_ATROCITIES_
Such are the people who but recently were spoken of as the “unspeakable
Turks.” For thirty years they have suffered from the crudest of
tyrannies and have met with but scant sympathy in Western Europe; for
it was “their double misfortune,” to quote the words of a writer in
the _Times_, “to be oppressed and to be compelled to bear the odium
of the cruelty of the oppressor. Their fine qualities were obscured
to the world. Their name was a byword for cruelty, violence, and
fanaticism.” In England, if one attempted to defend the Turk, one
was regarded as a cold-blooded villain by a great many good people.
A considerable section of the English lost their sense of fair play
so soon as the Turkish question became at the same time a pawn in our
party politics and an excitant of religious bigotry; for one political
party became avowedly anti-Turkish, while numbers of well-meaning
but unjust Christian people approached the subject from the point of
view which made a Mussulman appear everything that is vile, and so
espoused the cause of Turkey’s Christian enemies as being of necessity
the right one. It was the same sort of sectarian narrow-mindedness
that impelled well-known preachers—not members of the English State
Church to pray from their pulpits for the success of the Americans
in their war with Spain, because Spain was Catholic and the “land of
the Inquisition.” Thus it came about when Turkey’s Christian subjects
rebelled in the seventies and the Russians came to their assistance,
the Turks were held up to opprobrium as fiends in human shape, the
murderers, violators, and mutilators of the gentle Christians. Any
piece of evidence, second-hand or third-hand, however extravagant,
was implicitly believed by these people provided it was against the
Turks, whereas whenever charges of committing atrocities were brought
against Russians and Bulgarians by the most trustworthy eye-witnesses a
very different standard of evidence was set up, and it was held to be
incredible that Christians could do these things.
Yet what were the facts? In the first place, there can be no doubt
that Russia, bent on the destruction of Turkey and aggrandisement at
her expense, had stirred the Bulgarians into rebellion by means of
_agents provocateurs_. Travellers who visited Bulgaria in the years
preceding the Russo-Turkish war state that the Bulgarian peasantry
were more prosperous than any in Turkey. It is unlikely that they
would have risen of their own accord, seeing that they had good reason
to be grateful to the Turks, who had come to their rescue when their
persecuting Greek fellow-Christians had set themselves to exterminate
the Bulgarian Church, language, and nationality. In the next place,
it is now realised that the Christians and not the Turks initiated
the atrocities. The Bulgarians, when they rose, plundered and burnt
the villages of the Turks, committed the most shocking cruelties,
and massacred unarmed Moslem men, women, and children. There is
good evidence to show that the Turkish regular troops behaved with
consideration to the Christian population until their passions were
roused by the barbarities committed by the Bulgarians and Russian
Cossacks; then indeed the Turks, exasperated by the sufferings of
their co-religionists, engaged in terrible reprisals which aroused the
indignation of the civilised world. Ferocious when provoked by the
cruelty of others, the Turks are the last people to engage in wanton
cruelty, and those who like myself have seen their armies in time of
war can vouch for their humane treatment of prisoners and of the civil
population in an enemy’s country. It must be remembered, too, that the
worst atrocities proved against the Turks in Bulgaria were committed
not by Turkish regulars but by fanatical Circassians and by the
Bashi-Bazouks, ill-disciplined irregulars recruited from the criminals
and ne’er-do-wells of any races, detested by the Turks themselves for
their excesses.
The evil name thus acquired by the Turk during the war with Russia
stuck to him through the years that followed, and ignorant, prejudice
has been wont to put down to him all the cruel deeds committed by the
Palace Camarilla, including the terrible Armenian massacres, which
were perpetrated, not by the Turks—who regarded these crimes with
loathing—but by the savage Kurds and Lazes, at the instigation of
those who misruled the unfortunate country. In many ways the Turks
have suffered more from the oppressive despotism than their Christian
fellow-subjects, but all the sympathy of our humanitarians has been
for the latter, and they had little pity or sympathy to spare for the
Mussulman. Of late years the political intriguers in Athens, Sofia,
and Belgrade have been supporting bands of Christian brigands in
Macedonia, with the object of forwarding the rival interests of the
Greeks, Bulgarians, and Servians, in anticipation of the scramble over
the partition of that rich country on the breaking up of the Ottoman
Empire. These bands have been burning villages and murdering women and
children, their excesses being committed against both Christians and
Turks. In April, 1908, a Bulgarian band burnt a Greek priest at the
stake. The incident aroused no comment. What a howl would have been
raised had the Mussulmans done this thing!
