The Rebirth of Turkey

by Clair Price

On August 4, terms for the resumption of diplomatic relations between the United States and Turkey were signed at Lausanne. Relations had been severed on April 20, 1917, by the Enver Government at Constantinople and on May 5, 1923, Ismet Pasha had written Joseph C. Grew, American Minister to Switzerland, proposing negotiations looking toward the resumption of regular relations. Two Turco-American Treaties resulted, one a general treaty and the other an extradition treaty, the former recording American acquiescence in the abrogation of the Capitulations which Ismet Pasha had imposed upon the Allies. Under this treaty, Americans and American institutions in Turkey are hereafter to be subject to Turkish law and Turkish taxes, Turkey having voluntarily agreed during negotiations with the Allies to appoint four legal advisers, nationals of countries neutral in the late war, who are to serve for a term of five years and whose function is to be rigorously restricted to the offering of advice. By this abrogation of the Capitulations, Turkey enters into a status of equality in the family of nations. In July, 1894, Buddhist Japan began a five-year probationary period preparatory to its acquisition of that status of equality which previously been the exclusive right of the Christian nations, but in July, 1923, its Treaty of Peace with the Allies conferred upon Moslem Turkey a status of immediate equality with the Christian nations and Japan.

Ratification of the two Turco-American Treaties is to be exchanged at Constantinople “as soon as possible” and the Treaties are to take effect two months after ratification, the intervening period being allowed for the evacuation of the American naval forces from Turkish waters.

Meanwhile, Greco-Turkish agreements signed at Lausanne on Jan. 30, 1923, had preceded Greek participation in the Allied Peace Treaty of July 24. On January 30, Greece and Turkey agreed to exchange their Moslem and Orthodox nationals, respectively, amounting to a total of possibly 500,000 persons, exception being made for Moslems of Western Thrace and Orthodox of Constantinople, Turkey permitting the Oecumenical Patriarchate to remain at the Phanar in Stamboul subject to its disestablishment and to the departure of Meletios IV, the then Patriarch. With this precedent agreement, Greece recognized in the Peace Treaty of July 24 “her obligation to make reparation for the damage caused in Anatolia by the acts of the Greek Army or administration which were contrary to the laws of war. On the other hand, Turkey, in consideration of the financial situation of Greece resulting from the prolongation of the war and from its consequences, finally renounces all claims for reparation against the Greek Government.” In lieu of reparation, Turkey accepted the suburb of Karagatch across the Maritza from Adrianople, which was surrendered by the Greek Army on September 15 in as wrecked a condition as the towns from which the Greek Army had fled in Anatolia a year before.

On August 23 the Grand National Assembly at Angora ratified the Peace Treaty of Lausanne by a vote of 215 to 20, and on the following day the Allied evacuation of Constantinople and the Straits began, to be completed within a period of six weeks….

To realize the meaning of the Treaty of Lausanne, we shall have to go back some distance into Ottoman history. Sultan Selim III who was deposed in 1808, was possibly the first of the Ottoman reformers. Mahmoud II who succeeded him, was another great Sultan who saw the need of introducing Western methods into his Eastern realm, and it was he who abolished the Janissaries in 1826 as a result of their long opposition to reform. Abdul Medjid I was a third great reformer who proclaimed the Tanzimat in 1839 under whose terms all Ottoman subjects were to be given an equal status in temporal law. The Tanzimat dealt with sweeping reforms in education, in methods of tax collection and in the courts, but Czarist Russia put a stop to Ottoman reform in the aggression of 1853 which resulted in the Crimean War.

Under Abdul Aziz, a Western-trained group of Turks revived Ottoman reform and when Abdul Hamid II became Sultan, Midhat Pasha succeeded in proclaiming a Constitution. Again Czarist Russia put a stop to reform in the Russo-Turkish War of 1876 and the Berlin Congress adopted the title of “the Sick man of Europe” which the Czar had invented for the Sultan. Czarist Russia and Western Europe now took over the problem of Ottoman reform themselves, directing it to the benefit of the Sultan’s Bulgarian and Armenian subjects while passing over the equally urgent needs of his Turkish subjects. Ottoman reform as thus directed now became the fixed objective of Christendom from Czarist Russia to the country towns of the United States, while Islam in time from the Balkans to the back hills of Java became increasingly anxious over “our brother Turk.”

