CHAPTER XIX

_A STRONG ARMY NEEDED_

For some time before the elections for the Turkish Parliament took place, the Committee of Union and Progress was at great pains to explain its programme as fully and clearly as was possible to the people. From the articles which appeared in the newspapers of the party and the conversations which could be had without difficulty with members of the Committee one was able to form a fairly complete conception of the principal aims of the reformers. The title of the Committee, “Union and Progress,” well sums up these aims. Turkey is to be made strong and free, respected by the nations, first by _union_—by the union of all natives of Turkey of whatsoever creed or race. 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 by _progress_—the regeneration of a people whose energies have been sterilised by a long oppression, the restoration of prosperity to an impoverished land. The people are to be educated, and the vast resources of the country are to be developed.

Instead of dreaming of impossible social reforms, the Young Turks have very practical ends in view. In the first place, they recognise that it is essential to the existence of Turkey that she should possess a strong army, as otherwise her very progress may prove her ruin, arousing the cupidity of those of her neighbours who have already divided among them so much of her rich land. So Turkey, having no desire to sow that others may reap, is determined to create an army equal in strength to that of any of the great military Powers. To possess such an army the Turks are prepared to make great sacrifices. The exemption from conscription enjoyed by certain cities and districts will be withdrawn gradually. The Moslems will no longer bear the whole burden of the conscription; for the future the Christians also will have to serve in the army, and the view of the Turkish Generals with whom I have spoken is that there should be no formation of exclusively Moslem or exclusively Christian regiments, but that men of different creeds should be mingled in each unit. The Greeks, who want all the rights of Ottoman citizenship without its obligations, entertain a strong objection to service in the Turkish army.

But Turkey cannot maintain a great army without money, and money she can only obtain by developing her vast mineral and agricultural resources with foreign capital. Under the old _régime_, Court intrigue made all industrial enterprise precarious, and foreign capitalists were chary of ventures in a country where rights of property were so insecure. But by means of the good government which the Young Turks are introducing they hope to gain the confidence of foreign investors. They realise that, to quote from a Constantinople paper, “Turkey cannot have reform without money or money without reform; foreign capital she must have in order to carry out the reforms, and foreign capital will not come in until there is a satisfactory assurance that the reforms will be carried out, that the money provided will be spent properly and not be stolen and wasted as it was under the old _régime_.”

The programme of the more necessary reforms was set forth with some detail by the press of the Young Turk party during its electioneering campaign, and the abolition of the old corrupt system of administration, whereby bribery and _bakshish_ had to supplement the inadequate pay—often years in arrears—of the servants of the State, was of course insisted upon. The following are among the more important of the projects recommended by the Young Turk party: (1) The construction of many thousands of miles of roads to open out the country; at the present time some of the railway lines are of very little service, as roads to bring to them the produce of the neighbouring country at moderate cost are wanting. (2) The construction of four thousand kilometres of railway; certain railways are urgently needed if the enormous mineral wealth of the country is to be developed by foreign capital; the difficulties of transport now prohibit mining enterprise in most richly mineralised districts. (3) The bringing under cultivation again of the formerly productive arable districts in the Vilayets of Salonica, Smyrna, etc. (4) The construction of commercial ports at Dedeaghatch, Samsoun, Mersina, etc. (5) The construction of irrigation works in Mesopotamia and elsewhere; there are thousands of square miles of uncultivated land in Turkey only awaiting irrigation to make them exceedingly productive. (6) The engaging of French engineers to make navigable waterways of the Vardar, Maritza, Boyana, and Kizil-Irmak. (7) The foundation of an engineering college, coupled with a scheme for sending students who have gained diplomas to Europe to gain practical knowledge. (8) The formation of navigation, commercial, and industrial companies, with the object of forwarding the prosperity of the country.

It is outside the scope of this book to deal with the complicated question of Turkey’s financial position, which, according to the experts, is not so unsatisfactory as was at first supposed; but there are, of course, immense difficulties to be overcome before Turkey can see herself fairly started on the road of progress. The late _régime_ burdened her with obligations which stand in the way of all attempts at reform; but these obstacles might be removed by the co-operation of the Powers interested. Whenever some measure for Turkey’s good is proposed there seems to jump up some capitulation or some privileged interest of one Power or another to block it hopelessly. The Baghdad Railway concession, for example, with its kilometric guarantee, is like a mill-stone round the neck of Turkey.

