SECRETS OF THE BOSPHORUS
[Illustration: Ambassador Henry Morgenthau.
[_Frontispiece_
]
SECRETS OF THE
BOSPHORUS
By
AMBASSADOR HENRY MORGENTHAU
CONSTANTINOPLE, 1913-1916
_With 19 Illustrations_
[Illustration: colophon]
LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO.
PATERNOSTER ROW
ERRATA
[Corrected in this etext]
Page 16, line 4, read “_without_” for _with_.
Page 18, line 13, read “_Mexico_” for _Turkey_.
Page 18, line 35, read “_Humann_” instead of _Enver_.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE ANCHOR PRESS LTD. TIPTREE ESSEX.
PUBLISHERS’ NOTE
Ambassador Henry Morgenthau requires no introduction to the British
public, but the American diplomat who may with justice be termed _The
Searchlight of Truth at the Golden Horn_, and whose Reminiscences will
rank now and in years to come as historical documents of the first
importance, modestly obscures in his graphic and fascinating narrative
one fact which requires emphasising:
That by his shrewd grasp of enemy psychology, by his unswerving
impartiality, by his tact and dignity, and unflinching courage, he
frustrated again and again the evil designs and machinations of that
trio of arch-schemers and villains, Wangenheim, Talaat, and Enver,
against the Allies, and thus earned a debt of lasting gratitude from the
British people.
PREFACE
By this time the American people have probably become convinced that the
Germans deliberately planned the conquest of the world. Yet they
hesitate to convict on circumstantial evidence, and for this reason all
eye-witnesses to this, the greatest crime in modern history, should
volunteer their testimony.
I have therefore laid aside any scruples I had as to the propriety of
disclosing to my fellow-countrymen the facts which I learned while
representing them in Turkey. I acquired this knowledge as the servant of
the American people, and it is their property as much as it is mine.
I greatly regret that I have been obliged to omit an account of the
splendid activities of the American Missionary and Educational
Institutions in Turkey, but to do justice to this subject would require
a book by itself. I have had to omit the story of the Jews in Turkey for
the same reasons.
My thanks are due to my friend, Mr. Burton J. Hendrick, for the
invaluable assistance he has rendered in the preparation of the book.
HENRY MORGENTHAU.
_October, 1918._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A GERMAN SUPERMAN AT CONSTANTINOPLE 1
II. THE “BOSS SYSTEM” IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
AND HOW IT PROVED USEFUL TO GERMANY 12
III. “THE PERSONAL REPRESENTATIVE OF THE
KAISER”--WANGENHEIM OPPOSES THE SALE OF
AMERICAN WARSHIPS IN GREECE 26
IV. GERMANY MOBILISES THE TURKISH ARMY 39
V. WANGENHEIM SMUGGLES THE “GOEBEN” AND THE
“BRESLAU” THROUGH THE DARDANELLES 44
VI. WANGENHEIM TELLS THE AMERICAN AMBASSADOR
HOW THE KAISER STARTED THE WAR 53
VII. GERMANY’S PLANS FOR NEW TERRITORIES, COALING
STATIONS, AND INDEMNITIES 58
VIII. A CLASSIC INSTANCE OF GERMAN PROPAGANDA 62
IX. GERMANY CLOSES THE DARDANELLES AND SO
SEPARATES RUSSIA FROM HER ALLIES 68
X. TURKEY’S ABROGATION OF THE CAPITULATIONS--ENVER
LIVING IN A PALACE, WITH PLENTY OF
MONEY AND AN IMPERIAL BRIDE 73
XI. GERMANY COMPELS TURKEY TO ENTER THE WAR 80
XII. THE TURKS ATTEMPT TO TREAT ALIEN ENEMIES
DECENTLY, BUT THE GERMANS INSIST ON PERSECUTING THEM 85
XIII. THE INVASION OF THE ZION SISTERS’ SCHOOL 96
XIV. WANGENHEIM AND THE BETHLEHEM STEEL COMPANY--A
HOLY WAR THAT WAS MADE IN GERMANY 103
XV. DJEMAL, A TROUBLESOME MARK ANTONY--AN
EARLY GERMAN ATTEMPT TO GET A GERMAN
PEACE 112
