TURKEY IN EUROPE.* THERE is always an attractive mystery about
an anonymous book, wide possibilities of authorship, and a lively stimulus to the idle imagination. But, in truth, " Odysseus's " book is far ton brilliant to need the peculiar charm of the disowned.. No one, however distinguished, need_ be ashamed to put his name to a study of modem Turkey at
once sa accurate and penetrating, and set forth with such exceptional literary talent, as the work before us. We cannot recall any recent book on. the subject, and, scarcely any of the older authorities, of equal. or even approxi- mate merit. When "Odysseus" describes. the_ Turk at home or in his konak he reminds us of the immortal Eothen ; but it is seldom that he permits himself the plea cure of domestic painting, however picturesque. The book is a serious study of the problems presented by the rule of the Turk in Europe. The Turk is, no doubt, seen to the beet advantage, and with the least admixture of foreign elements, in Asia ; but there he offers no problem of the magnitude which his presence in Europe involves,—a problem which, if no longer a cause of fear, is at least a preoccupation to the West. " Odysseus " set himself honestly to discover what the present condition of Turkey is, and how it came about ; and, as far as may be judged from the book itself, he set out on his investigation with few- prejudices and with an unusual linguistic and historical equipment. As he remarks, it is necessary to surrey the history and present state of the Balkan Peninsula from a vide and general point of view : "Many authorities on Byzantine and Slavonic history seem to pride themselves on their ignorance of everything Turkish, while some of those who have contributed most to our knowledge of the Turks and of the Mohammedan religion show an Ottoman indif- ference to the peculiarities which may be exhibited by various
kinds of Giaours." The learning of a Freeman may be tainted by ferocious bigotry, and the admirer of Turkish honesty and courtesy is apt to be contemptuous of the moral qualities of the Greek. Moreover, the reaction which has set in, since Finla.y's day, against Gibbon's mordant dissection of the Byzantine Empire, has led to an unduly severe criticism of its successor, the Sublime Porte. One of the most valuable fea- tures of the present work is that it recognises the essential continuity of the problems and methods of government in the Balkan provinces, whether under " Greek " or Ottoman rule :-
"In one sense the Empire continued after the fall of Con- stantinople; that is to say, a Turkish empire succeeded a Greek one, and the general methods of government remained nearly the same. The later Greek government was, like the Sublime Porte, mainly a tax-collecting organisation : it took tribute from its provinces, and did nothing for them ; it employed foreigners and mercenaries; it had, an official nobility and a ruling race.
• Turkel; in Eill'OLC Br Odracaus London : E. Amid& 1166.1 Financial rapacity,' 'venality and sale of offices," desolation of rural districts,' • and 'depopulation of provinces,' are phrases which recur in Finlay's 'History of Greece,' previous to the Turkish conquest, as regularly as in modern Consular Reports. The evils of Turkish rule are undeniable ; they exist at the present day, and are much the same as they always were. But anti-Turkish writers speak of the entrance of the Turks into Europe as if a barbarian invasion had suddenly overwhelmed the industrious Slav and the cultivated Greek, and destroyed a peaceful and orderly civilisation. But this is hardly true. For centuries before the fall of Constantinople the history of South-Eastern Europe is one long record of blood and disorder 4,4vot, crorcioeis, ipitt, pixal,—murder, discord, strife, and battle. The crimes with which the Turks are fre- quently reproached, such as treachery, fratricide, and whole- sale cruelty, are characteristic, not of them, but of the lands which they invaded. It would be hard to produce from the annals of the Sultans anything worse than the quarrels, treachery, and misgovernment of Andronicus and the Angeli, or than the cruelties of Vlad the Impaler. Neither can we praise the Byzantines at the expense of the Turks in the realm of art and literature. If Constantinople contains beautiful churches, it also contains beautiful mosques, and must thank the Turks for what is now the most picturesque and characteristic feature of its landscapes,—the minarets which crown Stamboul or emerge more modestly from the groves which fringe the Bosphorus. Ottoman and Byzantine literature may fairly be compared ; neither have had any influence or importance for Western Europe, and no one would ever read either except for the purpose of extracting information. But Ottoman poems may be set against Greek romances, and Ottoman chroniclers against the Scriptores Historiae Byzantinae. In criticising either the Byzantine or the Ottoman Empire at any epoch except their zenith, we must remember that we are dealing with sick men, and be gentle. As consumptive patients who would die under normal conditions may live for years with a. fragment ef a lung in a mountain sanatorium, so does Constantinople preserve states which have lost all organic strength, and whose weaknesses are the more apparent because they are nominally respousible for large and disorderly territories over which they have little real control. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Turks cannot have been regarded as 'unspeakable' barbarians far below the standard of Christian Europe ; for we find that Christians, who must have had ample information respecting them, were ready to invite them into the lands of the Empire, and after the fall of the Empire they were welcomed in Servia and Bosnia. In morals, humanity, and civilisation they were much of a much- ness with the motley throng of Greeks, Slays, Albanians, and Roumanians; in energy and union they were superior."
