Ottoman rule

“ Turkey. Or the Ottoman empire, called by the Turks Osmanli Vilayeti, includes large portions of the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and consists of Turkey Proper, which is under the direct rule of the sultan, and of numerous dependent and tributary states, governed by their own princes. The existing Turkish empire dates only from the end of the 13th century, when it was founded by Osman, or Othman, a Turk of noble family, who had been driven westward from Khorasan by the invasion of Genghis Khan. Osman first invaded the Greek territory of Nicomedia on July 27, 1299 ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Turks could not endure either a pacific prince, or a prince unfortunate in war; so thoroughly were they persuaded that they ought to be always fighting, and that they ought always to conquer. The Ottoman people, to whom nothing was good or right but conquest, would obey none but a conqueror; and if they consented to be slaves, and tremble beneath the frown of a master, it was upon the sole condition that this all-powerful master should carry abroad the terror of his arms, and should give chains to other nations. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Ottoman dynasty which began with the Turkish nation and gave its name to it, that dynasty, always the object of veneration, and respected by revolt itself, has presented by its stability a new spectacle in the East. It has exhibited to the world a succession of great princes, who have in history almost all the same physiognomy, and resemble each other in their pride, their ambition and their military genius: which proves that all these barbarian heroes were formed by their national manners, and that among the [122] Turks, there is but one single road to greatness. ”

“ A weak or vicious Sultan may be deposed and strangled, but his inheritance devolves to an infant or an idiot; nor has the most daring rebel presumed to ascend the throne of his lawful sovereign. While the transient dynasties of Asia have been continually subverted by a crafty visir 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For it is not in the large cities of Turkey, where there is always such a heterogeneous population, that the Ottoman is found at his best but in the small towns and villages of the interior of the country and particularly in that portion of the Ottoman Empire which formerly constituted the emirates of Osman and Orkhan.
No people in the world, it is safe to say, have ever been more misunderstood or more misrepresented than the Osmanlis. For generations they have been regarded as a nation guilty of every crime and steeped in every vice. ”

“ They owed their greatness mainly to a long line of able sultans, who gradually absorbed the neighbouring Turkish tribes and used this consolidated strength for ambitious conquests both to east and west. In 1453 the Osmanli extinguished the old Byzantine Empire by taking Constantinople, and within a century thereafter they had conquered the Moslem East from Persia to Morocco, had subjugated the whole Balkan Peninsula, and had advanced through Hungary to the walls of Vienna. Unlike their Mongol cousins, the Ottoman Turks built up a durable 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Art. VIII. Tous les sujets de l'Empire sont indistinctement appelés ottomans, quelle que soit la religion qu'ils professent. La qualité d'ottoman s'acquiert et se perd suivant les cas spécifiés par la loi.
Art. XI. L'Islamisme est la religion de l'État. Tout en sauve-gardant ce principe, l ́État protège le libre exercice de tous les cultes reconnus dans l'Empire, et maintient les priviléges religieux accordés aux diverses communautés, à la condition qu'il ne soit pas porté atteinte à l'ordre public ou aux bonnes mœurs.
Art. XVII. Tous les ottomans sont égaux devant la loi. ”

“ Mohammed the Conqueror had established the Ottoman Empire in Europe by means of a well-trained, Koran-disciplined army, his successor Bajazet II increased and strengthened it. Great attention was paid to all matters of artillery and military engineering, in which the Turks of those days outshone all other nations, and which made the hastily levied undisciplined armies of the West, the bands of hired condottieri, or enthusiastic swarms of Christian knights, go under before the sword of Othman. The conquered provinces provided recruits for the corps of Janissaries. ”

“ In view of these many serious changes, it is not difficult to appreciate the causes for the falling off of the morale of the Ottoman army and for its failure to maintain the reputation it had achieved in the three centuries of conquest and extension of the Empire. The war which is now raging in the Near East has shown that the Ottoman soldiers, when organized, and in part led, by competent foreign officers, when fighting pro aris et focis, and especially when in defence of well fortified lines, have a great military value. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 Ottoman monarchy, therefore, consists today of an aggregation of kingdoms, principalities, and republics which are kept together only by habit and the communion of the Koran. And if a despot is a ruler whose words are law, then the Sultan in Constantinople is very far from being a despot. ”

“ If there be an empire which does not at all feel the pressure of this natural law, but lasts continuously, repairs its losses, renews its vigour, and with every successive age emulates its antecedent fame, such a power must be more than human, and has no place in our present inquiry. We are concerned, not with any supernatural power, to which is promised perpetuity, but with the Ottoman empire, famous in history, vigorous in constitution, but, after all, human, and nothing more. ”

“ 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. ”