XVI. THE TURKS PREPARE TO FLEE FROM CONSTANTINOPLE
AND ESTABLISH A NEW CAPITAL IN ASIA
MINOR--THE ALLIED FLEET BOMBARDING THE
DARDANELLES 121
XVII. ENVER AS THE MAN WHO DEMONSTRATED “THE
VULNERABILITY OF THE BRITISH FLEET”--OLD-FASHIONED
DEFENCES OF THE DARDANELLES 133
XVIII. THE ALLIED ARMADA SAILS AWAY, THOUGH ON THE
BRINK OF VICTORY 143
XIX. A FIGHT FOR THREE THOUSAND CIVILIANS 153
XX. MORE ADVENTURES OF THE FOREIGN RESIDENTS 167
XXI. BULGARIA ON THE AUCTION BLOCK 173
XXII. THE TURK REVERTS TO THE ANCESTRAL TYPE 180
XXIII. THE “REVOLUTION” AT VAN 193
XXIV. THE MURDER OF A NATION 198
XXV. TALAAT TELLS WHY HE “ANNIHILATES” THE ARMENIANS 215
XXVI. ENVER PASHA DISCUSSES THE ARMENIANS 226
XXVII. “I SHALL DO NOTHING FOR THE ARMENIANS,”
SAYS THE GERMAN AMBASSADOR 240
XXVIII. ENVER AGAIN MOVES FOR PEACE--FAREWELL TO
THE SULTAN AND TO TURKEY 253
XXIX. VON JAGOW, ZIMMERMAN, AND GERMAN-AMERICANS 261
ILLUSTRATIONS
AMBASSADOR HENRY MORGENTHAU _Frontispiece_
BARON WANGENHEIM, GERMAN AMBASSADOR _facing page_ 32
M. TOCHEFF, BULGARIAN MINISTER AT CONSTANTINOPLE 33
“GOEBEN” IN THE SEA OF MARMORA 48
“BRESLAU” (_left_) AT THE GOLDEN HORN 49
ENVER PASHA, MINISTER OF WAR 112
TALAAT PASHA, GRAND VIZIER 112
BUSTÁNY EFFENDI, EX-MINISTER OF COMMERCE AND
AGRICULTURE 113
DJEMAL PASHA, MINISTER OF MARINE 113
MR. MORGENTHAU AND SIR LOUIS MALLET 116
SIR LOUIS MALLET AND M. BOMPARD 116
BEDRI BEY, PREFECT OF POLICE 117
TALAAT AND VON KÜHLMANN 117
SEDD-UL-BAHR FORTIFICATION 144
FORT DARDANOS 145
MOHAMMED V., SULTAN OF TURKEY 176
TCHEMENLIK AND FORT ANADOLU HAMIDIÉ 177
SHEIK-UL-ISLAM PROCLAIMING A HOLY WAR 192
THE BOSPHORUS, KEY TO THE BLACK SEA 193
Secrets of the Bosphorus
CHAPTER I
A GERMAN SUPERMAN AT CONSTANTINOPLE
I am writing these reminiscences of my ambassadorship at a moment when
Germany’s schemes in the Turkish Empire and the Near East have achieved
an apparent success. The Central Powers have disintegrated Russia, have
transformed the Baltic and the Black Seas into German lakes, and have
obtained a new route to the East by way of the Caucasus. Germany now
dominates Serbia, Bulgaria, Rumania, and Turkey, and regards her
aspirations for a new Teutonic Empire, extending from the North Sea to
the Persian Gulf, as practically realised. The world now knows, though
it did not clearly understand this fact in 1914, that Germany
precipitated the war to destroy Serbia, seize control of the Balkan
nations, transform Turkey into a vassal state, and thus obtain a huge
oriental empire that would form the basis for unlimited world dominion.
Do these German aggressions in the East mean that this extensive
programme has succeeded?
As I look upon the new map, which shows Germany’s recent military and
diplomatic triumphs, my experiences in Constantinople take on a new
meaning. I now see the events of these twenty-six months as part of a
connected, definite story. The several individuals that moved upon the
scene now appear as players in a carefully staged, superbly managed
drama. I see clearly enough now that Germany had made all her plans for
world dominion and that the country to which I had been accredited as
American Ambassador was the foundation of the Kaiser’s whole political
and military structure. Had Germany not acquired control of
Constantinople in the early days of the war, it is not unlikely that
hostilities would have ended a few months after the battle of the Marne.
It was certainly an amazing fate that landed me in this great
headquarters of intrigue at the very moment when the plans of the
Kaiser, carefully pursued for a quarter of a century, were about to
achieve their final success.
