Turkey and the East

I

THE return of the Turk to Europe — the pivotal fact in all the Near-Eastern muddle — came about very simply. It was the old story of a group of strong men defying their fate. They ‘took to the hills,’ as so many others have done before them, gathered about them more and more support in the essential form of human will, and so at last, by endurance and self-denial, won their cause.

This troubled world has seen the like many times before. When ‘conquerors’ are sufficiently wearied by the exhausting business of conquest, and their heads are sufficiently enlarged by the same process, to ensure their doing the wrong thing at the right time, the determined rebels in the hills always have a chance of success. And both these conditions have been amply fulfilled by the Allies in the years that have followed the Armistice.

To one looking back on it, it is amazing how invariably the Allies played into the hands of the Nationalist Turks. Nothing else, of course, would account for the complete reversal of fortune which the Nationalists have been able to effect. Four years ago Turkey was more thoroughly beaten than Germany or Austria or Bulgaria. She was the only one of the defeated powers which the Allies proposed to cut up into their own spheres of influence. And to-day she is practically mistress in her own house.

The Allies blundered repeatedly. Within six months of the Armistice they introduced into the heart of Turkey the one element capable of reviving the spirit of resistance — the Greek army. Not content with the spread of that irritant, — though in truth it spread and irritated beyond all reason, — the British, in the following year, must need carry out a coup d’état at Constantinople. Many of the men they then suddenly arrested and sent to Malta were later released — in time to lead the Nationalist movement to victory.

The French in the meantime had got themselves into trouble in Cilicia, and could think of no better plan than to arm the Armenians against the Turks, — another irritant of the most virulent kind. The Armenians suffered, and the French were driven out of Adana and Marash with little prestige saved. A puppet Government in Constantinople was forced to sign the hopeless Treaty of Sèvres, to the further infuriation of ail true Turks.

Constantine returned to the throne of Greece, an event which brought almost as much encouragement to the Turks as disgust and confusion to the Allies. The Bolsheviki then began to take an active hand in the game, supplying the Turks with war material t Key had captured from Denikin, who in turn had had it from an all-tootrusting British Government. The French reefed their sails to the rising gale, and curried favor with the Turkish Nationalists by signing a treaty with them and putting them in the way of getting further material assistance. The Italians in the meantime had made a clean breakaway, leaving only a small detachment of troops in Constantinople.

And so the sad story dragged on. The Allies, wearied of war and blundering at every turn, would neither control the Greek army which they had allowed to go into Turkey, nor aid it in crushing Turkish resistance. Like Pilate, they washed their hands of the whole affair. But they could not rid themselves of it so easily, since in the end either the Turks had to be held down or the Allies had to give up the one essential they had gained — the all-important Straits and the bar to the return of the Turk to Europe.

The last act in the tragedy was perhaps the most characteristic of all. The Greeks, wearied at last by their hopeless war in Anatolia, attempted the desperate play of seizing Constantinople. Their army, aided by the Allied fleets, might at least have held the Neutral Zone of the Straits, — the one thing that really mattered to Western civization, — but they found their way blocked by a line of Allied bayonets. There were few enough of those bayonets to accomplish any useful object, but there were enough to keep out the one force that might have provided the necessary man-power to bar Constantinople and Europe to the Turks.

Then, with dramatic suddenness, came the finale. The war-wearied Greeks lay in their Anatolian lines, weakened by the detachment of troops they were trying to put into Constantinople. The Turks attacked and swept them into the sea. Smyrna burned. For a few dramatic weeks nothing but a few British battalions stood between the victorious and fanatic Turks and the Balkan powdermagazme. The resurgent East came up against the exhausted and blundering West.

For one must note that the West was dealing, not alone with Turkey, but with all the Moslem East that stood behind the Turks. Throughout the whole struggle the hands of the Western Powers were largely tied by their fear of trouble in their Moslem dependencies. In a treaty made in 1921 with another Moslem power, the Angora Government assumed the titleof ‘Guide of Islam,’and threw the mantle of its protection over its Moslem brother ‘as a beginning of good fortune for the happy future of all the East.’

