire in Europe. ”

“ The belief in the imminent collapse of the Ottoman dominion was weakened almost to extinction; so was the belief, which inspired the treaty of 1856, in the capacity of Turkey to reform and develop itself on European lines. But the Ottoman empire remained, the mistress of vast undeveloped wealth. The remaining phase of the Eastern Question, if we except the concerted efforts to impose good government on Macedonia in the interests of European peace, or the side issues in Egypt and Arabia, was the rivalry of the progressive nations for the right to exploit this wealth. ”

“ Neither the geographical position nor the economic wealth of the Ottoman Empire, however, need have been a cause for its exploitation by foreigners. Had the Sultan’s Government been strong—powerful enough to present determined resistance to domestic rebellion and foreign intrigue—Turkey would not have been an imperial problem. But Abdul Hamid and his successors, the Young Turks, showed themselves incapable of governing a vast empire and a heterogeneous population. ”

“ Such territories as Turkey holds in Europe, such control as she possesses over the free passage of the Straits must pass from her, and the alien peoples, who for centuries have fainted and bled underneath her infamous yoke, must be led out of the land of bondage. As we have seen throughout preceding chapters, it was the fixed policy of the Ottoman Government to rid itself of their presence, and already it has gone far in its murderous mission. Indeed the avowed aims of the Allies, when accomplished, will do that work for her, for the Allies are determined to remove those peoples from Turkey. ”

“ The large Persian community, rich, influential and safely placed under the protection of the Turkish government, has more than once tendered advice to the struggling factions of its native country, and more than once the advice has been in the nature of a command. The European is not accustomed to think of the Ottoman Empire as a haven of refuge for the oppressed, but the Persian, comparing Turkish administration with his own, regards it as an unattainable standard of tranquillity and equity. ”

“ A successful revolt of the Arab-speaking provinces would indeed sound the death-knell of the Ottoman Empire. No other event would be so immediately and surely catastrophic.
The third element in Osmanli prestige, inherent qualities of the Osmanli ‘Turk’ himself, will be admitted by every one who knows him and his history. To say that he has the ‘will to power’ is not, however, to say that he has an aptitude for government. He wishes to govern others; his will to do so imposes itself on peoples who have not the same will ”

“ The experience of the recent war and the prospect in the future made continuance and accentuation of military government in the Ottoman Empire inevitable. The Committee, which had made its way back to power by violent methods, now suppressed its own Constitution almost as completely as Abdul Hamid had suppressed Midhat’s parliament. Re-organization of the military personnel, accumulation of war material, strengthening of defences, provision of arsenals, dockyards, and ships, together with devices for obtaining money to pay for all these things, make Ottoman history for the years 1912-14. ”

“ Obedient and submissive as they have generally shown themselves under the Ottoman rule, they have inwardly always disliked and distrusted it, saying that the government with regard to their country, its richest field of harvest, has only one object in view—that of getting as much out of it as possible. ”

“ Blood. Turkey, the Ottoman state, is not a unity, climatic, geographical, racial, or economic; it is a pretension, enforced by bloodshed and violence whenever and wherever the Osmanli Government has power. ”

“ But whatever be the merit or the feasibility of this plan, it presupposes not only a design on the part of Russia to advance upon Constantinople, which is doubtful, but a degree of energy in the Turkish government and military commanders which it is almost certain does not exist. The Ottoman power is to all appearance perishing of inanition, and the mere hastening of its dissolution through external shocks is not to be deprecated. ”

“ Kaleidoscopic indeed have been the changes in the Near East since the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. The economic and political power of Germany in Anatolia, Syria, and Mesopotamia has been completely destroyed. The Ottoman Empire has disappeared, and in its place has risen a republican Nationalist Turkey. ”

“ It is true that the Porte has not been secured from ambition of all kinds—from all the chances of the future; but, at all events, we have an official instrument, signed by all the great powers of Europe, which admits Turkey into the European law, which declares that it is the intention of all the great powers to respect the inviolability of the Sultan’s rights, and to consolidate the repose of the Ottoman Empire. ”

“ From the first the aim of the Nationalists, who thus formed so deadly a blend with the Young Turk party, was Ottomanisation, or the establishment within the Empire of an Ottoman domination which should be pure and undefiled, and in which none of the subject peoples, be they Armenians or Kurds, Arabs or Greeks or Jews, Christian or Moslem, should have any part. ”

“ The religious prestige of the Ottoman power as the repository of caliphial authority and trustee for Islam in the Holy Land of Arabia, is an asset almost impossible to estimate. Would a death struggle of the Osmanlis in Europe rouse the Sunni world? Would the Moslems of India, Afghanistan, Turkestan, China, and Malaya take up arms for the Ottoman sultan as caliph? ”

