Turkish officials

“ The rapacity and exactions of the Turkish officials were worse than ever. Discontent was seething in all directions—the more so when the populations compared their fate344 with that of their more fortunate neighbours across the frontiers who had been liberated by the armies of Russia and by the treaty of Berlin. Nor were the reports as to the condition of the Moslem subjects of the Porte in any way better. The exactions of Turkish officials had increased on people of all races and religion. ”

“ The governors and other Ottoman officials were as corrupt, rapacious, and arbitrary as they had ever been. There was no security for life or property. The Turkish soldiers plundered the villages of Christians which they were sent to protect. Bands of brigands, sometimes wearing the uniforms of Greek, sometimes of Bulgarian soldiers, devastated the country. No attempt was made by the Young Turks to put in force any part of the reforms which had been proposed by the Commission appointed by the Great Powers after the Congress of Berlin. ”

“ We can forgive much in this country to a chieftain who does (as a rule) honestly exert himself to keep order; who has realized that it pays him better to protect his vassals than to oppress them; and who can be trusted to administer some sort of “Jeddart Justice” in fairly equable fashion to Kurd and Christian alike. But by Turkish officials generally we fear he is less appreciated. ”

“ Yet, despite these occasional outbursts of hatred, in the main the Turkish officials themselves behaved very well. They had promised me at the beginning that they would treat their alien enemies decently, and would permit them either to remain in Turkey, and follow their accustomed occupations, or to leave the empire. They apparently believed that the world would judge them, after the war was over, not by the way they treated their own subject peoples but by the way they treated the subjects of the enemy powers. ”

“ The fact is, that whatever his private opinion as to the issue of the present contest in the Herzegovina, Dervish Pashà is conscious that he is fighting for a lost cause. Like many other of the highest Turkish officials, he feels, and has confessed it to his friends, that whether the crash come to-day or to-morrow, the Ottoman Empire in Europe is irrevocably doomed. He is as well aware as any European that among the governing race of Turkey public honesty is as dead as private morality, that corruption has closed the door to progress, and that patriotism has almost ceased to exist ”

“ And to realize, while all this was going on, that neither the Grand Vizier, nor any of the other high Turkish officials, would leave the house without outriders and bodyguards to protect them from assassination—whatever other emotions such a vibrating atmosphere might arouse, it was certainly alive with interest. I felt also that there was something electric about it all; war was ever the favourite topic of conversation; everyone seemed to realize that this peaceful, frivolous life was{58} transitory, and that at any moment might come the spark that was to set everything aflame. ”

“ The ambassador of one power would most graciously escort to dinner the wife of another whose country was perhaps the most antagonistic to his own. Little groups would form after dinner; the Grand Vizier would hold an impromptu reception in one corner, cabinet ministers would be whispering in another; a group of ambassadors would discuss the Greek situation out on the porch; the Turkish officials would glance quizzically upon the animated scene and perhaps comment quietly in their own tongue ”

“ It was also a source of no small danger that the Young Turks, having but few trained administrators in their own ranks, had retained the services of such high officials of the old régime as had no notoriously evil records for corruption or oppression. Some of these men are the secret enemies of the new order of things. The Young Turks, therefore, determined to remain on their guard and see to it that Turkey’s newly won liberty was not wrested from her. ”

“ I may mention that since 1904 the officials of the Eastern Questions Association (which, I believe, has always held the view that a strong and independent Turkey is an essential factor in the polity of nations) have been on friendly terms with Ahmed Riza Bey, visited him in Paris, become strong supporters of the Young Turk party, and have vigorously denounced the crooked policy of Russia and Austria in Macedonia. ”

“ Minor officials knew that what was wrung from the people in the form of taxation was not spent for the country’s good, but was for the most part appropriated by the Palace gang, and it was but natural that they helped themselves to a share. But the Turks, in their dealings between man and man, are among the most honest of people, and public sentiment regarding official corruption has been undergoing a remarkable change since the revolution. ”

“ In my opinion, I have been a far better friend to the Ottoman Empire than have the Sultan and his advisers. I have always recommended the granting of reasonable powers of local self-government, which would have saved Turkey from terrible losses. This good advice has been spurned, and in consequence Turkey has lost 18,000,000 of people, and may lose more. Pray weigh these words.”—
The birthday of the Ex-Premier was made the occasion for an anti-Turkish demonstration. ”

“ I entreat my countrymen, upon whom far more than perhaps any other people of Europe it depends, to require and to insist that our government, which has been working in one direction, shall work in the other, and shall apply all its vigor to concur with the other states of Europe in obtaining the extinction of the Turkish executive power in Bulgaria. Let the Turks now carry away their abuses in the only possible manner—namely, by carrying off themselves. ”

“ When men can gather grapes of thorns, and figs of thistles, then, and not before, may we expect the Ottoman government to do justice to its non-Mussulman population. Politicians may say, as indeed Lord Derby has said, that the right and truly British policy is to turn a deaf ear to the cries of the oppressed in Turkey, and advise the Turkish government "that they had better follow the policy which they thought most consistent with their own interests." ”

