CHAPTER II
THE TURK IN THE BALKANS
It seems to be difficult to speak without violent prejudice on the subject of the Turk in the Balkans. One school of prejudice insists that the Turk is the finest gentleman in the world, who has been always the victim and not the oppressor of the Christian peoples by whose side he lives, and whose territories he invaded with the best of motives and with the minimum of slaughter. The other school of prejudice credits the Turk with the most abominable cruelty, treachery, and lust, and will hear no good of him. In England the issue is largely a political one. A great Liberal campaign was once founded on a Turkish massacre of Bulgarians in the Balkans. That made it a party duty for Liberals to be pro-Bulgarian and anti-Turk, and almost a party duty for Conservatives to find all the Christian and a few ex-Christian virtues in the Turk. Before attempting to judge the Turk of to-day, let us see how he stands in the light of history. It was in the fourth century that the first Saracens came to the Balkan Peninsula as allies of the Greek Empire against the Goths. They were thus called in by a Christian Power in the first instance. It was not until the fourteenth century that the Turks made a serious attempt to occupy the Balkan Peninsula. They were helped in their campaign considerably by the Christian Crusaders, who, incidentally to their warfare against the Infidel who held the Holy Sepulchre, had made war on the Greek Empire, capturing Constantinople, and thus weakening the power of Christian Europe at its threshold. Bulgaria, too, refused help to the Greeks when the Turkish invasion had to be beaten off. The Turks' coming to the Balkans was thus largely due to Christian divisions.
Sébah & Joaillier
SANCTA SOPHIA, CONSTANTINOPLE
Built by Justinian I, consecrated 538, converted into a Mohammedan mosque 1453. It is now thought that the design of its famous architect, Anthemius of Tralles, was never completed. The minarets and most of the erections in the foreground are Turkish