THE SECOND REVOLUTION IN TURXEY.
WHOEVER is in office in Turkey, it is the .soldier who is in power. Such a statement, however, does not take us very far towards an understandieg of the actual situation. To arrive at that understanding we must ask who controls the soldier and is able to put him in motion. As far as we can make out in the light of the communications received up till now from Constantinople, the new revolution is to a very great extent a counter- revolution. No doubt the forces which overthrew the late Ministry were to some extent the product of a combination between the old-fashioned reactionaries and certain Liberal extremists who are more Young Turkish than the Young Turks. Such combinations are known to all revolutions. They were visible on several occasions during the French Revolution, and threatened to take place, if they did not actually take place, in our own Rebellion aud also at the time of the Revolution. For instanee, the extreme Republicans coquetted with the supporters of Charles II. during the Commonwealth, and in Scotland after 1688 the Cameronians had. dealings with the Jacobites. But though the extreme Liberals may have combined with the Old Turks and with Mohammedan purists to overthrow the Committee of Union and Progress and the Ministers who were their nominees, we can hardly doubt that by far the strongest section of this combination is composed of reactionaries. The impelling force was the force which all students of Oriental affairs, however great their sympathy with the Young Turks, have during the past nine months felt must sooner or later come to the front. True, or at any rate primitive, Mohammedanism and political progress have nothing in common. Indeed, they are essentially opposed. The mass of the Turkish population, and still more the mass of the Army, are primitive Mohammedans or Old Turks to the backbone,—that is, firm believers in the old law and the old ways. No doubt the wickedness and fatuity of the Abd-ul-Hamid regime for a time obscured the essential features of Turkish Moham- medanism. You cannot harry and oppress even the most orthodox and conservative Moslem beyond a certain point, and Abd-ul-Hainid reached that point in the summer of last year. Hence when his regime fell, not a hand was lifted to save it, even by those who were theoretically and instinctively strongly opposed to the regime which took its place. For the moment the Old Turks felt as convinced as the Young Turks that any change was for the better. Men, however, forget very rapidly, and even so short a period as nine months has to some extent obliterated the traces of the old tyranny. Clearly what is actual now in Turkey is distrust of the new-fangled ways rather than remembrance of the old oppression. What is in the minds of the mob and of the common soldier, and of the religious leaders to whom they look for guidance, is dread of the future rather than hatred of the past.
But though we are convinced that the causa causans of the new revolution is reaction, we agree with the Times that for the present the revolution has not taken the form of a, counter-revolution. The new Ministry is very much of the same type as the old. That is, it is composed for the most part of men of enlightened ideas,— men such as all wellwishers of Turkey would like to see in office, and who, could they be sure of loyal support, might do a great deal to regenerate Turkey. Unfortu- nately, one cannot feel the least confidence that they will obtain loyal support from those who placed them in office. It is quite possible, indeed, that they have been deliberately placed in office as stopgaps, and that the next time the power of the reactionary section of the Army and of the populace is put in motion it may be to get rid of those men, and to substitute for them "the old gang," or, again, to clear them out of the way to make room for the obedient instrument of a military dictatorship. In other words, we should not be surprised, when the history of recent events is told in full, to fiud that though the Sultan has remained. in the shadow, and appears to have been a puppet in the hands of the contending factions, he has in reality been pulling the strings, and that he has once more shown his mixture of political capacity and. political pusillanimity by preferring to make the counter-revolution in two bites. But even though this may be the true reading of the situation, it does not necessarily follow that in the end. the Sultan will prevail and the old regime be restored. History does not repeat itself exactly ; but if we take the trouble to study history, we may find its light a useful guide. When the Long .Parliament had over- thrown "the sullen tyranny of Charles and Laud," it looked for the moment as if the King's power were finally broken. The King, however, soon realised that the men who had combined. to conquer him were hope- lessly divided amongst themselves. The majority of the Parliament were Presbyterians of Whiggish tendencies ; but opposed to them were the extremists of the Army and the men of light and leading who, like Milton, realised that " new presbyter" was but "old priest writ large." Charles at once 'began to play off the Radical Army against the Whig Parliament, and but for the discover), of his faithlessness and of his counter-intrigue against Cromwell and the soldiers with whom he was professing to act, be would in all probability have been restored to the throne, if not to power, and the Long Parlia- ment been sent about its business. He overreached himself, however, and found that Cromwell was not a man with whom it was safe to play a double game. It is conceivable that Abd-ul-Hamid has been engaged in a similar intrigue, and that the result may be not dissimilar. Military men, when once they know their power, are apt to get impatient at being played with by the subtle politician. If, then, the Army throws up a leader in whom it has confidence, he may prefer to rule in his own name rather than that of the Sultan. Such things have happened often enough before in the Mohammedan world, and may happen again.
