_AFTER THE REVOLUTION_
The victory had been won; the Young Turkey party was triumphant; the
Ottoman people had gained their liberty. There was complete individual
liberty and liberty of the press; there were no more spies, no more
domiciliary visits, no more oppression. In short, the Turks, who for a
generation had been groaning under the crudest of Oriental despotisms,
in one day became as free as the people of England, indeed in some
respects considerably freer than them. Peace came of a sudden to this
troubled land which had for so long been an inferno of implacable
racial hatreds, all men went about in security, and the peasants were
able to sow their fields knowing that they themselves would be the
reapers. This was not as other revolutions; for though for a time there
was no law in the land and no administration, there was no anarchy,
there were no cruel reprisals, there were no excesses; the conduct of
the entire population was admirable.
These revolutionaries, unlike those in some other lands, did not
hasten, so soon as they had freed themselves of one despotism, to
cast upon the country the still more galling chains of democratic
tyranny. The people who made this revolution were the educated
men in Turkey, all that was best in the country; and thus from the
beginning this had been the most conservative of revolutions. There
was nothing approaching to socialism or anarchism in this movement.
The Young Turks, as I have already explained, have no theories about
the reconstruction of society; they have no schemes for the benefiting
of one class by the spoliation of another; they do not believe that
one man is as good as another, or that manhood suffrage will bring the
millennium. Like the English revolution of 1688, this one came from
above and not from below. That the ignorant masses did not usurp the
direction of the movement, and by discrediting it prepare the way for
the restoration of the despotic power, was largely due to the fact
that Turkey, fortunately for herself, has had her revolution before
she has arrived at that stage of economic and industrial development
when what we term the working-classes think out political and social
theories or, rather, accept the views of the mischievous demagogues who
mislead them. There is no class hatred in Turkey; there are no large
manufacturing industries to produce hordes of discontented people in
the big cities, and, so far, there are no agrarian questions to trouble
the minds of the simple and pious Turkish peasantry.
Of the seventy thousand exiles who returned to Turkey from Europe
and America after the proclamation of the Constitution there
were of course some who had mixed with Russian anarchists, with
internationalists and other political extremists, and had absorbed
their theories; but these are in a small minority and exercise no
appreciable influence. The same may be said of a certain set of
well-to-do exiles who for years were idle Paris _flaneurs_, lost some
of their Ottoman virtues, became poor patriots, and have now returned
as _dilettante_ politicians, some of them to join the party which
advocates a thorough-going home rule all round for the various races
of Turkey—a programme detestable to the more earnest Young Turks, who
realise that such a policy would lead to the certain disintegration of
the Empire.
But it is of the attitude of the people themselves and not of the
politicians that I wish to speak in this chapter. When the Ottomans
of all races and creeds suddenly found themselves free they became
filled with an exceeding joy, a new sentiment of brotherhood, and a
profound gratitude to the saviours of the country, the Committee of
Union and Progress, that took the practical form of implicit obedience
to the Committee’s mandates, so that it had little difficulty in
preserving order. All over the country there were great demonstrations
and rejoicings of enthusiastic and good-natured crowds, that touched
foreign spectators of these scenes and compelled the sympathy even of
the cynically inclined. In the streets and _cafés_ and tramcars of the
capital, wherein men had been wont to meet in silence, each suspecting
the other, strangers, united by a common joy, now spoke to each other
freely and in kindly fashion. It was a reign of universal amity, and
it seemed as if all that is best in human nature had come to the top.
European witnesses have described the wonderful fraternisations of men
of all races and creeds: how Turks, Armenians, Bulgarians, and Jews
harangued sympathetic crowds in the streets of the capital, preaching
peace and good will among men; how even in Beyrout, notorious for the
massacres of Christians under the late _régime_, Christian priests
and turbanned _mollahs_ embraced publicly before fraternising mobs
of Moslems and Armenians; how in the same city the Turkish commander
with his officers and troops attended a service in the Armenian church
to lament over the massacres of their Christian fellow-countrymen;
and how, with the same object, crowds of Moslems in Stamboul went to
the Armenian cemetery to pray and place flowers upon the graves of
those who had been slaughtered by the orders of the Palace. It was the
same in Jerusalem, where the various Christian sects—hitherto kept
from flying at each other’s throats by the bayonets of the Moslem
soldiery—now made friends and joined in processions with Mussulmans and
Jews.