For the work of subjugating Turkey and transforming its army and its
territory into instruments of Germany, the Emperor had sent to
Constantinople an Ambassador who was ideally fitted for the task. The
mere fact that Wilhelm had personally selected Baron von Wangenheim for
this post shows that he had accurately gauged the human qualities needed
for this great diplomatic enterprise.
The Kaiser had early selected Wangenheim as a useful instrument for his
plans; he had more than once summoned him to Corfu for his vacations,
and here, we may be sure, the two congenial spirits had passed many days
discussing German ambitions in the East. At the time I first met him,
Wangenheim was fifty-four years old; he had given a quarter of a century
to the diplomatic service, he had seen service in such different places
as Petrograd, Copenhagen, Madrid, Athens, and Mexico, and he had been
_chargé_ at Constantinople, several years later coming there as
Ambassador. He understood completely all countries, including the United
States; his first wife, indeed, had been an American, and Wangenheim,
when Minister to Mexico, had intimately studied our country and acquired
that admiration for our energy and progress which he frequently
expressed. He had a complete technical equipment for a diplomat; he
spoke German, English, and French with equal facility, he knew the East
thoroughly, and had the widest acquaintance with public men. Physically
he was one of the most striking persons I have ever known. When I was a
boy in Germany, the Fatherland was usually symbolised as a beautiful and
powerful woman--a kind of dazzling Valkyrie; when I think of modern
Germany, however, the massive, burly figure of Wangenheim naturally
presents itself to my mind. He was six feet, two inches tall; his huge,
solid frame, his Gibraltar-like shoulders, erect and impregnable, his
bold, defiant head, his piercing eyes, the whole physical structure
constantly pulsating with life and activity--there stands, I would say,
not the Germany which I had known, but the Germany whose limitless
ambitions had transformed the world into a place of horror. And
Wangenheim’s every act and every word typified this new and dreadful
portent among the nations. Pan-Germany filled all his waking hours and
directed his every action. The deification of his Emperor was the only
religious instinct which impelled him. That aristocratic and autocratic
organisation of German society which represents the Prussian system was,
in Wangenheim’s eyes, something to be venerated and worshipped; with
this as the ground work, Germany was inevitably destined, he believed,
to rule the world. The great land-owning junker represented the
perfection of mankind; “I would despise myself,” his closest associate
once told me, and this represented Wangenheim’s attitude as well, “if I
had been born in a city.” Wangenheim divided mankind into two classes,
the governing and the governed; and he ridiculed the idea that the upper
could ever be recruited from the lower. I recall with what unction and
enthusiasm he used to describe the Emperor’s caste organisation of
German estates; how he had made them non-transferable, and had even
arranged it so that the possessors, or the prospective possessors, could
not marry without the imperial consent. “In this way,” Wangenheim would
say, “we keep our governing classes pure, unmixed of blood.” Like all of
his social order, Wangenheim worshipped the Prussian military system;
his splendid bearing showed that he had himself served in the army, and,
in true German fashion, he regarded practically every situation in life
from a military standpoint. I had one curious illustration of this when
I asked Wangenheim one day why the Kaiser did not visit the United
States. “He would like to immensely,” he replied, “but it would be too
dangerous. War might break out when he was coming home and the enemy
would capture him.” I suggested that that could hardly happen, as the
American Government would escort its guest home with warships, and that
no nation would care to run the risk of involving the United States as
Germany’s ally; but he still thought that the military danger would make
any such visit impossible.
Upon him, upon more than almost any diplomatic representative of
Germany, depended the success of the Kaiser’s conspiracy for world
domination. This German diplomat came to Constantinople with a single
purpose. For twenty years the German Government had been cultivating the
Turkish Empire. All this time the Kaiser had been preparing for a world
war, and in this war it was destined that Turkey should play an almost
decisive part. Unless Germany should obtain the Ottoman Empire as its
ally, there was little chance that she could succeed in a general
European war. When France had made her alliance with Russia, this placed
the man-power, 170,000,000, on her side, in the event of a war with
Germany. For more than twenty years Germany had striven diplomatically
to detach Russia from this French alliance, but had failed. There was
only one way in which Germany could make valueless the Franco-Russian
alliance; this was by obtaining Turkey as an ally. With Turkey on her
side, Germany could close the Dardanelles, the only practical line of
communication between Russia and her Western allies. This simple act
would deprive the Czar’s army of war munitions, destroy Russia
economically by stopping her grain exports, her greatest source of
wealth, and thus detach Russia from her partners in the world war. Thus
Wangenheim’s mission was to make it absolutely certain that Turkey
should join Germany in the great contest that was impending.
