Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  The episode, strictly historical, is of a certain importance, for it shows the date at which Wilhelm II. thought that the time had come for Germans to colonise Turkey. The peaceful penetration (which now amounts to perforation) was even then pretty far advanced. But Abdul Hamid seems to have seen the significance of the request, and for some little while after that German influence had a certain set-back in Turkey. The date of this marks an era, and Germany, ‘deep patient Germany,’ set to work again, in no way discouraged, to set her cancer-nippers in the cancer that already had begun to eat the live tissues round it.

  CHAPTER II: THE THEORY OF THE NEW TURKS

  In the year 1908 a military group in Constantinople, styling itself the ‘Young Turk’ party, seized and deposed Abdul Hamid, and shut him up at Salonika, there to spend the remainder of his infamous days. They put forth a Liberal programme of reformation, one that earned them at the moment the sympathy of civilised Europe (including Germany), and the Balance of Power very mistakenly and prematurely heaved a sigh of relief. For upwards of a century it had maintained in Constantinople the corrupt and bloody autocracy of the Sultans, fearing the European quarrels that would attend the dismemberment of that charnel-house of decay known as the Ottoman Empire, and now (just for the moment) it seemed as if a sudden rally had come to the Sick Man, and he showed signs of returning animation and wholesome vitality. The policy of the Powers, after a century of failure, looked as if it was justifying itself, and they were full of congratulations towards Turkey and each other. But never, in the whole century of their pusillanimous cacklings, had they made a greater mistake.

  Whether the Young Turks ever meant well or not, whether there was or was not a grain of sincerity in this profession of their policy, is a disputed question. There are those who say that originally they were prompted by patriotic and high-minded aims, when they proclaimed their object of ‘Organisation,’ and of reform. But all are agreed that it matters very little what their original aims were, so speedily did their Liberal intentions narrow down to an Ottomanisation such as Adbul Hamid had aimed at, but had been unable to accomplish before his evil sceptre ceased to sway the destinies of his kingdom. In any case this programme earned its authors the sympathy of Europe, and probably this, and no more than this, prompted it. They wished to establish themselves, unquestioned and undisturbed, and did so; and I do not think we shall be far wrong if we take the original Young Turk programme about as seriously as we took the parody of a Parliament with which Abdul Hamid opened (as with a blessing) his atrocious reign. The very next year (1909) they permitted (if they did not arrange) the Armenian massacres at Adana, and the Balance of Power began faintly to wonder whether the Young Turks in their deposition of Abdul Hamid had not slain an asp and hatched a cockatrice. Given that their aims originally were sincere, we can but marvel at the swiftness of the corruption which in little more than a year had begun to lead them not into paths of reform and Liberal policy, but along the road towards which the butcher they had deposed had pointed the way. It must have made Abdul Hamid gnaw his nails and shake impotent hands to see those who had torn him from his throne so soon pursuing the very policy which he invented, and to which he nominally owed his dethronement. Strange, too, was it that his overthrow should come from the very quarter to which he looked for security, for it was on the army that each Sultan in turn had most relied for the stability of his throne. But Abdul Hamid, in order, perhaps, to deal more effectually with the subject races he wished to exterminate, had introduced a system of foreign training for the officers of his army, a course of Potsdam efficiency, and it was just they, on whom Sultans from time immemorial had relied, who knocked the prop of the army away from him. Though publicly, for the edification of Europe his deposers professed a Liberal policy, it was not on account of Armenian massacres that they turned him off his throne, but because of the muddle and corruption and debility of his rule. Herein we may easily trace the hand of Germany, no longer publicly beckoning as when Wilhelm II., just after the first Armenian massacres, made his request of the Sultan for the establishment in Turkey of German colonists, but working underground, sapping and mining like a mole. For Germany, her mind already fixed on securing Turkey as an instrument of her Eastern policy, wanted a strong Turkey, and without doubt desired to bring an end to the disorganisation and decay of the Empire, and create and at the same time interpenetrate an efficient state that should be useful to her. We may take it for granted that she, like the rest of Europe, welcomed any sign of regeneration in the Ottoman Empire, but there was an ulterior purpose behind that. Turkey, already grasped by the Prussian hand, must be in that hand a weapon fit for use, a blade on which she could rely. She strengthened the Turkish army by the introduction of Prussian discipline, and worked on good material. Already she has realised her ambition in this respect, and now controls the material which she then worked on.