Alarmed by the dividing effect of Ottoman reform in Western hands, the Western-trained Young Turks again revived their own program of reform and when Sir Edward Grey agreed with Czarist Russia in 1907 on the eventual partition of the Ottoman Empire, the Young Turks hurriedly revived Midhat Pasha’s Constitution in the Revolution of 1908. But the end was already at hand. Austria-Hungary immediately annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bulgaria proclaimed its independence. Insurrections began in Albania in which Austria-Hungary was not disinterested and in Kurdistan in which Czarist Russia was not disinterested. The Italians landed in Tripoli and the First Balkan War brought the Bulgarians to the Chatalja lines behind Constantinople, putting an end not only to any attempt at Young Turkish reform but almost to the existence of the Empire. In the Western view, this sort of thing constituted Ottoman reform, and in 1914 the Anglo-Russian combination closed on the Empire and reformed it out of existence. The Sevres Treaty in 1920 finally wrote the last chapter in the story of Western reform by proposing to hand over the richest provinces of the Turkish country to Greeks and Armenians while denying the Turks any right whatever to an independent existence. The Sevres Treaty was and still is a full and complete definition of the word “reform” when applied by Allied diplomacy to Turkish lands.

In the meantime, the Young Turks abrogated the Capitulations in 1914 and with their hands untied for the first time in their modern history, a number of other reforms followed in rapid succession despite the fact that they were engaged in a world war. When Rauf Bey met Admiral Calthorpe at Mudros to apply for an armistice in 1918, he stipulated that the abrogation of the Capitulations would have to be recognized, but the first act of the Allies upon occupying Constantinople was to re-impose the Capitulations and to undo every reform which the Young Turks had succeeded in making. Within a few months, the Greek occupation of Smyrna threw the Young Turks into the heart of Anatolia. Turkish nationalism repeated and amplified Rauf Bey’s stipulations at Mudros in the Erzerum program of 1919. The Ottoman Parliament committed itself to the Erzerum program early in 1920 under the name of the National Pact. British officers reformed the Ottoman Parliament out of existence on the night of March 15-16, 1920, but away in the heart of Anatolia Turkish nationalism possessed as free a hand for its own program of reform as its state of siege permitted. What the Sevres Treaty was to Western reform in Turkey, the Grand National Assembly became to Turkish reform in Turkey; and when Soviet Russia recognized the National Pact in 1921, the fingers which had long strangled Ottoman reform were removed, temporarily at least, from the Turkish throat.

Afghanistan quickly recognized the Pact. The three Soviet Republics of Trans-Caucasia recognized it. Insofar as it concerned Cilicia, France recognized it. Soviet Ukrainia recognized it early in 1922. Insofar as it concerned Eastern Thrace, Mr. Lloyd George and his Foreign Secretary recognized it at the point of the bayonet in the Mudania armistice. But at Lausanne, Ismet Pasha placed the rest of the Pact before Lord Curzon and early in 1923 Lord Curzon, having swallowed a few drops of the nasty stuff, returned to London. There seemed then to be as little chance of Ismet Pasha’s diplomatic success as there had once seemed to be of Fevzi Pasha’s military success, but Turkish reform would not be alive today if it had not learned long ago to achieve the impossible. Little by little, Ismet Pasha dropped away the non-essentials of the Pact while holding fast to the abrogation of the Capitulations which the Enver Government had decreed on Sept. 28, 1914, and on July 24, 1923, the British Foreign Office finally accorded its recognition to the essentials of the National Pact, exception being made for further negotiation over Mosul.

For the last century, the Ottoman Empire has sought justice at the hands of Czarist Russia and the West. Czarist Russia has finally ceased to exist and Turkey has finally gained justice from the West at the point of the bayonet, a fact which we Christians of the West might do well to ponder. It secured from the West at Lausanne a belated recognition of its right to control its own reforms in its own country and since Czarist Russia and the West by their long endeavor to impose reforms from without for the exclusive benefit of the Turk’s minorities, have made it impossible for the Turk and his minorities to live together, the Turk today has only himself to consider in Turkey. Insofar as no further Western attempts are made to strangle Turkish reform (and if the past is any clew to the future, such attempts are quite certain to be made), the future of Turkey now depends on the Turk. We know at last who is responsible in Turkey, and this is a very substantial gain.