The Young Turks recognized that if their country was to be regenerated and to take its place among the nations the revenues would have to be greatly increased with the least possible delay. As to ways and means, the following may be taken as summing up some of the views which I heard expressed by Turks and others whose opinion carries weight. In the first place (in view of the attitude taken by the more ignorant Parliamentary electors, who maintained that under the Constitution no taxes could be demanded of them) it may be impolitic to make any increase in the direct taxation of the country. The people, however, should be compelled to pay such direct taxes as are now in force until some better system has been devised, and the persons—and they are numerous—who by exercise of undue influence or otherwise have succeeded in avoiding the payment of their taxes should be forced to contribute like the others.

It is held, however, that whereas the direct taxes should be left as they are, reforms being made in the method of collection, several new sources of revenue could be tapped in the way of indirect taxation. In the first place, all the existing methods of raising indirect taxation should be maintained in their integrity, while the revenue derived from them should be largely increased by administrative reforms. For example, it has been calculated that the reorganisation of the Turkish Customs under the advice of the English expert, Mr. Crawford, will increase the revenue derived from the Customs by twenty-five per cent. Thinking men in Turkey recommend, not only the maintenance of the existing Customs tariff and other methods of indirect taxation, but also the imposition of still heavier taxation of this description until Turkey has been extricated from her present financial difficulties; and they also favour the creation of several new monopolies, to be preceded, naturally, by an amelioration in the conditions of the existing tobacco, salt, and other monopolies.

The very mention of monopolies is shocking to most economists, but political economy is not an exact science, and there are many exceptions even to the most widely accepted of its rules. Turkey must have money. The foreign capital necessary to develop her resources hesitates to come in, waiting to see its security. A monopoly affords that security and tempts capital as nothing else will. The English business men to whom I spoke in Turkey regarded the granting of monopolies for comparatively short terms as expedient under the present conditions in Turkey; for not only does this fostering of large industries provide employment for many people, but—what is of the utmost importance to Turkey at the present moment—it will also bring to the Turkish Government, without any expenditure on its part, an immediate and considerable revenue.

As the time for the Parliamentary elections drew near the Committee of Union and Progress published its political programme, and to this all candidates who were nominees of the Committee were bound to adhere. The following were among the more important of the Committee’s demands: that the Cabinet should be responsible to the Chamber of Deputies; that Turkish should remain the official language of the Empire; that the different races should have equal rights; that non-Moslems should be liable to military service; that the term of military service should be reduced; that peasants who had no land should be assisted to procure land, but not at the expense of the present land-owners; that education should be free and compulsory.

It was deeply interesting to be in Turkey during the elections, to watch the Young Turks zealously conducting their campaign to serve what they considered to be their country’s interests, and the people themselves puzzling out the meaning of this new Western innovation, the Constitution, and balancing the arguments of rival canvassers. The representatives of the Committee of Union and Progress were prepared to discuss patiently the intentions of the party with any group of electors that came to consult them, and while promising concessions to just demands, they did not attempt to catch votes by making wild promises which could never be fulfilled. Thus, when the Armenians—who have proved their loyalty to the Constitution and have not harassed the Government with unjustifiable grievances—asked that the lands which had been taken from the Armenians by the Kurds should be returned to the rightful owners, the Committee, realising that in practical politics there must be a law of prescription even for the raider, and not wishing to have a Kurd question added to the numerous other difficulties which were confronting Turkey, suggested that it would be wiser to leave the turbulent Kurds in possession of what they seized some time ago and to compensate the Armenians by giving them at least equally good lands in the once productive tracts which have long been lying fallow and deserted. On the other hand, the Committee could not assent to the proposal of the Arabians that the use of the Arab tongue should be permitted in the debates of the Chamber of Deputies. To Christians of all sects it promised that there would be no interference with their churches, language, education, and laws of marriage and inheritance; but refused to consider the question of complete administrative decentralisation, or of autonomy, for any portion of the Empire.

On the other hand, the agents of the reactionary party—the party of those who had fattened under the old _régime_ of plunder and were loth to see the profitable abuses swept away—worked hard to influence the electors, but apparently with little effect in European Turkey and Asia Minor. Certain foolish agitators who were infected with some of the socialistic doctrines of Western Europe unwittingly helped the cause of the reactionaries by raising the election cry of “No more taxes for the people” and “Down with all monopolies.” I have explained that the more ignorant people thought that with the suppression of the late _régime_ there would be an end of all authority. When they were enlightened on this matter by the Young Turks, and discovered that they would be compelled to pay their taxes as heretofore they felt some disappointment, and this afforded an opportunity to the reactionaries to point out to them that they would be no better off under the Constitution than they had been before, and that, at any rate, Turkey, under the old _régime_, had been a Mussulman State, whereas under the new order of things the government would be in the hands of bad Mohammedans, Christians, and Jews.

