PERCY T. MAGAN by PERCY T. MAGAN

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 15, 1909

PERCY T. MAGAN

By PERCY T. MAGAN

The Turkish Revolution—No. 2

PERCY T. MAGAN

The Young Turks

On June 25, 1861, Abdul-Aziz was proclaimed sultan of the Ottoman empire. His was an unfortunate reign for Turkey. He first placed himself completely under Russian control, and later, by his extravagant administration, he plunged his country into an indebtedness of over one hundred million dollars. For the expenditure of this vast sum of money he had nothing to show.

The bad state of the national finances for which his rule was responsible cost

this monarch his throne. He was deposed May 29, 1876, and was succeeded by his nephew, Murad V. The wretched Abdul-Aziz committed suicide a day or two later.

It was during the scandalous reign of Abdul-Aziz that the Young Turk party first came into prominence. Its first beginnings date back to a somewhat earlier period—the early fifties of the last century. At that time Zia Bey, Shinassi Effendi, and other patriots began to realize that unless there were radical reforms both in the state and in the social system, the knell of Turkey's doom had sounded.

From these beginnings has grown the Young Turkdom of to-day. And the Young Turkdom of to-day is no insignificant affair; for “every one who feels Turkish, and speaks Turkish, is a Young Turk.”

During the reign of Abdul-Aziz these Young Turks demanded that the absolute power of the sultan be abrogated, and that in the place of it there be promulgated a constitution and a liberal form of government.

Murad V sympathized with the Young Turk party. This at once angered the Sheik-ul-Islam, the officials, and the entire court camarilla. These felt that drastic action must be taken to stop the growth of liberalism. On Aug. 31, 1876, the Sheik-ul-Islam declared Murad insane. He was deposed, and Abdul-Hamid II began that long and eventful reign which has just come to an end.

Abdul-Hamid II succeeded to the throne of the Osmanlis at a more unhappy period than any of his predecessors. He was without training for the difficult position which had fallen to his lot. Of trustworthy friends he had none. His empire was bankrupt and in a state of rebellion, and its integrity was menaced from every quarter. During the later days of Abdul-Aziz insurrection had become rife in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Bulgaria. During the brief reign of Murad, Servia and Montenegro had declared against Turkey. It took only until October to bring the Servian uprising to an end. The matter was attended to with brutal severity.

The Bulgarian insurrection, however, was destined to fan the flames of hatred against the misrule of the Turk. The sultan sent large numbers of Bashibazouks and other irregular forces to repress it. Not content with doing their legitimate work, these devoted themselves to wholesale massacre. Twelve thousand men, women, and children were ruthlessly slaughtered in the district of Philippopolis alone. Mr. Baring, the English consul, saw “whole masses of the dead bodies of women and children piled up in places where the bodies of no combatants were to be seen.”

What followed these revelations in the British empire, was described by the great John Bright as “an uprising of the English people.” The Tories were at the time in power. Mr. Disraeli, soon to be made the Earl of Beaconsfield, was prime minister. He and his cabinet championed, in part at least, the cause of the government of Turkey. Then it was that Mr. Gladstone emerged from his semiretirement and became the head and front of the agitation against Turkish misrule. He made speeches in the Commons. He addressed monster open-air meetings. He issued his long-since famous and never-to-be-forgotten pamphlet, entitled “Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East.” In this he climaxed his appeal with that plea which will remain as a classic as long as there shall be a Turkish question:—

“But I return to, and I end with, that which is the omega as well as the alpha of this great and mournful case. An old servant of the crown and state, I entreat my countrymen, upon whom far more than perhaps any other people of Europe it depends, to require and to insist that our government, which has been working in one direction, shall work in the other, and shall apply all its vigor to concur with the other states of Europe in obtaining the extinction of the Turkish executive power in Bulgaria. Let the Turks now carry away their abuses in the only possible manner, namely, by carrying off themselves. Their zaptiehs, and their moodirs, their bimbashis, and their yuzbachis, their kaimakams, and their pashas, one and all, bag and baggage, shall, I hope, clear out from the province they have desolated and profaned. This thorough riddance, this most blessed deliverance, is the only reparation we can make to the memory of those heaps on heaps of dead; to the violated purity alike of matron, of maiden, and of child; to the civilization which has been affronted and shamed; to the laws of God, or, if you like, of Allah; to the moral sense of mankind at large.”—“Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East,” by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M. P., pages 61–63; London, John Murray, 1876.

Such is the historic “bag-and-baggage” paragraph, so much misquoted and misunderstood. By the Tories it was denounced as “a demand for the expulsion of the Turks—all the Turks, the Turkish men and women—out of Europe. That, however, was not what Mr. Gladstone had said, and that was not what Mr. Gladstone intended. It could not have been, for to keep the Turkish people in Europe was one of his own pet policies. ‘What Mr. Gladstone meant was that the rule of Turkish officialism should cease in the Christian provinces; that these provinces should have autonomous governments subject to the sultan; not that all the individual Turks should be turned out.’”—Justin McCarthy, in “History of Our Own Times,” Vol. II, chap. 64, par. 1 from the end.

Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet and speeches and the “uprising of the English people” greatly alarmed the sultan. He feared that the British, who had saved the Turkish empire in the Crimean War, were about to desert him. No other power would assist him, and war with the Russian Bear loomed big across the frontier. His exchequer, thanks to Abdul-Aziz, was empty, and as for the national debt, he could only default in paying the interest on the coupon. A wall of Russian bayonets menaced him from the north and east; the Greek army threatened from the south; and the Austrian sabers rattled on his western flank.

