Their wives are women from the towns; as they generally follow their husbands to the different stations allotted to them, they obtain some knowledge of the world by travelling in various parts of the country, and are conversable and pleasant to associate with.
The sons of all good and wealthy families in the capital are either placed in the military schools or sent to the Kalem (Chancellerie d’État), where the majority of the upper class Turkish youth are initiated into official routine and receive different grades as they proceed, the highest rank accorded corresponding with that of Serik (general of division). The officials who pass through this school are generally more polished in manner, more liberal in their ideas, and superior in many respects to the mean creatures who in former times were intrusted with offices for which they were quite unfit. This practice of appointing Chiboukjis (pipe-bearers) and other persons of low origin as Mudirs (governors of large villages) and Kaimakams (governors of districts), is now less in force, and is limited to Governors-general, who sometimes send their servants to occupy these positions. A Mudir may become a Kaimakam, and a Kaimakam a Pasha, but the top ranks can be obtained without passing through the lower grades. The inferior official placed over each village is the Mukhtar. He may be Christian or Moslem, according to the population; in mixed villages two are generally chosen to represent the respective creeds. These functionaries are intrusted with the administration of the village; they collect the taxes, and adjust the differences that arise among the peasants. They are too insignificant to do much good or much harm, unless they are very vicious. The Mudirs are at the head of the administration of their villages and of the medjliss or council, in which members chosen by the people take part. Mutessarifs are sub-governors of Kazas or large districts, and Valis, Governors-general of vilayets.
All this body of officials, together with the Defterdars (treasurers), Mektebjis (secretaries of the Pashalik), politico memours (political agents), etc., taken as a whole, are seldom fitted for their posts: they are ignorant and unscrupulous and much more bent upon securing their personal interests than the welfare of their country.
It must, however, in justice be said that, owing to the large sums the higher officials have to disburse in order to obtain their appointments, the great expense entailed in frequently moving themselves and their families from one extremity of the empire to the other, and the irregular and meagre pay the minor officials receive, it is impossible for them to live without resorting to some illicit means of increasing their incomes. And it must be admitted that praiseworthy exceptions are to be found here and there among both the higher and the lower officials.
The case is very simple. A man has to pay a vast sum of money to various influential people in order to get a certain post. His pay is nothing much to speak of. He is liable to be ejected by some one’s caprice at any moment. If he is to repay his “election expenses” and collect a small reserve fund, he must give up all idea of honesty. An honest official in Turkey means a bankrupt. Under the system of favoritism and bribery no course but that of corruption and extortion is open to the official. Il faut bien vivre; and so long as the old system exists one must do in Turkey as the rest of the Turks do. It is utterly corrupt; but it must be reformed from the top downwards.
People in the East never think of asking what was the origin of pashas or in what manner they have attained their high station. Genealogical trees in Turkey are not cultivated; most of the old stems (as explained in Part II., Chap. I.) were uprooted at the beginning of the present century; their branches, lopped off and scattered in all directions, have in some instances taken fresh root and started into a new existence; but they no longer represent the strength of the ancient trunk. The important body of beys, pashas, etc., thus abolished, had to be replaced by a new body selected without much scrutiny from the crowd of adventurers who were always awaiting some turn of fortune whereby they might be put into some official position and mend their finances.
Yusbashi A., one of the chief leaders of the Bashi-Bazouks, who performed the work of destruction at the beginning of the Bulgarian troubles, was subsequently sent to Constantinople by the military authorities to be hung; but being reprieved and pardoned, he was promoted to the rank of Pasha. He had come, when a boy, to the town of T⸺ as an apprentice in a miserable barber’s shop; later on he left his master and entered the service of a native bey. During the Crimean war he joined the Bashi-Bazouks, and when peace was made returned to the town with the rank of captain and a certain amount of money, which he invested in land. By extortion and oppression of every kind exercised upon his peasants, he soon became a person of consequence in the town. Later on this man found his way to the Konak, was appointed member of the council, and was placed upon some commission by which he was enabled, through a series of illegal proceedings, to double and triple his fortune at the expense of the Government revenues. The misdeeds of this man and some of his associates becoming too flagrant to be longer overlooked, the Porte sent a commission to examine the Government defters or accounts. The captain, by no means frightened, but determined to avoid further trouble in the matter, is said to have set fire to the Konak in several places, so that all the documents that would have compromised him were destroyed and the Pasha and commission who came to inspect his doings barely escaped with their lives. Knowing the desperate character of the man they had to deal with, they were alarmed, and unfeignedly glad to get away and hush the matter up.
