II
The new Turkish Nationalism is the immediate factor to be reckoned with. It is very new - newer than the Young Turks, and sharply opposed to the original Young Turkish programme - but it has established its ascendancy. It decided Turkey's entry into the War, and is the key to the current policy of the Ottoman Government.
The Young Turks were not Nationalists from the beginning; the "Committee of Union and Progress" was founded in good faith to liberate and reconcile all the inhabitants of the Empire on the principles of the French Revolution. At the Committee's congress in 1909 the Nationalists were shouted down with the cry: "Our goal is organisation and nothing else[3]." But Young Turkish ideals rapidly narrowed. Liberalism gave way to Panislamism, Panislamism to Panturanianism, and the "Ottoman State Idea" changed from "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" to the Turkification of non-Turkish nationalities by force.
"The French Ideal," writes the Nationalist Tekin Alp in Thoughts on the Nature and Plan of a Greater Turkey, "is in contradiction to the needs and conditions of the age." By contrast, "the Turkish national movement does not exhibit the failings of the earlier movements. It is in every way adapted to the intellectual standard and feelings of the nation. It also keeps pace with the ideas of the age, which have for some decades centred round the principle of Nationality. In adopting Turkish Nationalism as the basis of their national policy, the Turks have only abandoned an abnormal state of affairs and thereby placed themselves on a level with modern nations[4]."
The development of Nationalism among the Turks was a natural phenomenon. Starting in the West, the movement has been spreading for a century through Central Europe, Hungary, and the Balkans, till from the Turks' former subjects it has passed to the Turks themselves. Chance played its part. Dr. Nazim Bey, for instance, the General Secretary of the "Union and Progress" Committee, is said to have been fired by a work of M. Leon Cahun's on the early history of the Turks and Mongols, lent him by the French Consul-General at Salonika, and the movement was, and still is, confined to a small intelligentsia. But that is the case with other national movements too, and does not hinder them from being powerful forces. Turkish Nationalism was kept alive after 1909 by a small group of enthusiasts at Salonika - their leader was Ziya Bey, who had come up to the Young Turk Congress from Diarbekir, and was one of the first converts to the new idea. It gained ground suddenly during, the Balkan War. The shock of defeat produced a craving for regeneration; the final loss of Europe turned the minds of the Osmanlis to the possibilities of Asia, and they were struck by the action of several prominent Russian subjects of Turco-Tatar nationality, who, out of racial sympathy, had given their services to the Ottoman Government in this time of adversity. As Tekin Alp expresses it:
"The Turks realised that, in order to live, they must become essentially Turkish, become a nation, be themselves.... The Turkish nation turned aside its gaze from the lost territory and looked instead upon Turania, the ideal country of the future."
Two years later this "New Orientation" had so mastered the Ottoman Government that it drew them into the European War.
There are many aims within the new Turkish horizon. Some of them are negative and non-political, some practical and extremely aggressive. Ziya Bey's adherents first took in hand the purification of the Turkish language. A Turkish poet had endeavoured before to dispense with the 95 per cent. (?) of the vocabulary that was borrowed from Persian and Arabic, and "his poetry had to be published in small provincial papers because the important newspapers of the towns would not accept it." The established writers in the traditional style made a hard fight, but Tekin Alp claims that the Yeni Lisan (New Language) "is to-day in possession of an absolute and unlimited authority." Borrowed rhythms have been banned as well as borrowed words, and there is even an agitation to replace the Arabic script by a new Turkish alphabet - an imitation of the Albanian movement which was opposed so fiercely by the Turks themselves before the Balkan War. In 1913 the Government stepped in with the foundation of a "Turkish Academy" (Turk Bilgi Derneyi ), and the Ministry of Education started an "Institute of Terminology," "Conservatoire," and "Writing and Translation Committee." The translation of foreign masterpieces as an incentive to a new national literature was in the programme of Ziya Bey's society, the Yeni Hayat (New Life). Their most cherished plan was to translate the Koran and the Friday Sermon, to have the Khutba (Prayer for the Caliph) recited in Turkish, and to remove the Arabic texts from the walls of the mosques[5]; the eyes and ears of Turkish Moslems were to be saved from the contamination of an anti-national language; but the campaign against Arabic passed over into an attack upon Islam.
