TURKEY

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 11, 1876

FromThe Review and Herald, Review and Herald, Vol. 47, No. 19.

The insurrection in the provinces of European Turkey is still vigorously maintained. The most significant fact which has recently transpired is the more manifest sympathy of Russia with the insurgents, coupled with the rumor that the Czar proposes to retire or abdicate in favor of his son, who represents more fully the strong anti-Turkish sentiment of Russia. The following extracts from an able European journal will assist in understanding the Eastern question:—

THE SITUATION IN CONSTANTINOPLE.

It is difficult to believe that a catastrophe of some kind can be avoided at Constantinople for many months longer, and it may take a somewhat unexpected form. All the accounts from the Bosphorus, cautiously as most of them are worded—the government of Abdul Aziz, like the government of Louis XVI., being still strong enough to punish libels—point to an impending collapse, but the form of that collapse may still be a surprise. As usual in decaying States, the immediate cause of the overturn will be the want of ready money. The Sultan’s government has for years oppressed the provinces till the population is decaying, the peasantry are ready for revolt, and all sense of security, either for property or for life, has disappeared; but except on the European frontier, no formidable insurrection has broken out. . . . The personal authority of the Sultan has, amidst the decay of the empire, rather increased than declined. This occurred also under the late Cæsars, and under the wretched successors of Philip II. of Spain, whose orders to the last were supreme with all subjects not in avowed revolt. So high now is the authority of the Sultan that it approaches the divine, and the greatest men in the empire dare not inform him of the most dangerous facts, or address him, save with their arms shielding their eyes from the too great effulgence of his glory. The Sultan has probably never seen the eyes of a Turk fixed, however respectfully, on his own. Nevertheless, the decay is creeping visibly inward from the provinces to the capital, and upward from the people to the palace.

It has long been the practice to compensate the soldiers for deferred pay by license to plunder the provincials, and now their very food, as they march northward, is only provided by ruinous little loans. The bondholders have been openly robbed, and now even the bankers of Galata are told that they must give up half their claims. The unstatesmanlike and timid policy of a half-repudiation has destroyed Turkish credit without relieving Turkish wants, till, though every sixpence is exacted that can be obtained, the treasury is unable to borrow abroad at any price, or to sell obligations sufficient to raise fractions of a million. It is believed by grave politicians that the bankruptcy of an empire which holds the most fertile portions of Europe and Asia in direct sovereignty may arise from the impossibility of raising £800,000. The power of borrowing little sums even for a moment is departing. . . . The circle of devastation is closing in. Constantinople, in fact, is suffering at last as the provinces have long suffered, and even if the last fraction of credit is destroyed by the confiscation of the half-interest, the machine may stop any day for want of motive-power. Till the Sultan knows the truth it may go on, all men obeying even though unpaid, and the Sultan knows as yet nothing; but the moment want touches the seraglio, the moment an order for an iron-clad, or a palace, or a set of jewels, cannot be obeyed, the Sultan will know all, and will probably rush to some extreme of despotic fury.

It is clear that much of all this is thoroughly known to the governing class in Constantinople, and clear, also, that their blame for it is all gradually concentrating itself upon the head of the Sultan himself. They admit that he is ruining the country. The mysterious reverence always paid to the Caliph has never prevented exasperated Mohammedans from dethroning him. The Mohammedan mob, always liable to fits of fury, has lately been burning palaces very close to the seraglio. The troops in Constantinople may be relied on against insurgents, without being trustworthy against a new Sultan.

The elements of conflagration lie heaped about in the capital, and it is difficult to believe that the Pashas, at last affected in their personal interests, and long aware of the ruin of their country and their faith, will not find means of firing them.—London Spectator.