In his despair, Abdul-Hamid summoned to his assistance the famous Young Turk leader, Midhat Pasha, and this truly great statesman became grand vizier. He counseled his sovereign that the only thing that could save the Ottoman empire from complete destruction would be the granting of a constitution and a liberal form of government.

Abdul-Hamid was an autocrat, wedded to absolutism. Nevertheless he deemed it the course of prudence to follow the advice of Midhat Pasha. Consequently, Dec. 23, 1876, amid salvos of artillery and fanfare of trumpets, the new constitution was proclaimed.

This constitution, which is the one proclaimed again July 23 last, was the work of Midhat Pasha, who, as previously stated, was one of the first of the Young Turks. “With singular sagacity he realized that the equality of the races before the law was the sole prospect of salvation remaining to Turkey.”

It is frequently asserted that Oriental peoples and popular forms of government are not suited to one another. All the trustworthy contemporary authorities, however, assert that Midhat Pasha and the other leading Young Turks of the day behaved with remarkable moderation and cool judgment.

Again it must be borne in mind that constitutional government is by no means a new thing in Islam. Anything more democratic than the doctrine of the Arab prophet would be difficult to find. True it is that only the first four caliphs adhered strictly to the text of the Koran and the Suma. Their successors made the caliphate into a sultanate. They sacrificed the spirit of democracy to the personal will of the ruler.

The first attempt, already mentioned, upon the part of the Turkish people to obtain free institutions and to curb the power of the sultan, was nipped in the bud. The constitution and the parliament called into existence by virtue of it soon passed away. The parliament held but two sessions. It met first in March, 1877, and came to an end in February, 1878. This was by order of the sultan, who, under the constitution, had power to dissolve both houses of parliament. Abdul-Hamid used the war with Russia as a pretext for suspending the constitution, and suspended it remained till 1908. He was aided in this nefarious work by the machinations of the Christian powers.

With the suspension of the constitution, Midhat Pasha fell from office, and the Young Turk movement went into hiding for a while. Some of the leaders preferred voluntary exile to remaining in their native land. Others chose to stay, so that when the time was ripe

for action again, they would be upon the ground.

The history of the Young Turks during the period intervening between 1878 and 1908 is difficult to narrate, from the fact that it is shrouded in secrecy. During the nineties there was some activity. From time to time it has become known that committees of progressive men of various blood, speech, and faith, came into existence, both inside and outside of the Ottoman empire. Headquarters were established at Paris and Geneva. Literature was sent out from these centers. The Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress called upon all good men to stand with it on the platform of racial and religious equality in Turkey for every blood and creed. It was this Midhatian plank that brought the jarring faiths and nationalities together.

The oaths subscribed to by members of the Young Turk organization were, like most of those in vogue among secret societies, picturesque in the extreme. A revolver and a knife were laid upon the Koran, which was held to the brow of the new member, as he solemnly repeated—

“I swear in the name of God and Mohammed that I will fight for nationality, freedom, and truth while a drop of blood remains in my body.”

After taking this oath, the member next undertook to provide himself with a rifle, and to be prepared to abandon work, family, and friends at a moment's notice, and fight for the cause. During the time when the attention of the world was centered upon the political revolution in Russia, the Young Turks transferred their headquarters from Paris to Salonika. From this point they directed operations until the revolution was an accomplished fact.

But what happened for a long period after this is what no man has yet undertaken to tell. A cloud of impenetrable darkness enshrouds their operations, with only the merest rift at big intervals in its inky blackness. Suffice to say that later we find a vast conspiracy ramifying throughout Macedonia.

In Macedonia organization seems to have been brought to a fine point. Adherents were admitted upon the stringent and terrible oath elsewhere recorded in this paper. Then they were divided into sections of five, of whom one alone was informed as to other members. “Each had to subscribe two per cent of his income.” Communications were carried in person, and many were the devices for sending news to the capital or distributing revolutionary matter. Leading men stood, disguised as hawkers, in the streets of Salonika, to sell a match-box or deal out a paper from Paris, as occasion served; others took service as coachmen, to keep watch on dangerous pashas. Papers from Europe were essential. How could they be obtained without detection? First, the post-office staff was ‘educated;’ then the staff of the viceroy. The latter ordered the papers in the viceroy's name; when they arrived, a clerk at the post-office took them to the conspirators.”—Noël Buxton, Chairman of the Balkan Commission, in the Nineteenth Century, January, 1909. Such is the story of the men and party that have upset all the calculations and plans of the chancelleries of Europe. The regeneration of Turkey has ever been thought to lie in joint control by the concert of the powers. The powers had been interfering in Turkish affairs for nearly a century, but the Ottoman government remained as vicious as ever. “Diplomacy despaired of the task. The Young Turks accomplished it in a week.”

The question now arises, What will be the attitude of the powers toward Turkey under the new régime? Writing on this point, Prof. Arminius Vamberry, the greatest living authority on the Turkish question, truly says:—

“If the near East is to continue to be what it has been for the last three hundred years—the wrestling ground for the intrigues of the diplomatic West; if by continual and useless interference disorder is caused in the still loose joints of the constitutional structure; or if by forwarding individual interests the seeds of discord are sown afresh, and the work of reformation is impeded, then all our hope for better things will end in delusion.”

To us it would appear as if the powers of Europe have already begun to answer the professor's query, and to answer it in such a way that all the friends of Turkey and of peace can only conclude that “all our hope for better things will end in delusion.”

Madison, Tenn.