Wangenheim believed that, should he succeed in accomplishing this task,
he would reap the reward which for years had represented his final
goal--the Chancellorship of the Empire. His skill at establishing
personal relations with the Turks gave him a great advantage over his
rivals. Wangenheim had precisely that combination of force,
persuasiveness, geniality, and brutality needed in dealing with the
Turkish character. I have emphasised his Prussian qualities; yet
Wangenheim was a Prussian not by birth but by development; he was a
native of Thuringia, and, together with all the push, ambition, and
overbearing traits of the Prussian, he had some of the softer
characteristics which we associate with Southern Germany. He had one
conspicuous quality, which is not Prussian at all--that is, tact; and
for the most part he succeeded in keeping his less agreeable tendencies
under the surface and showing only his more ingratiating side. He
dominated not so much by brute strength as by a mixture of force and
amiability; externally he was not a bully; his manner was more
insinuating than coercive; he won by persuasiveness, not by the mailed
fist, but we who knew him well understood that back of all his
gentleness there lurked a terrific, remorseless ambition. Yet the
impression left was not one of brutality, but of excessive animal
spirits and good nature. Indeed, Wangenheim had in combination the
jovial enthusiasm of a college student, the rapacity of a Prussian
official, and the happy-go-lucky qualities of a man of the world. I
still recall the picture of this huge figure of a man, sitting at the
piano, improvising in some beautiful classic theme--and then suddenly
starting to pound out uproarious German drinking songs or popular
melodies. I still see him jumping on his horse on the polo grounds,
spurring the splendid animal to its speediest efforts--never making
sufficient speed, however, to satisfy the ambitious sportsman. Indeed,
in all his activities, grave and gay, Wangenheim displayed this same
restless spirit of the chase. Whether he was flirting with the Greek
ladies at Pera, or spending hours over the card-table at the Cercle
d’Orient, or bending the Turkish officials to his will in the interest
of Germany, all life was to him a game, which was to be played more or
less recklessly, and in which the chances favoured the man who was bold
and audacious and willing to pin success or failure on a single throw.
And this greatest game of all--that upon which was staked, as Bernhardi
has expressed it, “World empire or downfall”--Wangenheim did not play
languidly, as though it had been merely a duty to which he had been
assigned; to use the German phrase, he was “fire and flame” for it; he
had the consciousness that he was a strong man set aside to perform a
mighty task. As I write of Wangenheim I feel myself affected by the
force of his personality, yet I knew all the time that, like the
Government which he served so loyally, he was fundamentally ruthless,
shameless, and cruel. He was content to accept all the consequences of
his policy, however hideous these might be. He saw only a single goal,
and, with all the realism and logic that are so characteristically
German, Wangenheim would brush aside all feelings of humanity and
decency that might interfere with success. He accepted in full
Bismarck’s famous dictum that a German must be ready to sacrifice for
Kaiser and Fatherland not only his life but his honour as well.
Just as Wangenheim personified Germany, so did his colleague,
Pallavicini, personify Austria. Wangenheim’s essential quality was a
brutal egotism, while Pallavicini was a quiet, kind-hearted,
delightfully-mannered gentleman. Wangenheim was always looking to the
future, Pallavicini to the past. Wangenheim represented that mixture of
commercialism and medieval lust for conquest that constitute Prussian
_weltpolitik_; Pallavicini was a diplomat left over from the days of
Metternich. “Germany wants this!” Wangenheim would insist, when an
important point had to be decided. “I shall consult my Foreign Office,”
the cautious Pallavicini would say, on a similar occasion. The Austrian,
with little upturned grey moustaches, with a rather stiff, even slightly
strutting walk, looked like the old-fashioned Marquis that was once a
stock figure on the stage. I might compare Wangenheim with the
representative of a great business firm which was lavish in its
expenditure and which obtained its trade by generous entertaining, while
his Austrian colleague represented a house that prided itself on its
past achievements and was entirely content with its position. The same
delight that Wangenheim took in Pan-German plans, Pallavicini found in
all the niceties and obscurities of diplomatic technique. The Austrian
had represented his country in Turkey many years, and was the dean of
the corps, a dignity of which he was extremely proud. He found his
delight in upholding all the honours of his position; he was expert in
arranging the order of precedence at ceremonial dinners, and there was
not a single detail of etiquette that he did not have at his fingers’
ends. When it came to affairs of State, however, he was merely a tool of
Wangenheim. From the first, indeed, he seemed to accept his position as
that of a diplomat who was more or less subject to the will of his more
powerful ally. In this way Pallavicini played to his German colleague
precisely the same part that his Empire was playing to that of the
Kaiser. In the early months of the war the bearing of these two men
completely mirrored the respective successes and failures of their
countries. As the Germans boasted of victory after victory Wangenheim’s
already huge and erect figure seemed to become larger and more
upstanding, while Pallavicini, as the Austrians lost battle after battle
to the Russians, seemed to become smaller and more shrinking.
