The Future

Turkey's situation, therefore, in general terms has become this. With the

dissolution of the Concert of Europe the Ottoman Empire has lost what had

been for a century its chief security for continued existence. Its fate

now depends on that of two European powers which are at war with the rest

of the former Concert. Among the last named are Turkey's two principal

creditors, holding together about seventy-five per cent. of her public br />
debt. In the event of the defeat of her friends, these creditors will be

free to foreclose, the debtor being certainly in no position to meet her

obligations. Allied with Christian powers, the Osmanli caliph has proved

no more able than his predecessors to unite Islam in his defence; but, for

what his title is worth, Mohammed V is still caliph, no rival claim having

been put forward. The loyalty of the empire remains where it was, pending

victory or defeat, the provinces being slow to realize, and still slower

to resent, the disastrous economic state to which the war is reducing

them.



The present struggle may leave the Osmanli Empire in one of three

situations: (1) member of a victorious alliance, reinforced, enlarged, and

lightened of financial burdens, as the wages of its sin; (2) member of a

defeated alliance, bound to pay the price of blood in loss of territory,

or independence, or even existence; (3) party to a compromise under which

its territorial empire might conceivably remain Ottoman, but under even

stricter European tutelage than of old.



The first alternative it would be idle to discuss, for the result of

conditions so novel are impossible to foresee. Nor, indeed, when immediate

events are so doubtful an at the present moment, is it profitable to

attempt to forecast the ultimate result of any of the alternatives.

Should, however, either the second or the third become fact, certain

general truths about the Osmanlis will govern the consequences; and these

must be borne in mind by any in whose hands the disposal of the empire may

lie.



The influence of the Osmanlis in their empire to-day resides in three

things: first, in their possession of Constantinople; second, in the

sultan's caliphate and his guardianship of the holy cities of Islam;

third, in certain qualities of Osmanli character, notably 'will to power'

and courage in the field.



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 God 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 constitutes a real asset 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 passed away and ignorant what conceivable new world could

come to be.



But the perilous moment passed, 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

massacre 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 asset 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 aptitude 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 constitution 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 pass 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 substitution 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, Shiite

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 mass 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 assumption 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 lust 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 illustrated 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 constituted ere

long; but where? There is no geographical unit of the Ottoman area in

which Armenians are the majority. If they cluster 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 reconstituted 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 constituted 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 assured

in what for generations has been a cockpit. 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 assimilation 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 Hellenic 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!