The Balkans Part 17

What Constantinople means for the Osmanlis is implied in that name _Roum_ by which the western dominions of the Turks have been known ever since the Seljuks won Asia Minor. Apart from the prestige of their own early conquests, the Osmanlis inherited, and in a measure retain in the Near East, the traditional prestige of the greatest empire which ever held it.

They stand not only for their own past but also for whatever still lives of the prestige of Rome. Theirs is still the repute of the imperial people _par excellence_, chosen and called to rule.

That this repute should continue, after the sweeping victories of Semites and subsequent centuries of Ottoman retreat before other heirs of Rome, is a paradox to be explained only by the fact that a large part of the population of the Near East remains at this day in about the same stage of civilization and knowledge as in the time of, say, Heraclius. The Osmanlis, be it remembered, were and are foreigners in a great part of their Asiatic empire equally with the Greeks of Byzantium or the Romans of Italy; and their establishment in Constantinople nearly five centuries ago did not mean to the indigenous peoples of the Near East what it meant to Europe--a victory of the East over the West--so much as a continuation of immemorial 'Roman' dominion still exercised from the same imperial centre.

Since Rome first spread its shadow over the Near East, many men of many races, whose variety was imperfectly realised, if realised at all, by the peasants of Asia Minor, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, have ruled in its name; the Osmanlis, whose governmental system was in part the Byzantine, made but one more change which meant the same old thing. The peasants know, of course, about those Semitic victories; but they know also that if the Semite has had his day of triumph and imposed, as was right and proper, his G.o.d and his Prophet on Roum--even on all mankind as many believed, and some may be found in remoter regions who still believe--he has returned to his own place south of Taurus; and still Roum is Roum, natural indefeasible Lord of the World.

Such a belief is dying now, of course; but it dies slowly and hard. It still const.i.tutes a real a.s.set of the Osmanlis, and will not cease to have value until they lose Constantinople. On the possession of the old imperial city it depends for whatever vitality it has. You may demonstrate, as you will, and as many publicists have done since the Balkan War and before, what and how great economic, political, and social advantages would accrue to the Osmanlis, if they could bring themselves to transfer their capital to Asia. Here they would be rid of Rumelia, which costs, and will always cost them, more than it yields. Here they could concentrate Moslems where their co-religionists are already the great majority, and so have done with the everlasting friction and weakness entailed in jurisdiction over preponderant Christian elements. Here they might throw off the remnants of their Byzantinism as a garment and, no longer forced to face two ways, live and govern with single minds as the Asiatics they are.

Vain illusion, as Osmanli imperialists know! It is their empire that would fall away as a garment so soon as the Near East realized that they no longer ruled in the Imperial City. Enver Pasha and the Committee were amply justified in straining the resources of the Ottoman Empire to cracking-point, not merely to retain Constantinople but also to recover Adrianople and a territory in Europe large enough to bulk as Roum. Nothing that happened in that war made so greatly for the continuation of the old order in Asiatic Turkey as the reoccupation of Adrianople. The one occasion on which Europeans in Syria had reason to expect a general explosion was when premature rumours of the entry of the Bulgarian army into Stambul gained currency for a few hours. That explosion, had the news proved true or not been contradicted in time, would have been a panic-stricken, ungovernable impulse of anarchy--of men conscious that an old world had pa.s.sed away and ignorant what conceivable new world could come to be.

But the perilous moment pa.s.sed, to be succeeded by general diffusion of a belief that the inevitable catastrophe was only postponed. In the breathing-time allowed, Arabs, Kurds, and Armenians discussed and planned together revolt from the moribund Osmanli, and, separately, the mutual ma.s.sacre and plundering of one another. Arab national organizations and nationalist journals sprang to life at Beirut and elsewhere. The revival of Arab empire was talked of, and names of possible capitals and kings were bandied about. One Arab province, the Hasa, actually broke away. Then men began to say that the Bulgarians would not advance beyond Chataldja: the Balkan States were at war among themselves: finally, Adrianople had been re-occupied. And all was as in the beginning. Budding life withered in the Arab movement, and the Near East settled down once more in the persistent shadow of Roum.

