THE OFFICIAL PRAYER OF ISLAM
which is used throughout Turkey, and daily repeated in the Cairo “Azhar” University by ten thousand Mohammedan students from all lands. The following translation is from the Arabic:
“I seek refuge with Allah from Satan, [the rejeem] the accursed. In the name of Allah the Compassionate, the Merciful! O Lord of all Creatures! O Allah! Destroy the infidels and polytheists, thine enemies, the enemies of the religion! O Allah! Make their children orphans, and defile their abodes! Cause their feet to slip; give them and their families, their households and their women, their children and their relations by marriage, their brothers and their friends, their possessions and their race, their wealth and their lands, as booty to the Moslems, O Lord of all Creatures!”[[21]]
All who do not accept Mohammed are included among “the infidels” referred to in the prayer.
CHAPTER V.
THE OUTCOME OF THE TREATY OF BERLIN.
It is quite needless to remark that Turkey, instead of doing anything to improve the condition of the Armenians, has done much to make it worse during the past fifteen years. The question now arises, what have the Powers signatory to the Berlin Treaty done to compel the Sublime Porte “to carry out the improvements and reforms” demanded in the Sixty-first Article? And what steps has Great Britain taken in addition, to discharge the additional obligation for the improvement of Armenia which she assumed by the so-called Cyprus Convention?
We find that in November, 1879, the English Government, seeing that matters throughout Asia Minor were really going from bad to worse, went the length of ordering an English squadron to the Archipelago for the purpose of a naval demonstration. The Turkish Government was greatly excited, and with a view to getting the order countermanded, made the fairest promises.
But England was not the only Power aroused. On June 11, 1880, an Identical Note of the Great Powers demanded the execution of the clauses of the Treaty of Berlin which had remained in suspense. In the conclusion of the Identical Note a clear recognition is made of the fact that the interest of Europe, as well as that of the Ottoman Empire, requires the execution of the Sixty-first Article of the Treaty of Berlin, and that the joint and incessant action of the Powers can alone bring about this result.
On July 5th, the Turkish Foreign Minister sent a Note in reply to the representatives of the Powers. “It is of great length and small real value, except as combining in a remarkable degree the distinguishing characteristics of modern Ottoman diplomacy, namely, first, great facility in assimilating the administrative and constitutional jargon of civilized countries; second, consummate cunning in concealing under deceptive appearances the barbarous reality of deeds and intentions; third, cool audacity in making promises which there is neither the power nor desire to make good; and, finally, a paternal and oily tone, intended to create the impression that the Turkish Government is the victim of unjust prejudices and odious calumnies.”
As soon as the reply of the Porte was received, Earl Granville sent copies to the British Consuls in Asia Minor, inviting observations thereon. Eight detailed replies to this request are published in the Blue-Book.[[22]] They concur in a crushing condemnation of the Ottoman Government.
These conclusions, moderately and very diffusely expressed in diplomatic phraseology, are reflected in the Collective Note which was sent on Sept. 11, 1880, to the Sublime Porte by the Ambassadors of the Great Powers. On October 3d, without making the slightest references to censures which had been addressed to it, and even appearing completely to ignore the Collective Note, the Porte, assuming a haughty tone, merely notified the Powers of what it intended to do.
In a Circular of the 12th of January, 1881, Earl Granville tried again to induce the other five Powers to join in further representations to the Sublime Porte on the subject. But the other Powers seem to have thought that the diplomatic comedy had gone far enough, and sent evasive answers. Prince Bismarck expressed the opinion that there would be “serious inconvenience” in raising the Armenian question, and France hid behind Germany. Such action by the powers had been anticipated by the British Ambassador at Constantinople, Mr. Goschen, who had already written to Earl Granville: “If they [the Powers] refuse, or give only lukewarm support, the responsibility will not lie with Her Majesty’s Government.” The whole correspondence was simply a matter of form.[[23]] I have condensed this outline of events since the Treaty of Berlin from Armenia, the Armenians, and the Treaties,[[24]] following as far as possible the words of the writer, M. G. Rolin-Jaequemyns, a high authority on International Law.