"The Turkish Nationalists," Tekin Alp explains, "have made great efforts to nationalise religion itself, and to give it the impress of the Turkish national spirit. This idea was zealously supported by a fortnightly periodical, and one of the noblest tasks undertaken by it has been the translation of the Koran into Turkish. This is a reform of the greatest importance. It is well known that the translation of the Koran has hitherto been considered a sin. The Nationalists have cut themselves off from this superstitious prejudice and have had three translations made, the above-mentioned and two others."
On this issue the Nationalists broke a lance with the Islamjis, or "clericals," as Tekin Alp prefers to call them.
"Because it is written in the Koran that Islam knows no nationalities, but only Believers, the Islamjis thought that to occupy oneself with national questions was to act against the interests and principles of Islam itself.... According to the Nationalists, the pronouncement in the Koran was directed exclusively against the very frequent dissensions of clans and parties in the various Arab races." (A sneer which is meant to have a modern application.) "Although the Nationalists proclaim themselves the most zealous followers of Mohammed, nevertheless they do not conceal the fact that their interpretation of Islam is not the same as that of the Arabs. They maintain that the Turks cannot interpret the Koran in the same manner as the Arabs.... Their idea of God is also different."
This amazing Kulturkampf is quite possibly a reminiscence of Bismarckian Germany, for Turkish Nationalism is saturated with forgotten European moods, and its vein of Romanticism is as antiquated as the Kaiser's. It has taken Attila to its heart, and rehabilitated Jenghis Khan, Timur, Oghuz, and the rest with the erudition of a Turanian Walter Scott.
"My Attila, my Jenghis," sings Ziya Goek Alp, "these heroic figures, which stand for the proud fame of my race, appear on the dry pages of the history books as covered with shame and disgrace, while in reality they are no less than Alexander and Caesar. Still better known to my heart is Oghuz Khan[6]. In me he still lives in all his fame and greatness. Oghuz Khan delights and inspires my heart and causes me to sing psalms of gladness. The fatherland of the Turks is not Turkey or Turkestan, but the broad eternal land of Turania."
The Ministry of Evkaf (Religious Endowments) recently made a grant of L50,000 (Turkish) towards the publication of works on these worthies; the students at the Military College in Constantinople are alleged to have been diverted from their studies by their devotion to such literature, and on the eve of the War the Professor of Military Education there is reported to have delivered the following address to an instruction class of reserve officers:
"We are, gentlemen, before all, Turks. I wonder why we are called Ottomans, for who is Osman after whom we are named? He is a Turk from Altai, who overran this country with his Turkish Army. Therefore it is more of an honour to us to be named after his origin than after himself. We have so far been deceived by the ignorance of our forebears, and fie on these forebears who made us forget our nationality.... Be sure that Turkish nationality is better for us than Islam, and racial pride is one of the greatest social virtues[7]."
These extravagances must not be taken too literally. The Young Turk politicians, though they have embarked on a Nationalist policy, are not so reckless as to break openly with Islam or to denounce the founder of their State. They see clearly enough that Turkish Nationalism carried to a logical extreme is incompatible with the Ottoman pretension, and they favour the view, so severely criticised by Tekin Alp, "that all three groups of ideas - Ottomanism, Islamism, and the Turkish Movement - should work side by side and together." But, with this reservation, they follow the doctrinaires, who on their part are quite ready to press Islam into their service. Tekin Alp candidly admits that
"They sought after a judicious mingling of the religious and national impulses. They realised only too clearly that the still abstract ideals of Nationalism could not be expected to attract the masses, the lower classes, composed of uneducated and illiterate people. It was found more expedient to reach these classes under the flag of religion."
This sentence reveals in a flash one motive of the Armenian "Deportations," which followed Turkey's intervention in the War; and a celebrated German authority, in a memorial[8] written in 1916, gives this very explanation of their origin.
