Turkic people

“ Someone has said: "The greatest enemy of Turkey is the Turk." I have too much love for the Turkish people, too much sympathy for them, to adopt this pessimistic attitude without great inward opposition; but unfortunately it is only too true. We have seen how the Turkey of Enver and Talaat has reacted sharply against the Western-minded, [Pg 263] liberal era of the 1876 and 1908 constitutions, and has turned again to Asia and her newly discovered ideal, Turanism. To the Turks of to-day, European culture and civilisation are at best but a technical means; they are no longer an end in themselves. ”

“ In speaking of the Turks it is necessary to carry two distinct types in mind. The pure Tatar vagrant, true to his native indolence, which unfits him for sedentary occupation, is in the minority. The mass of the Turkish population consists of a mixed element in which the racial strain of given localities persists along with characteristics imparted by fusion with Turki conquerors. This mingling is indicated further by the spirit which moves this people in the performance of their daily tasks. Its members are recruited among the plodding, gentle-mannered and kind-hearted peasants of the land. ”

“ The Turkish Nationalists wanted to build up their country for efficiency, not for luxury. They had not sought and obtained power for selfish reasons of comfort and enjoyment. So what did they care if their capital was to be a small, uncomfortable village! They had left their homes, their property and their families in Constantinople and had come to Asia Minor to put into execution lofty ideals. Their purpose was to set up in Anatolia a new state, a new democracy, a new Government of the people and for the people, free and independent—and they were firmly determined to do this against any odds. ”

“ It is a stirring history, full of ups and downs, that of the Turkish people. As we have seen, they emerged from a seething mass of nomadic humanity which infested Central{158} Asia, and threatened those Empires which had settled and acquired civilization, such as China, whence, by the way, come some of the earliest records of the Turks. These nomads had no other use for civilization than to acquire unearned riches ”

“ Happily, the character of the Turkish people neutralizes much of what is pernicious and odious in their customs and creed. They possess at bottom a wonderful quality of goodness, of gentleness, of simplicity, a remarkable instinct of reverence for that which is good and beautiful, of respect for that which is weak. ”

“ There are no handsomer people in Europe than the Turks, for here the crossing of many virile breeds has resulted in the development of a very fine race of men. The modern Turk is a Caucasian of the highest type, and combines in himself some of the best qualities of the East and West. It is true that some of his Eastern qualities stand in the way of what the energetic Western world calls progress. ”

“ They are to enjoy equal rights. No advantage is to be given to any religion. The Young Turks announced that this tolerance was not to be merely a passive one, that where Christian populations had no churches or schools these would be provided for them at the expense of the State, and that in these schools the teaching of such national languages as Albanian or Servian would be permitted. In the second place, Turkey is to be made strong by262 progress—the regeneration of a people whose energies have been sterilised by a long oppression, the restoration of prosperity to an impoverished land. ”

“ By this means the Turk preserves so many different sorts of people, as he hath conquered, in due obedience, using no other help than a severe hand, joined to all kind of oppression: But such as are Turks, and bear any name of office or degree in the service of the empire, feel but part of this oppression, and live with all freedom, having their spirits raised by a licence they attain to insult over others that dare not resist them. ”

“ The Turkish people do not include a middle class or an aristocracy. The reasons will be found in any good history of their slave theory of government, but the reasons concern Europe less than does the fact. With a small margin of error, all Turks may be described as falling in one of two categories, namely, officials and 246 peasants. ”

“ Türklük, by which strangers understand the above-named fault, is often used by the Turks themselves as a mark of plainness, simplicity, and uprightness. The lights and shades of Türklük have been at all times observable and discoursed on, whenever parallels are drawn between the character of the Turks and of other nations, especially the Persians. People praise the acuteness, the refined manners of the latter; but still, he who wants to find a faithful servant, an attached soldier, or an upright man, will always give the preference to the Turks. ”

“ The modern European touch is brought by the Turks from the big centers, Nationalist leaders who have come here from Constantinople and other large cities, clad in sack suits or in uniforms cut on western patterns, but all wearing the black fur kolpak which has replaced throughout the country the red felt fez as national headgear.
“In the village proper there is not a house which does not shelter more people than it has rooms. ”

“ Colonel Baker's volume gives us a corresponding picture of Turkish life and character, the political institutions, religious peculiarities, and material resources of the empire. The book is full of very interesting information upon this class of subjects, much of which is fresh, and calculated to dispel erroneous impressions, and many unjust prejudices that are entertained in Christian countries, concerning the Turkish people. Turks are known to the outside world chiefly through their government, which is bad and corrupt, and shamefully misrepresents the population which it rules. ”

“ It must be remembered that the corrupt officialdom created by the Palace, which had a degrading influence on everything in touch with it, is not representative of the Turkish people. The typical Turk possesses the virtues and the failings of a conquering and dominant race. He is courageous, truthful, and honest amid races not conspicuous for truthfulness or honesty, some of which are likewise lacking in courage. The Turk, moreover, is shrewd and gifted with common sense, and he is not a visionary, as are the Arabs and some other peoples holding the Mos7lem faith. ”

“ The Turkish climate is a temperate and salubrious one, with no greater extremes of temperature than the United States; not tropical or enervating. Nor is it their race that makes the Turks lazy; they were not so at the outset. It is their religion and the habits it breeds. Their minds and bodies are enervated by the unwholesome nervous excitation of lust, their energies further sapped by a falsehood that leaves no room for aspiration, their vanity as a military caste in not working takes all the spirit of manly enterprise out of them. ”