The situation in Turkey in these critical months seemed almost to have
been artificially created to give the fullest opportunities to a man of
Wangenheim’s genius. For ten years the Turkish Empire had been
undergoing a process of dissolution, and had now reached a state of
decrepitude that had left it an easy prey to German diplomacy. In order
to understand the situation, we must keep in mind that there was really
no orderly established Government in Turkey at that time. For the Young
Turks were not a Government; they were really an irresponsible party, a
kind of secret society, which, by intrigue, intimidation and
assassination, had obtained most of the offices of administration. When
I describe the Young Turks in these words, perhaps I may be dispelling
certain illusions. Before I came to Turkey I had entertained very
different ideas of this organisation. As far back as 1908 I remember
reading news of Turkey that appealed strongly to my democratic
sympathies. These reports informed me that a body of young
revolutionists had swept from the mountains of Macedonia, had marched
upon Constantinople, had deposed the bloody Sultan Abdul Hamid and had
established a constitutional system. Turkey, these glowing newspaper
stories told us, had become a democracy, with a parliament, a
responsible ministry, universal suffrage, equality of all citizens
before the law, freedom of speech and of the press, and all the other
essentials of a free, liberty-loving commonwealth. That a party of Turks
had for years been struggling for such reforms I well knew, and that
their ambitions had become realities seemed to indicate that, after all,
there was such a thing as human progress. The long welter of massacre
and disorder in the Turkish Empire had apparently ended; the great
assassin, Abdul Hamid, had been removed to solitary confinement at
Saloniki; and his brother, the gentle Mohammed V., had ascended the
throne as the first constitutional sovereign of Turkey. Such had been
the promise, but by the time I reached Constantinople, in 1913, many
changes had taken place. Austria had annexed two Turkish provinces,
Bosnia and Herzegovina; Italy had wrenched away Tripoli; Turkey had
fought two wars with the Balkan states, and had lost all her territories
in Europe, except Constantinople and a small hinterland. The aims for
the regeneration of Turkey that had inspired the revolution had
evidently miscarried, and I soon discovered that four years of so-called
democratic rule had ended with the nation more degraded, more
impoverished, and more dismembered than ever before. Indeed, long before
I had arrived this attempt to establish a Turkish democracy had failed.
The failure was probably the most complete and the most disheartening in
the whole history of democratic institutions. I need hardly explain in
detail the causes of this failure. Let us not criticise too harshly the
Young Turks, for there is no question that, at the beginning, they were
sincere. In a speech in Liberty Square, Saloniki, in July, 1908, Enver
Pasha, who was popularly regarded as the chivalrous young leader of this
insurrection against a century-old tyranny, had eloquently declared
that, “To-day arbitrary government has disappeared. We are all brothers.
There are no longer in Turkey Bulgarians, Greeks, Serbians, Rumanians,
Mussulmans, Jews. Under the same blue sky we are all proud to be
Ottomans.” That statement represented the Young Turk ideal for the new
Turkish state, but it was an ideal which it was evidently beyond their
ability to translate into a reality. The races which had been maltreated
and massacred for centuries by the Turks’ could not transform themselves
overnight into brothers, and the hatreds, jealousies, and religious
prejudices of the past still divided Turkey into a medley of warring
clans. Above all, the destructive wars and the loss of great sections of
the Turkish Empire had destroyed the prestige of the new democracy.
There were plenty of other reasons for the failure; but it is hardly
necessary to go into them at this time.