"Turkey's entry into the War," he writes, "was unwelcome to Turkish society in Constantinople, whose sympathies were with France, as well as to the mass of the people, but the Panislamic propaganda and the military dictatorship were able to stifle all opposition. The proclamation of the 'Holy War' produced a general agitation of the Mohammedan against the Christian elements in the Empire, and the Christian nationalities had soon good reason to fear that Turkish chauvinism would make use of Mohammedan fanaticism to make the War popular with the mass of the Mohammedan population."
The evidence presented in the British Blue Book on the Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire[9] shows that this explanation is correct. The Armenians were not massacred spontaneously by the local Moslems; the initiative came entirely from the Central Government at Constantinople, which planned the systematic extermination of the Armenian race in the Ottoman Empire, worked out a uniform method of procedure, despatched simultaneous orders to the provincial officials and gendarmerie to carry it into effect, and cashiered the few who declined to obey. The Armenians were rounded up and deported by regular troops and gendarmes; they were massacred on the road by bands of chettis, consisting chiefly of criminals released from prison by the Government for this work; when the Armenians were gone the Turkish populace was encouraged to plunder their goods and houses, and as the convoys of exiles passed through the villages the best-looking women and children were sold cheap or even given away for nothing to the Turkish peasantry. Naturally the Turkish people accepted the good things the Government offered them, and naturally this reconciled them momentarily to the War.
Thus in the Armenian atrocities the Young Turks made Panislamism and Turkish Nationalism work together for their ends, but the development of their policy shows the Islamic element receding and the Nationalist gaining ground.
"After the deposition of Abd-ul-Hamid," writes the German authority quoted above, "the Committee of Union and Progress reverted more and more to the ex-Sultan's policy. To begin with, a rigorous party tyranny was set up. A power behind the Government got the official executive apparatus into its hand, and the elections to Parliament ceased to be free. The appointment of the highest officials in the Empire and of all the most important servants of the administration was settled by decrees of the Committee. All bills had to be debated first by the Committee and to receive its approval before they came before the Chamber. Public policy was determined by two main considerations: (1) The centralistic idea, which claimed for the Turkish race not merely preponderant but exclusive power in the Empire, was to be carried to its logical consequences; (2) The Empire was to be established on a purely Islamic foundation. Turkish Nationalism and the Panislamic Idea precluded a priori any equality of treatment for the various races and religions of the Empire, and any movement which looked for the salvation of the Empire in the decentralisation or autonomy of its various parts was branded as high treason. The nationalistic and centralistic tendency was directed not merely against the various non-Mohammedan nationalities - Greeks, Armenians, Syrians, and Jews - but also against the non-Turkish Mohammedan nations - Arabs, Mohammedan Syrians, Kurds, and the Shia element in the population. An idol of 'Pan-Turkism' was erected, and all non-Turkish elements in the population were subjected to the harshest measures. The rigorous action which this policy prescribed against the Albanians, who were mostly Mohammedans and had been thorough loyalists till then, led to the loss of almost the whole of European Turkey. The same policy has provoked insurrections in the Arab half of the Empire, which a series of campaigns has failed to suppress. The conflict with the Arab element continues" - this was written in 1916 - "though the 'Holy War' has forced it to a certain extent into the background."
"The conflict with the Arabs" - that has been the worst folly of the Young Turkish politicians, and it will perhaps be the most powerful solvent of the Empire which the Osmanlis have misgoverned so long. It is the inevitable consequence of the camarilla government and the Pan-Turkish chauvinism for which the Committee of Union and Progress has come to stand.
The Committee consists by its statutes of Turks alone, and the election even of one Arab was vetoed[10]. Tekin Alp informs us that
"The portfolio of the Minister of Trade and Agriculture, which has been in the hands of Greeks and Armenians since the time of the Constitution, and was lately given to a Christian Arab, has at last been handed over to the Constantinople deputy Ahmed Nasimi Bey, who joined with Ziya Goek Alp in laying the foundations of the Turkish Movement immediately after the proclamation of the Constitution. With one exception the members of the Cabinet are all imbued with the same ideas and principles."
