Abdul Hamid was that of the island of Crete. The Powers at Berlin had
refused to include it in the kingdom of Greece or even to recommend
this course to the Porte. They contented themselves with a provision
in the treaty guaranteeing to the island a reformed administration
under a Christian governor. In compliance with this, Photiades Pasha,
a Greek subject of the Porte of administrative capacity, was appointed
governor, and a representative chamber was constituted. For a few years
the island enjoyed peace and prosperity. But later, on the retirement
of Photiades, the Sultan endeavoured to restore his authority in the
island by appointing a Moslem governor and suspending the national
assembly. Insurrection followed in 1896. The Greeks of the island, who
formed by far the greater number of its inhabitants, were supported by
the Government and people of Greece. War broke out in 1897 between the
Porte and Greece. It was the first occasion on which the Turkish army,
which had been trained by German officers, under command of General von
der Goltz, was able to show its quality. In thirty days it completely
defeated the Greek army and occupied Thessaly and Epirus. The Powers
thereupon intervened and prevented the Porte from taking advantage of
its success. Peace was again insisted upon between the belligerents.
Greece was compelled to submit to a small rectification of its
frontier and to pay the cost of the war, estimated at four millions
sterling.
The Turks thereupon evacuated Thessaly, and with them departed the last
of the Moslem beys or landowners. Though Greece had at the time a navy
superior in strength to that of the Porte, it effected nothing in the
war by sea. Turkish troops had been able to invade Crete, and were in
practical occupation of it. The four Powers, not including Germany,
whose Kaiser was already coquetting with the Sultan, with a view to a
future military alliance, then blockaded the island, occupied ports
on its coast, and ultimately compelled the Turkish troops to evacuate
it. In 1898 Prince George of Greece, a son of the King of Greece, was
appointed governor of the island at the suggestion of the Powers, and
the native assembly was recalled into existence. This arrangement was
obviously of a temporary nature. It lasted with growing friction till
the revolution in Turkey in 1908. When Austria annexed Bosnia and
Herzegovina, the Cretan Assembly proclaimed annexation to Greece, and
thenceforth the union of the island to the present kingdom was complete
and was fully recognized by the Powers.
The Great Powers were less successful in securing performance of the
promises of the Sultan under the treaty of Berlin in the case of
the Armenians. The Porte had undertaken by the treaty to carry out,
without delay, “the amelioration and reforms demanded for provinces
inhabited by Armenians and to guarantee their security against Kurds
and Circassians.” Periodic reports showing what reforms were effected
were to be laid before the Powers, who were also to superintend their
application. These provisions were the more important as they were
practically the conditions on which the provinces of Erzerum and
Bayezid, which had been occupied by the Russians in their invasion of
the Asiatic provinces of Turkey in 1877, were restored to the Porte.
It may be taken that, if the Powers had conceived it possible that
these promises would not be carried out, they would not have been
so cruel as to restore these two provinces, inhabited so largely by
Armenians, to Turkish rule. Lord Salisbury in 1888 did, in fact, use
strong language to the Porte on the subject of Armenia, and threatened
armed force if reforms were not carried out. In spite of this threat,
no reforms were effected. Mr. Gladstone, when he came into power again
in 1892, endeavoured to bring pressure on the Porte in favour of the
Armenians, but he met with no support from other Powers. Bismarck at
last intimated to him that the subject had better be allowed to drop.
Russia, it seems, was at that time engaged in the effort to induce the
Armenians inhabiting the districts round Kars, which had been ceded to
it under the treaty of Berlin, to give up their national Church and to
join the Greek Church. It was little disposed to give support to the
Armenians who remained subjects of the Porte.
As a result, the Armenians obtained no valid protection, and the Kurds
and Circassians continued their raids against these peaceful people.