From 1881 to the present time, almost without exception, England, on her part, has allowed no mention in her Blue-Books of the manner in which her protégés and those of Europe have been treated. Her energies have seemed to be devoted to stifling the ever-increasing cry of despair from Armenia, instead of attempting her rescue or relief. The other Powers are only less guilty, in proportion as they have done less to perpetuate Ottoman misrule, and have made less pretence of sympathy and help for the oppressed. Freeman says of England,
“By waging a war on behalf of the Turk, by signing a treaty which left the nations of Southeastern Europe [and Asia Minor] at the mercy of the Turk, by propping up the wicked power of the Turk in many ways, we have done a great wrong to the nations which are under his yoke; and that wrong which we have ourselves done it is our duty to undo.”[[25]]
It is thus clearly seen that both the Sixty-first Article of the Berlin Treaty, and the Cyprus Convention as well, have been of positively no value in securing for the Armenians any of the reforms which were therein recognized as imperatively called for and guaranteed. It is also clear that the condition of Armenia, and of Turkey as a whole, is even vastly worse and more hopeless than it was twenty years ago.
PROFESSOR MINAS TCHÉRAZ.
Present at the Berlin Congress.
This condition, I further maintain, is in large measure directly attributable to those treaties themselves and to the attitude subsequently assumed by the Powers which signed them. It is said that the Armenians have brought trouble on themselves, by stirring up the Turks. I ask what stirred the Armenians up? It was primarily the Sixty-first Article of the Treaty of Berlin. Many a time has that precious paragraph been quoted to me in the wilds of Kurdistan by common Armenian artisans and ignorant villagers. They had welcomed it as a second evangel, and believed the word of England as they did the gospels. It was that Article which roused them from the torpor of centuries. They saw Bulgaria rise from her blood and shame and enter on a career of honor and prosperity under the ægis of European protection. Is it surprising that hopes and aspirations have been born anew in the heart of the Armenian race—a people not inferior to the Bulgarians and in many respects more talented?
I have rarely found it difficult to persuade intelligent Armenians that an autonomous Armenia is impracticable. But I have never been able to convince one of them that the course of England and the other powers has been anything but one of selfishness, jealousy, and dishonor as far as fulfilment of their treaty obligations is concerned.
During a residence of four years in Eastern Turkey I noticed a marked and rapid alienation of Armenian sentiment from England in favor of Russia, who now seems to them the only source of succor. They see in England only a dog in the manger.
There is another sequel to the Berlin Treaty and to the attitude of the powers, namely, its effect on the Turks themselves. The natural enmity and contempt of the Moslem rulers and population generally for the Christian subjects has been greatly increased by reason of the pressure which foreign Powers have occasionally brought to bear on the Turks in order to procure relief for the Christian. To be sure the only hope of such relief is from without. But the pressure should not be of a petty, nagging and galling nature. This is worse than nothing. What is needed is prompt, decisive, and final action.
And things have now arrived at such a pass that in such action lies the only hope of preventing a terrible catastrophe, which will eclipse even the massacres of Sassoun. The wheels of progress will not go backward except as they are broken. The Christians of Armenia can be exterminated, but it is too late for them to accept slavery or Islam. They may be slaughtered like sheep, but they will not all die like dogs. The revolutionary movement, as it is called, is thus far nothing but a blind turning of the worm. It is ill considered, without resources, reckless, and foreign to the real spirit, objects, and methods of the Armenians on Turkish soil. It is not denied that there are a few Armenians in Europe who, in despair and for lack of better teaching, have imbibed Nihilistic views and are trying, in a very bungling way, to apply them. They are hated by the vast majority of Armenians in Turkey. They are related to the question at issue in the same way and degree as train wreckers and box-car burners were to the industrial problem during the riots of Chicago in July last, and deserve the same treatment. The Turks take great pains to thrust them into public notice, as a cloak for themselves, and with good success. The Turkish Government and its partisans, in order to conceal the real character of the massacre in Sassoun, has made persistent, extensive, and dishonorable use of a letter by the first President of Robert College, Constantinople, Dr. Cyrus Hamlin, written December 23, 1894. Dr. Hamlin’s vigorous and indignant protest may be found in Appendix [C].