Islam is not the strong t ie that binds all Moslems together in an efficient mutual-aid society, as some people would have us believe, but it is strong enough for propaganda purposes among peoples already drawn together by common repugnance to European domination. As a rallying cry, a slogan, it was most useful to those who could say that they were fighting the infidel to liberate the Caliph, and to regain the relics of the Prophet. It was not hard to scare the already bewildered politicians of the West by the bogey of religious uprisings. The politician hates religious fanaticism as the Devil hates holy water.

One must admit, however, that the Turkish revival was a highly creditable piece of work on the part of the few determined leaders and the mass of the people. Making all possible allowances for Allied blunderings and the threat of Islam, it still remains a notable feat to have built up a beaten, impoverished, and demoralized country. So far as material resources went, they built it up practically on a shoestring. They lacked nearly every material means of resistance, even transportation for the munitions of war given them by the Bolsheviki and others. And they did it all without raising a foreign loan or debasing their currency by means of the printing-press. A much greater triumph than their victory over the Greeks is the exchange on the Turkish pound. While the German mark, the Austrian crown, and the Bulgarian lev have dropped to anywhere from one twentieth to one ten-thousandth of their pre-war value, the Turkish pound has never dropped below one ninth of its former value.

This has meant both determination and sagacity on the part of the leaders. And on the part of the humble peasants who followed them and formed their armies, it has meant the greatest personal self-sacrifice and devotion. Much of the present intolerance on the part of the Turks toward Europe and all things European, including the nonTurkish population of Asia Minor, comes from the fact that for the past three years all of them have stoically gone back to a primitive Eastern life, devoid of most of the things we Westerners have come to consider necessities.

II

But, much as one may admire the solid virtues the Turks have displayed in their national revival, one must not be led astray by them. The Turkophile would have us believe that they have had a change of nature. He would persuade us that the ‘New Turk’ will rule well and prosper through the coming years. Smyrna was somewhat of a setback to this theory. Also the wholesale deportation of non-Turks from Asia Minor has been a little difficult to explain. But against these disagreeable facts are set the Turkish moderation at Mudania and their patience at Lausanne.

One may, if one likes, believe in the theory that the leopard sometimes changes his spots. But perhaps it is safer to wait for ocular proof of this phenomenon before putting too much faith in the continued success of the Turk as a governing power. The military clique that rules the nation showed admirable restraint in holding back their armies after their victory over the Greeks; but they may find it much more difficult to rule in peace than it was to win in war.

However, they must have their try at it. And the West can only wish them success. For, however much one may regard the return of the Turk to Europe as a calamity of the first magnitude for Western civilization, the fact remains that he has returned. Only by war could he have been kept out of Europe last September; only by war could he be put out of Europe now. And the simple fact is that no power or group of powers in the West, since the Armistice, has been prepared to fight the Turk for the abstract idea of Western civilization, or anything else.

This has been his great source of strength. The soldiers and sailors who have directed Turkish policies at Angora and at Lausanne have been unwilling to commit their people to further sufferings and hazards of war. But they have known all along that the West was still more unwilling to fight. This has given them a great moral advantage. They could afford to wait, or even, if necessary, to fight. The West could afford to do neither.

With calm persistence the Turks made themselves masters of Constantinople and Thrace, even before the first Lausanne Conference. Constantinople was garrisoned by a small force, but it represented the flower of the British army. The Straits and the Sea of Marmora were held by the most powerful warships in the world. The great bulk of the Turkish army was bound by the Convention of Mudania to remain on the Asian shore, fifteen kilometres from the British lines. Yet quietly, step by step, the Turk came into his own again, and the Allies in European Turkey, as in Asiatic, found themselves masters only of the ground on which their troops actually stood. In Constantinople the police, the customs, and the other functions of civic administration were successively taken over. In each case the underlying cause was the fact that the Allies were unwilling to fight — and the Turk knew it.

In the East the rule has always been t hat t hose who will not fight must make way for those who will fight. This may shock our Western ideas. But it is well to remember it, and also to remember that the Turk has overthrown Europe’s plans for the partition and exploitation of his country by force of arms, actual or potential. And until he is dispossessed by force of arms, he is going to run his country, including his bit of Europe and the Straits, as he sees fit. He may concede a little on paper concerning the treatment of Europeans in Turkey or the demilitarization of the Straits, but in practice he means to do as he likes.

