The peoples who speak the various Turkish dialects and who bear the
generic name of Turcomans, or Turco-Tatars, are distributed over huge
territories occupying nearly half of Asia and an important part of
Eastern Europe. But as we are only considering the Turkish question
from the European point of view, no lengthy reference is needed to
such Eastern groups as those of Turkish or Mongol descent who are
connected with the Yenisseians of Northern Asia and the Altaians. The
Russians call these peoples Tatars, and they, no doubt, constituted
the “Tubbat” nation, referred to by the Chinese historians under the
name of “Tou-Kiou” up to the seventh century after Christ. These very
brief facts show the importance of the race and are also sufficient
to emphasise the point that these people are akin to those Turks of
Western Asia who are more closely connected with the Europeans.
The Western Turkish group includes the Turcomans of Persia and Russian
or Afghan Turkistan; the Azerbaïjanians, who are probably Turkisised
Iranians, living between the Caucasus Mountains and Persia; and,
lastly, the Osmanli Turks, who are subjects of the Sultan, speak the
Turkish language, and profess Islam.
Close to this group, but farther to the East, the central group also
concerns us, for some of its representatives who now inhabit the
boundaries of Europe made repeated incursions into Europe in various
directions. In the plains lying between the River Irtish and the
Caspian Sea live the Kirghiz-Kazaks, and in the Tien-Shien Mountains
the Kara-Kirghiz, who have preserved many ancient Old Turkish customs,
and seem to have been only slightly Mohammedanised. The Usbegs and
the Sartis of Russian Turkistan, on the other hand, have been more or
less Iranised. Finally, on the banks of the Volga are to be found the
Tatars of European Russia. Among them the Tatars of Kazan, who are
descended from the Kiptchaks, came to the banks of the Volga in the
thirteenth century and mingled with the Bulgars. These Tatars differ
from the Tatars of Astrakhan, who are descendants of the Turco-Mongols
of the Golden Horde, and are connected with the Khazars, and from the
Nogaïs of the Crimea, who are Tatars of the steppes who more or less
inter-married with other races—the Tatars of the Tauris coast being the
hybrid descendants of the Adriatic race and the Indo-Afghan race. They
are to be found near Astrakhan and in the Caucasus Mountains, and even,
perhaps, as far as Lithuania, “where, though still being Mohammedans,
they have adopted the language and costume of the Poles.”[1]
* * * * *
The invasion of Europe by the Turks appears as the last great ethnic
movement that followed the so-called period of migration of peoples
(second to sixth centuries A.D.) and the successive movements
it entailed.
Let us consider only the migrations of those who concern us most
closely, and with whom the Turks were to come into contact later on.
First the Slavs spread westward towards the Baltic and beyond the Elbe,
and southward to the valley of the Danube and the Balkan Peninsula.
This movement brought about the advance of the Germans towards the
west, and consequently the advance of the Celts towards Iberia and as
far as Spain. Owing to the invasion of the Huns in the fifth century
and in the sixth of the Avars, who, after coming as far as Champagne,
settled down in the plains of Hungary and the territories lying farther
to the south which had already been occupied by the Dacians for several
centuries, the Slavs were cut into two groups. About the same time, the
Bulgars came from the banks of the Volga and settled on the banks of
the Danube.
In the ninth century, owing to a new migration of masses of Slavonic
descent, the Hungarians, driven by tribes of Petchenegs and Polovts
into Southern Russia, crossed the Carpathian Mountains and took up
their abode in the valley of the Tirzah. While the Magyar Turks settled
in Hungary, the Kajar Turks occupied the hinterland of Thessalonica in
Macedonia. In the twelfth century, the Germans, driving the Western
Slavs as far as the banks of the Vistula, brought about a reaction
towards the north-east of the Eastern Slavs, whose expansion took place
at the expense of the Finnish tribes that lived there.
Only in the thirteenth century did the Turco-Mongols begin to migrate
in their turn; they occupied the whole of Russia, as far as Novgorod
to the north, and reached Liegnitz in Silesia. But, although they soon
drew back from Western Europe, they remained till the fifteenth century
in Eastern Russia, and in the eighteenth century they were still in the
steppes of Southern Russia, and in the Crimea.