ZEIBEK, TURKISH SOLDIER, “IRREGULAR.”
The idea of Armenian revolution is a new thing in the history of that peaceable race, which has quietly submitted for centuries to the yoke of the Turk. But it is the natural outcome of the horrible situation in Armenia since the Treaty of Berlin, and the disease is bound to grow more virulent and contagious until the European doctors apply vigorous and radical treatment to the “Sick Man.” It is difficult to see how anything but a surgical operation can be helpful. The knife has frequently been used in the case of this incurable patient during the present century, and always with excellent results, as for instance in the case of Greece, Lebanon, Bulgaria, Boznia-Herzegovina, and Egypt.
A situation in many respects parallel to that in Armenia existed until lately in Bosnia and Herzegovina. How quickly and completely that difficult problem has been solved, is narrated by M. de Blowitz in the October, 1894, issue of The Nineteenth Century, from which I condense in his own words.
“The orders, given after the taking over of the country, to surrender all arms or to destroy them, was given a sweeping application. Yet, before the victorious entry of the Austro-Hungarians, each Bosnian each Herzegovinian, was a walking arsenal.
“To-day weapons and ambuscades are things of the romantic past. Twelve years have sufficed, under M. de Kallay’s administration, not only to remove all traces of the wild, inhospitable, inaccessible Bosnia of which I have been speaking, but indeed and especially to banish even the memory of those dark days of strenuous battle, and to wipe away from the hearts of both invader and invaded all traces of the hate which then animated them. In the year 1882, the superior administration of the two provinces (Bosnia and Herzegovina) passed into the hands of the Minister of Finance of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, who was then, and who is still, M. de Kallay. From this moment all is changed. The powers given to the new administration are almost unlimited. The civil element has been substituted for the military element, and pacification has succeeded conquest. The greatest effort is made to reassure all minds. Not a single minaret has disappeared, not a muezzin is deprived of his resources.”
A recent writer wisely says that “the Armenian question, if it ever be settled at all, must be taken out of the Turk’s hands, whether he like it or not.... And we have an opportunity now, which may never come our way again, of settling a difficulty which, if allowed to develop much longer, will prove more fruitful of mischief than any with which we have been confronted for a generation or more.”[[26]]
TURKISH SOLDIER, “REGULAR.”
C. B. Norman, special correspondent of The London Times, in his Armenia and the Campaign of 1877[[27]] wrote words which are even truer to-day. I condense:
“Naturally, since I have been here I have had many, very many, opportunities of conversing with Turkish officers and men on the so-called Eastern Question; and the consequence is that, arriving in the country a strong philo-Turk, deeply impressed with the necessity of preserving the ‘integrity of the Empire’ in order to uphold ‘British interests,’ I now fain would cry with Mr. Freeman: ‘Perish, British interests, perish our dominion in India, rather than that we should strike a blow on behalf of the wrong against the right!’[[28]]
“There is no finer race in the world than the Turk proper. Brave, honest, industrious, truthful, frugal, kind-hearted, and hospitable, all who know the Osmanli speak well of him. He is as much oppressed by the curse of misgovernment as his Christian fellow-subject; and had the members of the Eastern Question Association as keen a sense of justice as they have love of writing, they would long ago have obliterated the word ‘Christian’ from their lengthy documents, and striven to ameliorate the condition of the lower orders of the subjects of the Porte, downtrodden as they are by an effete section of the Mohammedan race, who have degenerated in mind, body, and estate, since coming in contact with Western civilization.
“I do not for one moment mean to deny that there are honest, energetic Turks, capable of exercising their talents for their country’s good; but these men are powerless. The vital powers of the nation are so sapped by centuries of misrule, the minds of the majority are so imbued with the belief that all ideas not born of Moslem brains and sanctified by Moslem usage are false, and to be scorned, that were any honest-minded gentleman to rise to power, and endeavor to check the present system of misgovernment, he would not remain in office one week. Captain Gambier’s able article on the ‘Life of Midhat Pasha’[[29]] bears me out in this idea.”
CHAPTER VI.