  The troubled years of the Balkan wars which followed this false dawn, coupled with the loss of all the territory which remained to the Ottoman Empire in Europe, with the exception of Thrace, caused an immediate reaction from the open-minded policy of the Young Turks, if we decide to credit them at the outset with a sincere purpose. Organisation by a slightly different spelling became Ottomanisation, and the aims of the Young Turks were identified with those of the Nationalist party which followed out and developed into a finished and super-fiendish policy the dreams of Abdul Hamid. He, as we have seen, had invented the idea of securing Ottoman supremacy in the Empire, not as before by absorption of the strength of its subject peoples, but by their extermination, and this formed part of the new programme which was to be more efficiently administered. Already, in 1909, the experimental massacre at Adana took place, and the Young Turk party, with its possibly Liberal aims, had become a party that had as its main object a system of tyranny and murder such as the world had never seen. Simultaneously Turkey itself, Nationalist party and all, became enslaved to German influence. Link by link the chains were forged and the manacles welded on, and before the European War broke out in 1914, the incarceration of Turkey in Germany was complete, and Wilhelm II. had a fine revenge for the snub inflicted on him by Abdul Hamid when he proposed the scheme of German colonisation in the lands depopulated by the Armenian massacres of 1895.

  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. The inception of the scheme was no doubt inspired by the example given by Prussia’s treatment of the Poles, and Hungary’s of Roumans and Slovaks. But in thoroughness of method Prussia’s pupil was to prove Prussia’s master, for it aimed not merely at expropriation, but extermination, and sought to become strong, not merely by weakening alien elements, but by abolishing them. It did not set this out quite explicitly in its manifestoes and the resolutions of its congresses, but two extracts, the first from the proceedings of the ‘Committee of Union and Progress,’ held in Constantinople in 1911, have a sinister suggestiveness about them for which the acts and measures of the Committee had already supplied the comment.

  ‘The formation of new parties in the Chamber or in the country must be suppressed, and the emergence of new Liberal ideas prevented. Turkey must become a really Mohammedan country, and Moslem influence must be preponderant. Every other religious propaganda must be suppressed.... Sooner or later the complete Ottomanisation of all Turkish subjects must be effected; it is clear, however, that this can never be attained by persuasion, but that we must resort to armed force.... Other nationalities must be denied the right of organisation, for decentralisation and autonomy are treason to the Turkish Empire.’

  Could there be a completer reversion to the policy of Abdul Hamid, than this formal resolution, passed within three years of the time when the Young Turks deposed him? The conviction
begins to dawn on one — as it began to dawn on the Balancers of Power — that he owed his downfall not to his illiberal and butcherous policy, but because he was not thorough enough.

  The second extract, from a pamphlet by Jelal Noury Bey, may be added, which defines the policy, not with regard to the Christian or Jewish subjects of the Turks, but with regard to the Arabs, Moslem by creed, and the guardians of the Holy Cities.

  ‘It is a peculiarly imperious necessity of our existence for us to Turkise the Arab lands, for the particularistic idea of nationality is awaking among the younger generation of Arabs, and already threatens us with a great catastrophe. Against this we must be fore-armed.’

  The design of Ottomanisation soon began to take practical form. Ottomanisation was to be the highest expression of patriotism, and any means which secured it, massacres such as, in 1909, had taken place at Adana, or the treatment accorded to the Greeks and Bulgarians who remained in Thrace after the Balkan wars, were in accordance with the new ‘Liberal’ gospel. Thrace was the only territory left to the Turks in Europe, and as it was largely populated by Greeks and Bulgarians, it could not be considered as sufficiently Ottomanised. A massacre under the very eyes of Europe was perhaps dangerous, so it sufficed to put the entire non-Turkish population over the frontier and lay hands on their property. In fact this was the first of the ‘deportation’ schemes which, in 1915, proved so successful with the Armenians, and the effect of it was that neither Greeks nor Bulgarians were left in Thrace. Then followed the expulsion of Greeks from the Mediterranean sea-board, but this was never completely carried out because the European war intervened, and the attention of the Nationalists was claimed by their over-lord. Later, as we shall see, a further deportation of Greeks was begun, but again that was stopped, for Germany saw that it would never do to have her Turkish allies murdering settlers of the same blood as those she hoped would become her allies. Of course, when it was only a question of Armenians she did not interfere.

