Chapter 3

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 (_Medressés_), 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 Güji_ (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.

III

With these suggestions, Anatolia and Turkish Nationalism may be dismissed from our survey. Shorn of their pretensions in Armenia and the countries south of Taurus, the Turks may experiment in the art of government without the tragedies which their present domination has brought upon mankind. The other lands and peoples of Western Asia, when they have ceased to be "Turkey," will be restored once more to the civilised world. What forces will shape their growth? Not, even indirectly, the discrowned Turk, for if he were not banned by his crimes he would still be doomed by his incapacity.

The relative qualities of the different Near Eastern races are not in doubt. A German teacher in the German Technical School at Aleppo, who resigned his appointment as a protest against the Armenian atrocities in 1915, thus records his personal judgment in an open letter to the _Reichstag_[21]:

"The Young Turk is afraid of the Christian nationalities--Armenians, Syrians and Greeks--on account of their cultural and economic superiority, and he sees in their religion a hindrance to Turkifying them by peaceful means. They must therefore be exterminated or converted to Islam by force. The Turks do not suspect that in so doing they are sawing off the branch on which they are sitting themselves. Yet who is to help Turkey forward if not the Greeks, Armenians, and Syrians, who constitute more than a quarter of the population of the Empire? The Turks, _the least gifted of the races living in Turkey_, are themselves only a minority of the population, and are still far behind the Arabs in culture. Where is there any Turkish trade, Turkish handicraft, Turkish industry, Turkish art, Turkish science? They have even borrowed their law and religion from the conquered Arabs, and their language, so far as it has been given literary form.

"We teachers, who have been teaching Greeks, Armenians, Arabs, Turks, and Jews in German schools in Turkey for years, can only pass judgment that of all our pupils the pure Turks are the most unwilling and the least talented. When for once in a way a Turk does achieve something, one can be sure in nine cases out of ten that one is dealing with a Circassian, an Albanian, or a Turk with Bulgarian blood in his veins. From my personal experience I can only prophesy that the Turks proper will never achieve anything in trade, industry, or science.

"We are told now in the German Press about the Turks' hunger for education, and of how they are thronging eagerly to learn German. There is even a report of language courses for adults which have been started in Turkey. They have certainly been started, but with what result? One reads of the language course at a technical school which began with twelve Turkish teachers as pupils. Our informant forgets to add, however, that after four lessons only six pupils presented themselves; after five, five; after six, four; and after seven only three, so that after eight lessons the course broke down, through the indolence of the pupils, before it had properly commenced. If the pupils had been Armenians they would have persevered till the end of the school year, learnt industriously, and finished with a respectable mastery of the German language."

From a German teacher who has worked in Turkey for three years this verdict is crushing, and Tekin Alp himself virtually admits the charge. "It is true," he writes, "that the Turkish character is usually lacking in the qualities most essential to trade or economic undertakings, but these may be acquired by a reasonable and methodical training and organisation." The only "organisation" that seems to occur to him is the Boycott, which has been popular with the Turks since the Revolution of 1908.

"The unaccommodating attitude of the Greek Government was sufficient excuse," he remarks, in reference to the Boycott of 1912. "The real motive, however, was the longing of the Turkish nation for independence in their own country. The Boycott, which was at first directed solely against the Greeks, was then extended to the Armenians and other non-Mohammedan circles, and was carried out with undiminished energy. This movement, which lasted in all its rigour for several months, caused the ruin of hundreds of small Greek and Armenian tradesmen.... The systematic and rigorous Boycott is now at an end, but the spirit it created in the people still persists.... It can now be asserted that the movement for restoring the economic life of Turkey is on the right road."

The real effects of the Boycott of 1912 are described by the German authority whose memorial has several times been cited in this article. He tells us how, under the patronage of the Young Turkish Government, associations were formed which intimidated the Moslem peasants into buying from them, when they came to market, instead of from the Christians with whom they had formerly dealt.

"The peasants came to their old dealers," the memorial continues, "lamented their fate, and asked their advice as to how they could save themselves from the hands of their fellow-countrymen. They were delighted when at last the Boycott came to an end and they could once more buy from Greeks and Armenians, where they were well served and got good value for their money."

If the Turkish Nationalists had confined themselves to economic weapons, the Turks' economic ineptitude would have prevented them from doing serious harm; but by abusing the political and military powers of the Ottoman State to perpetrate the recent atrocities they have struck a mortal blow at the prosperity of Western Asia.

"In the whole of Asia Minor, with perhaps one or two exceptions," the same German authority states, "there is not a single pure Turkish firm engaged in foreign trade.... The extermination of the Armenian population means not only the loss of from 10 to 25 per cent. of the total population of Anatolia[22], but, what is most serious, the elimination of those elements in the population which are the most highly developed economically and have the greatest capacity for civilisation...."