THE SULTAN AND THE SUBLIME PORTE.
Church and State are one and inseparable in Turkey. The Sultan of the empire is also Calif of the Mohammedan religious world. He cannot abdicate either office, if he would, without vacating the other by the same act. In fact, herein lies the secret of the present Sultan’s policy, which seems suicidal on general principles of government. He has, on the one hand, been lavish in the building and repairing of mosques, and in establishing Moslem schools throughout his dominions. On the other hand, he has infringed and ignored the ancient rights and privileges of the Christian Patriarchates which were guaranteed by Mohammed II., and have hitherto been regarded as sacred. He has blocked the erection of new Christian schools and churches, and even the repairing of such as are falling into decay. There were formerly thousands of non-Moslems in civil positions, faithfully serving the government; under the new régime, however, they have been systematically removed and excluded. And why has all this been done? Because the Sultan is a good conscientious Mohammedan, it is only fair to believe. Even if he were not a sincere believer, he would still feel compelled to adopt the same course, as a matter of internal political necessity. The Moslem population look to him as the Defender of the Faith, girded with the sword of the Prophet. He feels it imperative at all hazards to regain lost prestige over his fanatical subjects, especially in the south, where rumblings of discontent and disloyalty are ominous.[[30]]
Let us be reasonable and practical. Why longer exact or accept from the Sultan promises which he cannot make without doing violence to his own conscience and to his office, and which he cannot execute without imperilling his throne? You might as well ask the Pope to abandon the doctrines of temporal sovereignty and of infallibility, which to him are fundamental. If the situation in Turkey demands that anything be done, and if the rest of humanity and civilization have any responsibility in the matter, let practical statesmen proceed to business. All hope of reform from within depends on the distrustful, distracted, hoodwinked Sultan, who is clearly, in the circumstances, a helpless and pitiable object. But he should no more be allowed to stand in the way of the emancipation of Turkey, than the Pope was allowed to impede the making of Italy. “The Prisoner of the Vatican” has still abundant scope for his great and beneficent spiritual projects; and the Captive at Yildiz Palace—for such he has for years constituted himself—may also be allowed a sphere in which his personal virtues and ability shall shine forth, unobscured by the clouds and darkness that surround him now. He certainly would be better off, and his subjects also—Moslem no less than Christian.
The shrieks of ten thousand slaughtered Armenians pierce for the moment above the groans of others. But it should not be forgotten that all the races in Turkey are under the same curse, and that the present is a chance to help them as well as the Armenians.
According to the Koran, which is the basis and ultimate authority of Mohammedan law—Code Napoleon, treaty stipulations, and Imperial Iradés notwithstanding,—the whole non-Moslem population of Turkey are outlaws. The millions of ancient, hereditary inhabitants, whether Greek, Armenian, Nestorian, Jacobite, Jew, or Syrian, are considered aliens. Their legal status is that of prisoners of war, with corresponding rights and responsibilities.[[32]] Not one of them is expected or even allowed to serve in the army. Non-Moslems, whose services are indispensable to the government, are, in rare cases, put in civil offices, especially financial, for which no Mohammedan of sufficient integrity or ability can be found.
It cannot be denied that the above is true in theory, and it is equally true that the theory is carried out so far as fear of intervention by Christian nations permits.
But in this hour, when our hearts are stirred by the lot of our co-religionists under the Crescent, let us not forget that the Moslem population almost equally is cursed and impoverished by Turkish misrule, venality, and taxation. They drink the cup of woe, all but the more bitter dregs of religious persecution, which is reserved for Christian lips. Their benumbed condition, natural stolidity, and unquestioning obedience to Islam, a creed whose cardinal principle is submission,[[33]] accounts for the fact that they do not appear as a factor of the problem. Yet even Mohammedans often secretly come pleading that Europe take some interest in their case too. In the name of humanity, yes, of Christianity, let them not be forgotten.