Later, suspicion of Armenian insurrection arose in the mind of Sultan
Abdul Hamid. There were a few isolated cases in which insignificant
numbers of Armenians, prompted by their compatriots across the frontier
in Russia, formed conspiracies against the Turkish Government. But
these feeble sparks were extinguished by the Turkish officials on the
spot without difficulty. They were made the excuse, however, by the
Sultan for a new policy of massacre directed against these unfortunate
people. Massacres on a small scale began in 1889.
In 1890, when the writer was at Constantinople, he was favoured with
an interview by the Sultan, who spoke on the subject of the Armenians,
and sent a message to Mr. Gladstone, conveying his most positive
assurances that he was animated by none but the most friendly feelings
towards these people, and that he was determined to secure to them
good government. Such assurances from this quarter were but proofs
of malevolent intentions. Certain it is that the tale of official
massacres was thenceforth for some years a continuous one. Abdul Hamid
appears to have deliberately made up his mind, if not to settle the
Armenian question by extermination of the Armenians, once for all, at
least to inflict such a lesson on them as would never be forgotten.
This policy culminated in 1894. Commissioners were then sent into the
country inhabited by Armenians with directions to summon the Moslems of
the district to the mosques and to inform them of the Sultan’s wishes
and plans. They were to be told that liberty was given to them to take
by force the goods of their Armenian neighbours, and if there was any
resistance to kill them. It was not an appeal to the fanaticism of the
Moslems, but rather to their greed for loot and to their jealousy of
their more prosperous neighbours.
At the same time every precaution was taken to prevent the news of
these wholesale acts of rapine and massacre from being known to the
outside world. No strangers or visitors were allowed to enter the
country where these scenes were taking place, and the most rigorous
censorship was applied to all letters coming from them. Save in a
few rare cases where the mollahs refused to obey, in the belief that
the Koran did not justify such acts, the instructions were acted on
and the policy of murder and robbery was preached in the mosques. In
the province of Bitlis twenty-four Armenian villages were destroyed
by Zeki Pasha. Their inhabitants were butchered. Zeki was decorated
by the Sultan for this infamy. In 1895, and again in 1896, wholesale
massacres of Armenians took place, organized by Sultan Abdul Hamid,
and effected through the agency of Shakir Pasha and other officials,
civil and military. It was estimated that a hundred thousand Armenians
were victims of these massacres, either directly or indirectly by
starvation and disease which followed them. Constantinople itself, on
August 22 and 28, 1896, was the scene of an organized attack on the
Armenian quarter. It was invaded by gangs of men armed with clubs,
who bludgeoned every Armenian to be found there. In vain did the
ambassadors protest and appeal to the treaty of Berlin. In vain did
Mr. Gladstone issue, for the last time, from his retirement and appeal
to public opinion on behalf of these people, designating the Sultan as
Abdul the Great Assassin. No Power was willing to use force or even to
threaten force on behalf of the Armenians. Even Russia was disinclined
to do so. These people had no wish to be absorbed by Russia. An
Armenian of good position and wide acquaintance with his countrymen in
Asia Minor, when questioned by the writer on this point in 1890, said
that the Armenians had no desire to become subjects of Russia. They
would prefer to remain under the Turks, if England would hold a big
stick over the Sultan; but if England would not do this, they would
prefer Russia, or the devil himself, to the Turk.
It need not be said that those massacres of 1890-5 have been completely
put into the shade by the far more extensive and bloody massacres
of 1915, and that the policy of deporting the whole population of
Armenians has been carried to a terrible conclusion.
There remains the case of the Macedonians and other people of the
Balkans who were replaced by the treaty of Berlin under Ottoman rule.
The difficulty of dealing with them was aggravated by the fact that the
population of these districts was not homogeneous. Bulgarians, Greeks,
and Serbians were in many districts mixed up, each with separate
villages or communities, so that no definite geographical lines could
be drawn between them. The neighbouring States of Bulgaria, Serbia,
and Greece were furiously jealous of one another, each claiming these
intervening districts. This, however, was no excuse to the Porte for
the continued misgovernment of these provinces. Their unfortunate
populations, while enduring the evils of misrule, were able to compare
their position under Turkish rule with that of their more fortunate
neighbours who had been liberated from it by the treaty of Berlin, and
were enjoying all the benefits of self-government in Bulgaria, Serbia,
and Greece.
