The Crisis in Turkey

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 1, 1876

FromThe Review and Herald, Review and Herald, Vol. 47, No. 22.

The Crisis in Turkey.

The intelligence daily received from Turkey justifies the gravest apprehension for the immediate future. The military movements and the diplomatic negotiations are entirely lost sight of in the more serious complications at Salonica and Constantinople. The danger that now threatens is a rising of the Mussulman mob against the Christians, and an outbreak of a religious war more fanatical, and therefore more bloody and merciless, than any that has stained the recent history of the world. From the possibilities attendant upon such a rising, and the massacres that must be perpetrated before it would be possible to crush the mob, the mind shrinks back in horror. In the outrage at Salonica we have an illustration of what a Mussulman mob can do under slight provocation, and of the indifference or weakness of the authorities. Bloodthirstiness is a passion which grows by what it feeds on, and the affair at Salonica has evidently stimulated rather than repressed the hostility to the Christians. If the foreign war vessels which now blockade that port were to be withdrawn, or the vigilance of the foreign consuls and ministers to be for a moment relaxed, there is not the slightest doubt that there would be a fresh outbreak, much more extended and disastrous.

The situation in Constantinople is even more serious. There the Softas—a term applied to all persons attached to the Mosques—appear to be masters of the situation. They are reported as marching about the streets to the number of ten thousand, uttering revolutionary cries. The Sultan, so far from being able to control or repress this mob, was besieged by them in his palace, and after an hour’s clamor yielded to them abjectly and dismissed the Grand Vizier at their request. This illustrates at once the gathering strength of the unruly population, and the cowardice and helplessness of the Porte. Both Turks and Christians are buying weapons in readiness for the conflict which is so plainly impending. Even in Asiatic Turkey there are indications of a similar condition of affairs. At Beyrout and Damascus there have been several cases of assault or murder by the Moslems, and hostility to the Christians has manifested itself in so many ways that the French have found it necessary to send a man-of-war thither to protect them.

When all these circumstances are taken into consideration, it will be apparent that the next few weeks will be weeks of uncertainty and anxiety, possibly of tumult and bloodshed. The faith of the Mussulman teaches him that Paradise is the reward of all who die fighting for Islam; and the Moslem mob would look upon a massacre of Christians as a holy enterprise, insuring an entrance into Heaven to all who might engage in it. Of course foreign intervention would make short sharp work of the participants in such a rising, and the result would be the final elimination of the Sick Man from European politics. But it is to be feared that such intervention could not come soon enough to prevent a terrible collision with bloody results. What with the dangers to be apprehended from this source, and liable to develop at a moment’s notice, and with the complications sure to attend the settlement of Turkish affairs by the great powers, each of which is jealous of the other, the situation of affairs at present is exceedingly dark and threatening.—Boston Journal of May 20.