Turkey; the Awakening of Turkey; the Turkish Revolution of 1908

by E. F. Knight

Now the one essential part of the Young Turk programme is the preservation of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. Opportunists in the rest of their policy, the Young Turks are determined that no more Ottoman territory shall be placed under foreign domination. They feel that foreign interference in Turkey’s internal affairs means loss of national independence and the ultimate expulsion of the Turks from the European side of the Bosphorus. They entertain the strongest objection to the attempted settlement of the racial disputes in Macedonia by foreign Powers, and the chief article of their faith is that, for Turkey to hold her own in the world, her reforms must come from within and not from without. Therefore at this juncture, knowing that they had the educated classes in Turkey in sympathy with them, and that oppression had made the masses discontented, these Turkish patriots in Geneva decided to create an organisation whose object it would be to bring pressure to bear upon the Turkish Government, and move the Sultan to sanction the much needed reforms. At this early stage they did not feel sufficiently strong to plan the deposition of the monarch should he prove obdurate, but they resolved so to arrange matters in Constantinople as to make it impossible, in the case of the death of that clever and masterly monarch, for his successor to rule on the same despotic lines.

The head-quarters of the organisation was moved from Geneva to Paris, and it had its branches in London and other capitals. Little heed was paid to the Young Turks by the peoples in whose midst they lived, and many regarded them as harmless dreamers. But the Sultan himself knew better; his Embassy in Paris was instructed to watch the organisation closely, and spies were sent from Constantinople whose business it was to report directly to the Palace all they could discover concerning the members. In Turkey itself active methods of suppression were taken, and the system of espionage became ever more unbearable, with the result that the enemies of the régime increased in number, and Turkey’s best men fled the country to swell the band of conspirators in Paris.

Now that men can talk quite freely in Turkey, returning exiles tell strange and romantic tales of their adventures in those dark days. For a Turkish subject to leave Turkey without the permission of the inquisitorial Government was then a treasonable offence involving outlawry and the confiscation of property. As every outgoing steamer was closely watched by the police, it was no easy matter to escape from Constantinople by sea, and to do so by land was still more difficult. On several occasions distinguished Turks were assisted in their flight by their English friends. For example, with the connivance of one of our Consuls, a fugitive Pasha was concealed in the Consulate, was disguised in a suit of slops such as sailormen wear, and when the opportunity arrived quietly walked away from the carefully watched Consulate in the company of an English merchant captain, satisfied the questioning police spies on the quay, and boarded the British vessel that was to carry him to safety; for he had been entered on the ship’s books as cook, and was provided with the necessary consular document that testified to his having signed articles in that capacity. Oftentimes, too, some British steamer passing down the Bosphorus would stop her engines and, under cover of the darkness, send off the friendly boat that, by pre-arrangement, would take a party of fugitive Turks from a lonely beach, and so save them from the oubliette or the strangler’s cord.

The Palace employed terrorism in Turkey and corruption in Paris in its attempt to destroy the Young Turk association. By offers of rewards and high positions, some of the members were persuaded to desert the cause and to return to Turkey. Some were found base enough to serve as spies. Thus, one, whose name it is perhaps better not to mention, contrived to work himself into a prominent position on the Paris Committee, learnt its secrets, and returned to Constantinople to betray them to the Sultan. But the organisation ever grew stronger under persecution, and patriotic Turks supplied the funds which enabled it to carry on its propaganda. The Paris Committee published a paper and numerous tracts, which exposed the iniquities of the Hamidian régime and called for the deposition of the Sultan, and these were smuggled into Turkey and were widely distributed and read, despite the vigilance of the ever-increasing army of spies. The agents of the Committee in Constantinople used to placard the city under cover of the night with revolutionary appeals, and seditious placards threatening the life of the Sultan were sometimes placed upon the walls of the Palace itself. Abdul Hamid, living in perpetual fear, redoubled his precautions.

In 1901 the Sultan, having been informed by his ambassador in Paris that the Paris Committee was preparing a great Young Turkey demonstration in Constantinople itself, was so anxious to intercept the correspondence that was passing between Paris and the members of the Young Turkey party in his capital that he violated his international agreements by seizing and breaking open the European mail-bags that were addressed to the various foreign post-offices in Constantinople, and thereby provoked the Powers to threaten a joint naval demonstration, which was only warded off by a humble apology and further solemn promises on Abdul Hamid’s part.