“An Eastern Resident,” writing from Constantinople, in an article entitled “Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid,” in The Contemporary Review, January, 1895, gives an able analysis of the Sultan’s position and policy, showing at the same time great appreciation of His Majesty as a man. His position and relations to the Sublime Porte are not well understood by the public, and could hardly be better stated than in these extracts:
H. I. M. ABD-UL-HAMID KHAN, THE SULTAN OF TURKEY.
“So far as we can judge, the Sultan is a sincere and honest Mohammedan, and regards himself as a true Caliph—a successor of the Prophet—the chief defender of the faith, under God the absolute arbiter of its destinies. He has undoubtedly done his best to reconcile the interests of the Caliphate with those of the Empire....
“In one particular it [the policy of the Sultan] is condemned by most enlightened Mohammedans as strongly as by Christians. His attempt to concentrate the whole administration of the Empire in his own hands has led to the establishment of a dual government—that of the Palace and the Porte. The whole machinery of a government exists at the Porte. There are Ministers and fully organized departments. There is a Council of Ministers and a Council of State. All business is supposed to pass through their hands, and the whole administration is supposed to be subordinate to them. All is, of course, subject to the supreme will of the Sultan, but his official advisers and his official agents are at the Porte.
“In fact, however, there is another government at the Palace of Yildiz, more powerful than the official government, made up of chamberlains, mollahs, eunuchs, astrologers, and nondescripts, and supported by the secret police, which spares no one from the Grand Vizier down. The general policy of the Empire is determined by this government, and the most important questions of state are often treated and decided, while the highest officials of the Porte are left in absolute ignorance of what is going on. It is needless to add that the Porte and the Palace are at sword’s-point, and block each other’s movements as far as they can....
“The Sultan evidently believes that he is equally independent of both these governments, and decides all questions, great and small, for himself. In form he does so, but no man can act independently of all his sources of information, and of the personal influence of his entourage. Under the present system he makes himself responsible for every blunder and every iniquity committed in the Empire, but he has disgraced three distinguished Grand Viziers for telling him so, and seems to have no idea of the causes of the intense dissatisfaction with his government which prevails among his Mohammedan subjects. The Turks, as well as the Christians, also condemn the laws restricting personal freedom, which have increased in severity every year. In many ways these laws are more galling to the Turks than the Christians....
“There is another evil connected with this system which may lead to serious difficulties with foreign Powers. All foreign relations are supposed to be managed through the Minister of Foreign Affairs or the Grand Vizier, but these officials have no power and but little influence. They can promise nothing and do nothing. But in all delicate diplomatic questions it is essential to treat with responsible agents, and to discuss them with such agents in a way in which it is impossible to treat with the Sovereign himself. The present system has been a serious injury to Turkey. It has roused the hostility of all the Embassies and led them to feel and report to their governments, that there is no use in trying to do anything to save this Empire; that it is hopelessly corrupt, and the sooner it comes to an end the better for the world. There is no longer any concerted action of Europe at Constantinople for the improvement of the condition of the people....
“If Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid would come out of his palace, restore to the Porte its full responsibility, disband its secret police, trust his Mohammedan subjects, and do simple justice to the Christians, his life would be far more secure than it is to-day, with all precautions; his people and all the world would recognize the great and noble qualities which they now ignore, and welcome him as the wisest and best of all the Sultans....
“The sad pity of it is that he will never do it. It is too late. The influence of the Palace favorites is too strong. He will appear in history not as the Sultan who saved the Empire, but as the one who might have saved it and did not.”
CHAPTER VII.
PREVIOUS ACTS OF THE TURKISH TRAGEDY.
In this chapter[[34]] I shall take no account of events that have taken place in legitimate warfare, where the slain were foreign enemies or rebellious subjects of the Sultan, resisting with arms in their hands after being ordered to submit. The “insurgents”—as the Porte has called them—in all these cases have consisted of men, women, children, and infants, and in each case, by a curious coincidence, have been non-Mohammedan.
In all of these massacres, Turkish military or civil officers presided and directed the bloody work, as will be seen by reference to the authorities mentioned. There have been many other massacres of less than ten thousand during the intervals, which, to use the language of Beder Khan in Mosul (see Layard’s Nineveh), have confirmed the whole Turkish principle, that “the Armenians were becoming too numerous, and needed diminishing.”
This item of Turkey’s account, for the past seventy-five years only, stands about as follows: