Ottoman Turks

“ In all literary matters the Ottoman Turks have shown themselves a singularly uninventive people, the two great schools, the old and the new, into which we may divide their literature, being closely modelled, the one after the classics of Persia, the other after those of modern Europe, and more especially of France. The old or Persian school flourished from the foundation of the empire down to about 1830, and still continues to drag on a feeble existence, though it is now out of fashion and cultivated by none of the leading men of letters. ”

“ The Ottoman Turks, once a petty tribe of unsettled wanderers, without an acre of soil they could call their own, had now become, in little more than three centuries, great among the European nations, occasionally endangering their independence, civilization and religion. ”

“ That short, thick, beetle-browed, bandy-legged, obese man, that so many fresh tourists find so charming, is a Turkish official. He and his ancestors have ruled the land since 1517. A Wilberforce in sentiment, he is the representation of "that shadow of shadows for good—Ottoman rule." The Turks, whether in their Pagan or Mohammedan phase, have only appeared on the world's scene to destroy. No social or civilizing art owes anything to the Turks but progressive debasement and decay. ”

“ The Turks themselves may remain, but they will no longer be the governing race, but subject, like other races, to whatever power may succeed; the Sultan may transfer his capital to Brousa, the ancient capital of the Ottoman Empire; but Turkey will thenceforth be wholly an Asiatic, and no longer an European power.
And this will be the end of a dominion that for centuries was the terror of Europe. It is four hundred and twenty years since the Turks crossed the Bosphorus and took Constantinople. Since then they have risen to such power that at one time they threatened to overrun Europe. ”

“ Over these dissentient populations stands the pure Ottoman race, the paramount nation, charged with maintaining the equilibrium between all, and with neutralizing the ascendancy of one faction by the aid of others. Were this control not to exist—were the Turks, who represent their ancestors, the conquerors of the land, to be reduced to a level with those now beneath them, or were the preponderating influence of the former to be destroyed by the elevation and equalization of the latter, perpetual revolts and civil wars could not fail to ensue. ”

“ Relations between Turks and Armenians in the Ottoman Empire had thus far been generally peaceful. They both suffered alike under the Government at Constantinople and even when Westernism was alienating the Bulgarians in Europe, the Armenians in the eastern provinces were still “the loyal community.” But the Armenian revolutionists in the West, instead of confining their work to Russian Trans-Caucasia, sought to raise funds in the Ottoman Empire as well, and the ancient Turco-Armenian relationship began to be poisoned. ”

“ Those who know, and there are many, though they keep their convictions secret, are aware that inefficiency has brought the East down before the organized, purposeful West, and that the days of Turkish rule in Europe are numbered, that the Ottoman Empire this side of the Bosphorus is as much doomed as was that of{323} ancient Byzant when Amurath made Adrianople his capital.
The great majority of Turks appear to be of the same mind as Ali, the master-weaver; they know little of what is happening, they seem to care less. ”

“ From the Greeks, the West had never asked Capitulations. It would therefore not ask Capitulations from the Turks. As for the rights of minorities, such rights as the Greeks gave their Moslem minorities, the Turks would give their Christian minorities. The Straits would remain open to world commerce, subject only to the necessary military security of Constantinople, “the seat of the Caliphate of Islam, the capital of the Sultanate, and the headquarters of the Ottoman Government.” In the delineation of the new Turkey’s frontiers, certain border areas were under dispute. ”

“ If Moslems and non-Moslems were to be made equals in an Ottoman citizenry, it was necessary that both should give up their dividing community institutions and assume instead equal duties and equal rights under the Parliament. This only shocked the Old Turks and as for the Christians, the suggestion only made them cling the more tightly to their community institutions. The application of Ottomanization only drove them into nationalism. Westernism was as unpalatable to the Rûm and Ermeni communities as to the dominant Islamic community. ”

“ The rapid disappearance of his own empire in a hundred years, the creation out of the Ottoman Empire of new states like Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Rumania, and the wonderful improvement which had followed the destruction of the Turkish yoke in these benighted lands, may have increased the Ottoman hatred for the unbeliever, but at least they had a certain influence in opening his eyes to his importance. Many Turks also now received their education in European universities ”

“ There are now sixty to seventy million Turkish subjects of various states in the world, who should succeed in giving the nation an important place among the other Powers. Unfortunately, there is no connexion between the separate groups, which are distributed over great tracts of land. Their aspirations and national institutions still divide them.... Now that the Ottoman Turks have awakened from their sleep of centuries they do not only think of themselves, but hasten to save the other parts of their race who are living in slavery or ignorance.... ”

“ While visits to foreign countries and scientific studies are undertaken by few, their influence as a leaven is great.
In the centuries preceding the Moslem conquest of Constantinople scepticism was absent among both the Christian and Mahometan masses. The Ottoman Turks in the fifteenth century, more perhaps than at any other time, were full of the zeal of new converts. They were in a period of conquest which stimulated them. Many, perhaps most of them, believed in their divine mission. ”

“ The Levant was suffering from changes which interrupted its commerce and which made the old trade-routes that passed through it almost impracticable. The principal cause for this process of decay and failure was the rise of the Ottoman Turks as a conquering power. About 1300 a petty group of Turks, in the heart of Asia Minor, under a chieftain named Osman, began a career of extension of their dominions by conquering the other provinces of Turkish or Greek origin and allegiance in their vicinity. ”