Thus the illustrious line of Pashas and Grand Vizirs, like the Kiprilis, was put aside and replaced by a long list of nonentities who, with the exception of a few such as Ali and Fuad Pashas, cannot be said to have benefited their country in any remarkable degree, or to have shown any special qualifications as statesmen.
The title of Grand Vizir, now nominally abolished, was one of the oldest and the highest given to a civil functionary. His appointment, being of a temporal nature, depended entirely upon the will of the Sultan, who might at his pleasure load the Vizir with honors, or relieve him of his head. This unpleasant uncertainty as to the future attached to the Vizir’s office gradually almost disappeared as the Sultans began to recognize the indispensable services rendered to them by an able Grand Vizir. They began to appreciate the comfort of having ministers to think for them, make laws, and scheme reforms in their name; and this confidence, so agreeable to an indolent Sultan, and so convenient to an irresponsible minister, was the ruling principle of the constitution during the reign of Sultan Abdul-Medjid, who was affable to his ministers, changed them less frequently than his ancestors did, and loaded them indiscriminately with decorations and gifts. Not so his wayward and capricious brother and successor Abdul-Aziz, who scrupled not, on the slightest pretext, to dismiss his Grand Vizir. A trifling change in his personal appearance, a divergence of opinion, timidly expressed by the humble minister—who stood with hands crossed, dervish-fashion, on his shoulders, in the attitude of an obedient slave—just as much as a more serious fault, such as casting difficulties in the way of his Imperial Majesty with regard to his exorbitant demands on the treasury, were sufficient to seal the fate of the daring Sadrazam. But in spite of the difficulties and drawbacks and humiliations of the post, a Grand Vizir continued to be, after the Sultan, the most influential person in the country. The gates of his Konak were at once thrown open, and the other ministers and functionaries flocked to pay their respects to him. The governors of districts telegraphed their felicitations, while the ante-chamber and courts of his house and office were rarely free from the presence of a regular army of office-hunters, petitioners, dervishes, old women, and beggars, waiting for an audience or a chance glimpse of the minister on his exit, when each individual pressed forward to bring his or her claim to his notice. Pek aye, bakalum olour,[3] were the words that generally dropped from the mouths even of the least amiable Vizirs on such occasions—words of hope that were eagerly caught by the interested parties, as well as by the numerous cortége of kyatibs, servants, and favorites of the great man who, according to the importance of the affairs or the station of the applicant, willingly undertook to be the advocate of the cause, guaranteeing its success by the counter-guarantee of receiving the rushvets or bribes needed in all stages of the affair. This method of transacting business, very general in Turkey, is called hatir, or by favor; its extent is unlimited, and its application varied and undefined; it can pardon the crime of murder, imprison an innocent person, liberate a condemned criminal, take away the property of one minister to present it to another, remove governors from their posts just as you change places in a quadrille, or simply turn out one set, as in the cotillon, to make room for another. Anything and everything can in fact be brought about by this system, except a divorce when the plea is not brought by the husband.
I have particularized the Grand Vizir as doing business in this way merely because it was he who was more appealed to in this manner than the other ministers, not because the others do not follow closely in his steps. Their duties are extensive and important, and demand for their proper and exact performance not only intelligence, but also high educational qualifications, which, with rare exceptions, Turkish officials do not possess—a capital defect, which, added to the uncertainty of the period they are likely to remain in office, and the systematic practice, pursued by each successive minister, of trying to undo what his predecessor had done for the country, and of dismissing most of the civil officials and provincial governors to replace them by some from his own set, greatly contributes to increase maladministration, and to create the disorder that has long prevailed in Turkey.