But, says the European, the Turk has need of the foreigner: he has need of foreign money and brains. To a certain extent, he has — and he knows it. But he also knows that he can bargain for these things in a competing market. He does not have to accept them on any terms the West may chose to impose. He does not intend to accept them at the price of his own independence. Circumstances have made him the champion of many peoples throughout the Near East and India who are acutely discontented with European rule and exploitation. He does not mean to throw away that position of leadership. Still less does he mean to repeat his old mistake in keeping in his midst unassimilable peoples who may be more astute than he, but who, through long centuries, have proved themselves to be parasites on his body politic. He is tired of seeing alien races in his land making money in ways for which he does not care. He is tired of constant disloyalty to his traditions and to his State.

Brutal and horrible as have been the wholesale deportations of Greeks and Armenians and other aliens from Turkey during the past six months, there is little use in denying the reasons behind them. Under the easy tolerance of the East, these people have been permitted to live in Turkey for many centuries. During all this time they have kept themselves apart. Neither the Turkish state nor the Moslem religion has been able to assimilate them. They have never been loyal subjects. And, like the Japanese in California, they have underlived the dominant race, they have made money in ways incompatible with its character, and they have surpassed it in the vital matter of the production of children.

Say what one likes about Turkish methods of getting rid of these people, the fact remains that no dominant race will, in the long run, permit other races on their own soil to underlive them, to out breed them, to resist assimilation and to be disloyal.

III

That is the state of affairs to-day. Largely through Allied mismanagement, and also through religious appeal to other peoples struggling against European control, the Turks have regained their country and come back into Europe. If we choose to remember that they did not do this entirely by virtue of their own strength and wisdom, we should not at the same time forget that the struggle has cost them much in self-sacrifice, and that, in their own minds at least, they have overcome their European enemies and won their right to mastery in their own house.

What is to come of it? Europe is prone to say that the Turk cannot, get along without the foreigner — meaning the foreigner who has made money out of him and wants to make more. In this there is a suspicion that the wish may be father to the thought. What is more probable is that the Turk cannot get along without a dictator.

Autocratic rule is in the blood of the East. The Turk has never known anything else. The long line of Ottoman sultans and grand viziers was ably topped off by Enver Pasha, perhaps the most ruthless dictator of the lot. The Turk understands autocracy. It fits into his scheme of things. His extraordinary docility, which makes him such an admirable soldier, lends itself to autocratic rule. He does not question. He asks only to be let alone on his own plot of ground, or to be led if he needs must leave it.

Yet, paradox of paradoxes, when the Turkish Nationalists raised their standard of revolt and made themselves the champions of the East against the West, it was the most modern of Western governmental forms they chose to adopt. They went far beyond the Western idea of a republic. Sovietism, of course, left them cold, for inherent in Sovietism is the dictatorship of a class. Nothing but the purest form of democracy would suit them. No checks or balances, no ifs or buts for them. The government must spring directly from the people, by universal male suffrage, and must repose solely in a single National Assembly.

The West, for a century and more, has tried out democratic forms of government a-plenty, and never found any of them altogether easy to run. But rarely has the West set up for itself so unequivocal, so uncompromising a democracy as this. All power, executive, legislative, judicial, — even religious, — is imposed on one single chamber of the direct representatives of the people. The executives of the government are appointed by the National Assembly from among its own members, and not only are responsible to the Assembly, but are removable at the will of the Assembly. During the crisis of their war with the Greeks, Mustapha Kemal himself held power only for periods of three months, renewable by vote of the Assembly. ‘Sovereignty belongs to the Nation without reservation or condition,’ says the Law of Fundamental Organization.

— ‘The administration of the Nation’s sovereignty is based on the principle of the direct decision of the people.’ Most amazing of all, the people’s representatives have assumed the responsibility of separating Church and State, — far more inseparable in Islam than ever in the Christian West, — and of electing a Caliph, not alone of Turkey, but of the whole Moslem world.