“ England, France, Russia, and Italy, which for a century had held a restraining hand over the Ottoman Empire, had finally lost all power to influence or control. The Turks now perceived that a series of dazzling events had changed them from cringing dependents of the European Powers into free agents. For the first time in two centuries they could now live their national life according to their own inclinations, and govern their peoples according to their own will. ”

“ If it is difficult to see how the Turkish Nationalist movement is going to control the Mohammedan world, it is still more difficult to accept the idea that there is such a movement as pan-Turanianism, of which the Nationalists make so much.467 In the days of its glory, the Ottoman Empire included the Caucasus and the entire coast of the Black Sea. The Ottoman Turks were masters of a part of the Turanian race and neighbors of the Turanians of Central Asia. ”

“ Their unity among themselves, and their distinctively different character from that of the other Turks of Asia Minor, becomes, during the first sixty years of the fourteenth century, so marked that Europe is forced to recognize them as a nation. Being more in the presence of Europe than the other groups of Asia Minor, the Europeans begin to call them simply Turks, and to take them as representing all the Turks of Anatolia. ”

“ It is singular how few administrators the Ottoman race has produced. It does not possess faculties for government, or for trade, or for art. No sooner had the Turks conquered south-eastern Europe than they found themselves obliged to intrust the administration of their provinces to the children of the people whom they had overcome. Turkish art was but a faint and spoiled copy of Christian and Arab models. Trade remained in the hands of Christian merchants, or fell into the clutches foreign of Christian powers. When the Turks ceased to conquer they ceased to prosper. ”

“ Moreover, not only have native Christians had their existence assured to them, but also their freedom of conscience, which is amply proved by the fact that their ecclesiastical constitutions, their languages, and their national customs have been respected by the Turks. But this liberal treatment has been abused by the subject populations 125of Turkey. They have never done anything to show their gratitude, and have never displayed any patriotism towards the Ottoman empire. ”

“ They ruled the Empire in the name of the incompetent Mahomet and his successor. This advent of a family was the more notable as in Turkey there never was any trace of hereditary rank. While the throne had been filled without a break by members of the Othman family, who, in the first three hundred years, deservedly acquired prestige so great that it has survived a yet longer succession of degenerates, it has never been supported by an hereditary class of any kind. The structure of the political and social system of the Ottoman Turks has always been democratic. ”

“ The Young Turks, as I have explained, desired Ottoman unity, perhaps an impossible but certainly a noble ideal, and it was a disappointment to them that, so soon as Parliament met, the Deputies who were not partisans of the Committee divided themselves into distinct nationalist groups, some of them impracticably socialistic in their aims, others separatist at heart. ”

“ The Turkish state is no united whole, and it has always been very difficult to govern. Turks, Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, cannot be welded together. This is a war of liberation for Turkey.... Only by energetic interference, and by "expelling" the obstinate Armenian element could the Ottoman Empire get rid of a Russian domination.... ”

“ It is nevertheless necessary to state that the Turks themselves call the Turkish Empire Mémâliki-Othmanieh, or the “Ottoman States” (kingdoms) , in consequence of their having been founded by Othman, the great ancestor of the present reigning sovereign, Abd-ul-Mejid. They are no better pleased with the name of Turk than the people of the United [pg 333] States are, generally, with that of Yankee: it bears with it a meaning signifying a gross and rude man—something indeed very much like our own definition of it, when we say any one is “no better than a Turk;” ”

“ And here it is important to bear in mind, that the Turks have no hold whatever on the affections of the masses in the empire; on the contrary, they are cordially hated, not only by the Christians, but also by the Coords, Yezeedees, Druses, and Arabs, that is by ninety-nine out of a hundred of their subjects, who could overthrow the Ottoman dynasty at a blow. The prejudices of religion and caste, which separate these distinct races, may perchance always prevent their combining to any such end ”

“ Concerning the Turks themselves a popular fallacy has ever been to consider their destiny as a whole. But here again an important division of the subject intrudes itself. In Asia Minor, where the Turkish population overwhelmingly preponderates, the question of their destiny, barring the ever threatened Russian interference, ought not to arouse great concern in the present. But in European Turkey the utter lack of this predominance seems to deprive the Ottoman of his only legitimate title. The Turkish population in Thrace and the Balkans never did in fact constitute a majority ”

“ But, just as in the establishment of the constitution, in their attitude toward the Greek Church the Young Turks acted as if the work of generations in other countries could be for them, in spite of their peculiarly delicate problems and the differences in creed involved, the act of a single moment. This mentality of the half-educated, immature visionary has been shown in every one of the numerous senseless and disastrous decisions which have brought the Ottoman Empire so speedily to its ruin. ”

“ The Ottoman troops in Arabia were mutinous and unpaid; the Albanians, long the mainstay of Turkish military power in the west, had been irritated by unpopular taxes and by the repressive edicts which deprived them of schools and a printing-press; foreign interference in Crete and Macedonia was resented by patriotic Moslems throughout the empire. In these circumstances the headquarters of the Young Turks were transferred from Paris to Salonica, where a central body, known as the committee of union and progress, was established (1908) to organize the revolution. ”

“ The Young Turks have adopted a self-denying ordinance{38} with regard to such expedients; but they have hardly attempted to touch that cancer of Ottoman rule—the chronic corruption of the Administration. Turkey enjoys an admirable code of laws, and a revenue system which should be the envy of our own fiscal extremists; but it has also evolved along with them that other modern panacea, a multiplicity of jobs. Every single official, be he Old Turk or Young Turk, Arnaut or Armenian, is frankly “on the make.” ”