In Arabia and in other parts of Asia the efforts of the friends of the old _régime_, as might be expected, were attended with some success. The fanatical Arabs, who have never been reconciled to the Turkish rule, were impressed by the preachings of those who in the mosques denounced the Constitution, and declared that the Turks, who had ever been indifferent Mussulmans, had now abandoned the essential doctrines of Islam and were worse than the Christians and Jews with whom they associated.

But with the other races of the Empire it was still—in those early days of liberty—harmony, fraternisation, and enthusiasm; the racial and religious differences appeared to be forgotten for a while; one read of elections in which Christians were voting for Mussulman candidates or Mussulmans for Christian candidates. The optimistic Minister of the Interior, Haki Bey, made the following statement: “In our Parliament there will be no Turkish, Armenian, Greek, or Jew Deputies; they will all be Ottoman Deputies.” If one judged from the appearance of the surface one would have concluded that the proclaimed ideal of the Young Turk party—the union of people of all races and creeds within the Empire—was in a fair way to being realised.

The Turkish election law—which is now being revised—defines so vaguely the qualifications for a voter that a good deal of misunderstanding arose. Thus the Greek farmers in Epirus clamoured for the franchise, which had been denied to them on the ground that they were not taxpayers, the tithes being paid, not by them, but by the owners of the land. The Greeks maintained that, as this tax is calculated on the produce of the soil and not on the rent paid, the farmers were virtually the taxpayers and therefore entitled to vote. To decide what constituted a taxpayer in the eyes of the election law must have puzzled the brains of many a Turkish official at this time, especially when he had before him some cunning and plausibly argumentative Greek, determined to have his vote by hook or by crook. In an amusing case which was brought before my notice an importunate person was allowed to vote in his capacity as a taxpayer, though the only proof that he was such lay in the fact that he had on his back a coat made of a foreign cloth, which, if not smuggled, must have contributed to taxation in the form of Customs duties as it entered the country. The Turkish equivalents to English revising barristers had plenty of work to do in all the constituencies between Macedonia and Baghdad. It reminded one pleasingly of England to read of these things; but there were differences to be noticed here and there between the British and Turkish frame of mind during a General Election. For example, the Turkish electorate appears to be somewhat more exacting than the English, and it was announced that at Gumuldjina the _imams_, carrying the sacred banners from the mosques, assembled with ten thousand Mohammedans in front of the Municipality, to protest against the nomination as parliamentary candidates of “_obscure and undistinguished individuals_.”

The following are the more important features of the electoral regulations under the existing law. The elections are quadrennial. Roughly speaking fifty thousand voters are represented by one member of Parliament. There are two classes of electors; each group of about five hundred electors of the first class selects an elector of the second class, and the electors of the second class nominate and elect the Deputies. The following are among the qualifications for the franchise: An elector must be a male Ottoman subject, over twenty-five years of age; he must be a payer of direct taxes; he must have lived a year in the district in which he exercises his right of voting, and must produce a certificate from the _moukhtar_ of his former place of domicile showing that he is entitled to vote; _employés_ of the State and officers in the army, from the rank of lieutenant upwards, have the right to vote in whatever electoral districts they may happen to be during the elections; soldiers on furlough can vote in their own districts. A man is disqualified from voting if he has been condemned for a crime, if he is an undischarged bankrupt, if his character is notoriously bad, if he is acting as servant to another individual, if he has represented himself as being of other than Ottoman nationality. A Deputy must be over thirty years of age, must know the Turkish language, and must possess the qualifications of an elector. A good many of these regulations were not insisted on rigidly at the recent elections; for example, there are several Deputies who cannot speak Turkish.