The Armenian deportations gave the Committee an opportunity of tightening its hold over the provincial officials as well. Valis who refused to carry out the orders were superseded if they were strong-minded enough to persist; but more often they were browbeaten by the leaders of the local Young Turk organisations, or even by their own subordinates, and let things go their way. Ways and means of packing the administration with their own henchmen had been discussed by the Committee already in their congress of October, 1911, and they had defined their policy then in the following remarkable resolutions[11]:
"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 ideas and Moslem influence must be preponderant. Every other religious propaganda must be suppressed. The existence of the Empire depends on the strength of the Young Turkish Party and the suppression of all antagonistic ideas....
"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. The character of the Empire must be Mohammedan, and respect must be secured for Mohammedan institutions and traditions. Other nationalities must be denied the right of organisation, for decentralisation and autonomy are treason to the Turkish Empire. The nationalities are a quantite negligeable. They can keep their religion but not their language. The propagation of the Turkish language is one of the sovereign means of confirming the Mohammedan supremacy and assimilating the other elements."
The confusion of aims in these two paragraphs reveals the direction in which Young Turkish policy has been travelling. Religion is now secondary to language, and the precedence still given to the Islamic formula is only in apparent contradiction to this, for Mohammedan supremacy is equated with the Turkish National Idea. Such a version of Panislamism leaves no room for an Arab race under Ottoman rule, and the "Panturanian" address given by the Turkish Professor at the Military College in Constantinople had a sequel which showed the Arabs what they, too, had to expect from Turkey's entrance into the War.
There were Arabs among the officers whom the Professor was addressing, and one of them ventured to protest.
"All Ottomans are not Turks," he said, "and if the Empire were to be considered purely Turkish, then all the non-Turkish elements would be foreign to it, instead of being living members of the political body known as the Ottoman Empire, fighting the common fight for it and for Islam."
To this the Professor is reported to have replied:
"Although you are an Arab, yet you and your race are subject to Turkey. Have not the Turks colonised your country, and have they not conquered it by the sword? The Ottoman State, which you plead, is nothing but a social trick, to which you resort in order to attain your ends. As to religion, it has no connexion with politics. We shall soon march forward in the name of Turkey and the Turkish flag, casting aside religion, as it is only a personal and secondary question. You and your nation must realise that you are Turks, and that there is no such thing as Arab nationality and an Arab fatherland."
It is said that the Arab officers present handed in a joint protest to the Minister of War, asking for the Professor's dismissal, and that Enver Bey's answer was to have them all sent to the front-line trenches.
Certainly the Turkish Nationalists have not concealed their attitude towards the Arabs since the War began.
"The Arab lands," writes Djelal Noury Bey in a recently-published work, "and above all Irak[12] and Yemen, must become Turkish colonies in which we shall spread our own language, so that at the right moment we may make it the language of religion. 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 forearmed."
And Ahmed Sherif Bey, again, has written as follows in the Tanin :
"The Arabs speak their own language and are as ignorant of Turkish as if their country were not a dependency of Turkey. It is the business of the Porte to make them forget their own language and to impose upon them instead that of the nation which 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."
A Turkish pamphleteer wrote that "the Arabs have been a misfortune to Turkey," and that "a Turkish conqueror's war-horse is better than the Prophet of any other nation." This pamphlet was distributed in the Caucasus at the Ottoman Government's expense as Turkish propaganda.
But the best proof of the Young Turks' intentions towards the Arabs is their actual conduct in the Arab provinces of their Empire. In the spring of 1916 an Arab who had escaped from Syria published some facts in the Egyptian Press which the Turkish censorship had previously managed to conceal[13]. Business was ruined, because the Turks had confiscated all gold and forced the people to accept depreciated paper; the population was starving, and the Turks had prohibited the American colony at Beirut from organising relief; the national susceptibilities of the inhabitants were outraged in petty ways - the railway tickets, for instance, were no longer printed in Arabic, but only in Turkish and German; and spies were active in denouncing the least manifestations of disaffection. A Turkish court-martial was sitting in the Lebanon, and at the time our informant left Syria it had 240 persons under arrest, 180 of them on political charges. These prisoners were the leading men of Syria - Christians and Moslems without distinction; for in Syria, as in Armenia, the Turks put the leaders out of the way before they attacked the nation as a whole; most of the Syrian bishops had been deported or driven into hiding; by the beginning of March, 1916, it was reckoned that 816 Arabs in Syria and 117 in Mesopotamia had already been condemned to death with the confiscation of their property. A Turkish officer, taking our informant for a Turk too, remarked to him: "Those Arabs wish to get rid of us and are secretly in sympathy with our enemies, but we mean to get rid of them ourselves before they have any chance of translating their sympathy into action." This caps what a Turkish gendarme in Armenia said to a Danish sister serving with the German Red Cross: "First we kill the Armenians, then the Greeks, then the Kurds[14]." Every non-Turkish nationality in the Ottoman Empire is threatened with extermination.