The writer had the opportunity of personally forming an opinion on
this subject. In 1887 and 1890 he paid visits to Greece, and in 1890
he visited Bulgaria on his way to Constantinople, staying a few days
at Sofia and Philippopolis. In both cases he was able to compare the
new condition of things with what he recollected of his previous
visits to these districts in 1857. Nothing could be more striking and
more satisfactory to those who had felt confidence in the principle
of self-government and of democratic institutions. The change in
Bulgaria was the more remarkable as it had been effected in the twelve
years which had elapsed since the treaty of Berlin. In these few
years the Bulgarians had equipped themselves with the machinery of a
progressive democratic community, with schools and colleges, and with
compulsory education. Roads, harbours, and improvements of all kinds
were in course of construction. The Tartars and Circassians who had
been planted in Bulgaria by the Porte after the conquests by Russia
of the Crimea and the Caucasus, and who were the main instruments of
the horrors of Batak, had again been transplanted by the Porte in Asia
Minor. But the indigenous Moslems, whether of Slav or Turkish race, in
spite of vehement exhortations of their mollahs, remained and were
well treated by the Christian population now in possession of power.
They had no cause for complaint. They were represented in the National
Assembly of Bulgaria by not a few men of their own religion.
The Bulgarian peasants, who, under Turkish rule, had in many parts been
driven from the fertile plains into the Rhodope Mountains and had there
formed congested districts, had migrated again into the plains and were
extending cultivation. A member of the Bulgarian Chamber of Deputies,
when asked by the writer what his constituency of peasants thought of
the change since old Turkish times, replied that they all admitted that
though taxation had not been reduced there was this great difference:
Under the Turkish régime the taxes went into the pockets of the Turkish
officials and of the Sultan’s gang of robbers at Constantinople, and
the peasants who paid got no return for them. But under the new régime
they had full return for their money in schools and roads, with other
improvements, and in the protection of life and property. Brigandage,
which used to be rampant, had wholly ceased, and justice could be
obtained from the magistrates without bribes.
In Greece there was everywhere the same story, the same comparison of
the present with the past, to the immense advantage of the existing
state of things. Brigandage had entirely ceased. Athens had become a
capital worthy of the nation—remarkable for the number and character of
its public buildings and institutions, for its museums, colleges, and
schools, founded for the most part by wealthy Greeks in all parts of
the world.
There remains to consider what had been the relative and
contemporaneous changes in the Balkan provinces still remaining under
Turkish rule and in the (mainly Moslem) countries of Asia Minor, Syria,
and Mesopotamia. To inquiries of the writer in all quarters, in 1890,
there was but one answer, that since the treaty of Berlin the condition
both of Christians and Moslems throughout the Turkish Empire had gone
from bad to worse. In the Christian Balkan provinces still under
Turkish rule misgovernment was more rampant. Brigandage had increased.
The rapacity and exactions of the Turkish officials were worse than
ever. Discontent was seething in all directions—the more so when the
populations compared their fate with that of their more fortunate
neighbours across the frontiers who had been liberated by the armies
of Russia and by the treaty of Berlin. Nor were the reports as to the
condition of the Moslem subjects of the Porte in any way better. The
exactions of Turkish officials had increased on people of all races
and religion. The concurrent testimony from all quarters was that the
condition of the Moslem peasants had greatly deteriorated.
The writer, on his return from the East in 1890, in the following
paragraph described the danger to Turkey resulting from this state of
things:—
The danger to Turkey in its Eastern provinces of Asia Minor and in
its European provinces in Macedonia and Epirus is the comparison
between the condition of those who were freed in 1878 from the
Sultan’s rule, and who have become self-governing, as in the case
of the Bulgarians, or have gone under the rule of Austria, Russia,
or Greece, with those who remain the subjects of Turkish rule.