This is the vox populi with a vengeance. In theory, yes; but is it so in practice? Ah, that’s the point! On that question rests the future of Turkey, and perhaps much of the East besides. For democracy carried to the extreme of the Angora government is both difficult to carry out and easy to overturn.

Its difficulty lies in the very pureness of its form, in its utter dependence and reliance on the vox populi. The West, with more intelligent people to work with, and far more liberal traditions behind it, has not found democracy an easy road. Even with all the elaborate machinery we have devised to protect minorities,—and sometimes, to protect majorities against minorities in temporary power, — the thing is not easy. The old car bumps a bit, now and then, in spite of the best shock-absorbers. And we consider ourselves enlightened people, used to power. But here is an illiterate people who have never shown any native intelligence in government, and who are quite unused to running their own affairs. If we know anything of the game, the Turks are in for a few hard knocks before democracy is made safe for them.

To overturn a democracy such as that of Turkey, one has but to seize the power of the National Assembly. There are no checks or balances, no counterweights to hinder. Cow the Assembly; turn it out, as Cromwell turned out the Rump Parliament, or force it to surrender its power into your hands, and the trick is done. It is a pretty paradox ( and one which possibly has not escaped the notice of some of the Turkish leaders ) that the nearer a government of docile people approaches pure representative democracy, the more does it lend itself to abrupt conversion into autocracy.

There are signs of coming autocracy, even now. In practice the Angora government, like most institutions in the East, does not march with theory. There is reason to believe that the elections in many instances are far from being popular. Candidates ‘nominated’ by the prominent Nationalist leaders have a way of being elected by large majorities, even in districts in which they are barely known by name. And, in spite of theory, there are distinct indications that all power does not rest in the hands of the National Assembly. The last one appears to have dissolved itself at the bidding of a few of its leaders, though it was elected to sit until after peace was made.

A reasonable argument can be made for the reëstablishment of autocracy in Turkey. It is the form of government which the people have had throughout their history, and which they understand. The electorate is both highly illiterate and indifferent to politics. What is really needed is peace, that the losses in men and material of the past twelve years of almost incessant warfare may be regained. A long period ol peace, in which law and order should be maintained — much might come of that, under any form of government capable of securing it.

It cannot be said, however, that the prospects for peace are particularly bright. Bound Turkey as we used to do in our geography classes, and on all sides, except perhaps where the Mediterranean washes her shores, there is trouble brewing. To the north there is her old enemy, Russia. It is chaos, organized for the spread of chaos. Every state bordering Russia to-day trembles for the future, and Turkey has her own particular reasons for anxiety. There are thousands of Moslems in the welter of the Sovietized Caucasus. The bait of the Straits has never failed to attract the old Russian Bear. Then to the east lie unsettled Kurdistan and Persia — and oil. (What a combination!) South of her are the Arabs, hostile, turbulent, disunited. To the west are the Balkans.

Internally the prospects are not much better. War has become a habit. A military class has been developed which knows no other occupation. And there is still the tremendous problem of readjustment from an autocratic government to one under which power may be won by any man or group of men strong or clever enough to seize it. Almost all the Nationalist leaders have come from the military professions, and so far they have run their country and won their war with little indication of internal friction or selfish ambition. But they are only human; time is a trying test, and environment and tradition are difficult influences to overcome. In a land of ruthless methods, with the example of such men as Enver and Talaat and Djemal fresh in their minds, it will be little short of a miracle if t he ablest of the Turks display, year in and year out, that self-effacing patriotism which alone can bring about a peaceful development of their country.

Perhaps Turkey would have more chance of peace under a dictatorship than under any other form of government. In her present state of progress, democracy exposes her to both internal and external dangers. It is much more difficult to maintain, and a complete breakdown in government would almost certainly lead to foreign intervention, if not to armed invasion. Not a few foreigners frankly say the time to retake Constantinople, and whatever else the West may desire, will come in a few years, with the breakdown of the present form of government.