In Paris the “Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress,” to give the association the now world-famous name which it assumed a few years ago, was ably directed by Ahmed Riza Bey, who, having worked with devotion for the cause through eighteen years of exile, returned to Turkey after the proclamation of the Constitution last year, and is now the President, or Speaker, of the Turkish Chamber of Deputies. The Committee was also strengthened during the last few years of the Hamidian régime by the admission to it of several distinguished Turks of high rank, who fled from Constantinople to Paris so as to be able to assist the national movement from that safe vantage-ground. Among these fugitives was the Sultan’s relative, Prince Sabah-ed-din, who threw himself heart and soul into the revolutionary movement, and advocated a policy more advanced and radical than that favoured by the large majority of the Young Turks, whose Liberalism is full-blooded Toryism when compared to what passes for Liberalism in England in these latter days. Prince Sabah-ed-din is an advanced home ruler, and he is the virtual leader of the “Liberal Union” party, which is working for a degree of centralisation that is regarded as dangerous by most Mussulmans, but is naturally pleasing to the Greeks.

But though these Turkish gentlemen, with their clever conversation and their charming manners, were welcomed in Paris salons and London drawing-rooms, few people in Europe realised that the Young Turkey movement had the remotest chance of attaining its ends; for it was a silent movement, and while the Greeks, Bulgarians, and Armenians voiced their grievances with a persistence that gained for them a wide hearing and much sympathy, the patriotic Turks, unwilling to invoke the help of foreigners, took no steps to make their aspirations known in Europe. Ahmed Riza did, indeed, come over to London in 1904, and, for the first time in his life, addressed a meeting of Englishmen, but it was not to crave sympathy for the Mussulman Turks whom he represented, but to express the sentiments of his party regarding foreign intervention in Turkey, whether it were that of a Government or of the English humanitarian committees. In the course of his speech Ahmed Bey, while admitting the justice of a revolt against despotism, condemned the European friends of Armenia and Macedonia for wrongfully and artificially inciting a rising, and so playing the part of the Pan-Slavist agents, and he practically put it that by fomenting insurrection among the Christian populations in Turkey they were more or less responsible for the massacres which followed. The meeting, to quote from the official report, “became extremely agitated, and many interruptions were addressed to the speaker.” The speakers who followed had some unkind things to say concerning Ahmed Riza and the Young Turks. Here is a quotation from the speech of an influential humanitarian who was present: “I am not sorry that the gentleman has spoken, because it shows us how impossible it is to expect any reforms in Turkey from the Young Turkish party. They are only thinking of themselves. The liberties of the Christians would be just as unsafe under a Sultan with the sentiments of the gentleman who has just sat down, as under the present Sultan.”

And yet, even at that time, Ahmed Riza and his Mussulman associates were planning a scheme which was intended to bring liberty, justice, and security to the oppressed Christian subjects of the Porte, and was, moreover, destined to prove successful where all the diplomacy of the Powers and the too often misdirected efforts of the humanitarians in Europe had signally failed. For the Young Turks, like their great forerunner, Midhat Pasha, realised that Turkey could only be saved from disintegration by placing all her races and creeds on an equality, by giving the same rights to all. They therefore set themselves to bring about a co-operation of the various elements of the Turkish population, and to make common cause with the Armenian, Bulgarian, and other revolutionary non-Mussulman committees in Paris.

It appeared, to those who heard of it, as being the most chimerical of schemes; for the Young Turks and their proposed allies had but one aspiration in common—the overthrow of the Despotism. Their ideals seemed indeed to be irreconcilable. The Young Turks above all things desired the maintenance of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire and a union of her peoples that would make the Empire strong. On the other hand, the non-Mussulman revolutionaries cared nothing for the integrity of the Empire. For the most part they desired not to reform Turkey, but to break her up. Neither did they seek union among themselves; for the different Christian races hated each other, and cherished mutually incompatible ambitions. Thus, Bulgarians, Greeks, and Serbs in Macedonia dreamt of the formation of autonomous States, or of annexations to Bulgaria, Greece, and Servia, respectively. There was to be found, too, in some of the non-Mussulman committees, a considerable leavening of anarchical and socialistic ideas with which the conservative Turkish reformers could have no sympathy. Out of elements so incongruous, and in many respects antagonistic, it would seem impossible to effect any sort of co-operation.