Finally, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Osmanli Turks
invaded the Balkan Peninsula, where they met such of their kindred
as the Kajars, the Tchitaks, and the Pomaks, who were heathens or
Christians, and later on embraced Islam. They invaded Hungary and made
incursions into Lower Austria.
Then began the migration of the Little Russians into the upper valley
of the Dnieper, and in the sixteenth century they set off towards the
steppes of Southern Russia, while the Great Russians began to advance
beyond the Volga towards the Ural, a movement which reached Siberia,
and still continues.
It follows, necessarily, that in the course of these huge migrations,
the so-called Turkish race was greatly modified; the Turks of the
Eastern group mixed with the Mongols, the Tunguses, and the Ugrians;
and those of the Western group in Asia and Europe with various
Indo-Afghan, Assyrian, Arab, and European elements, especially with
those living near the Adriatic: the Greeks, the Genoese, the Goths,
etc. Thus the Osmanli Turks became a mixture of many races.
Though ethnologists do not agree about the various ethnic elements of
the Turco-Tatar group, it is certain, all the same, that those who came
to Asia Minor early associated for a long time with the people of
Central Asia, and Vambéry considers that a Turkish element penetrated
into Europe at a very early date.[2]
Though the Arabs in the seventh century subdued the Turks of Khiva,
they did not prevent them from penetrating into Asia Minor, and the
Kajars, who were not Mohammedans, founded an empire there in the eighth
century. At that period the Turks, among whom Islam was gaining ground,
enlisted in the Khalifa’s armies, but were not wholly swallowed up by
the Arab and Moslem civilisation of the Seljukian dynasty, the first
representatives of which had possibly embraced Nestorian Christianity
or Islam. Henceforth Asia Minor, whence the previous Turkish elements
had almost disappeared, began to turn into a Turkish country.
All the Turks nowadays are Mohammedans, except the Chuvashes (Ugrians)
who are Christians, and some Shamanist Yakuts.
As will be shown later on, these ethnographic considerations should not
be neglected in settling the future conditions of the Turks and Slavs
in Europe, in the interest of European civilisation.
* * * * *
About half a century ago Elisée Reclus wrote as follows:
“For many years has the cry ‘Out of Europe’ been uttered not only
against the Osmanli leaders, but also against the Turks as a
whole, and it is well known that this cruel wish has partly been
fulfilled; hundreds of thousands of Muslim emigrants from Greek
Thessaly, Macedonia, Thrace, and Bulgaria have sought refuge
in Asia Minor, and these fugitives are only the remnants of the
wretched people who had to leave their ancestral abodes; the exodus
is still going on, and, most likely, will not leave off till the
whole of Lower Rumelia has become European in language and customs.
But now the Turks are being threatened even in Asia. A new cry
arises, ‘Into the Steppes,’ and to our dismay we wonder whether
this wish will not be carried out too. Is no conciliation possible
between the hostile races, and must the unity of civilisation be
obtained by the sacrifice of whole peoples, especially those that
are the most conspicuous for the noblest qualities—uprightness,
self-respect, courage, and tolerance?”[3]
For a long time this state of affairs did not seem to change much, but
after the recent upheaval of Europe it has suddenly become worse.
Very different races, who have more or less intermingled, live on
either side of the Bosphorus, for Elisée Reclus says:
“The Peninsula, the western end of the fore part of the continent,
was a place where the warlike, wandering, or trading tribes,
coming from the south-east and north-east, converged naturally.
Semitic peoples inhabited the southern parts of Anatolia, and in
the centre of that country their race, dialects, and names seem to
have prevailed among numerous populations; in the south-west they
seem to have intermingled with coloured men, perhaps the Kushits.
