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

by E. F. Knight

The work of the Commission alarmed the Committee of Union and Progress, several of whose most useful members had been seized; and the young officers in the army who had been affiliated realised their danger, and came to the conclusion that it would be expedient to start the insurrection as soon as possible, before further arrests had seriously weakened their cause. Thus it happened that, quite a year before the time originally contemplated by the Committee, Major Niazi Bey, at Resna, on July 3, took the momentous step. He openly disavowed his allegiance to his sovereign, fled to the mountains with a band of Moslem civilians and some of the soldiers under his command, and issued his rebel manifesto, in which he called upon all patriots to join in destroying the Government. I will tell later the story of the doings of Niazi Bey, Enver Bey, and the other insurgent leaders in the mountains; how officers and men rallied round them; how they persuaded the Bulgarian bands to join forces with them; how at last the entire Macedonian army had become the army of the Committee; and how, within three weeks of that historic event—the raising of the banner of revolt at Resna—the revolution had triumphed and the Despotism was a thing of the past. At this stage I will describe the series of events that precipitated the final struggle between the Palace and the Committee.

In view of the increasing activity of its enemies, the Committee, at its secret meetings, condemned to death and ordered the execution of such instruments of the Palace as were the most dangerous to the cause, including several of the senior officers in the Macedonian army and all those who were found to be spies or informers. Towards the end it must have become difficult for the Palace to find men willing to embark on so dangerous a profession as that of spy, even for the highest pay. Had it not been for these assassinations the conspiracy must have failed; at the cost of these few lives Turkey was saved; and a terrible persecution of her best sons by the vengeful Palace was warded off. These killings of the condemned as often as not were done in broad daylight, in a busy street, by officers in uniform, and no man interfered with the executioners.

Thus, on July 7, General Shemshi Pasha, an able soldier, who, as possessing considerable experience in suppressing Macedonian and Albanian risings, had been sent to crush the mutiny, was shot dead in the streets of Monastir in broad daylight by a young officer. Next, the officer commanding at Seres and certain other officers who upheld the cause of the Palace were killed. On July 10 the imam, or chaplain, of the artillery regiment in Monastir, who had been acting as a spy in barracks, was shot in the streets of Salonica while he was on his way to the railway station to carry his information to the capital. On the same day, and also in Salonica, an attempt was made on the life of Haki Bey, a Palace informant, who had been a member of the Commission of inquiry. On July 12, General Sadik Pasha was shot while on a Messagerie steamer bound from Salonica to Constantinople. The Committee was now fighting, so to speak, with the halter round its neck, and took no risks; it removed those whose action might bring ruin upon the cause of the Young Turks, for the chances of success or failure were still very uncertain.

The Palace realised its danger, and knew—what the outer world did not know—that this was no ordinary mutiny of discontented troops. The Sultan’s most trusted officers, when sent to crush the rising, could not get their men to fire upon their insurgent fellow-Moslems, and were sometimes themselves assassinated by them. For the first time in history the name of the Padishah had failed to inspire the pious Ottoman soldiery with reverence and obedience. The Palace was now thoroughly alarmed, and no measure was omitted that could help to bring about the destruction of the Young Turkey conspiracy. It was decided, among other things, that another effort should be made to get at the very heart of the movement, to strangle the secret Central Committee, which, as the spies suspected, worked in Salonica; for if the ringleaders and the central organisation could be exterminated, the movement would become a lifeless thing and fall to pieces.