But the aims of Turkish Nationalists are not limited by the Ottoman frontiers. If they are resolved to clear their Empire of every non-Turkish element, that is only a step towards extending it over everything Turkish that lies outside. The Turks have not only aliens to get rid of, but an irredenta to win.
"The Ottoman Turks," Tekin Alp reminds his readers, "now only represent a tenth of the whole Turkish nation. There are now sixty to seventy million Turkish subjects of various states in the world, who should succeed in giving the nation an important place among the other Powers. Unfortunately, there is no connexion between the separate groups, which are distributed over great tracts of land. Their aspirations and national institutions still divide them.... Now that the Ottoman Turks have awakened from their sleep of centuries they do not only think of themselves, but hasten to save the other parts of their race who are living in slavery or ignorance....
"Turkish irredentism may be directed towards material or moral reforms according to circumstances. If the geographical position favours the venture, the Turks can free their brothers from foreign rule. In the other case, they can carry it on on moral or intellectual lines.
"Irredentism, which other nations may regard as a luxury - though often a very terrible and costly one - is a political and social necessity for the Turks.... If all the Turks in the world were welded into one huge community, a strong nation would be formed, worthy to take an important place among the other nations of the world[15]."
This may be a dream, but the Young Turks have used the political and military resources of the Ottoman Empire to make it a reality. At the congress of 1911 it was resolved that "immigration from the Caucasus and Turkestan must be promoted, land found for the immigrants, and the Christians hindered from acquiring real estate." Turkey was first to be reinforced by the Turks abroad; in the European War she was to strike out as their liberator. The day after their declaration of war the Young Turkish Government issued a proclamation in which the following sentences occur:
"Our participation in the world war represents the vindication of our national ideal. The ideal of our nation and people leads us towards the destruction of our Muscovite enemy, in order to obtain thereby a natural frontier to our empire, which should include and unite all branches of our race."
When war broke out the "Dashnaktzagan" - the Armenian parliamentary party in the Ottoman Empire - were in congress at Erzerum. A deputation of Young Turk propagandists[16] presented themselves, and urged the Armenians to join them in raising a general insurrection in Caucasia. They sketched their proposed partition of Russian territory; the Tatars [17] were to have this, the Georgians that, the Armenians this other; autonomy for the new provinces under Ottoman suzerainty was to be the reward for co-operation. The Dasknaktzagan had always worked with the Young Turks in internal politics, but they refused to join them in this aggressive venture. The Ottoman Armenians, they said, would do their duty as Ottoman subjects during the war, but they advised the Government to preserve peace if that were still possible[18]. But the Turks were past reason, and their Army was already on the move. The main body crossed the Russian frontier; a second force invaded Northern Persia, and penetrated as far as Tabriz. Tabriz is the capital of Azerbaijan, a province where the majority of the population is Turkish by language; and beyond, across the River Aras, lies the Russian province of Baku, also containing a large Turkish-speaking population and the vital oilfields. The Turkish plan of campaign was frustrated by the brilliant Russian victory of Sarikamysh. By the end of January, 1915, the Turkish Army was back within its own frontiers, and in this quarter it has not again advanced beyond them. But the Young Turks' irredentist ambitions have remained in being. During their brief occupation of Northern Persia they did their best to wipe out the Syriac element in the population - the Nestorian Christians of Urmia. Their plan was to get rid of all the non-Turkish peoples which separate the Turks of Anatolia from the Turks of Baku and Azerbaijan, and this was the second motive of the Armenian deportations, which they put in hand a month or two after their military projects had failed.