“ The difference, however, which existed between the Turks and the other barbarians who conquered the West, was, that the jealous despotism of the sultans never allowed fiefs to become hereditary, or that an aristocracy should grow up round it, as in the monarchies of Christendom. Thus in the Turkish empire nothing was to be seen on one side, but the authority of an absolute master; and on the other, nothing but a military democracy. The Ottoman monarchy was thus built upon that which is weakest in political societies—the will of a single man, or that of the multitude. ”

“ It was with forces thus constituted that the Ottomans extended their Empire up to and beyond the Danube. The conquests of the larger part of Asia Minor, of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt, were also effected, by composite forces, to which Serbia and Wallachia sent contingents by virtue of treaties with the Porte. The greater number of Ottoman generals who distinguished themselves in these early days of conquest were not of Turkish race, but were Greeks, Albanians, Slavs, and Italians, who had embraced Islam or whose forbears had done so. ”

“ We will take these two avowed aims of the Allies in order, and first try to draw (though with diffident pencil) some sketch of what will be the confines of the Ottoman Empire, when we pluck the fruits of the great crusade against the barbarism of Turkey and of Germany. It is quite useless to attempt to keep the map as it was, and peg out claims within the Empire where we shall proclaim that Arabs and Greeks and Armenians shall live in peace, for it is exactly that plan which has formed a century's failure. ”

“ Certainly there is not now a single sensible and sincere man who does not desire the preservation of the Ottoman empire; who does not wish that England and France would take such a resolution as should seriously ensure its perfect independence—its full sovereignty; and spare the civilized world the pain of constantly hearing these unjust and barbarous words.—The partition—the dismemberment of Turkey ! Dismember Turkey ! Why not rather Austria or Russia ? ”

“ In Turkey, the Young Turks, who only maintained their power with the help of the Germans, counted on them to resist the Russian pretensions to Constantinople and to check all the English and Italian claims and demands, which would cause the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. ”

“ When Turkey has finally jettisoned those encumbrances, the European vilayets, and withdrawn to Asia Minor, the Ottoman Empire will probably gain considerably in strength by consolidation, and by carrying out many social and economical reforms which have been kept in abeyance during the constant trouble caused by the war-clouds that hung over Eastern Europe. A strong Turkish Empire in Asia Minor, real control over the tribes in Syria, strict surveillance of the eastern and north-eastern frontiers, will mean some prospect of peace in those very unsettled regions. ”

“ A generation that has watched the decay of the Turkish power in Europe and the successive curtailment of its territorial possessions, and is accustomed to hearing it spoken of as the “sick man,” destined to a speedy dissolution, must find it difficult to realise the feelings which the Ottoman empire inspired in the early days of its rise in Europe. The rapid and widespread success of the Turkish arms filled men’s minds with terror and amazement. One Christian kingdom after another fell into their hands: Bulgaria, Servia, Bosnia, and Hungary yielded up their independence as Christian states. ”

“ Are the Arab-speaking peoples, therefore, likely to revolt, or be successful in splitting the Ottoman Empire, if they do? The present writer would like to say, in parenthesis, that, in his opinion, this consummation of the empire is not devoutly to be wished. The substitution of Arab administration for Osmanli would necessarily entail European tutelage of the parts of the Arab-speaking area in which powers, like ourselves, have vital interests—Syria, for example, southern Mesopotamia, and, probably, Hejaz. ”

“ The officials pass their lives in proposing, and his Majesty very generally spends his time in opposing, all manner of schemes, good, bad, and indifferent. The contradictory nature of the system produces the anomalous position occupied by the Ottoman Empire in Europe. ”

“ But, fortunately for those who are able to read the signs of the times, there are well-grounded hopes for a change for the better—for a return to the position among nations which the Ottoman Empire occupied when its schools and scholars were as famed as were its achievements on land and sea—when the followers of Osman shall be as far in the van of civilization as they are now in the rear. ”

“ At a time when the Eastern Question looms like a huge shadow over Europe, and when the very existence of the Turkish Empire is once more threatened, may I hope that this story of the military virtues of the Ottoman troops may not be found without real interest? ”

“ And though such part of the native populations as is not of use to Germany may be starving, Turkey’s value as a military, an industrial, and an economic asset is vastly greater to-day than it ever has been, for Germany has set the Ottoman house in order since it is an annexe in the plans of her own world-wide palace, and Anatolian soldiers are a wheel in the great German war-machine, which shall Juggernaut its way over the entire globe. ”

“ The Ottoman Empire is made up of Turkey in Europe—the strip of territory stretching across from the Black Sea to the Adriatic—Turkey in Asia, which includes Arabia, Syria, and Palestine, and provinces in the isles of Samos and Cyprus are also under the sultan’s rule. ”

“ Whatever may be the explanation, there can be no doubt that the degeneracy of the Othman dynasty dates from the accession of Selim the Sot. But this did not necessarily involve the immediate decadence of the Empire. The Ottoman Empire could not have been built up by the energy and ability of a single autocrat in each generation. There must have been many capable men, statesmen, generals, and administrators, of all ranks, who contributed in each generation to the achievements of their rulers. ”