Such is the first element in Osmanli prestige, doomed to disappear the moment that the Ottoman state relinquishes Europe. Meanwhile there it is for what it is worth; and it is actually worth a tradition of submission, natural and honourable, to a race of superior destiny, which is instinctive in some millions of savage simple hearts.

What of the second element? The religious prestige of the Ottoman power as the repository of caliphial authority and trustee for Islam in the Holy Land of Arabia, is an a.s.set almost impossible to estimate. Would a death struggle of the Osmanlis in Europe rouse the Sunni world? Would the Moslems of India, Afghanistan, Turkestan, China, and Malaya take up arms for the Ottoman sultan as caliph? Nothing but the event will prove that they would. Jehad, or Holy War, is an obsolescent weapon difficult and dangerous for Young Turks to wield: difficult because their own Islamic sincerity is suspect and they are taking the field now as clients of _giaur_ peoples; dangerous because the Ottoman nation itself includes numerous Christian elements, indispensable to its economy.

Undoubtedly, however, the Ottoman sultanate can count on its religious prestige appealing widely, overriding counteracting sentiments, and, if it rouses to action, rousing the most dangerous temper of all. It is futile to ignore the caliph because he is not of the Koreish, and owes his dignity to a sixteenth-century transfer. These facts are either unknown or not borne in mind by half the Sunnites on whom he might call, and weigh far less with the other half than his hereditary dominion over the Holy Cities, sanctioned by the prescription of nearly four centuries.

One thing can be foretold with certainty. The religious prestige of an Ottoman sultan, who had definitely lost control of the Holy Places, would cease as quickly and utterly as the secular prestige of one who had evacuated Constantinople: and since the loss of the latter would probably precipitate an Arab revolt, and cut off the Hejaz, the religious element in Ottoman prestige may be said to depend on Constantinople as much as the secular. All the more reason why the Committee of Union and Progress should not have accepted that well-meant advice of European publicists! A successful revolt of the Arab-speaking provinces would indeed sound the death-knell of the Ottoman Empire. No other event would be so immediately and surely catastrophic.

The third element in Osmanli prestige, inherent qualities of the Osmanli 'Turk' himself, will be admitted by every one who knows him and his history. To say that he has the 'will to power' is not, however, to say that he has an apt.i.tude for government. He wishes to govern others; his will to do so imposes itself on peoples who have not the same will; they give way to him and he governs them indifferently, though often better than they can govern themselves. For example, bad as, according to our standards, Turkish government is, native Arab government, when not in tutelage to Europeans, has generally proved itself worse, when tried in the Ottoman area in modern times. Where it is of a purely Bedawi barbaric type, as in the emirates of central Arabia, it does well enough; but if the population be contaminated ever so little with non-Arab elements, practices, or ideas, Arab administration seems incapable of producing effective government. It has had chances in the Holy Cities at intervals, and for longer periods in the Yemen. But a European, long resident in the latter country, who has groaned under Turkish administration, where it has always been most oppressive, bore witness that the rule of the native Imam only served to replace oppressive government by oppressive anarchy.

As for the Osmanli's courage as a fighting man, that has often been exemplified, and never better than in the Gallipoli peninsula. It is admitted. The European and Anatolian Osmanlis yield little one to the other in this virtue; but the palm, if awarded at all, must be given to the levies from northern and central Asia Minor.

If Constantinople should be lost, the Arab-speaking parts of the empire would in all likelihood break away, carrying the Holy Cities with them.

When the constant risk of this consummation, with the cataclysmic nature of its consequences is considered, one marvels why the Committee, which has shown no mean understanding of some conditions essential to Osmanli empire, should have done so little hitherto to conciliate Arab susceptibilities. Neither in the const.i.tution of the parliament nor in the higher commands of the army have the Arab-speaking peoples been given anything like their fair share; and loudly and insistently have they protested. Perhaps the Committee, whose leading members are of a markedly Europeanized type, understands Asia less well than Europe. Certainly its programme of Ottomanization, elaborated by military ex-attaches, by Jew bankers and officials from Salonika, and by doctors, lawyers, and other _intellectuels_ fresh from Paris, was conceived on lines which offered the pure Asiatic very little scope. The free and equal Osmanlis were all to take their cue from men of the Byzantine sort which the European provinces, and especially the city of Constantinople, breed. After the revolution, nothing in Turkey struck one so much as the apparition on the top of things everywhere of a type of Osmanli who has the characteristic qualities of the Levantine Greek. Young officers, controlling their elders, only needed a change of uniform to pa.s.s in an Athenian crowd.

