The Sick Man of Europe Is Dying at Last
By Albert Bushnell Hart
NOTWITHSTANDING the fearful destruction of human beings which goes on from day to day as gigantic armies grind individuals to pieces between their flinty fronts, a soldier's funeral is a solemn event. Who can be unmoved by the black plumes, the dirge, the riderless steed led in the procession, the soldier's coffin on the gun carriage, the following of companions in arms? How much more tragic are the obsequies of a nation, the last ceremonies over a proud empire which for half a millennium has caused the people to rejoice and its enemies to tremble—the extinction of an organized government which for ages has issued its mandates from a splendid capital city! That is what the world is witnessing now, or rather it is looking on at the death struggle of one of the world's great powers, the erasure from the map of a once majestic empire. The Sick Man of Europe is dying at last, and his convulsive agonies are felt throughout the world. The government offices are open; Constantinople is there; twenty millions of Turkish subjects still live; provinces and vilayets, cities and villages, are busy; couriers pass to and fro with orders; hundreds of thousands of men are called soldiers, and a score of vessels name themselves a navy. Nevertheless Turkey is seeing its last days. It may live weeks, months, perhaps a few years, but the end is in sight; the country is dying. . . . What is this Turkey? How did it come to life? Why should it be dying? And who is to inherit the property of the defunct? These are questions which this article will attempt to answer. Little European Turkey Now
A few people in the United States can perhaps still remember how, when they first studied geography, they learned that “the empire of Turkey is a country lying partly in Europe and partly in Asia. European Turkey includes the provinces of Wallachia, Moldavia, Rumelia, Bulgaria, Servia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Macedonia, Albania, and Greece. The principal religion is Mohammedan, although many of the inhabitants are Christians. Turkey is one of the strongest powers in the world. Since 1453 the capital has been the city of Constantinople.” At present European Turkey includes the city of Constantinople and a district extending a few miles westward to Bulgaria. Two hundred years ago the Turks had a territory, a European population, and a military might superior to that of any European state east of France and west of Russia. They made the Black Sea a Turkish lake; they held half the coast of the Ægean, most of the coast of the Black Sea, the Mediterranean from the Strait of Gibraltar eastward, northward and westward to the head of the Adriatic Sea, and the interior up to Budapest. Across the Bosporus the Turkish dominions stretched to the farthest point of Arabia, to the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates; to Mt. Ararat; to the Caucasus. They conquered the holiest shrine of the Moslem world at Mecca; they annexed the caliphate, and thereby the sultans became the religious heads of the whole Mohammedan world. The sultans held a rich and splendid court in Constantinople. By land and sea, in the camp, in Constantinople, across the diplomats' table, the Turks were a great and majestic power. Christian nobles would have flattened themselves to earth before the presence of the sultan's three-tailed pashas. Great and splendid was Turkey! . . . For the slow but nearly steady decline of Turkey from the position of a first-class European power to a feeble country, terribly strained by inward convulsions and pressed upon by enemies from outside, there are three main causes: the complex of races, the wretched government of the empire, and the pressure of foreign powers. The fundamental weakness of Turkey is that it is not Turkish. Of six million Turkish subjects in European Turkey previous to the last Balkan wars less than two million were Moslems. Even in Constantinople only about half the population is Turkish. In Asia Minor there are large elements of Greeks, Armenians, and Kurds. The Arabians are not Turks. Probably not for a moment in the last five hundred years have the Turks been in a majority in their own empire. . . . The Turks throughout their history have suffered from the lack of a definite and clearly organized government. They are organized on the principle of absolute monarchy, but the rule of succession is uncertain, and there have been many assassinations and forcible setting aside of the Lord's anointed. Of popular government, of representative government, they hardly had a glimmer, until in 1909 a parliament was elected, which was allowed to lapse because it really tried to legislate. While Abdul-Hamid was in power, he governed exactly as his forefathers governed, by brute force, by banishment, terror, murder, assassination. The present so-called “government” has not even that authority. The sultan is a figurehead. . . . If Turkey had been let alone by outsiders, the empire would have died an ignoble death a good sixty years ago; for on the European side of the Bosporus