So the Christian had plenty of friends and the Turk few. No voices were
raised to defend him and to explain the injustice that was done him.
Neither was he the man to put his own case before his European critics;
for the Turk is better with the sword than with the pen; he is not so
cunning as Greek or Bulgarian in carrying on a newspaper campaign,
or in the weaving of effective misrepresentations; as a rule he is
too proud to defend himself against calumny, and treats with silent
contempt those who snarl at him. Moreover the Turk, being essentially
a patriot, would not appeal for help to foreign Governments as did
the Christians. To quote from an article recently written by Halil
Halid: “The Mussulmans suffered as much as, indeed in many places more
than, the Christians, from a despotic _régime_. They had submitted,
not to the will of their rulers, but to their hard fate, because
Turkish patriotism, which has not until recently received fitting
attention, was too great to allow them to invite outside interference
or help in the national struggle against native tyranny. Never
despairing of gaining their end, the people of Turkey have waited for
an opportune moment to strike a blow at the foundations of despotism,
and this promptly and with the least possible risk of international
complications. They have thus submitted to the indignities and
hardships caused by the tyranny of their own rulers, rather than expose
themselves to the patronising interference of any foreign Power.”
There are thus excuses for the misunderstanding that poisoned the
minds of so many Englishmen against their former friends, the Turks.
Greeks, Bulgarians, and others who sought the dismemberment of Turkey
and the appropriation of Macedonia voiced their cause loudly, not only
with just denunciations of the Turkish oppression of the Christians,
but with many plausible inventions. That the Turkish side of the
question was so rarely heard was also largely due to the fact that,
during the few years preceding the revolution, it became ever more
difficult for Englishmen in Turkey to have friendly intercourse with
the Turks themselves. The intervention of the English Government
to introduce reforms into Turkey, and the action of the Balkan and
Armenian Committees, which were wrongly believed by the Sultan and
his advisers—and appear still to be believed by all Germans and
Austrians—to be the agents in advance of the perfidious English
Government, so intensified the hatred of the Turkish despotism against
England that it was practically made a crime for a Turk, especially
if he was suspected of Liberal tendencies, to receive an Englishman
into his house. If a Turk was even seen to speak to an Englishman in
Constantinople the spies reported the fact to the Palace; and, as I
shall explain later, to manifest sympathy for the British cost many
a Turk his life and liberty. Thus the intelligent tourist, or the
globe-trotting M.P., who visited Constantinople in those days was
not in a position to pick up accurate information. His doings and
goings would probably be watched by spies, especially if he was a
member of the Balkan Committee. Though he knew it not, he would find
no opportunity of conversing with Turks save such as were the secret
agents of the Palace. His dragomans would be Greeks or Armenians, who
might speak to him of the grievances of the Christian subjects of the
Sultan, but certainly not of the grievances of the Turks. So, too, was
it with most of the journalists. If they were anti-Turks they sought
information from the members of the Greek and Bulgarian bands, and if
they were pro-Turks they were on friendly terms with officialdom—they
had audiences with ministers, possibly with the Sultan himself; and as
all Turks are very polite, they often left the audience-chamber charmed
with despotism, and explained, in the papers they represented, that
the Young Turk party was either a myth or a small and impotent group
of malcontents, who, during a sojourn in Paris, had absorbed the wild
theories of the internationalists and anarchists.
To drive the Turks “bag and baggage” out of Europe was the proclaimed
policy of many ignorant humanitarians. The expulsion of the Turkish
rule would indeed have been followed by a bag-and-baggage exodus, for
but a small minority of Mussulmans would have remained in the land to
be governed by a Christian race. In former years Russia and Austria
were regarded as the probable inheritors of the “Sick Man’s” European
territories, and it is certain that the rule of either of these would
be intolerable to the Turks. One remembers how the Circassian and
Bosnian Mussulmans emigrated in large numbers into Turkey when their
countries were occupied respectively by the Russians and Austrians.