So Colonel Nazim Bey, an A.D.C. of the Sultan, one of the most detested and feared of the instruments of the Despotism, was sent to Salonica with a body of spies to unearth the secret Committee. Nazim was a typical creature of the Palace. Extravagant and vicious, ever in debt, like Catiline, prodigal of his own while greedy for the possessions of others, clever, and quite unscrupulous, he was ready to sell his soul for the moneys of which he was ever in need. He was appointed Commandant de Palace in Salonica. Denunciations were well paid for, so he denounced many officers, professional men, and students on the flimsiest evidence, for real evidence was not easily procurable. On one day he despatched thirty-eight young officers to Constantinople, who were imprisoned on their arrival. But in many cases those whose arrest he ordered were immediately set free or escaped with the assistance of officials in the police and other departments, many of whom, as I have explained, were secret adherents of the Committee. Nazim, who knew well what found favour in his master’s eyes, also sent reports to the Palace regarding the conduct of his superiors in Salonica, accusing distinguished general officers of the head-quarters staff and others of carelessness, partiality, and covert sympathy with the Young Turks, with the result that he was given still further emoluments, and was so strongly supported by the Palace that he was enabled to arrogate successfully the chief authority in the city. The Committee of Union and Progress condemned Nazim to death, one of his own subordinates signing the decree. A young lieutenant of infantry offered himself as the executioner. Nazim, however, had taken fright, and on July 11 he fled from Salonica. As he was driving to the station in his carriage he was shot at, but was only slightly wounded; so he was able to reach Constantinople and report to the Sultan the information which he had collected concerning the revolutionary movement.

VIEW OF CONSTANTINOPLE

As the result of Nazim Bey’s alarming report, another Commission of inquiry was sent from Constantinople to Salonica. It was under the presidency of Ismail Mahir Pasha, General of Division and A.D.C. to the Sultan—who, it having been discovered by the Committee that he was the leader of a reactionary plot, was shot dead in the streets of Stamboul by an officer in December last—and it contained, among other notable men, Youssouf Pasha, Rejet Pasha, and Sadik Pasha. The ostensible object of the Commission was to inspect arsenals and military stores; but this the Commissioners never attempted to do. They took up their abode in the principal hotel in Salonica. A friend of mine, now editor of one of Turkey’s principal papers, who was told off by the Committee to live in the hotel and keep the Commissioners under observation, found that they rarely ventured out of doors, but sent for and proceeded to examine closely all manner of men.

The contre espionage conducted against them by the Committee to a large extent baffled their designs; even the people employed by the Commission to gather incriminating information were as often as not initiates of the secret Society. But though the Commission could not get at the heart of the conspiracy it displayed great activity, and the denunciations to the Palace were numerous; for, as with the other spy commissions, proofs of complicity in the plot were not necessary to condemnation, and to be known as an honest and patriotic Ottoman subject was sufficient ground for accusation. The Commission also had its branches in the interior of Macedonia. In Monastir, Persepe, and other garrison towns certain officers became its agents; but most of these were discovered by the Committee and had to flee, and some, including Sami Bey, Commissioner of Police in Monastir, were destroyed by the executioners of the Committee.

So thoroughly had all the machinery of official authority been destroyed in Macedonia that it was difficult for the Commissioners to secure the arrests of those who had been denounced, therefore treacherous methods were now employed to get the ring-leaders within the clutches of the Palace. The Sultan believed that every man had his price, and on previous occasions he had found bribery succeed where terrorism failed. The most flattering letters were sent to Enver Bey and other young staff-officers who had been forwarding the revolutionary cause in the interior of Macedonia with such marked success; they were invited to the Palace and were promised not only forgiveness but large pecuniary rewards and promotion to general rank. Many a good man from the time of Midhat Pasha had been tempted by the Palace to come out from some secure sanctuary to his destruction by such wiles as these. So Enver Bey and his comrades ignored this invitation, but at the same time, realising the danger of non-compliance, they fled to the mountains, organised bands, and as open insurgents precipitated the doom of the Despotism. At the same time other methods of conciliation were attempted by the Palace. A large sum of hastily borrowed money was sent to Salonica to discharge the arrears of pay due to the troops, and the authorities in Constantinople refrained from doing any injury to the thirty-eight young officers of the Macedonian army who had been imprisoned at the Ministry of War. To anticipate a little, these officers were pardoned and released on July 21 as the result of the Committee’s threat to kill all the general officers in Macedonia unless this was done.