the Christians could probably have long since taken care of themselves. If unable to break their chains, Russia has stood ready to aid them ever since the treaty of 1774, in which the Turks gave them indefinite powers to look after the Christians in the Moslem empire. In 1850 Turkey was falling to pieces; it had long since lost the four Barbary powers of North Africa. Egypt, under Mehmet Ali, had practically made itself an independent principality. Greece had been able, by the combined fleets of England, France, and Russia,—an alliance fateful for later times,—to throw off the Turkish yoke, and had a German king. Roumania was united into a principality, Servia was practically an independent principality in which the Karageorgovitches and the Obrenovitches cordially cut each other's throats for the privilege of being princes. All that was necessary was to form a ring of interested spectators around Turkey, and allow the Christians to fight themselves free. The collapse of the Turkish Empire would have been a righteous and natural solution of the European question of Turkey, but it was clear that whenever European Turkey broke up, Constantinople would cease to be Turkish. Without this ancient capital, Asiatic Turkey was sure to succumb. When Asiatic Turkey went to pieces, somebody would pick up two significant fragments,—the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which is the natural overland route to India; and the Isthmus of Suez, which is on the shortest sea line to India. The fall of Turkey would also affect the Mohammedan subjects of England, especially in India, because they look upon the sultan as the head of their church. Hence England came out as the friend and supporter of Turkey, and for many years Sir Stratford Canning, British ambassador, was a focus of “spontaneous” action on the part of the Turkish government. Friendship with Turkey required a blind eye to the most important things that were going on in Turkey, such as brigandage, murder, pillage, and rapine in the Christian states of Turkey. The power that had the most direct and largest interest in Turkey was Russia, which at intervals had been fighting the Turks during two centuries, partly because the Russians hoped that Constantinople would soon be vacant, and they knew just the right kind of reliable tenants to move in. Allowing that the Bulgarians, Macedonians, Montenegrins, and other Christians in the Balkans could look after themselves, plainly none of them was competent to hold Constantinople. A basal need of Russia was direct access to the ocean through ice-free ports; and the obvious short, direct, and desirable route to the ocean was through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. Russia is still in need of that water connection. “Backing the Wrong Horse”
If Christian Europe could have realized the real character of the Turks and the desperation of the Christians, they would not have allowed the Sick Man to go through a racking chronic illness of sixty years: they would have left the7Christians and the Turks and Russia to fix matters up to suit themselves. Unfortunately for the present peace of the world, England adopted a policy which Lord Salisbury years later neatly described as “backing the wrong horse.” Great Britain and France backed up Turkey, fought Russia in the Crimean War, and thereby probably sacrificed more lives than this fearful war year of 1914. All the murders, outrages, civil wars, executions, and combats between the little Balkan States in the last few years may fairly be charged to this interference with the political laws of nature. For about forty years England was the particular friend of the Porte. From the British embassy, Sir Stratford Canning long suggested spontaneous action on the part of the Turkish government. To be sure the English firmly urged reforms upon the Turks, and the Turks as firmly did not carry them out. Even in 1877, when Russia, stirred up by the performances of the Bashi-Bazouks,—irregular Turkish soldiers who were sent to teach the Bulgarians good behavior,—sent an army to the Balkans, freed Bulgaria, and dictated a peace at San Stefano, within sight of the minarets of Constantinople, England still backed the wrong horse, and blocked the way of Russia; but the boundary line of Turkey was, nevertheless, pushed back far down the Balkan Peninsula. After 1890 England and Russia began to approach, just as Russia drifted out of an alliance with Germany and Austria. Soon after, the Turks found another charming friend, much nicer than that English prig, who was always saying, “You mustn't.” This was the emperor of Germany, who did not stand by Bismarck's famous saying that “the whole Eastern Question was not worth the bones of one Pomeranian grenadier.” Nobody knows just what the interest and purpose of Germany was, except that Germans sought and obtained concessions for railroads and other investments; and of late years the stately German embassy in Constantinople has been looked upon as the clearing house between Turkey and the Western world. German officers replaced Englishmen as drillmasters and