Spare and dapper officials, presiding in seats of authority over Kurds and Arabs, reminded one of Greek journalists. Osmanli journalists themselves treated one to rhodomontades punctuated with restless gesticulation, which revived memories of Athenian cafes in war-time. It was the Byzantine triumphing over the Asiatic; and the most Asiatic elements in the empire were the least likely to meet with the appreciation or sympathy of the Byzantines.

Are the Arab-speaking peoples, therefore, likely to revolt, or be successful in splitting the Ottoman Empire, if they do? The present writer would like to say, in parenthesis, that, in his opinion, this consummation of the empire is not devoutly to be wished. The subst.i.tution of Arab administration for Osmanli would necessarily entail European tutelage of the parts of the Arab-speaking area in which powers, like ourselves, have vital interests--Syria, for example, southern Mesopotamia, and, probably, Hejaz. The last named, in particular, would involve us in so ticklish and thankless a task, that one can only be thankful for the Turkish caretaker there to-day, and loth to see him dismissed.

An Arab revolt, however, might break out whether the Triple Entente desired its success or not. What chance of success would it have? The peoples of the Arab part of the Ottoman Empire are a congeries of differing races, creeds, sects, and social systems, with no common bond except language. The physical character of their land compels a good third of them to be nomadic, predatory barbarians, feared by the other two-thirds. The settled folk are divided into Moslem and Christian (not to mention a large Jewish element), the cleavage being more abrupt than in western Turkey and the tradition and actual spirit of mutual enmity more separative. Further, each of those main creed-divisions is subdivided.

Even Islam in this region includes a number of incompatible sects, such as the Ansariye, the Metawali, and the Druses in the Syrian mountains, s.h.i.+te Arabs on the Gulf coast and the Persian border, with pagan Kurds and Yezidis in the latter region and north Mesopotamia. As for the Christians, their divisions are notorious, most of these being subdivided again into two or more hostile communions apiece. It is almost impossible to imagine the inhabitants of Syria concerting a common plan or taking common action.

The only elements among them which have shown any political sense or capacity for political organization are Christian. The Maronites of the Lebanon are most conspicuous among these; but neither their numbers nor their traditional relations with their neighbours qualify them to form the nucleus of a free united Syria. The 'Arab Movement' up to the present has consisted in little more than talk and journalese. It has not developed any considerable organization to meet that stable efficient organization which the Committee of Union and Progress has directed throughout the Ottoman dominions.

As for the rest of the empire, Asia Minor will stand by the Osmanli cause, even if Europe and Constantinople, and even if the Holy Places and all the Arab-speaking provinces be lost. Its allegiance does not depend on either the tradition of Roum or the caliphate, but on essential unity with the Osmanli nation. Asia Minor is the nation. There, prepared equally by Byzantine domination and by Seljukian influence, the great ma.s.s of the people long ago identified itself insensibly and completely with the tradition and hope of the Osmanlis. The subsequent occupation of the Byzantine capital by the heirs of the Byzantine system, and their still later a.s.sumption of caliphial responsibility, were not needed to cement the union. Even a military occupation by Russia or by another strong power would not detach Anatolia from the Osmanli unity; for a thing cannot be detached from itself. But, of course, that occupation might after long years cause the unity itself to cease to be.

Such an occupation, however, would probably not be seriously resisted or subsequently rebelled against by the Moslem majority in Asia Minor, supposing Osmanli armaments to have been crushed. The Anatolian population is a sober, labouring peasantry, essentially agricultural and wedded to the soil. The levies for Yemen and Europe, which have gone far to deplete and exhaust it of recent years, were composed of men who fought to order and without imagination, steadily and faithfully, as their fathers had fought. They have no l.u.s.t for war, no Arabian tradition of fighting for its own sake, and little, if any, fanaticism. Attempts to inspire Anatolian troops with religious rage in the Balkan War were failures. They were asked to fight in too modern a way under too many Teutonic officers.