And this is the universal judgment of those in a position to know.

"The result of the deportations," the American Consul at Aleppo declares in an official report[23], "is that, as 90 per cent. of the commerce of the interior is in the hands of the Armenians, the country is facing ruin. The great bulk of business being done on credit, hundreds of prominent business men other than Armenians are facing bankruptcy. There will not be left in the places evacuated a single tanner, moulder, blacksmith, tailor, carpenter, clay-worker, weaver, shoemaker, jeweller, pharmacist, doctor, lawyer, or any of the professional people or tradesmen, with very few exceptions, and the country will be left in a practically helpless state."

The German memorialist presses the indictment:

"You cannot become a merchant by murdering one. You cannot master a handicraft if you smash its tools. A sparsely-populated country does not become more productive if it destroys its most industrious population. You do not advance the progress of civilisation if you drive into the desert, as the scapegoat for decades and centuries of wasted opportunities, the element in your population which shows the greatest economic ability, the greatest progressiveness in education, and the greatest energy in every respect, and which was fitted by nature to build the bridge between East and West. You only corrupt your own sense of right if you tread the rights of others under foot. The popularity of an unpopular war may temporarily be promoted among the Turkish masses by the destruction and spoliation of the non-Mohammedan elements--the Armenians most of all, but also, in part, the Syrians, Greeks, Maronites, and Jews--but thoughtful Mohammedans, when they realise the whole damage which the Empire has sustained, will lament the economic ruin of Turkey most bitterly, and will come to the conclusion that the Turkish Government has lost infinitely more than it can ever win"--it is a German writing--"by victories at the front."

"We may call it political necessity or what not," declared an American travelling in Anatolia during the deportations of 1915, "but in essence it is a nominally ruling class, jealous of a more progressive race, striving by methods of primitive savagery to maintain the leading place[24]."

What forces will be released in Western Asia when the Turk has met his fate? Who will repair the ruin he leaves behind?

The Germans? They have been penetrating Turkey economically for the last thirty years. They have organised regular steamship services between German and Turkish ports, multiplied the volume of Turco-German trade, and extended their capital investments, particularly in the Ottoman Debt and the construction of railways. In 1881, when the Debt was first placed under international administration, Germany held only 4.7 per cent., of it, and was the sixth in importance of Turkey's creditors; by 1912 she held 20 per cent., and was second only to France[25]. Her railway enterprises, more ambitious than those of any other foreign Power, have brought valuable concessions in their train--harbour works at Haidar Pasha and Alexandretta, irrigation works in the Konia oasis and the Adana plain, and the prospect, when the Bagdad Railway reaches the Tigris, of tapping the naphtha deposits of Kerkuk[26]. Dr. Rohrbach, the German specialist on the Near East, forecasts the profits of the Bagdad Railway from the results of Russian railway-building in Central Asia. He prophesies the cultivation of cotton, in the regions opened up by the line, on a scale which will cover an appreciable part of the demands of German industry, and will open a corresponding market for German wares among the new cotton-growing population[27]. "Yet the decisive factor in the Bagdad Railway," he counsels his German readers, "is not to be found in these economic considerations but in another sphere."

Dr. Wiedenfeld drives this home.

"Germany's relation to Turkey," his monograph begins, "belies the doctrine that all modern understandings and differences between nations have an economic origin. We are certainly interested in the economic advancement of Turkey ... but in setting ourselves to make Turkey strong we have been influenced far more by our political interests as a State among States (_das politische, das staatlich-machtliche Interesse_). Even our economic activity has primarily served this aim, and has in fact originated to a large extent in the purely politico-military problems (_aus den unmittelbaren Machtaufgaben_) which confronted the Turkish Government. Exclusively economic considerations play a very subordinate part in Turco-German relations.... Our common political aims, and Germany's interest in keeping open the land-route to the Indian Ocean, will make it more than ever imperative for us to strengthen Turkey economically with all our might, and to put her in a position to build up, on independent economic foundations, a body politic strong enough to withstand all external assaults. The means will still be economic; the goal will be of a political order[28]."

And Dr. Rohrbach formulates the political goal with startling precision. After twelve pages of disquisition on recent international diplomacy he brings his thesis to this point: the Bagdad Railway links up with the railways of Syria, and

"The importance of the Syrian railway system lies in this, that, if the need arose, it would be the direct instrument for the exercise of pressure upon England ... supposing that German-Austro-Turkish co-operation became necessary in the direction of Egypt."

Written as it was in 1911, this is a remarkable anticipation of Turkish strategic railway-building since the outbreak of war; but it is infinitely remote in purpose from the economic regeneration of Western Asia, and even when the German publicists reckon in economic values they generally betray their political design.