When, on one side of mere geographical lines, without any physical
difference, the populations are flourishing and improvements of
all kinds in roads, railways, harbours, schools, etc., are being
effected; when brigandage is at an end, and the cultivation of land
is extending; when justice is equally administered, and security
to life and property is afforded by the authorities; and when
all these improvements date from the time when they ceased to be
under Turkish rule; and when, on the other side of these lines,
the conditions are the same as formerly, or even worse, and no
improvement of any kind has taken place, the contrast must inevitably
lead to fresh aspirations of the peasantry, to renewed political
difficulties, to threats of intervention, and to further schemes for
disintegrating the Empire at no distant date. The real defects of
the Turkish Government appear to be the same as ever, not so much in
the laws themselves as the administration of them, or the want of
administration, the excessive centralization, the want of honest and
capable governors, the corruption which infects all official classes,
the want of money to supply the needs of the central Government and
the extravagance of the Sultan, the consequent excessive taxation,
the complete absence of security for life and property.[46]
For seventeen more years these evils continued unabated in the Ottoman
Empire under Abdul Hamid, while the condition of the liberated
provinces was continually improving and the contrast was becoming
every year more striking. Discontent and disaffection to the Turkish
Government, and contempt and hatred of the Sultan, the head of it,
increased not only among his Christian subjects, but equally among the
Moslems throughout the length and breadth of the Empire.
The provinces of the Empire which had attained virtual independence
under Moslem rulers, such as Egypt and Tunis, were little more
fortunate in their experience. They were infected with the same
radical defects and misgovernment as the suzerain Power. In Egypt the
enlightened despotism of Mehemet Ali had degenerated into the corrupt
administration of his grandson, Ismail Pasha. Egypt fell into the
hands of French and English moneylenders, and millions of borrowed
money were squandered by the Pasha with little or no benefit to his
country. Bankruptcy ensued to the State, and the bondholders persuaded
the French and English Governments to interfere on their behalf and to
insist on a financial control through their Consuls. Later, in 1881, a
popular movement arose in Egypt against this foreign control, and the
army, under Arabi Bey, revolted. France refused to join with England in
putting down the revolt and in maintaining the dual control. England
alone undertook the task. It sent an army to Egypt, defeated Arabi and
his native army, and restored the nominal rule of the Khedive. The
dual financial control of Great Britain and France was maintained. But
a virtual protectorate by the former was established, with the result
that it became eventually the master of Egypt.
In no case was the action of Abdul Hamid more fatuous and more
opposed to the real interests of his Empire than in dealing with this
Egyptian question. It was the policy of Great Britain, at the time we
are referring to, pursued by both political parties in the State, to
maintain as far as possible the authority of the Sultan in Egypt and
the integrity of the Turkish Empire. When, in 1881, Mr. Gladstone’s
Government proposed to send an army for the temporary occupation of
Egypt in order to put down the rebellion of the Egyptian army, it was
most anxious to do so with the consent and support of the Porte. It
invited Abdul Hamid to send troops there to act in concert with the
British army and in support of his own sovereign rights. The Sultan
refused to do so. He could not be brought to believe that, in the event
of his refusal, the British Government would act without him. But this
was precisely what it did. A British army was landed in Egypt and put
down the rebellion without any support from the Sultan. When it was too
late, Abdul Hamid discovered the supreme error of his policy.
Later again, between 1885 and 1887, when Lord Salisbury was Prime
Minister, he was most anxious to come to an arrangement with the Porte
for the ultimate withdrawal of the British army in occupation of Egypt.
He sent a special envoy (Sir H. Drummond Wolff) to Constantinople,
with the offer of a treaty to the Sultan, under which the British
army was to be wholly withdrawn from Egypt within seven years, but
with the condition that if, later, armed intervention should again
become necessary, British troops should be employed for the purpose
in preference to those of any other Power. This most friendly and
advantageous proposal was agreed to by all the ministers of the Porte
and was favoured at first by the Sultan, but, after long negotiation,
he refused to sign the treaty. Later, when he perceived the mistake
which he had made, he offered to reopen the negotiations, but met
with a rebuff from Lord Salisbury. The two incidents are important as
showing that Egypt became a dependency of Great Britain mainly through
the perversity, folly, and stupidity of Abdul Hamid.
