Ottoman people

“ We heard everywhere from them that the Christian Powers—above all, Great Britain were going to hand over that portion of the 'decaying' Ottoman empire to them, as they had handed over Ottoman territories before to other Christian races of the East They were simply awaiting the prophesied moment of the partition of Turkey to establish their independence on their share of the divided territory. I myself heard Armenians talking about who were to be the future rulers among their own people. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Had he started to persecute Christians, the Greek Church would have taken a new lease of life, and Osman could not have gained the converts who made possible the Ottoman race.
Attila, Djenghiz Khan, Timur, the greatest conquerors of the stock from which Osman came, utilized a race already made. They were leaders of a united people. In spite of their dazzling exploits, they were mere raiders, and their empires were the territories of an unassimilated path of conquest. ”

“ The warmer that the interest for the Greeks became, the more barbarous the Turks appeared. The Ottoman nation came and established itself in the richest countries of Europe, and remained in sight of all European people, without becoming acquainted with their languages, their laws, or their policy ”

“ 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. ”

“ For years statesmen and observers have discussed the approaching dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Travelers in Turkey have reported that thoughtful Turkish people held the conviction that the crisis of their nation was near at hand. Years ago Mr. Charles MacFarlane wrote:
"The Turks themselves seem generally to be convinced that their final hour is approaching. ”

“ Now, when we consider the geographical position of the Ottoman empire, the fertility of the soil, the aptitude and intelligence of the inhabitants, we are convinced that by applying ourselves to discover suitable means, the result, which by the aid of God we hope to attain, may be obtained in the space of a few years. Thus, then, full of confidence in the Most High, and relying upon the intercession of our Prophet, we have judged proper to seek by new institutions to procure for the provinces composing the Ottoman empire the benefit of a good administration. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Osmanli and Moslem were synonymous terms, just as to-day in the Balkan peninsula, where the Ottoman Empire was really founded, Turk and Moslem are synonymous terms. When once this is understood, the student and traveller is freed from his preconceived notion that the ‘Turks’, as that expression is to-day understood in Turkey, are an Asiatic race, who have held the country as conquering invaders. ”

“ In the bazaars and the narrow streets Turks and Greeks, Armenians and Kurds, Arabs, Georgians, full-blooded negroes, go about their business with the utmost unconcern, as if Europe were not face{100}{99} to face with epoch-making changes which affect the Ottoman Empire in Europe, and especially this City, its heart. Yet here in Constantinople, so full of memories of the great Christian Empire which shielded Europe’s development against the Pagan armies of the East for so many centuries, there is a feeling, subconscious but ever present, that the Turk is only in temporary possession. ”

“ The history of the Ottoman Empire is filled with mystery, romance and stories of intrigue, cruelty and barbarities, involving internal wars, uprisings, almost continuous struggles with practically all of the European countries and massacres that aroused the whole world. ”

“ The population of the Ottoman Empire is of a most heterogeneous character, embracing Turks, Greeks, Slavs, Albanians, Armenians, Syrians, Arabs, Tartars, &c. The government is a pure despotism, and the Sultan is regarded as the Caliph or head of Islam; military service is compulsory, and the army on a war footing numbers not less than 750,000, but the navy is small ”

“ We here turn aside for a brief hour from the stream of historical narrative to consider some of the results of Ottoman misrule which has for more than four centuries controlled an empire in Eastern Europe almost as large as France, in one of the most delightful and beautifully varied regions on the continent and which yet holds its peoples in the relentless grip of the Dark Ages. ”

“ The Ottoman empire was not so called from Othman, the third khalif, but from Ottoman, the successful chief, who conquered a small part of the Grecian empire in Asia, and thus laid the foundation for the Turkish. ”

“ The hesitating and fearful Ottoman, feeling his way cautiously amid the mazes of European diplomacy, and seeking opportunities to find an advantage for himself in the divided counsels of the European powers, gave place to an upstanding, almost dashing figure, proud and assertive, determined to live his own life and absolutely contemptuous of his Christian foes. ”

“ The losses which the Ottoman power has undergone at the hands of its independent neighbours, Russia, Montenegro, and Austria or Hungary, must be distinguished from the liberation of certain lands from Turkish rule to form new or revived European states. ”

“ Turkey and Egypt in particular have long been favourite themes; and indeed the Ottoman empire in every point of view, whether topographical, historical, ivadministrative, religious, moral, political, military, or commercial, offers an inexhaustible subject for investigation, and an endless excitement to curiosity. ”

“ Now-144a-days any one can go there, and many who do so come away quite unimpressed; but of one thing we may be quite certain, and that is that when centuries shall have elapsed, when possibly the Ottoman power will be only a memory in Europe, and that exquisite hill be crowned by the busy streets of a new and populous city, no traveller will pass through them without seeing again, in fancy, the imperial kiosks of former days, and thinking enviously of us in the nineteenth century who can still behold the speaking, breathing records of that storied habitation of the Ottomans. ”

“ They bore the hardships of long campaigns without complaint. But they were deficient in intelligence and education, which count for much in war as in civil life. In this respect they were very inferior to subjects of the East Roman Empire and to many of the Christians with whom they came in conflict. But the Ottomans who first invaded Europe were not simply Turks. Later, the most effective corps in the Ottoman army was formed exclusively of the sons of Christian parents in the Balkans, conscripted at an early age and forcibly converted to Islam. ”

“ This resulted in the establishment of various Turkish dynasties in that country. At the close of the thirteenth century the paramount power over these was exercised by Osman (or Othman, whence the name Ottoman) , who seized all that remained of the ancient Roman world in Asia, and thus practically founded the Ottoman Empire. In the middle of the fourteenth century the way was opened for the Ottomans to advance into Europe. They were invited by one of the rival factions at Constantinople to undertake their cause. ”

“ Of course, the Ottoman empire has long been suffering from intolerable 124oppression, but its Christian inhabitants have not been the only sufferers; on the other hand, many of them have allowed themselves to be the cause of oppression, and have even acted as the right-hand men of the oppressors. ”

“ The peoples of the Arab part of the Ottoman Empire are a congeries of differing races, creeds, sects, and social systems, with no common bond except language. The physical character of their land compels a good third of them to be nomadic, predatory barbarians, feared by the other two-thirds. The settled folk are divided into Moslem and Christian (not to mention a large Jewish element) , the cleavage being more abrupt than in western Turkey and the tradition and actual spirit of mutual enmity more separative. Further, each of those main creed-divisions is subdivided. ”

“ The Ottoman Empire is named after the Osmanli, but you might search long before you found one among its inhabitants. These Osmanlis are a governing class, indigenous only in Constantinople and a few neighbouring towns, but planted here and there, as officers and officials, over the Ottoman territories. They come of a clan of Turkish nomads, recruited since the thirteenth century by converts, forced or voluntary, from most of Christendom, and crossed with the blood of slave-women from all the world. They are hardly a race. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ While the transient dynasties of Asia have been continually subverted by a crafty vizier in the palace, or a victorious general in the camp, the Ottoman succession has been confirmed by the practice of five centuries, and is now incorporated with the vital principle of the Turkish nation. ”