military and naval advisers. German steamer lines with excellent ships reached Constantinople. The Germans finally obtained permission to build a railway line from Constantinople to the Persian Gulf. It is probable that these advances have something to do with a big scheme for extension of Austria down through the Balkans to Saloniki, and perhaps to Constantinople, as a part of a great rail route from Germany to mid-Asia. Whatever may have been the ultimate purpose of Germany, conditions were rudely disturbed by the Turkish revolution of 1908, which brought about the deposition of Abdul-Hamid, the only Turk who had a definite policy, and that was a wicked one. This opened the way for the Balkan war of 1912, which pushed the Turks back to the fortified lines of Tchataldja, just outside Constantinople. Emperor William at that time remarked that the result of those wars would oblige him to increase the German army; which probably meant that it showed the Turkish weakness and the strength of the Balkan powers which were nearest neighbors to Austria. In the great war of 1914 the Turks have been in a state almost of frenzy, for the whole struggle is so intertwined with the Balkan situation that from the first it seemed likely that Turkey must choose one side or the other; that it must be part of the hammer or part of the anvil. The danger of the Turkish Empire is acute. To side with Germany means that in case the allies are victorious in their general war, Russia will infallibly demand and must receive Constantinople and the waters leading to the Ægean Sea. German officers trained the Turkish army which took the field in 1912; nevertheless it was fearfully defeated. German officers are now supposed to be the advisers of the war department. Two German cruisers have taken refuge in the Dardanelles, and have become the instruments for bringing on war between Turkey and Russia. Between Turkey and Germany in one direction are Greece, Servia, and Roumania, all strongly anti-Turkish; and in another direction the Mediterranean Sea, which is completely controlled by allied fleets. Germany can send no aid except by defeating the Russian armies in Poland or the fleets in the North Sea and the Mediterranean. On the other hand, if Germany is victorious in the end, it can only be by defeating the Balkan powers, as well as the rest of Europe. Even then these independent states could hardly be placed back under the crescent. There will then be no probable outcome, except that the Turkish Empire will become a dependency of Germany, and eventually will drift into about the present condition of India—a complex of races and former nations taking its government from a distant European power. Constantinople would become as truly a German city as Calcutta and Cairo are English cities. There is not much comfort for the Turks in that prospect. As to the power of the Turks to defend themselves, and, still more, to attack their enemies, no American who has seen Turkish troops and Turkish ships within the last two years is likely to believe that there is any serious military strength left in the empire. Men are abundant—crude, good-natured, willing, patient, and long-suffering fellows, who when well fed and well led are probably as good troops as Russians or Austrians. But where are the magazines of clothing, arms, and ammunition? Where is the necessary accumulation of food? What are the arrangements for supplying marching armies or for transporting troops to Egypt, to India, to the Crimea? The available Turkish navy is made up of two modern German cruisers, as good as some of the fleet of twenty ships which the allies could place at the mouth of the Dardanelles. The Turkish Empire appears to be entering on a war with Russia, France, and England with a military preparation much inferior to that of two years ago, when it was abjectly defeated by three little Balkan States. War on a grand scale, affecting general results, is out of the question for Turkey. There are still millions of people in Turkey, nearly half of whom are discontented Christians or discontented Arabs. But in the true sense of the words, there is no Turkish Empire, no Turkish army, no Turkish navy, no Turkish government. Even the so-called cabinet is divided, one faction holding out a white flag, while the other faction fires its gun at the allies. A good, hard land highway leads from the Balkans to Constantinople, and another from the Russian frontier through Armenia and western Asia Minor also to Constantinople, but there is no road by land or sea which the Turks can follow in force to attack the allied hosts. This once mighty empire, this former rival of Russia and Austria, this proud military kingdom, must, perforce, stand aside, while its fate is decided on the battle fields of France, Germany, and Hungary. Whether it accepts or resists the hammer strokes of the combatants, the anvil must receive blows and cannot return them. Apparently the end of the Turkish Empire is at hand, whether it accepts or resists the hammer strokes of either side.—Prof. Albert Bushnell Hart of Harvard, in New York Times, Nov. 8, 1914.