In Tunis analogous agencies had been at work in favour of France. The
occupation of this province had been the subject of conversations
between the Powers at the Congress of Berlin. Prince Bismarck himself
suggested it to the representative of France, hoping perhaps that it
would be the cause of ill-feeling between that country and Italy, and
would widen the breach between them to the advantage of Germany. The
British delegates expressed themselves as not unfavourable to this
project. It followed that, between 1881 and 1883, the Government of
France forcibly assumed a protectorate over Tunis and a control of its
finance and administration, with the acquiescence, if not the full
approval, of the British Government. In the case of Tunis, however, its
connection with the Turkish Empire had been virtually severed three
centuries earlier.
Both in Egypt and Tunis, European control effected great improvements
in the condition of the native populations, especially the peasantry,
and afforded illustration to the people of Turkey of the grave defects
of their own Government and its corrupt administration. A party was
gradually formed in the first decade of the present century among
Moslems in Turkey in favour of constitutional reform. It was known as
the Party of Union and Progress. Its members were called the Young
Turks. It had its origin with Turks exiled abroad and chiefly living
in Paris, and thence it began to permeate Turkey and find influential
support in Constantinople. It obtained adherents in great numbers in
the Turkish army. It established a Committee at Salonika, where it
was in close touch with the officers of the Turkish army, which had
its headquarters there. By the year 1908 this movement had enormously
increased. Among its ablest members were many Jews and crypto-Jews of
Salonika.
There was universal discontent. The system of espionage which the
Sultan had set up, and which was his main engine of government, was
odious to people of every rank, high and low. The army shared in the
discontent. It was not till they were certain of the support of the
army that the Committee of Union and Progress attempted any overt act.
But when assured of this they boldly proceeded with their plans. On
July 23, 1908, at Salonika, Enver Bey, on behalf of the Committee,
proclaimed a revolution, and on the same day the 2nd and 3rd Army
Corps, stationed there, declared their intention of marching to
Constantinople and compelling the Sultan to reform the Constitution. It
was decided by the Committee that Abdul Hamid should not be deposed,
but that he should be allowed to remain on the throne, provided he
accepted the Constitution in good faith. The Committee had further
made certain of the support of the Albanian soldiers who formed the
bodyguard of the Sultan, and who had been looked upon by him as his
most reliable supporters. Abdul Hamid, when he found that the army was
against him and that he had no friends on whom he could rely, even
among his bodyguard, announced his willingness to concede the demands
of the revolutionary party. Never was a revolution effected with so
little bloodshed and with more complete success. The Sultan dismissed
his corrupt and hated ministers and appointed others, dictated to him
by the Committee. He agreed to summon again the Parliament which he
had dismissed in 1877. He issued a firman abolishing the system of
espionage. He publicly swore fidelity to the new Constitution. For
a time the people of Constantinople were willing to believe in his
sincerity. The Sheik ul Islam pronounced that there was nothing in
the demands of the people which was opposed to the laws of Islam. A
general election took place of members for a National Assembly under a
process of double election. Men of all races and religions were equally
admitted to the franchise.
There were everywhere great rejoicings over the new Constitution,
though very few people beyond Constantinople and Salonika had any
conception of what it meant. There was for a time great enthusiasm
for England, and the new ambassador, Sir Gerard Lowther, on arriving
at Constantinople to take up the post received a great ovation. On
December 10th the new Parliament met, and was opened by the Sultan
with a speech, in which he promised to safeguard the Constitution and
to protect the sacred rights of the nation. The various Christian and
other subject races were well represented in the Chamber of Deputies.
Its members showed an unexpected ability in the conduct of its
proceedings and in their speeches.