“ As a country inhabited by 18,000,000 Moslems, 5,000,000 Christians and a scattering of lesser faiths, the internal life of the Empire had been generally peaceful and not ignoble, but if its population were to be changed over into a matter of 9,000,000 Turks, 8,000,000 Arabs, 2,000,000 Greeks, 2,000,000 Kurds, 1,500,000 Armenians, etc., all of them inter-tangling into each other, the prospect of trouble was limitless, not only for the Turks themselves but for every race in the country. ”

“ The position of Turkey is certainly an anomaly. It is an Asiatic power planted in Europe. It is a Mohammedan power ruling over millions of Christians. It is a government of Turks—that is of Tartars—over men of a better race as well as a purer religion. It is a government of a minority over a majority. The Mohammedans, the ruling caste, are only about one-quarter of the population of European Turkey—some estimates make it much less, but where there is no accurate census, it must be a matter of conjecture. ”

“ The Turk, as a race, is composed of two elements, a ruling class of land-owners and military and civil officials, arrogant though courteous, corrupt though honest in private life, parasitical though self-respecting, and a peasant class, hopelessly ignorant, lacking in energy, initiative, ambition, aspirations, and ideals. The great bulk of the Turkish element in the Empire looked with the indifference of ignorance and the hostility of jealous regard for their unique position in the community upon the granting of a constitution. ”

“ There were Turks, Kurds, Circassians, Turcomans, Tartars and Laz in the country, a few remaining Armenians in the interior, an increasing number of Greeks between Samsun and Trebizond along the Black Sea littoral, and a handful of widely scattered Americans, mostly in the employ of the Near East Relief. The large majority of its population, however, was Turkish and most of the non-Turks were bound to the Turks by their acceptance of Islam. The country, while wholly primitive, was far more single-minded than its capital had been for a century. ”

“ It is doubtful though whether those early Turkish tribes, if they had come under the influence of Christianity instead of Islam, would have advanced any further on the path of culture than they have arrived to-day. Though they have been in contact with the West since the seventh century, though they conquered the Empire of the East and made its Christian peoples their subjects, and from the City of Constantine overflowed Eastern Europe up to the gates of Vienna, yet the Turk has learnt nothing. ”

“ That a State so raised, so maintained, should act as an organization for protecting and furthering the interests of its subjects, of whatever race or creed, is not to be expected, neither did the great body of the Turkish nation ever wish it to assume such functions. For the Turks were the dominant race, the conquerors, and to them any idea of their non-Islamic, non-Turk fellow-subjects as equals was inconceivable ”

“ Yet, it is not easy to talk history with a people who confound Miriam and Mary, or politics to those whose only idea of a king is a robber on a large scale, or religion to men who measure excellence by forbidden
Diagram illustrating Somali Geography meats, or geography to those who represent the earth in this guise. ”

“ The western nations of Europe, who now so immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors, and stand at the summit of civilisation, owe little or none of their superiority to direct inheritance from the old Greeks, though they owe much to the written works of that wonderful people. ”

“ Home is a stranger to me, and a foreign land is my home. But her love remains with me, and as a tear drops into the ocean, so has her love dropped into the living ocean of humanity and pervades and embraces millions—millions of the "strange people" whom I have so loved from childhood. ”

“ I was of military age and Turkey was under blockade. When I had left Constantinople a few years after the Turkish revolution, the whole country was exhilarated, filled with joy, with ambition and with hope. Freedom and emancipation from an autocratic domination had been obtained. Nothing was to prevent the normal advance of Turkey and the Turks along the road to progress. We were at last to obtain full recognition as a civilized nation. We were at last to receive equal treatment from the other European nations. ”

“ Such Old Turkish strongholds as the dervish tekkes at Konia might oppose him, but the Old Turks had no Western backing and Islam in India felt so deeply on the subject of “our brother Turk” that success in maintaining the last of the independent Moslem States would prove its own justification. As for Greeks and Armenians, they could continue to worship in their own way as they had always done under the old Empire, but they would never again be permitted to poison the country with their political reaction. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This nation, indifferent regarding the choice of its masters, has received fetters from the hands of ambitious men who spurned the nation while coercing it. Invariably unfortunate, the people have no hope save in a future revolution, which will enslave them to a new tyrant insolently bedecked with the imposing title of "Deliverer".
What can be the motive that prompts a despot to retain the privilege of laying violent hands on the liberty and welfare of his subjects? A despot who replaces natural rights by arbitrary power! ”

“ There is no greater mistake than to imagine that the Arabs, who spread with such astonishing rapidity over half the civilized world, were in any real sense a united people. So far was this from being the truth, that it demanded all Mohammed's diplomatic skill, and all his marvellous personal prestige, to keep up a semblance of unity even while he was alive. The Arabs were made up of a number of hostile tribes or clans, many of whom had been engaged in deadly blood-feuds for several generations, and all of whom were moved by a spirit of tribal jealousy which was never entirely extinguished. ”

“ The Turks, the least gifted among the races living in Turkey, themselves form only a minority of the population, and are still far behind even the Arabs in civilisation. Is there anywhere any Turkish commerce, Turkish handicraft, Turkish manufacture, Turkish art, Turkish science? Even law and religion, even the literary language, is borrowed from the subjected Arabs.
We teachers, who for years have taught Greeks, Armenians, Arabs, Turks and Jews in German schools in Turkey, can only declare that of all our pupils the pure Turks are the least willing and the least capable. ”