“ There has been no lack of cross currents against the war policy of the Young Turkish Government. Ever since the entry of Turkey into the war, there has been a deeply rooted and unshakeable conviction among all kinds and conditions of men, even in the circles of the Pashas and the Court—the people of Turkey take too little interest in politics and are composed of far too heterogeneous elements for there to be anything in the nature of what we call "public opinion"—that Turkey's alliance with the Central Powers was a complete [Pg 210] mistake and that it can lead to no good. ”

“ The danger to Turkey in its Eastern provinces of Asia Minor and in its European provinces in Macedonia and Epirus is the comparison between the condition of those who were freed in 1878 from the Sultan’s rule, and who have become self-governing, as in the case of the Bulgarians, or have gone under the rule of Austria, Russia, or Greece, with those who remain the subjects of Turkish rule. When, on one side of mere geographical lines, without any physical difference, the populations are flourishing and improvements of all kinds in roads, railways, harbours, schools, etc., are being effected ”

“ Such is the present state of Turkey—universal corruption and oppression, and things going all the time from bad to worse.
And yet this wretched Government rules over the fairest portion of the globe. The Turkish Empire is territorially the finest in the world. Half in Europe and half in Asia, it extends over many degrees of latitude and longitude, including many countries and many climates, "spanning the vast arch from Bagdad to Belgrade." ”

“ Let them have the courage to tear from their hearts all ideas—if they entertain such—which are prejudicial to the interests of the Turkish rule, and let them, without fear, throw themselves into our arms. They have nothing to fear from us; all that is asked of them is that they make us believe in their sincerity. But, whatever may be said in this country, it is the Turks who compose, and who will always compose, the dominant element.”
The Committee, therefore, set itself diligently to work to secure the ascendency of its adherents in Parliament. ”

“ Now in all these stipulations so intimately concerning Turkey, for whose independence we are fighting, Turkey is not allowed to have any voice whatever, nor has she ever been allowed to be made acquainted with what is going on except through the newspapers, where the Turkish Ministers may have read what is passing, like other people. ”

“ The speakers who followed had some unkind things to say concerning Ahmed Riza and the Young Turks. Here is a quotation from the speech of an influential humanitarian who was present: “I am not sorry that the gentleman has spoken, because it shows us how impossible it is to expect any reforms in Turkey from the Young Turkish party. They are only thinking of themselves. The liberties of the Christians would be just as unsafe under a Sultan with the sentiments of the gentleman who has just sat down, as under the present Sultan.” ”

“ The present government is the best Turkey has ever had, and as Sir Edwin Pears, the venerable correspondent of the London Times, says: “Its faults are those of inexperience which time will cure. Experience will give the ministers greater courage to accept responsibility, and they and the masses of the people are gradually gaining confidence in each other and in themselves.”
There has always been a department of education in the Turkish administration, but it has never amounted to anything until now. ”

“ It consists in pushing forward, if need be with greater delicacy than before and on the round-about road of real modern reforms, towards the one immovable goal: the complete Turkification of Turkey. The reform of the [Pg 195] law, which we have treated more exhaustively as an example of the first rank, is typical of the Young Turkish national tendency. Naturally it has its use, too, as a means of further throwing off the foreign political yoke. Through the modernising of the whole Turkish legal system, Europe is to be shown that the Capitulations can be dispensed with. ”

“ The Christian populations of Turkey, or rather it may perhaps be said those who, by their knowledge and intelligence, are capable of representing them, are convinced that under the Turkish rule they have a far better chance of carrying out their national aspirations, of retaining their national faith, and developing their political freedom than under that of Russia. They believe 339 that the pressure recently brought to bear upon the Porte by the European Powers, and the lesson which the Turkish Government has received, will contribute to these objects. ”

“ To these problems of maintaining peace and order at home there was added the equally difficult problem of preventing the extension of foreign interference and control in Ottoman affairs. The integrity of Turkey already was seriously compromised by the hold which the Great Powers possessed on Turkish governmental functions. Under the Capitulations foreigners occupied a special and privileged position within the Ottoman Empire. Nationals of the European nations and the United States were practically exempt from taxation ”

“ The United States minister to Turkey continues, under instructions, to press for a money payment in satisfaction of the just claims for injuries suffered by American citizens in the disorders of several years past and for wrongs done to them by the Ottoman authorities. Some of these claims are of many years' standing. This Government is hopeful of a general agreement in this regard.
In the Turkish Empire the situation of our citizens remains unsatisfactory. ”

“ For one can no longer doubt that the Government has the real intention of carrying out actual reforms, for they must be only too well aware that the strengthening and healing of Anatolia, the nucleus of the Turkish race, is absolutely essential for any Turkish mastery, and is the very first necessity for the successful carrying out of more far-reaching national exertions. ”

“ For the oppression, corruption, and incompetence that characterised their government the Turkish people themselves were held responsible by a large section of public opinion in Western Europe. There is a saying to the effect that a nation has the government which it deserves, and this may be true if a nation is free to work out its own salvation. But in the case of Turkey the people were allowed no chance of obtaining the government which they deserved ”

“ The Young Turks, who are now in power, stand for internal reform and the integrity of the empire. But they have to face the fact that the great majority of Moslems are reactionary, and that their power is dependent on the support of the army. The people as a whole are not fitted for self-government. One of the charges brought against Abdul Hamid was that the Turkish dominions were dismembered during his reign, but since the revolution of July, 1908, Turkey has lost its nominal sovereignty over Bulgaria and Bosnia and Herzegovina. ”