IV

And so indeed it may come to pass — or, again, it may not. The resurgence of Turkey amounts to an experiment of great importance to the world. She has set herself the task of running her own affairs, in her own way, independent of Western control, but on ultra-Western and liberal lines of government. The whole of North Africa, the Near East, and India are watching that experiment with intense interest. They, too, are sick of European control, and particularly of the patronizing manners of their European mentors or masters. They, too, have drunk deeply of the theory of selfdetermination. If Turkey succeeds in maintaining complete independence of foreign control under a liberal form of government, so much the better, so much the more to be said for Eastern self-determination. But it really does not greatly matter how she succeeds, so long as she succeeds. To throw off European control and maintain her independence— that is the essence of the experiment in the eyes of the East. A dictator would prove their point almost as well as a National Assembly.

The influence of Islam on this experiment will be a most interesting thing to watch. Much depends on the extent to which Islam can be united behind the nationalist movements in the East. There is nothing quite so difficult to measure as a religious force when it is diverted into political channels. Of course, Mohammedanism is far more of a political religion than is Christianity. The Sheriat law, which is the religious law derived from the Koran, regulates most of the questions of personal and domestic life, such as marriage, divorce, and inheritance, in all Moslem countries. The Church enters directly into the civic life of the people to a degree unknown to us. And the Church and State are very closely linked together. Mohammed not only founded a religion, but made himself the head of a state. For six centuries his successors were temporal as well as spiritual rulers. The tradition of the indivisibility of Church and State, of religion and politics, is fixed in the minds of the people.

The brotherhood of all ‘true believers’ is very thoroughly indoctrinated into Islam. The lack of a sacerdotal class, of a real priesthood or clergy, tends to strengthen the bonds between individual Moslems. There is a closer tie between Moslems of all races and classes than between Christians. Islam is a younger religion, more direct and much more simple.

And yet there are other things to be taken into account by one who would estimate the possible cohesive force of Islam in this struggle between the East and the West. The first is that, with all of its unifying tendencies, Islam does not and cannot present a united front. It has its schisms, its ‘two-and-seventy jarring sects,’very much as Christianity has its divisions. Their lines of cleavage are not so deep as those which separate the major branches of Christianity, and the antagonism between them is not so bitter. But nevertheless the rifts in Islam destroy a great pari of its cohesive force when applied to practical politics.

Furthermore, Islam comes into play only indirectly, for the revolt against Western domination is everywhere primarily political, and not religious. The Turkish Nationalists named themselves rightly, for their cause is almost entirely nationalistic. The mainspring of their action has been their intense desire to establish an independent national entity. Their slogan has not been ‘The Crescent against the Cross,’but ‘Turkey for the Turks.’ It is the success of the Turks in recreating their country and freeing it. from foreign control which has raised their prestige all over the East and made them the leaders in the new movement. The fact that they were Moslems fighting Christians enemies has had only a secondary and indirect influence, both on their own people and on other Moslem countries.

The idea of a Holy War, fought by a united Islam for Islam, has been pretty well exploded. Such a war was proclaimed in all solemnity in 1914 by the Sheik-ul-Islam, backed up by the Sultan-Caliph (not to mention the All Highest in Berlin!). But the Mohammedan world did not respond. Arabs and Indian Moslems fought against the Turks, and few of their coreligionists supported them. The fact is that the Turks, even after having held the Caliphate in their hands for four hundred years, do not stand high as Moslems in the Mohammedan world. They are slack in their religious observances (including temperance). Their religious fervor does not burn with the same intensity as that of many other Moslems. The intellectual centre of Islam is the University of El Azhar, at Cairo. The great religious centres lie in the Arab lands. The mosques at Constantinople are little more than the glorification of the military prowess of the early Ottoman sultans. The Turkish Caliph, invested with the mantle of the Prophet, is nothing more than an appointee of the National Assembly, and as such carries even less weight in Islam than did the sultan-caliphs of the old Ottoman Empire.

Nevertheless, Islam, as a secondary force behind Nationalism, exerts an influence with which one must reckon. It is a common tie between Eastern peoples struggling for Nat ionalism; and a common tie is an excellent basis for propaganda. It is more than that, for it is the most intense religion in the world to-day in its hold on great masses of people. To throw off a foreign yoke, a people should believe that they are superior to that foreigner; that they have been given a light which has been denied him; that they are, in short, the Chosen People. There is nothing like a vigorous, intense religion to produce that superiority complex.