In Salonica, the head-quarters of the revolution, there were scenes
of intense national rejoicing that astonished European observers. The
Bulgarian, Greek, and other leaders of bands, the Albanian brigand
chiefs, and all their followings of ferocious outlaws of the hills,
on whose heads there had been a price for years, men of different
races who since boyhood had been burning each other’s villages and
killing each other’s women, flocked into the town to submit to the
Committee, to be reconciled to one another, and to become the friends
of the Moslem Turks. Sandansky himself, the king of the mountains, the
most formidable of the Bulgarian leaders of bands, came in, harangued
the crowds on liberty, fraternity, and justice, and was received
with the greatest enthusiasm. All these fighting men, who had spread
terror through Macedonia and Albania, clad in the picturesque dress of
Europe’s wildest and least known regions, forgot civil war and blood
feuds, fraternised with each other and with the Turkish soldiery,
marched down the streets roaring the songs of liberty, hobnobbed
together over cups of coffee, and sometimes _mastic_ and _raki_, in the
_cafés_, embraced each other, and swore to be brothers.
I was in Salonica four months after Turkey had won her freedom, and
the national jubilation had not yet subsided; it was everywhere
exultation and good-fellowship. Here, in this city of many races, I
found myself surrounded by a refreshing atmosphere of joyous delight in
the new-found liberty. From the window of my hotel I looked out upon
the busy quay and the blue sea that stretched to the snows of Olympus.
Along this quay passes most of the life of the town, and at frequent
intervals something happened in front of me to remind me of the
revolution and of the keenness of the people. Now it was a procession
of Christians and Mussulmans fraternising and singing patriotic songs
on their way to the railway station to cheer a newly elected Deputy
who was starting for Constantinople; now it was a body of troops of
the Macedonian army marching through crowds which hailed them as their
liberators; now a battalion paraded on the quay to be exhorted by some
general before embarking for Constantinople, for at that time the Young
Turks were despatching more of their faithful troops to the capital,
determined to be in readiness should the forces of reaction reassert
themselves; now it was the return from over the water of some exile
of despotism to the friends and relatives who had not seen him for
years. Thus one morning I saw a flag-decorated tender come off from a
newly arrived steamer and land on the stage in front of me the Albanian
General, Mehmed Pasha, just freed from a long exile in Baghdad; he
was welcomed with shouts and clapping of hands by the large crowd of
Albanians and others who had come to escort him to his house.
There were most affecting sights, too, to be seen in those early days
of liberty. When it was decreed that political prisoners should be
liberated, the gates of the prisons were thrown open, and out poured,
in their thousands, the captives of the Despotism, to be received by
crowds of deeply moved sympathisers. Many of these unfortunate men had
been confined for years in cells but twelve feet square, and came out
into fresh air and sunshine dazed and weak in mind, like the prisoner
of the Bastille in Dickens’ famous story, to be led home by relatives
and friends. Here one would see outside the prison door a husband and
wife greet each other with tears of joy after years of separation, and
here some poor wretch, with spirit long since tortured out of him,
weeping miserably as he wandered to and fro because no dear ones had
come to meet him, and he realised that they had died while he was in
captivity.
It was pleasant to observe the confidence and pride of the population
in the Young Turk leaders, who had sacrificed so much for liberty
and justice. The patriotism of the people of Salonica was then being
displayed in various ways. Large sums were being collected to supply
comforts to the troops who throughout the winter were to guard the
northern frontier against any attack on the part of Turkey’s enemies,
and a movement had also been started in the town, which, if it spreads
far enough, may relieve the Government of some of its embarrassments.
Officers of the garrison and civil servants of all grades, reading of
the depleted treasury and the heavy burden of the floating debt, were
abandoning their claims to their arrears of pay, because, as they said,
their country needed the money. Deputies, also, were refusing to accept
their travelling allowances.
For one who knew Turkey under the old _régime_ it was very interesting,
in Constantinople, to observe the outward signs of the great change
which had come to the country, and to note the attitude of a population
which found itself suddenly in the enjoyment of the widest liberty.
In most countries, after such a revolution, the people would have
been intoxicated with their new freedom; the forces of disorder would
have been let loose; there would have been, for a while, a condition
approaching anarchy. But Constantinople is not like other European
capitals, and it took its revolution in a sensible fashion. All the
old restrictions had been swept away; but liberty had not broken into
license. Though there was no longer a censorship of printed matter,
the Turkish press observed a dignified moderation in its tone. For the
first time the comic papers were free to publish political caricatures
in which the highest personages were represented; but if one might
judge from such as were exhibited in the windows of the newspaper
shops, there was nothing offensive in these somewhat crude pictures.
