The Troubles of Turkey

 LITTLE as we may understand of the Salonica affair, it is not difficult to see some things in it which lie at the root of most of the troubles of Turkey. For one thing, the quarrel at the Gulf of Salonica was a religious quarrel between Christians and Mahomedans ; for another it was a religious quarrel which reached its serious stage principally through the inability of the authorities to quell the fury of a fanatical mob. And, in addition to these, there is the restraint that is put upon Turkish license and upon Mahommedan fury by the menace of foreign Powers. These are the things which have contributed most to make the Eastern Question as we have it to-day.

Let us take these things, in the order in which we have stated them. The riot at Salonica was a religious riot, and the rebellion in the Herzegovina is a rebellion that has religion at the root of it. It is not only a rebellion of Christians against Mohammedans, but it is a struggle that has arisen out of the religious prejudices which separate the Christians and the Mohammedans so widely from each other. It is a mistake to suppose that the Hersegovinian quarrel is principally a quarrel of races, or that it is simply a rebellion against an alien rule. Strange as it may appear, it is not against the rule of the SULTAN chiefly that the insurgent provinces of Turkey are protecting, and it is worthy of remark that most of those who are fighting against each other in the Hersegovina are of the same race. The contending parties are one, so far as blood and nationality are concerned. The divisions from which their quarrels have arisen have grown out of the fact that while the populace in the insurgent provinces have adhered to the immemorial traditions of Christianity, a section of the people at the time of the Turkish Conquest, adopted, and have continued to adhere to, the Turkish faith.

Faiths, as we all know, can be the savagest of things on convenient occasions, but the Mohammedan faith is essentially and confessedly an implacable one. The battles of the Crescent have often been fought and won by the aid of the scimitar. The religion of the Turks is, in some of its phases, at least, both a religion of hatred and a religion of conquest. There are Mohammedans who not only refuse to eat with a Christian dog, but who would, if it were in their power, decline to fight with him even, lest if they should fight on the same battle field their ashes should be polluted by contact with those of an infidel.

In the Herzegovina this flame of religious detestation is fed by the strength of a social ascendancy. The Christians in these parts of the SULTAN'S Empire are the populace, while the Mohammedans form an oligarchical tyranny. The cruelty of such a tyranny may well be imagined, but the facts of it are even beyond what an ordinary imagination would be able to picture. In the Turkish Empire, an it exists at present, the Christian is not and never can be a citizen. He has no rights, no country, and no home. The essential principle of Turkish rule, it has been truly said, is the government of unarmed Christian communities by armed Mohammedans. The Christian is the victim of a diabolical system of forced labour, which in the hands of his Mohammedan masters renders him liable to be compelled at any time to leave his farm and his home to drudge for his enemies. Notwithstanding this, the unfortunate Rayah is held responsible in good seasons and in bad ones, not only to pay the most cruel of taxes, whether he has the means of doing it or not, but is bound on the spot to pay for those of others who may come short, and in default is summarily bound to a post and beaten until he finds some means of appeasing the cupidity of his masters. Outrageous as the thought of such brutality as this may be to us, it is in the eyes of a Turk of the good old times too good a lot for Christian dogs. Things of this sort have been going on in the Turkish provinces for years and decades, and the world has not been aware of them or has given them no heed. The progress of events has, however, carried daylight into the extremities of the Ottoman Empire, and the long persecuted Rayahs of Bosnia and Hersegovina have risen not only to protest against the tyrannies and the butcheries of their Mohammedan tyrants, but to demand as a reality what has been so long and so vainly given them as a promise, namely, that the social and civil rights of Christians shall be equal with those of Mussulmans themselves. The war which is being fought out within the Empire of Turkey is therefore but an outstanding phase of the great contest for religious equality which, in one form or another, is the standing warfare of this generation.

But we were also told that the riot of Salonica arose out of the inability of the Turkish authorities to quell the rage of the Mohammedan populace. This inability is the next cause of all the Turkish quarrels in existence The Christians of Herzegovina, in asking for social rights and religious equality, are asking for what the Government of the SULTAN has not the capacity to give them. These things were promised most explicitly by the treaty of 1856, and the promise has been repeated at one time and another from that day to this. But the things have not been granted, and are not likely to be. The reason of this does not lie altogether in the insincerity of the SULTAN or in the corruption of his officials. The insincerity and the corruption may be true enough, but if the SULTAN were perfectly sincere, and his Government a model of honesty, the result would in all probability be exactly the same. The Turkish Government has no power over the Mohammedan fanatics who have driven the mild-mannered Rayahs to desperation. And if the facts were otherwise, it the SULTAN were really able to grant that protection to the Christians which he has so often promised, he could only do so by alienating and enraging the governing classes in the insurgent provinces. In attempting to initiate reforms the Turkish authorities have already come into serious collision with their Mohammedan fanatics. The reason is simple enough. The granting of civil rights to Christians would mean their ceasing to be the tools of Mussulman authority, and the victims of Mussulman cruelty ; and for this the local Mohammedan authorities are in no way prepared. The enemies of the Christians in the districts where insurrection prevails are the governing classes. They are the landlords and the judges, who demand that their rights shall not be infringed, and that that their enemies shall not be conciliated. In making this demand they have hitherto prevailed, and are likely to prevail in future, unless some power stronger than the one which exists at Constantinople interferes. In reference to Hezegovina as to Salonica the Turkish authorities are intrenched behind a non possimus.

But the third difficulty in Turkey arises out of the fact that the day has come in which the Turks cannot kill a consul or two without getting a score of ironclads at their doors. In other words, the fact that Turkey is propped up by foreign Powers compels her to bear, without a protest, the humiliation of submitting to be told by other people what she must do and how far she must go. These are conditions which Turkey is obliged to accept, but to which she cannot adjust herself. Turkey is essentially a military State, and it belongs to a military State to dispose of rebels by soldiers and not by diplomatic arguments. But since Turkey now exists by foreign guarantees this is just what she cannot do. In the good old times it might have been possible for the Turk's to have made short work of the Herzegovinian rebellion. One or two hundred thousand drilled murderers might have been marched at once into the unruly districts, in which case the rebels might soon have been brought to their senses or been swept out of existence altogether. But as it is, when Turkey takes a step she is liable to be called to order by the six great Powers of Europe, and the result of this is that, since she has ceased to have the power of doing things in her own way, she has apparently ceased to have the power of doing anything at all. The three causes we have named lie at the root therefore of much of the troubles of Turkey. The Eastern question is, however, a large one, and we shall take an early opportunity of returning to it.

The Sydney Morning Herald 1876  http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article13375664