Thus the Young Turks had disappeared as a positive, regenerating force,
but they still existed as a political machine. Their leaders, Talaat,
Enver, and Djemal, had long since abandoned any expectation of reforming
their State, but they had developed an insatiable lust for personal
power. Instead of a nation of nearly 20,000,000 developing happily along
democratic lines, enjoying the suffrage, building up their industry and
agriculture, laying the basis of education, sanitation, and general
progress, I saw that Turkey consisted of merely so many inarticulate,
ignorant, and poverty-ridden slaves, with a small, wicked oligarchy at
the top, which was prepared to use them in the way that would best
promote their private interests. And these men were practically the same
who, a few years before, had made Turkey an institutional State! A more
bewildering fall from the highest idealism to the crassest materialism
could not be imagined. Talaat, Enver, and Djemal were the ostensible
leaders, yet back of them was the Committee, consisting of about forty
men. This Committee met secretly, manipulated elections, and filled the
offices with their own henchmen. It had its own building in
Constantinople, and a supreme chief who gave all his time to its affairs
and issued orders to his subordinates. This functionary thus ruled the
party and the country something like an American city boss in our most
unregenerate days. The whole organisation thus furnished a splendid
illustration of what we sometimes describe as “invisible government.”
This kind of irresponsible control has at times flourished in American
cities mainly because the citizens have devoted all their time to their
private affairs and thus neglected the public good. But in Turkey the
masses were altogether too ignorant to understand the meaning of
democracy, and the bankruptcy and general vicissitudes of the country
had left the nation with practically no government and an easy prey to a
determined band of adventurers. The Committee of Union and Progress,
with Talaat Bey as the most powerful leader, constituted such a band.
Besides the forty men in Constantinople, sub-committees were organised
in all important cities of the Empire. These men met secretly,
formulated their plans, distributed the patronage, and issued orders to
their appointees, who filled nearly all the important offices. These
men, like orthodox department heads in the worst days of American city
government, “took orders” and made the appointments submitted to them.
No man could hold an office, high or low, who was not a part of this
Committee.
I must admit, however, that I do our corrupt American gangs a certain
injustice in comparing them with the Turkish Committee of Union and
Progress. Talaat, Enver, and Djemal had added to their system a detail
that has not figured extensively in American politics--that of
assassination and judicial murder. They had wrested power from the other
factions by a deed of violence. This _coup d’état_ had taken place on
January 26, 1913, not quite a year before my arrival. At that time a
political group, headed by the venerable Kiamil Pasha, as Grand Vizier,
and Nazim Pasha, as Minister of War, controlled the Government; they
represented a faction known as the “liberal party,” which was chiefly
distinguished for its enmity to the Young Turks. These men had fought
the disastrous Balkan war, and, in January, they had felt themselves
compelled to accept the advice of the European Powers and surrender
Adrianople to Bulgaria. The Young Turks had been outside the breastworks
for about six months, looking for an opportunity to return to power. The
proposed surrender of Adrianople apparently furnished them this
opportunity. Adrianople was an important Turkish city, and naturally the
Turkish people regarded the contemplated surrender as marking still
another milestone to their national doom. Talaat and Enver hastily
collected about two hundred followers and marched up to the Sublime
Porte, where the ministry was then sitting. Nazim, hearing the uproar,
stepped out into the hall. He courageously faced the crowd, a cigarette
in his mouth and his hands thrust into his pockets.
“Come, boys,” he said good-humouredly, “what’s all this noise about?
Don’t you know that it is interfering with our deliberations?”
The words had hardly left his mouth, when he fell dead. A bullet had
pierced a vital spot.
The mob, led by Talaat and Enver, then forced their way into the Council
Chamber. They forced Kiamil, the Grand Vizier--he was more than eighty
years old--to resign his post under threat of meeting Nazim’s fate.
As assassination had been the means by which these chieftains had
obtained the supreme power, so assassination continued to be the
instrument upon which they depended for maintaining their control.
Djemal, in addition to his other duties, was Military Governor of
Constantinople, and in this capacity he had control of the police; in
this office he developed all the talents of a Fouché, and did his work
so successfully that any man who wished to conspire against the Young
Turks usually retired for that purpose to Paris or Athens. The few
months that preceded my arrival had been a reign of terror. The Young
Turks had destroyed Abdul Hamid’s régime only to adopt that Sultan’s
favourite methods of quieting opposition. Instead of having one Abdul
Hamid, Turkey now discovered that she had several. Men were arrested and
deported by the score, and hangings of political offenders--opponents,
that is, of the ruling gang--were common occurrences.