In the eastern provinces the chief ethnic elements seem to have
been connected with the Persians, and spoke languages akin to Zend;
others represented the northern immigrants that bore the generic
name of Turanians. In the West migrations took place in a contrary
direction to those that came down from the Armenian uplands;
Thracians were connected by their trade and civilisation with the
coastlands of Europe and Asia sloping towards the Propontis, and
between both parts of the world Greeks continually plied across the
Ægean Sea.”[4]
Thus the common name of “Turks” is wrongly given to some Moslem
elements of widely different origin, who are to be found in Rumelia and
Turkey-in-Asia, such as the Albanians, who are akin to Greeks through
their common ancestors, the Pelasgians, the Bosnians, and the Moslem
Bulgars, the offspring of the Georgian and Circassian women who filled
the harems, and the descendants of Arabs or even of African negroes.
After the internal conflicts between some of these elements, the
quarrels with other foreign elements, and the keen rivalry which
existed generally, each section seems to have held the Turk responsible
for whatever wrong was done, and the Turk was charged with being the
cause of all misfortunes—almost in the same way as the Jews: the Turks
have become, as it were, the scapegoats.
Yet, in 1665, in his account of his travels in the East, M. de
Thévenot, who died at Mianeh in 1667, praised Turkish morality and
tolerance.
Elisée Reclus wrote:
“Turkish domination is merely outward, and does not reach, so to
say, the inner soul; so, in many respects, various ethnic groups in
Turkey enjoy a fuller autonomy than in the most advanced countries
of Western Europe.”
Ubicini speaks in the same manner, and Sir H. Bulwer states that:
“As to freedom of faith and conscience, the prevailing religion in
Turkey grants the other religions a tolerance that is seldom met
with in Christian countries.”
Unfortunately the Turk’s mentality, in spite of what his enemies say,
does not help him. Owing to his nature, he is quite unable to defend
himself and to silence his slanderers.
For, as E. Reclus remarked:
“They are not able to cope with the Greeks, who, under pretence of
pacific dealings, take vengeance for the war of extermination,
the traces of which are still to be seen in Cydonia and Chio. They
do not stand an equal chance of winning; most of them only know
their own language, while a Greek speaks several languages; they
are ignorant and artless by the side of clever, shrewd adversaries.
Though he is not lazy, the Turk does not like to hurry; ‘Haste
is devilish, patience is godly,’ he will often say. He cannot do
without his ‘kief,’ an idle dream in which he lives like a mere
plant, without any exertion of his mind and will, whereas his
rival, always in earnest, can derive profit even from his hours
of rest. The very qualities of the Turk do him harm: honest,
trustworthy, he will work to the end of his life to pay off a
debt, and the business man takes advantage of this to offer him
long credits that shall make a slave of him for ever. There is an
axiom among business men in Asia Minor: ‘If you wish to thrive, do
not grant a Christian more credit than one-tenth of his fortune;
risk ten times as much with a Mohammedan.’ Encumbered with such a
credit, the Turk no longer possesses anything of his own; all the
produce of his work will go to the usurer. His carpets, his wares,
his flocks, even his land, will pass gradually into the hands of
the foreigner.”[5]
But since the time when this was written the Turkish mind has changed.
The Turks have set to work to learn languages, especially French. A
large part of the younger generation concern themselves with what takes
place in the West, and this transformation, which the Greeks and other
Europeans looked upon as endangering their situation in Turkey, may be
one of the factors of the present conflict.
Besides, E. Reclus added: “The Greeks already hold, to the great
prejudice of the Turks, numerous industries and all the so-called
liberal professions, and as dragomans and journalists they are the only
informers of the Europeans, and control public opinion in the West.”[6]
Footnotes:
1: J. Deniker, _Les Races et les peuples de la terre_ (Paris,
1900), p. 438. Zaborowski, _Tartares de la Lithuanie_ (1913).
2: Deguignes, _Histoire générale des Huns_ (1750 and 1756); L.
Cahun, _Turcs et Mongols, des origins à 1405_ (Paris, 1896);
Vambéry, _Das Turkenvolk_ (1885).
3: Elisée Reclus, _Nouvelle géographie universelle_ (1884), ix., p.
547.
4: _Ibid._, p. 536.
5: Elisée Reclus, _Nouvelle géographie universelle_ (1884), ix., p.
546.
6: _Ibid._, p. 550.