The Turkish Irredentists propose, in fact, to gain their ends by bloodshed and terrorism. Tekin Alp (like most Turkish publicists and politicians since 1908) is a Macedonian[19], and is profoundly impressed by the methods which the other nationalities there employed to the discomfiture of the Turks themselves.
"Observers," he writes, "who, like myself, are Macedonians, and, like myself, had ample opportunity of gaining an intimate knowledge of the irredentist propaganda of the Bulgars, Greeks, Serbs, and Vlachs, are able to judge the significance of this striving after a national ideal, and how sweet and inspiring it is to go through the greatest dangers for such a cause. This is best illustrated by a few living examples" (which he proceeds to give)....
Macedonia is soaked in blood. Atrocities were committed here the mere thought of which makes one's hair stand on end. Nevertheless, the leaders of robber bands and members of the terrible irredentist organisations were not regarded by the public as wild robbers, but as heroes fighting for the unity of the nation.
"Will the Young Turks emulate the self-sacrifice of these men?"
Russia and Persia are the fields marked out for such activity:
"In some places ordinary propaganda is sufficient, but in hotly-contested territory recourse is to be had to the more violent measures used in Macedonia. The neighbouring land of Persia is without doubt the best of all countries with Turkish population for spreading the new ideas, and it has been found that simple propaganda is amply sufficient to produce a satisfactory effect on this fruitful soil."
In Persia, Tekin Alp reckons, one-third of the population is of Turkish blood. He passes these Turkish elements in review, and concludes that "the spirit of the administration is Turkish, and also the leading spirit of Persian civilisation, even though these be clothed in Persian guise" - for at present the tables are turned. "All those Turkish warriors and heroes, Shahs and Grand Viziers, thinkers and scholars, have lost their Turkish consciousness and have become assimilated to the Persians in writing, speech, and literature." Even the compact two millions and a half of Turkish-speaking Azerbaijanis will write letters only in Persian, and will not read a Turkish newspaper. He omits the most important fact - that these Turks of Persia are Shias like their Persian fellow-countrymen, while the "Mohammedan institutions and traditions" for which the Ottoman Turks are pledged by the Young Turk Party to "secure respect" are those of the Sunni persuasion. But then Turkish Nationalism depends upon ignoring religion. Tekin Alp sets out confidently to give the Turks in Persia "a Turkish soul." His model is the Rumanian propaganda among the Vlachs in Macedonia, and his expectations are great:
"There is no power in Persia to put down such a movement, because it could do no harm to anyone. The nationalisation of the Persian Turks would even be a great and unexpected help to the Persian Government.... Persia would be situated with regard to the Turkish Government as Bavaria towards Prussia."
And this is only a stage towards a higher goal:
"The united Turks should form the centre of gravity of the world of Islam. The Arabs of Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, the Persians, Afghans, etc., must enjoy complete independence in their own affairs, but outwardly the world of Islam must present a perfectly united front."
The Arabs of North Africa and the Shias of Iran can appraise the "independence" held out to them by the "unity" which Turkish Nationalism has been presenting already to Syria and Irak, the Yemen and the Hedjaz.
But Tekin Alp deals even less tenderly with Russia. In explaining the bond of interest between Turkish Nationalism and Germany he remarks that
"The Pan-Turkish aspirations cannot come to their full development and realisation until the Muscovite monster is crushed, because the very districts which are the object of Turkish Irredentism - Siberia, the Caucasus, the Crimea, Afghanistan, etc. - are still directly or indirectly under Russian rule."
The "et cetera" proves to be nothing less than the province of Kazan:
"The alluvial plains of the Volga and the Kama, in European Russia, are inhabited by four or five million Turks.... The Northern Turks are not indeed superior to the Ottoman Turks, but must not therefore be underrated. Their progressive economic and social organisation is in every way a great help to the national movement.
"If," he concludes, "the Russian despotism is, as we hope, to be destroyed by the brave German, Austrian, and Turkish Armies, thirty to forty million Turks will receive their independence. With the ten million Ottoman Turks this will form a nation of fifty million, advancing towards a great civilisation which may perhaps be compared to that of Germany, in that it will have the strength and energy to rise ever higher. In some ways it will be even superior to the degenerate French and English civilisations."