But though this may be the ultimate result, we are far from saying that it will come about immediately. Revolu- tions may be rapid, but they move much slower than the brains of journalists. There are, besides, two other alter- natives which have to be considered. In the first place, we must remember that though the Committee of Union and Progress has been overthrown at Constantinople, it does not follow that it is yet overthrown in the provinces. It may be that at Adrianople or Salonika, or,,again, in the interior of Albania, the course of events will be very different. Men like Enver Bey—who, we note, has left his post at Berlin with the confident assurance that he and his friends will be able to restore order, as he calls may organise considerable bodies of troops and march upon Constantinople. [After the death of Caesar, Brutus and Cassius were forced to fly post-haste from Rome, but in the provinces they soon gathered a force of men large enough to carry on a groat war.] But if civil war takes place over a large area of the Turkish Empire both in Europe and Asia, even if it is in the end suppressed by those who now hold power in Constantinople, the very conditions will have arisen which are likely to create that military dictatorship of which we have just spoken. In the case of Turkey there. are, however, other factors and other influences to he considered. If a civil war breaks out, and especially a civil war in which Albania plays a large part, it is not likely that Bulgaria and the other Balkan States will be able or willing to bold their hands. Remember that what appears to them so rich a prize—the possession of Macedonia—will be the great stake in the lottery, and that the way to obtain tickets for that lottery will be by military intervention of sonic sort or other. But Austria, we may feel sure, is not going to sit still and see Bulgaria, Greece, Servia, Montenegro, and possibly Roumania, settling the fate of Macedonia and Albania amongst themselves, She is not going to allow the door which opens on Salonika and the Aegean to be closed against her by any Slav coup de main. If, then, there is civil war in Turkey, it will be Very difficult, 'nay, impossible, to avoid opening up the whole future of the Balkans.—Possibly Baron Aehrenthal has a Partition Treaty for European Turkey in his pocket. ready to be produced at the right time..—In a word, the new revolution in Turkey may throw us back into all the anxieties and difficulties which were temporarily ended by the coercion which Riissia lately suffered at the hands of Germany and Austria-Hungary.
We confess that what we have written above will be of very little assistance to a public bewildered by the course of recent events. Unfortunately, however, the situation is not one which is capable of easy explanations. We doubt very much whether there is at the hour of writing any statesman in Europe who has a clear and definite idea of what has happened, is happening; or is going to happen, or even of the policy which he himself means to pursue. Every one is waiting upon events, determined uo doubt to use those events to what he considers the best advantage of his own country, hut none the less doubtful as to the when, how, and where of action. For ourselves, we can only see one clue, and upon this clue we would ask our readers to fix their minds. For the time the strongest influence in Turkish affairs is, we believe, old-fashioned. Mohammedanism. This was picturesquely and signifi- cantly proclaimed by the news that the former street-cry of " Hurriet ! " ("Liberty ! ") has passed away, and. that the cry "Long live the Mohammedan religion !" has taken its place. We must also never forget that patriotism in the national sense is unknown to Turkey, and, indeed, to any Mohammedan country. What the Mohammedan cares for, and what he is willing to make sacrifices for with the most splendid. devotion, is not Turkey or any other country, but "The Faith." No doubt Arabs, Turks, and Albanians under- stand tribal pride and tribal jealousy, but all those feelings which we group under the head of patriotism belong in the mind. of the good Mohammedan to his creed, not to his country. It is a case not of "The Fatherland in danger ! " but of "The Moslem Faith in danger " Possibly this fact may every now and. then be obscured by the 'dust and smoke of tumult and conflict, but it is always in the background, and. always the final influence. The true Mohammedan cares little or nothing about Liberal Institutions, Democracy, Representative Government, or this or that phenomenon of progress. When these are interpreted to him as low taxation, or protection from gross oppression, he may tolerate them, but at heart lie tares for none of these things. He is a sceptic and fatalist, in politics. The only thing which really moves him is fear lest his creed be in peril. Once convince him that it is in peril, and everything, even the bonds of military discipline, to which he is naturally inclined, are swept away. For example, the belief that he was going to be called upon to shoot down the Ulema, the pious men of his faith—there is no real priest- hood in the Mohammedan world, but only " saints ' and. "Godly professors," as among the Puritans—ran like wild- fire through the Constantinople garrison, and made it an easy task for the enemies of the Ministry to hurl them from power. In the mind of the common soldier, they had suddenly become the enemies of the faith.
We come back to the point at which we began. Power in Turkey rests with the Army. What we said when writing on August 8th last is as true now as then. "In trying to forecast the future this fact that the revolution is a military revolution, and that it is the Array which is in power in Turkey, must never be forgotten." To this we need now only add the fact we have just been describing,—that the Mohammedan thinks first, not of his country or his Sovereign, but of his faith,. and that his faith is a theocratio body of law which, in the form in which it is received by the masses, is essentially inimical to political progress, Liberal institutions, and revolutionary ideas. The Old Turk, or, rather, the Old Mohammedan, has no use whatever for a Parliament and a Constitution.
Previous page
