CHAPTER XVIII
PREPARING FOR SELF-RULE

DURING the interregnum the most important task that had to be undertaken by the Committee of Union and Progress, and one that caused it a good deal of anxiety for a while, was the preparation of the country for the coming general election of the members of Turkey’s new Parliament. It could not but be a dangerous experiment thus suddenly to give self-governing institutions to the ignorant Ottoman masses, who had endured thirty years of the worst of despotisms. It would naturally take long to make the peasantry understand that under the new order of things taxation would not be as it was under the old, that the money supplied by the people would be spent in reorganising and developing the country to their own great benefit. All that they knew of taxation was that it had been wrung from them to enrich the ruling clique, that Constantinople swallowed up the huge sums which were collected in every part of the Empire, and that little had been done for the people. It was difficult to convince them that taxation could possibly be for their own good. To quote from an article which appeared at the time in a Constantinople paper: “Persuasion in this case will be of no avail. Acts must precede arguments. Let works of public utility, roads, railways, harbours, irrigation canals, be undertaken at once. Let the police be organised. Let the troops in the provinces receive their pay and be given their proper clothing and equipment as in the capital.” If they beheld these changes, so advantageous to themselves, the people would no doubt gradually lose their profound distrust of everything connected with the administration of the State and realise that the sacrifices entailed by taxation might mean the return to the taxpayers, in the form of various benefits, of ten-fold what they had contributed. When the elections did take place it was found that great numbers of the poorer and more ignorant peasants, though as taxpayers entitled to vote, refrained from exercising their right, for they suspected the needful registration of being in some way connected with the exaction of further taxation.

In the meanwhile, people, prejudiced against all outward form of government and wholly ignorant of the elements of economics, suddenly found themselves the free electors of a representative assembly. Many people looked forward to the opening of the Parliament with grave misgivings. It is rankest heresy in these days to give utterance to such a sentiment, but one could not help thinking last autumn, when the result of the elections was still in doubt, that it might have been better to have continued the rule of the country for some time longer through a Ministry selected by the Young Turk oligarchy, and not to have conferred self-governing institutions on the people until these had been to some extent educated by the object-lessons of good government presented to them—the suppression of corruption, the efficiency of public departments, the bringing of prosperity to the wasted land, the wise expenditure on public works.

But it had been decreed that the Parliament should meet as soon as possible, so the Committee of Union and Progress set itself to teach the electorate the duties of citizenship, to explain to them what constitutional government meant, and to employ its wide-reaching organisation to secure so strong a representation of its nominees in the Lower House as to give the Committee the control of affairs. The Young Turks were too wise to be over-confident. They realised the difficulties and dangers before them. They knew that the reactionaries were intriguing everywhere and would seize their chance when they got it. The Young Turks remained on their guard, determined that the liberty so hardly won should not be wrested from Turkey as it was in 1878, and that if the Turkish Parliament failed as the Russian Duma failed, it should not be to make way for the return of the Despotism.

It was recognised that, far from losing its raison d’être with the opening of Parliament, the Young Turk organisation would be needed more than ever for the protection of the country, and would have to continue its existence, with the army behind it as heretofore, for a long while to come. The Committee of Union and Progress therefore held a Congress in Salonica in October, at which measures were taken to strengthen and effect the closer knitting together of the Young Turk party. It was arranged that all the Deputies in the Turkish Parliament who were nominees of the Committee should pledge themselves to support in its entirety the programme laid down by the Committee. Arrangements were made for the establishment of close relations between the Committee and the Army. The secret Central Committee, the names of whose members are unknown to the outer world, was re-elected at the Congress, but it was decided that it should no longer have its head-quarters in Salonica and that it should not hold its meetings in Constantinople. It was to have no known or fixed habitation. The Young Turks, therefore, apparently deemed it more necessary than ever that strict secrecy should be observed as to who their real leaders were. By this time the Committee had largely extended its membership, its sworn associates numbering about seventy thousand—all that was best of the Ottoman manhood.

As the result of the electoral campaign conducted by the Committee of Union and Progress their nominees are in an overwhelming majority in the Turkish House of Commons, voting as one man on all important questions. The Constitution arranged for the creation of a Senate, or Second Chamber, composed of notables selected by the Sultan. The Committee saw to it that the Senate should not become the head-quarters of reaction. It presented a list of names to the Sultan, who was pleased to appoint as Senators the persons thus suggested to him. A parliament, the bulk of whose members are sworn to obey the bidding of a secret society, may not be an ideal form of government; but there can be little doubt that it was the best possible one for Turkey during the early days of the new régime, when it was necessary for the very existence of the Empire that one strong and patriotic party should dominate the House and present a united front to foreign foe and home reactionary. It was no time for parliamentary dissensions, for the raising of delicate questions concerning the future position of the various races, with their conflicting aspirations, or for the discussion of the schemes of thorough-going decentralisation advocated by the too broad-minded theorists who would grant home rule all round to Turkey’s various peoples.

The Turks were novices at political combination, whereas the Greeks were skilled in electioneering trickery of every sort and were determined to obtain as large an electioneering representation as possible in Parliament. The Greeks undoubtedly entertained the opinion that, representing the brains and commercial wealth of Turkey, they should take a leading place, above all the other elements of the population, in the administration of the country. The Committee of Union and Progress was not of this opinion, and under its guidance the votes of the Mussulmans, largely supported by the Armenian and Jewish vote, secured the ascendency of the ruling race in Parliament.

It is a fortunate thing for Turkey that the people who conquered this land will still maintain their political supremacy under the Constitution. The situation would be a dangerous one, indeed, were the Greek vote ever to swamp that of the Mussulmans at the elections. Another revolution, not of so bloodless a character as the last, would be the probable result. It is obvious that for the Caliph, the head of the Mussulman faith, to be under the direction of a Christian Government would be intolerable to the millions of fanatical Moslem subjects of the Porte in Asia, who already regard the Constitution with great suspicion. It is absurd to suppose, too, that the Young Turk party and the Mussulman Turkish army have overthrown despotism only to hand over the rule of the country to what, for centuries, have been the subject races. The Turks hold the inconsistent, but perfectly justifiable, point of view that all Ottomans, of whatever race and creed, shall have equal rights, but that the predominance of the Mussulman Turks must be safeguarded. This may not be logic, but it is common sense.