The result ill.u.s.trated a prophecy ascribed to Ghasri Mukhtar Pasha. When German instructors were first introduced into Turkey, he foretold that they would be the end of the Ottoman army. No, these Anatolians desire nothing better than to follow their plough-oxen, and live their common village life, under any master who will let them be.

Elements of the Christian minority, however, Armenian and Greek, would give trouble with their developed ideas of nationality and irrepressible tendency to 'Europize'. They would present, indeed, problems of which at present one cannot foresee the solution. It seems inevitable that an autonomous Armenia, like an autonomous Poland, must be const.i.tuted ere long; but where? There is no geographical unit of the Ottoman area in which Armenians are the majority. If they cl.u.s.ter more thickly in the vilayets of Angora, Sivas, Erzerum, Kharput, and Van, i.e. in easternmost Asia Minor, than elsewhere, and form a village people of the soil, they are consistently a minority in any large administrative district.

Numerous, too, in the trans-Tauric vilayets of Adana and Aleppo, the seat of their most recent independence, they are townsmen in the main, and not an essential element of the agricultural population. Even if a considerable proportion of the Armenians, now dispersed through towns of western Asia Minor and in Constantinople, could be induced to concentrate in a reconst.i.tuted Armenia (which is doubtful, seeing how addicted they are to general commerce and what may be called parasitic life), they could not fill out both the Greater and the Lesser Armenias of history, in sufficient strength to overbear the Osmanli and Kurdish elements. The widest area which might he const.i.tuted an autonomous Armenia with good prospect of self-sufficiency would be the present Russian province, where the head-quarters of the national religion lie, with the addition of the provinces of Erzerum, Van, and Kharput.

But, if Russia had brought herself to make a self-denying ordinance, she would have to police her new Armenia very strongly for some years; for an acute Kurdish problem would confront it, and no concentration of nationals could be looked for from the Armenia Irredenta of Diarbekr, Urfa, Aleppo, Aintab, Marash, Adana, Kaisariyeh, Sivas, Angora, and Trebizond (not to mention farther and more foreign towns), until public security was a.s.sured in what for generations has been a c.o.c.kpit. The Kurd is, of course, an Indo-European as much as the Armenian, and rarely a true Moslem; but it would be a very long time indeed before these facts reconciled him to the domination of the race which he has plundered for three centuries. Most of the Osmanlis of eastern Asia Minor are descendants of converted Armenians; but their a.s.similation would be slow and doubtful. Islam, more rapidly and completely than any other creed, extinguishes racial sympathies and groups its adherents anew.

The Anatolian Greeks are less numerous but not less difficult to provide for. The scattered groups of them on the plateau--in Cappadocia, Pontus, the Konia district--and on the eastward coast-lands would offer no serious difficulty to a lord of the interior. But those in the western river-basins from Isbarta to the Marmora, and those on the western and north-western littorals, are of a more advanced and cohesive political character, imbued with nationalism, intimate with their independent nationals, and actively interested in h.e.l.lenic national politics. What happens at Athens has long concerned them more than what happens at Constantinople; and with Greece occupying the islands in the daily view of many of them, they are coming to regard themselves more and more every day as citizens of Graecia Irredenta. What is to be done with these? What, in particular, with Smyrna, the second city of the Ottoman Empire and the first of 'Magna Graecia'? Its three and a half hundred thousand souls include the largest Greek urban population resident in any one city. Shall it be united to Greece? Greece herself might well hesitate. It would prove a very irksome possession, involving her in all sorts of continental difficulties and risks. There is no good frontier inland for such an _enclave_. It could hardly be held without the rest of westernmost Asia, from Caria to the Dardanelles, and in this region the great majority of the population is Moslem of old stocks, devotedly attached both to their faith and to the Osmanli tradition.

The present writer, however, is not among the prophets. He has but tried to set forth what may delay and what may precipitate the collapse of an empire, whose doom has been long foreseen, often planned, invariably postponed; and, further, to indicate some difficulties which, being bound to confront heirs of the Osmanlis, will be better met the better they are understood before the final agony--If this is, indeed, to be!