Islam is a force which the restless peoples of the East will not fail to use — as an adjunct to Nationalism. And, in being used, the religion itself will be seriously affected. On the one hand, the Western Powers will probably exert all the influence of their present political control to widen the schisms in Islam and destroy its cohesive power. Furtive steps have already been taken in that direction. On the other hand, the Eastern peoples will tend to develop the religious power of Islam by the very fact that they keep it before them as a bond of unity in their struggle with the West.

So this Turkish experiment may be expected to have ramifications all over the East, and to affect not only the colors on the map, but the inner lives of millions of people.

It is an experiment abounding in paradox. The nation whose despotism has been proverbial is now trying to be the most democratic in the world. The people who lead the East in its revolt against the West are trying at the same time to be most Western in their government and in their attitude toward prohibition and women. The people whose harems have become a byword for female seclusion and enslavement are now liberating their women and advocating a feministic movement. The nation which calls itself the ‘Guide of Islam’ and assumes the protection of the Caliphate, at the same time smashes through the deepest traditions of the Mohammedan faith and is notoriously lax in its religious observances.

Paradox can go no farther. One is tempted to say that Turkey is setting herself the most difficult problems in national transformation that any people have ever faced, unless we except those with which Japan has dealt since 1854. And she proposes to accomplish these great transformations in one of the world’s centres of intrigue, surrounded on all sides by enemies. One can only wish her well. But in the achievements of other people, and particularly in the oast history of her own people, there is little encouragement to be found for the success of so prodigious an experiment.

Yet it is an experiment of the greatest import to the Western world. Turkish character may not have changed, may not be susceptible of much change under the inhibitions of Islam and the inertia of the East. But the Turkish state has changed completely. No longer is it ‘the Sick Man of Europe,’the old moribund affair of mediæval traditions which had to be bolstered up and kept going somehow because the West coveted its property and could not agree on a division of the spoils. For a century and more Turkey has been under European influences. They have been jealous and conflicting influences, for the most part; and by playing one against another Turkey has often been able to mitigate European domination. But on the whole the West has dominated, and Turkey has meant nothing to the world except a decayed holding corporation for property and interests which could not be peacefully divided.

Now she means much more. Now she is free from European leadingstrings, and she means to keep herself free — if she can. She faces the West as the leader in Eastern self-determination. She is doing what so many other people in Asia and Africa have longed to do since the beginning of this period of nationalist awakening.

Many men have told us that the East is sick of Western rule. It is true. Nothing is clearer in the East. Twenty years ago Western superiority was granted unquestioningly, and Western control accepted with little protest. But now, from Morocco to the Philippines, a new spirit is in the air. The Russo-Japanese War was a great eyeopener. The World W ar was an arena in which the West drained its own life-blood. The settlements following that war awakened the East to the full realization of Western weakness and folly. Rejuvenated Turkey is the result, and the inspiration to further revolt.

One cannot, therefore, see bright prospects for the West if the Turkish experiment succeeds. There may be peace on the shores of the Bosphorus, but what sacrifices of Western interests in the East will be demanded? How is the trade of the world to readjust itself if Western control is generally overthrown in the East? Western prosperity (and perhaps much of what we call Western civilization) has been built up largely on two things, the development of the New World and the exploitation of the Old. If, instead of continued control in the East, the West must face a series of successful revolts; if it must readjust itself to trade with many countries puffed up with pride in their new-found nationalism, and blundering in their first attempts at self-rule, the change will be great indeed. It may be a change for the betterment of the world in the long run, but one may suspect that the run will be both long and painful.

And yet, if the Turkish experiment does not succeed, the West must bear the consequent strain. If government breaks down in Turkey, either under a National Assembly or under a dictator, the West must bring order out of chaos or face the possibility of another great war. The old question of the inheritance of the ‘Sick Man’s’ property will come up again, with the equally unsolved problem of the control of the Straits. (So many men have died trying to control those Straits!) Next door lies the Balkan powder-magazine. And next to the Balkans lie the greater explosives of Central Europe, extending from the Carpathians to the Ruhr, and north to the Niemen. Let the West look to itself if the prizes of Turkey are again to be had for the taking!