Large crowds attended political meetings in the capital; but there was
no disturbance of the peace and there was no need for the presence of
the police or the troops, save when the Greeks, who are never happy
unless they have some real or imaginary grievance to make a noise
about, made demonstrations during the elections. People now enjoyed
the right to form themselves into associations, but one heard of no
anarchical societies; and apparently the first result of this new
privilege was that the Turkish temperance reformers availed themselves
of it to establish a total abstinence league in Cæsarea.
But, as might be expected, the interregnum between the withdrawal of
the authority of the old _régime_ with its severe code and its armies
of spies, and the reorganisation of the police and other departments
by the Young Turks was taken advantage of to some extent by the
ignorant and lawless. At the beginning of the revolution all prisoners,
including the criminals, were released from the gaols—probably because
it was impossible in many cases to ascertain whether the offence for
which a man had been confined was a political one or otherwise. The
restrictions on the sale and carrying of fire-arms were also removed,
with the result that revolvers in tens of thousands poured into the
city and were at once bought up. A large proportion of the population
carried revolvers and also let them off; men practised with them in the
streets; accidents were frequent; and in some quarters of the city,
especially in the poorer Greek quarters, it was not unusual to hear a
regular fusillade going on at night, generally in honour of something
or other, or to spread the news that a house was on fire. Robbery with
violence in the streets certainly increased after the revolution.
But, notwithstanding all this, it could not be fairly said that
Constantinople was a dangerous place to walk about in at any hour; and
indeed, when it is remembered what a lot of cosmopolitan blackguardism
there is in that city of over a million inhabitants, it is astonishing
that there was so large a measure of security for life and property.
It was natural, too, that Turks of the poorer and more ignorant class
should be under the impression that this new constitutional liberty
meant that each man was free to do what he liked—a common error
which before long was eradicated from the minds of this naturally
law-abiding people by the Young Turk administration. Thus many thought
that the Constitution wiped out the liability to pay any private debts
incurred before the revolution. In the country, peasants came to the
conclusion that they would no longer be called upon to pay taxes; in
the towns the contrabandists sold their smuggled tobacco openly; and
in Constantinople itself the popular conception of liberty produced
some amusing results. The firewood sellers were to be seen calmly
chopping up their logs in the middle of a busy thoroughfare; pavements
were often blocked with the wares of the hawkers; and others in like
manner carried on their avocations in public; so that the narrow,
crowded streets and the Galata Bridge, difficult enough to traverse
in the days of the old régime, became almost impassable. This sums up
the inconveniences of the interregnum; they were wonderfully few and
trifling when one bears in mind what a revolution this had been.
It was, of course, difficult for the Young Turks to reorganise the
police and carry out administrative reforms until Parliament met;
for the provisionary Ministry was naturally disinclined to accept
much responsibility. But in the meanwhile, though there was a little
license in small matters, the people were made to understand clearly
that the Committee would stand no nonsense. This was proved at the
time of the coaling strike in Galata not long after the proclamation
of the Constitution. The men, having struck once and obtained the
concession of their demands, came to the conclusion that under the new
Constitution they were free to extort what they pleased and terrorise
the population; so they struck again for a prohibitive rate of wage
which would have closed the port to commerce. It was a critical
time: the Young Turks were on their trial; their movement had been
represented by their enemies as anarchical; their cause would be lost
were they to fail to preserve order among the populace. It must be
remembered that this was not only the question of a strike, but of
probable rioting of so serious a nature that it might have caused
European intervention; for these labourers who coal the ships at Galata
belong to that rabble of Kurds and other Mussulmans of the lowest
class which is only too ready, on a hint from the Palace, to set about
massacring Armenians and other Christians.
It therefore behooved the Young Turks to prove that they could rule
men, and they did so. Two young officers rode boldly, unescorted,
into the middle of a dangerous crowd of the strikers, and by their
firm attitude compelled the men to listen to them. First they tried
persuasion, and pointed out to the strikers that by their action
they were prejudicing the cause of freedom which they had so loudly
acclaimed but a few days before. But the men would not be persuaded and
refused to go back to their work. Then the two officers changed their
attitude. One, drawing his revolver, reminded the men that under the
old _régime_ the soldiers would have been sent to throw them into the
water or cast them into prison! “And as you are conducting yourselves
as friends of the old _régime_, so shall you be treated,” he exclaimed.
“I will come down here to-morrow and ask you to return at once to your
work. I will with my own hand shoot down the first man who refuses to
do so, and the rest of you will be swept into the sea or into prison.”
The next morning the two officers rode to the quay followed by a body
of cavalry. The strikers knew that what had been said was meant, and
quietly went off to work, and there has been no trouble since with this
dangerous element of the population.