These emigrations were accompanied by great suffering and loss of
life, due largely to the incapacity and callousness of the Turkish
Government, which, while undertaking to found colonies of the refugees
in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, and other parts of the Empire, practically
left them to starve. The humanitarians would have realised the cruelty
of their proposal had they seen, as I did, the pitiful sights in
Northern Albania thirty years ago. The Bosnian Mussulman peasants,
escaping from the rule of Austria, were pouring into that portion
of Turkish territory. Men, women, and children were slowly crawling
across the snow-covered country in the bitter winter weather, weak
and listless with hunger and cold, often frost-bitten, hundreds of
them failing by the way, so that it was a common thing to see frozen
corpses lying by the roadside. The Albanians themselves were in a
half-starving condition after the ravages of the war, and could render
little assistance to the wretched refugees. Under the bag-and-baggage
scheme there would be an exodus of millions and unimaginable suffering.
Had Europe committed this crime the retribution might have been heavy.
The Sultan would still have been the Caliph of the Moslem world, and
the Turks, driven into Asia, might have reformed their Government and
set their house in order, even as they are doing now; but the Turkish
awakening, instead of taking its present form, would have taken that
of Pan-Islamism—the combination against the Christians of all the
Mussulman peoples.
The humane bag-and-baggage proposal would have meant the expulsion of
nearly half the population of Turkey and the replacement of the Turkish
by some other rule. But the Russianisation or Germanisation of the
Balkan Peninsula would have been more disagreeable to the Christian
population than even the domination of the Turk, while it would
have been impossible to divide the country among the neighbouring
states in such a way as to satisfy the inhabitants. In the peninsula
are jumbled up remnants of every race and creed, not collected into
separate districts, but intermingling with each other, hating each
other, jealous of each other—Servians dreaming of the larger Servia,
Bulgarians of the larger Bulgaria, Greeks of the larger Greece—their
territorial claims, based upon race distinctions, all overlapping
each other; an entanglement of rival rights and interests impossible
of unravelment. Neither of these Christian races would submit to be
ruled by the other. For example, there can be no doubt that a Bulgarian
would rather be governed by the Moslem Turk than by the Greek. And amid
all these races, more numerous than any of them taken singly, are the
ruling Turks, who own the fee simple of the land by the best of titles,
conquest. They are the strong race whose bearing is in strong contrast
to the servility of some of the races in their midst. They are the
masterly people fit to rule the others; for whatever peace fanatics may
say, only people ready to fight bravely in defence of their possessions
are fit to own possessions. We have not arrived at the state of
civilisation when it can be otherwise. Even our humanitarians, who
unknown to themselves have some of the old Adam in them, respect those
who can use the sword; for whereas they sympathise with the aspirations
of the plucky Bulgarians they pay little heed to the Greeks, who,
though the noisiest of the claimants to Turkey’s heritage and having
vast pretensions which extend to every piece of territory in Europe and
Asia that ever belonged to any of the states of ancient Greece, are
among the feeblest people in the world in the practice of war.
It needs a strong rule to keep the rival Christian sects of the Balkan
Peninsula in order and to prevent them from cutting each other’s
throats, lopping off each other’s ears, and burning each other’s
priests. The Turks can provide that strong rule; and if we add to the
Turks the Mussulmans of other race in the country—Albanians, Moslem
Bulgarians, Circassians, and others—we have nearly half the total
population united by a common religion, as the Christians certainly are
not. The Young Turks may now prove that Lord Palmerston, after all, was
right when he said that the rule of the Mussulman Turk was the only
one that could combine the different races and sects of Turkey in one
kingdom. The Turks have no ambition to recover the territory which they
have lost, but they are determined to hold on to what still remains to
them. With a strong Turkey, in close alliance with a federation of the
Slav states to the north of her, we may yet see a quiet and contented
Balkan Peninsula.