The weakness of the Sultan particularly facilitated the ascendancy of
this Committee. We must remember that Mohammed V. was not only Sultan
but Caliph--not only the temporary ruler, but also head of the
Mohammedan Church. In this capacity he was an object of veneration to
millions of devout Mussulmans, a fact which would have given a strong
man in his position great influence in freeing Turkey from its
oppressors. I presume that even those who had the most kindly feelings
toward the Sultan would not have described him as an energetic,
masterful man. It is a miracle that the circumstances which fate had
forced upon Mohammed had not long since completely destroyed him. His
brother was Abdul Hamid--Gladstone’s “great assassin”--a man who ruled
by espionage and bloodshed, and who had no more consideration for his
own relations than for his massacred Armenians. One of Abdul Hamid’s
first acts, when he ascended the throne, was to shut up his
heir-apparent in a palace, surrounding him with spies, limiting him for
society to his harem and a few palace functionaries, and constantly
holding over his head the fear of assassination. Naturally Mohammed’s
education had been limited; he spoke only Turkish, and his only means of
learning about the outside world was an occasional Turkish newspaper. So
long as he remained quiescent, the heir-apparent was comfortable and
fairly secure, but he knew that the first sign of revolt, or even a too
curious interest in what was going on, would be the signal for his
death. Hard as this preparation was, it had not destroyed what was at
bottom a benevolent, gentle nature. The Sultan had no characteristics
that suggested the “terrible Turk.” He was simply a quiet, easy-going,
gentlemanly old man. Everybody liked him, and I do not think that he
harboured ill-feeling against a human soul. He could not rule his
empire, for he had had no preparation for such a difficult task; he took
a certain satisfaction in his title and in his consciousness that he was
a lineal descendant of the great Osman; clearly, however, he could not
oppose the schemes of the men who were then struggling for the control
of Turkey. In exchanging Abdul Hamid, as his master, for Talaat, Enver,
and Djemal, the Sultan had not greatly improved his personal position.
The Committee of Union and Progress ruled him precisely as they ruled
all the rest of Turkey--by intimidation. They had shown their power when
they dethroned Abdul Hamid and locked him up in a palace, and poor
Mohammed naturally lived under the constant fear that they would treat
him similarly. Indeed, they had already given him a sample of their
power; and the Sultan had attempted on one occasion to assert his
independence, and the conclusion of this episode left no doubt as to
who was master. A group of thirteen “conspirators” and other criminals,
some real ones, others merely political offenders, had been sentenced to
be hanged. Among them was the imperial son-in-law. Before the execution
could take place the Sultan had to sign the death-warrants. He begged
that he be permitted to pardon the imperial son-in-law, though he raised
no objection to viséing the passports of the other twelve. The nominal
ruler of 20,000,000 people figuratively went down upon his knees before
Talaat, but all his pleadings did not affect this determined man. Here,
Talaat reasoned, was a chance to decide, once for all, who was master,
the Sultan or themselves. A few days afterward the melancholy figure of
the imperial son-in-law, dangling at the end of a rope in full view of
the Turkish populace, visibly reminded the Empire that Talaat and the
Committee were the masters of Turkey. After this tragical test of
strength, the Sultan never attempted again to interfere in affairs of
State. He knew what had happened to Abdul Hamid, and he feared an even
more terrible fate for himself.
By the time I reached Constantinople the Young Turks thus completely
controlled the Sultan. He was popularly referred to as an
“iradé-machine,” a phrase which means about the same thing as when we
refer to a man as a “rubber stamp.” His State duties consisted merely in
performing certain ceremonies, such as receiving Ambassadors, and in
affixing his signature to such papers as Talaat and his associates
placed before him. This was a profound change in the Turkish system,
since in that country for centuries the Sultan had been an unquestioned
despot, whose will had been the only law, and who had centred in his own
person all the forces and sovereignty. Not only the Sultan, but the
Parliament, had become the subservient creature of the Committee, which
chose practically all the members, who voted only as the predominant
bosses dictated. The Committee had already filled several of the most
powerful Cabinet offices with its creatures, and was reaching out for
these few posts that, for several reasons, still remained in other
hands.