Indeed, the Committee, by its firmness and justice, made itself loved
of the people, who at last came to obey its orders without question.
Thus, when the Committee enjoined the strict boycott of Austrian
trade, while at the same time forbidding the populace to molest or
insult Austrian subjects, a wonderful thing happened. The Austrians
were able to go about the streets in perfect safety; and the Austrian
shops remained open, but no one would buy of them, however cheaply they
offered their goods. The rough and ignorant Kurds who do the coaling
and also earn their living as lightermen and as porters in Galata, and
the poor Jews who do the same work in Salonica, to a man enforced the
boycott, though it meant for them a great falling off in their small
wages, and short commons for their families. Thus no Constantinople
boatman would take a passenger off to an Austrian steamer, or carry
him on shore from it when he reached his destination. These steamers
had to use their own launches for the embarkation and disembarkation
of passengers; and the person who had sailed under this tabooed flag
sometimes found himself in a sorry plight even after he had been landed
on a Turkish quay, no porter being willing to carry his baggage. But
in February last, so soon as the Governments of Turkey and Austria had
arranged their differences, the Committee of Union and Progress gave
the word that the boycott should cease; and cease it did within an hour
of this order: the boatmen, porters, lightermen, and dock labourers
in every port in Turkey coming out as one man to work again for the
Austrians.
In the cities and in the countryside all seemed to be going well
with the cause of the Young Turks; but foreigners who observed
this harmonious opening of the new _régime_ and this extraordinary
fraternisation of men of different races and creeds hitherto
irreconcilable asked themselves how long this reign of universal
friendship could last, and whether this falling into each other’s arms
of Turks, Armenians, Bulgarians, and others was due to any sentiment
more deep and permanent than the joyous intoxication caused by this
unaccustomed wine of liberty. Like other Englishmen in Turkey at that
time, I came to the conclusion that the Young Turks were quite sincere;
that they were honestly desirous to have done with internal strife,
to give equality to all the elements of the population, and to live
in peace and friendship with their non-Moslem fellow-countrymen. The
Armenians and Jews have proved their sincerity by cooperating loyally
with the Young Turks throughout the parliamentary elections and since.
Of the Macedonian Christians the bulk had become weary of bloodshed
and the internecine conflict that had brought nothing but suffering
and ruin to the population; and there was no insincerity about the
friendly relationship that sprang up between the sturdy Bulgarian
leaders of fighting bands and their former foes, the Turkish officers,
for they respected each other. The civil warfare in Macedonia had been
deliberately fomented by the machinations of the Palace gang, to whom
the doctrine of _divide et impera_ was ideal statesmanship, and to the
intrigues of Bulgaria, Servia, and Greece. There is no reason why, if
left alone, these peoples might not dwell together in peace. A short
time since a _mollah_, addressing the people, said, “Before the reign
of Abdul Hamid the Moslem and Christian mothers used to nurse each
other’s children.” But will these Macedonian peoples be left alone by
Palace agents of reaction, by those Great Powers whose interests are
opposed to the creation of a strong and independent Turkey, and by the
greedy little neighbouring states?
It is, of course, too much to hope that constitutional government has
put a sudden end to the religious and racial strife in Macedonia.
The Greeks in the country have already demonstrated the illusiveness
of such an expectation. The Greeks, like the others, welcomed the
Constitution and fraternised with their Ottoman fellow-countrymen.
Carried away by the enthusiasm of the moment they may have been
sincere in their protestations of brotherhood, but one suspects that
the mental reservations were at the back of their brains all the
while. If one misjudges them in this, then their own actions and
the utterances of their press belie them. In the hour of national
jubilation they supplied the one discordant note. One of the first uses
that they made of the freedom which the Young Turks had won for them
was to boycott and insult the Bulgarians in Salonica, and the news came
that the Greek clergymen in the interior were once more persecuting
the Bulgarian exarchists, and had drawn up prescription lists of the
leading Bulgarians with a view to getting them assassinated. The Greek
element of the population, as might be expected, was the first to
express dissatisfaction with the policy and administration of the Young
Turks. The intolerant and often mischievously active Greek Patriarchate
in Constantinople, which denied the Bulgarians the use of their own
language, supported the Greeks in clamouring for much more than was
their due. Their idea of Ottoman citizenship, so far as themselves were
concerned, was to avoid all the obligations of that citizenship, while
enjoying all the rights conferred by it and retaining all their special
privileges intact. They seemed to think that the government of Turkey
should be in their hands. During the elections it was they alone who
provoked rioting and at Smyrna they created a dangerous disturbance
with their armed mobs.