The electoral laws provide heavy punishments for those who employ violence, intimidation, or corruption at elections. By Article 72 of the Constitution the penalty for influencing elections by false statements and calumnies is a fine of forty pounds and a period of imprisonment of from one year up to five years, according to the gravity of the offence; so it would be a dangerous thing in Turkey for partisans to post the walls with cartoons such as those which have exerted no small influence at General Elections in England. Another curious regulation, the object of which is to prevent rioting, compels the elector to return to his home as soon as he has registered his vote. It is also laid down that electors, before they drop their voting papers into the urn, must attend the prayers of the _imam_ (or priest in the case of a Christian voter) for the prolongation of the Sultan’s life and the increase of his glory.

In the late autumn, throughout the Turkish Empire, the elections took place. Turks, Albanians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Wallachs, Armenians, Jews, Latins, Arabs, Syrians, Kurds, Druses, elected their Deputies to a Chamber which represents so many races, interests, creeds, and languages that Turkey’s new Parliament in all probability would have been a Babel of vain talk and no doing had it not been that the cause of the Committee of Union and Progress triumphed in European Turkey and in Anatolia, and secured many adherents in other parts of the Empire, with the result that the nominees of the Committee formed a large majority in the Chamber.

I was in Constantinople during the election operations, and very interesting and picturesque they were. On the night preceding the polling the big drums were beating loudly in the Turkish quarters of the capital to remind the electors that it was their duty as good citizens of a free country to go on the morrow to the appointed places and drop their voting papers in the ballot boxes. On the following morning the great city presented a very animated appearance. Large processions were formed to carry with due ceremony the urns, or ballot boxes, to the various mosques, Greek and Armenian churches, synagogues, police stations, and other public buildings, in which the voting was to take place. A typical Mussulman procession which passed me was composed as follows: First came a military band and a small escort of infantry; next a carriage draped with Turkish flags, containing the voting urn and a few officials; lastly, a motley Mussulman crowd of voters and others, including _imams_, accompanied by theological students, pupils of the artillery and naval academies and numbers of happy school children, conspicuous among which was a band of tiny Moslem girls, wearing veils and waving miniature Turkish flags as they toddled along by the side of some tall _gendarmes_ who brought up the rear of the procession. This and the other processions which I met moved through the crowded streets to the accompaniment of martial music, the singing of patriotic songs, occasional cheers for liberty and justice, and the waving of many flags. These were, indeed, the most good-humoured and happiest election demonstrations one remembers to have seen in any country; there were no party cries or manifestations of party feelings of any sort; all seemed to be thinking of the good of their country alone, and to be rejoicing in its liberation. The Greeks and Armenians had similar processions, also headed by military bands (for these had been lent to all sections of the electorate by the authorities), and here, too, the priestly element was largely represented. At one manifestation which I saw in Stamboul the Turk and Armenian electors joined forces, and there were to be seen in the combined procession Mussulman _hodjas_ and Armenian priests in their full Mohammedan and Christian canonicals, walking hand in hand in amity. For a while good-fellowship reigned everywhere in this city of rival creeds and races. To judge from appearances it might have been concluded that “Fraternity,” which has been the watchword of all revolutions, has for the first time in history been brought about in Turkey, of all countries in the world.

But when the voting commenced it was made manifest that the brotherhood of creeds and races in Turkey had not yet been realised. The Turks, Armenians, Latins, Syrians, and Jews recorded their votes without any difficulties arising, and in many instances voted for the same candidates. But the Greeks, who, according to the [OE]cumenical Patriarch, number one hundred and fifty thousand in Constantinople, created a good deal of disturbance, after the manner of their brethren in Athens on similar occasions. In many parts of Turkey the Greeks complained bitterly of the electoral irregularities which, so they alleged, had been committed at their expense, and rioting occurred in Smyrna and elsewhere. So the Greeks in the capital, protesting that they had been very badly treated, organised noisy demonstrations which caused the elections to occupy several more days than had been intended.