  The design, then, of the new ‘Liberal’ regime, of which those three measures, the massacres at Adana, the expulsion of Greeks and Bulgarians from Thrace, and of Greeks from the sea-board of the Mediterranean, were early instances, was to restore the absolute supremacy of the Turks in the Ottoman Empire. It was obvious that the problem was one of considerable difficulty, since the Turks at the time composed only some forty per cent, of the whole population. They numbered about 8,000,000, while in the Empire were included about 7,000,000 Arabs, 2,000,000 Greeks, 2,000,000 Armenians, and 3,000,000 more of smaller nationalities, such as Kurds, Druses, and Jews. But the Turks were backed by Germany, and nowadays, since the abolition of the Capitulations, which leaves all alien races unprotected by foreign Powers, such as survive, after the extermination of the Armenians, are completely at the mercy of the Government in Constantinople. All these peoples speak a different language from the Turks, and have a different religion, for the Nationalist party, with a view to the Ottomanisation of the Arabs, have definitely stated that Arab Moslems are not of the true faith, and that their own Allah (in whose name they subsequently exterminated the Armenians) is the God of Love — German equivalent Got — whereas the Arab Allah is the God of vengeance. The sinister motive in this discovery needs no comment, for it is obvious that it releases the Ottoman Government from the prohibition in the Koran, whereby Moslem may not fight against Moslem. Therefore the Arabs were declared not to be true Moslems. Later on, that motive was translated into practical measures.

  Among the first tasks with regard to the Arabs that faced the Nationalist party from what we may call the pacific side of their mission was to substitute the Turkish language for Arabic. Kemal Bey, a Nationalist of Salonika, with the help of Ziya Bey, collected round him a group of young writers, and these proceeded to translate the Koran out of Arabic into Turkish, and to publish the prayers for the Caliphate in their own language, and orders went out that these revised versions should be used in all mosques. Turkish was to be the official language for use in all public proclamations, and, with Prussian thoroughness, it was even substituted on such railway tickets as had hitherto been printed in Arabic. The new Turkish tongue (Yeni Lisan) had also to be purged of all foreign words, but here some difficulty was experienced, for Persian and Arabic formed an enormous percentage in the language as hitherto employed, and the promoters of this Ottoman purity of tongue found themselves left with a very jejune instrument for the rhapsodies of their patriotic aims. Poets in especial (for the Nationalists, like all well-equipped founders of romantic movements, had their bards) found themselves in sore straits owing to the limited vocabulary; and we read of one, Mehmed Emin Bey, who was forced to publish his odes in small provincial papers, since no well-established journal would admit so scrannel an expression of views however exalted.[] But the translation of the Koran was the greatest linguistic feat, and Tekin Alp, the most prominent exponent of Nationalism, refers to it as one of the noblest tasks undertaken by the new movement. It mattered not at all that by religious ordinance the translation of the Koran into any other tongue was a sin. ‘The Nationalists,’ he tells us, ‘have cut themselves off from the superstitious prejudice.’ A further attempt was made to substitute Turkish letters for Arabic letters in the alphabet, but this seems to have presented insuperable difficulties, and I gather that it has been abandoned.

  This thwarted poet retired from the Committee of Union and Progress not long after, and his place was taken by Enver.

  The Ottomanisation of religion and language, then, was among the pacific methods of spreading Pan-Turkism through the Empire. A monstrous idol was set up, a Hindenburg idol, in front of which all peoples and languages, not Christians alone, but Moslems, were bound to prostrate themselves. Indeed it was against Arabs mainly that these provisions were directed, for the Arabs constituted the most menacing obstacle to the spread of Ottomanisation, since they numbered in the Empire only a million less than the Turks themselves. It was ordained by statute that no Arab could have a seat on the Committee of Union and Progress, and the Cabinet similarly was purged of any Greek or Armenian element. Never any more must there be new parties in the Chamber, never any more must Liberal ideas (to champion which the New Turk party had come into being) be allowed to prick up their pernicious heads. For the Nationalist party, with whom the New Turks were now identical, had taken as their creed all that the deposed Abdul Hamid stood for, and only differed from him in that as their schemes developed they looked forward to logical conclusions far beyond what he had ever dreamed of. But Abdul Hamid may, I think, be taken to be the true founder of the new Nationalism: at any rate it was he who had first seen the possibilities of massacre as a means of maintaining Ottoman supremacy. In the hands of Nationalists that was to prove a more effective weapon than the printing of railway tickets in Turkish. But already before the European War the Nationalists had vastly extended his ideas, and had seen the danger of allowing even Arabs to have a standing of any kind in the new state. Henceforth all subject people were to be rayas, cattle, as in the old days of the Sultans who absorbed the strength of the aliens, but did not exterminate them. But now the cattle were not only to be used for milk, but were to be slaughtered when advisable. Till then they must be dumb, or speak the language of their masters only, for this alone can save them from the shambles. Ahmed Sherif Bey, a prominent Nationalist, lays this down. ‘It is the business of the Porte to make the Arabs forget their own language, and to impose upon them instead that of the nation that rules them. If the Porte loses sight of this duty, it will be digging its grave with its own hands, for if the Arabs do not forget their language, their history, and their customs, they will seek to restore their ancient empire on the ruins of Ottomanism and of Turkish rule in Asia.’