There are details in this comparison which might easily be criticised—e.g., in the matters of art and literature—but the main contention is unquestionably true. Apart from a peculiar military organisation, the Turks brought no special system with them ; they simply adopted the East Roman tradition of government just as they adopted the literary style of Persia and the religion of Arabia. There is nothing original about them—certainly not their mosques or their poetry—unless it be their courage and their toleration. The former no one has ever questioned; and if their toleration of alien races and creeds is but another name for contempt, it is at least the fact that no ruling race is less propagandist or more disposed to let its giaour subjects go to hell-fire in their own way, with the least possible interference, than the Turks, —provided, of course, that these subjects keep their proper relative places. The only point on which the Turk is im- placable is his own predominance. That he should submit to Christians is to him inconceivable, and therein lies the main obstacle to all reforms. "When you can get a Turk to obey Rayab, then you may begin to talk of reforming the Turkish Empire," said the Vali of Karakeui in a delicious imaginary conversation with the author. The Vail went on to tell a little story :— " Once,' said the Vail, calmly and irrelevantly, was a very
young man, and went a ride with my old father. I was foolish then, and my head was stuffed with silly notions and liberal ideas. I spoke much as you have spoken. I told my father we ought to reform our constitution, systematise our administration, purify our family life, educate cur women, introduce liberal ideas, and imitate Europeans. And my old father answered never a word. So we rode on along the banks of the Bosphorus. At last we came to a Christian village, and round the Christian village were many pigs. Then my father said to me, "My son, what seest thou?" [replied, " Pigs, my father." "My son," he said, "are they all similar in size and colour, or do they differ ? " "They differ, my father. There are big pigs and little pigs, white pigs and black pigs, brown pigs and mottled pigs." "But they are all of them swine, my son ? " "All, my father." "My son," he said, "it is with the Christians even as with these pigs. There are big Christians and little Christians, Russian Christians and English Christians, French Christians and German Christians ; but they are all of them swine, and he who wishes to imitate the Christians wishes to wallow with the swine in the mire." Well. I was very young then, and my brain was full of nonsense—au I thought my father was a fool. But now that my own beard is getting grey—by God, I think the old gentleman was right!'
It is this attitude, combined with the invincible inertia, the immemorial unchangeableness, of the Turk that has made all the Hatti-Sherifs and other reforms of no avail ; and frankly one sees no likelihood of any change so long as the Turk remains a Turk and a Muslim. The Turk does not wish for reform ; he prefers to govern in his own way, to "eat with a big spoon" instead of exploiting the country by modern methods; and though " Odysseus " does not press any con- clusion, it is clear that he considers the reform of Turkey hopeless, and is not indisposed to concede a good deal to the Turkish view of the general undesirableness of Western civilisation as a veneer upon an Oriental society. We are much too apt to assume that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander ; the gander is frequently of a different opinion. And the application of Western methods to Osiental peoples is fraught with difficulties and dangers. In the case of Turkey, where the Ostnanlis form a small minority ruling a vast but, fortunately for the Turks, an infusibly heterogeneous majority of Christians, reform is clearly seen to be identical with political suicide. The Turk, according to" Odysseus," goes in very real fear of Christian insurrection. He knows that once the rayahs get the bit between their teeth it is all up with the supremacy of the Osmanli ; and the least movement among the Christians excites his watchful suspicion. The massacres of the Armenians were generally approved, even by the advanced and liberal "Young Turkish" party, as necessary measures of self-defence, and this point of view was so obvious to those familiar with Eastern politics that the massacres aroused no indignation in Russia and excited no remonstrances from the Orthodox Greek Church. The Turks realise that if they are to maintain their power, any approach to equality on the part of the Christians—except so far as they are protected by the Capitulations—is not to be dreamt of, and their old-fashioned methods of suppres- sion, however crude, are to them simply necessary in face of a dangerous majority. The moral of all this would seem to be that the sooner the Caliph removes his seat of government to Asia, where such methods are less noticeable, the better. But " Odysseus " points no moral; he merely offers facts and observations, and in presenting the Turkish view of the situation he makes a valuable, and indeed essential, contribu- tion to the factors of the problem. One may detest the ruling Turk and all his ways, as we ourselves do most heartily, but that is no reason for not understanding him.
We have dwelt upon the account here given of the Turks, because it forms the largest and the most complete section of the book, and because, after all, it is the Turk, and not the Greek or Slav, who constitutes the chief difficulty in the Eastern question. " Odysseus " has much to say that is in- teresting and suggestive on the Greeks, Bulgarians, Albanians, and Armenians under Turkish rule ; but though he strives to be just to all, it appears to us that, like most travellers who have had a close acquaintance with South-Eastern Europe, he is less in sympathy with the Christian populations than with the ruling race. The Turk at home is undoubtedly a much more attractive personality than the Turk of the newspapers, and, as " Odysseus " remarks, even Mr. Gladstone would have felt himself obliged to be deferential to the Turk if he had en- countered him on his seat of power. Of the Orthodox Church we read, and only too truly, that, "though the contest between Christianity and Islam is the most important feature of the East. though Turkish institutions give such prominence to ecclesiastical matters, the Orthodox Church has failed to use her opportunities : she has neither spread light nor infused energy." Nor are the Greeks the important factor in the Eastern question that they once were. During the last three- quarters of a century, the aliseiss Airs has not advanced. "The Greeks are, perhaps, still the most intelligent and best educated of the Sultan's subjects, but they are no longer in any way predominant among the Christians." The Bulgarian Church and Millet have now to be reckoned with. But our author seems to be more interested in the modern Greek language—indeed, be is almost as " keen " about linguistic matters as the versatile Lord Strangford—than in the Mace- donian question, and though he has a chapter on the Armenians—a race "doomed to political failure "—it scarcely helps the reader to a definite judgment. The want of cut-
and-dried conclusions is indeed a lack which will irritate some readers of this remarkable book ; but it is obviously a wise reticence. Prophecy is a thankless profession. "Odysseus" tells us what Turkey is, and does it admirably; he leaves us to guess what Turkey will become.
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