The polling opened on a Friday, and it was made evident that the Greeks had come into the streets on the lookout for trouble. It was noticeable that when a man of another race was not permitted to register his vote on account of some irregularity in his papers or other disqualification, he went away quietly, whereas the Greeks in like circumstances stayed to protest and bluster until they formed crowds of disappointed voters who blocked the way to the urns, and by so doing considerably delayed the course of the election. On the following morning the Greek leaders hurried about Pera collecting the people, and ordered all the Greek shop-keepers to close their shops, which they promptly did. Others got into the belfries of the Greek churches and rang the bells violently to summon the crowds, and soon the main streets were packed with excited and clamouring men. Seeing that they practically all carried revolvers and knives it is wonderful that but few accidents occurred throughout the demonstration. The authorities took due precautions. Certain points were occupied by troops, and bodies of cavalry and infantry patrolled the streets, in no way interfering with the demonstration, but awing the demonstrators by their very presence, for the inhabitants of Constantinople knew of what stuff are made these soldiers who trooped slowly by, silent, stolid, apparently indifferent to all that was going on around them, in striking contrast to the noisy rabble which gave way before them. On the Sunday the church bells again rang out their appeal, and thirty thousand Greeks having assembled in Pera marched through Galata, crossed the Golden Horn by the bridge of boats and came to the Sublime Porte, where they insisted that the Grand Vizier himself, Kiamil Pasha, should come out to speak to them. When that aged statesman did appear to explain that full justice would be done to them by Parliament should they be able to show that the alleged irregularities had occurred, these people, who but a few months before were afraid to open their mouths if any representative of the dreaded Government was near, insulted Kiamil Pasha by shouting out to him that his verbal assurances would not suffice for them, and that they must have his undertaking in writing. This attitude, of course, brought the conference to an end, and the Grand Vizier retired. It became necessary later to employ the cavalry to clear the streets, but, wonderful to say, only two casualties, and these slight ones, were reported for this day. The troops displayed a great forbearance and behaved admirably under conditions calculated to try their temper.

Observing the indignation and distress of the Greeks, one would have supposed that they had been very badly treated. As a matter of fact their clamour was chiefly caused by disappointment at the failure of their scheme to obtain a much larger representation in Parliament than their numbers warranted. Their point of view was that the Greek element of the Turkish population, being the most civilised and cultured, was the best fitted to undertake the Government of the country, and, being Greeks, they considered that any means were fair which could forward their aim. The Greeks are the only people in Turkey who understand election trickery, and they were assisted in their recent campaign by clever and, of course, absolutely unscrupulous electioneering experts from Athens. Taking advantage of the ignorance of the lower class Moslems they obtained votes by various fraudulent devices and misrepresentation. The Greeks flocked to the polls whether they were entitled to a vote or not. Impersonation both of the living and the dead was largely practised. In Turkey, each voter, on coming up to the voting place, has to show his _hamidieh_—the official paper testifying to Ottoman nationality and date of birth. It was discovered that Greeks not entitled to the vote had been provided with the _hamidiehs_ of dead men and of people who had left the country. In some cases, too, the stamps which are impressed upon the _hamidiehs_ to show that the vote has been registered had been erased, thus enabling an _hamidieh_ to be used by a succession of would-be voters.

The Greeks would now be represented by a powerful party in the Turkish Parliament had not the Committee of Union and Progress kept a close watch on them during the elections. The Greeks have themselves to blame for the under-representation of which they now complain. They compelled the Committee to exercise an influence in the elections which, though technically unfair, was fully justified by the circumstances. The liberty so recently won had to be safeguarded by the return of a solid majority of patriotic Turks to the Chamber of Deputies.

The Greeks, gifted as they are with administrative capacity, held high appointments under the old _régime_, and will no doubt do so to a greater extent under a constitutional Government; but as a people they have yet to prove themselves loyal Ottomans. During the elections their one thought was for the interests of their own race. Headed by the [OE]cumenical Patriarch, they demanded the maintenance of all the privileges that had been granted to them from the time of the Turkish conquest. The Moslems have had to give up their special rights, but the Greeks refused to surrender a single one of their privileges for the sake of Ottoman unity. The Greeks chatter about liberty, equality, and fraternity, but their aim is to secure to themselves advantages over the other Christian peoples; and the Patriarchate, the most cruel and intolerant ecclesiastical tyranny remaining in the world, makes use of “liberty” to increase its persecutions of the exarchists and other schismatics. In the ranks of the reactionaries are to be found many Greeks who profited much by the Despotism whose parasites they were. A large number of the Greeks in Turkey still cling to their separatist aspirations. Even as I write this the Greeks in Macedonia are breaking the peace which the Young Turks brought to that long harassed land; for large Greek bands are once more in the field, with no shadow of a grievance as their excuse for brigandage this time, but agitating for various things, including the annexation of Crete to Greece. If the great Powers would act together and let it be clearly understood that under no conceivable circumstances will Greece be permitted to annex another foot of Ottoman territory, the Greeks in Turkey might become the useful citizens of a united country; for they, like all the other peoples in European Turkey, would prefer even a Hamidian despotism to the domination of Germany, Austria, or Russia.