This Nationalism, which dominates Turkey's present, has also decided the question of her future. If such a movement has taken possession of the Osmanlis, the Osmanlis must lose possession of their Empire. Turkish Nationalism now directs the Ottoman Government, wields its pretensions, is master within its frontiers; and how does it use its mastery? To make a hell of Armenia and Syria, and to plot out new Macedonias in Persia and the heart of Russia. Thus Turkish Nationalism shows where the Turk is intolerable and must go, but it also shows where he has some right to stay.
There are innocent and constructive elements in it, as in all movements of the kind. As in Europe, it has forced open the Dead Hand of the Church. Under its influence the Ministry of Evkaf, which holds the enormous religious endowments of Turkey in trust, has turned its funds to the founding of a national bank and library, and the subsidising of a national architecture. It has also started elementary schools, like the voluntary schools supported by the Christian nationalities, in aid of the Ministry of Education; and it has taken up the reform of the Moslem seminaries (Medresses), which have been one of the strongholds of Turkish reaction. The welfare of Turkish students is a concern of the Nationalist society called Turk Ujaghi (the Turkish Family), founded in 1912, and now possessing sixteen branches in various provincial towns of Anatolia - only Turks may be members - with affiliated societies in the Caucasus and Turkestan. The Turk Ujaghi organises lantern lectures, lectures on mediaeval Anatolian art, and even lectures by a Turkish lady on Panturanianism and woman's rights - she is said to have had Khodjas[20] in her audience, and, if so, this certainly shows an unheard-of openness to new ideas on the part of the "Islamji." Another society, the Turk Gueji (Turkish Strength), encourages physical culture like the Slavonic Sokols, and there are Izdjis, or Turkish Boy-Scouts, under Enver Bey's patronage, who take "Turanian" scout-names, blazon the White Wolf of Turkish paganism on their flags, and cheer, it is said, not for the "Caliph" or the "Padishah," but for the "Khakan."
This jumble of efforts, half-admirable and half-absurd, will justify Turkish Nationalism if it brings about the regeneration of the Anatolian peasantry. The Anatolians have suffered as much from the Ottoman dominion as any of the races which have come under its yoke. They have paid for Ottoman Imperialism with their blood and physique; their villages have been ravaged by the syphilis of the garrison towns, and the wider the frontiers of the Empire the further from their homes the Anatolian soldiers have died - in the Yemen, in Albania, in Irak, on the snow-covered Armenian plateau. Two things are necessary for Anatolia's salvation - the limitation of the Turkish State to the lands inhabited by its Turkish-speaking population, and the replacement of the mongrel Osmanli bureaucracy by a cleaner and more democratic political order. If the Allies can compass this, they may claim without hypocrisy to have liberated another nationality; for Anatolia will be reborn on the day of its escape from the Ottoman chrysalis as truly as were Serbia and Greece and Rumania and Bulgaria.
The beginnings will be difficult, as they have been in the Balkans. Whatever frontiers a Turkish National State may receive, they cannot be drawn without including non-Turkish elements - racial geography is nowhere very simple between Bagdad and Vienna - and in view of what the Turk's racial minorities have suffered during the War and before it, those left to him hereafter must be safeguarded by stringent guarantees - far more stringent than the Capitulations, which, for that matter, protected none but the nationals of foreign Powers. The Capitulations are a problem in themselves. They were repudiated by the Young Turkish Government at the beginning of the War, as well as the conventions regulating the customs tariff. It is difficult to see how the Peace Conference can pass over flagrant violations of international treaties, and the Nationalists' contention that Turkish justice has been brought up to a European standard will not bear examination; on the contrary, the Young Turkish congress of 1911 passed a resolution that "the reorganisation of the administration of justice was less important than the abolition of the Capitulations." These difficulties, however, might be settled with a new and better Anatolian government; and as for the racial question, with time and guaranteed tolerance for religion it might solve itself, for there is a rude vitality in the Turkish language, and the Greek and Armenian minorities in Central Anatolia have been gradually adopting it in place of their native speech, though this tendency is now being counteracted by the spread of national schools among the scattered outposts of the two nationalities in the interior.