Constantinople old and new

by H. G. Dwight

Of all these things more has been written than is profitable to read. It is still too soon to know very much about the Young Turks—their real leaders, their real motives, their real aims, their real accomplishment. It is fairly safe to conclude, however, that they were neither the demigods acclaimed in 1908 as the saviours of their country nor the rascals execrated as its destroyers in 1912. They were, in all likelihood, men neither better nor worse than the rest of us, who found their country in an evil case and who for no shameful reason lacked the knowledge and the power to make it an earthly paradise. Yet it seems to me that history will give them credit for breaking the spell of Abd ül Hamid, that strange and tragic figure of myth who struggled to keep the thirteenth century alive in the twentieth. Nor do I see how they could have matched him otherwise than as they did, with his own weapon of secrecy. And whatever their subsequent mistakes may have been, it also seems to me that history will absolve them from much of the reproach of losing their European empire. No one can fairly blame them for wishing to make the Turk the dominant element in his own empire, and for wishing to make that empire independent of the foreigner. Neither they nor any one else, moreover, could in the long run have saved their European provinces. It is a serious question whether they will succeed in saving certain of their provinces that remain—or whether their own good advises them to do so. There are influences of common blood and common tradition which no mere political influence can indefinitely withstand. In any case, I have come to look upon the Turkish revolution with other than the eye of a reactionary impressionist. It would be a reactionary impressionist indeed who put the picturesqueness of Stamboul before the good of a people—and a blind one who failed to see what there was of human colour in those dramatic events. And although time has only partially fulfilled so many generous hopes, or has turned them to bitterness, I refuse to believe that they were totally insincere. I shall always count it, on the contrary, among the most enlarging experiences of my life to have been in Constantinople in 1908, and to have seen a people at one of those rare moments when it really lives.

Badge of the revolution: “Liberty, Justice, Fraternity, Equality.”

It is strange to recall, in the light of all that has happened since, how silently that momentous change announced itself. We knew that there were disturbances in Macedonia; but there were always disturbances in Macedonia. We gathered that there were dissensions at the Palace, for on the very day of his decoration by William II with the Black Eagle, Ferid Pasha, the Albanian Grand Vizier, fell. But there were usually dissensions at the Palace. And when, two days later, we read at the top of our morning papers a bare official announcement that the constitution had been re-established, that long-suspended constitution, the promise of which had brought Abd ül Hamid to the throne, we asked each other what it meant. Apparently no one could tell—least of all the diplomats supposed to sit at the fountain-heads of information. The most frequent conjecture was of a trick to gain time. It was only later that rumours began to run about, in the true Constantinople way, of the revolt of Macedonia; of the telegrams exchanged between Salonica and Yîldîz, and the memorable night council at which Abd ül Hamid, fainting with exhaustion and rage, acknowledged himself beaten at last; of the mysterious Committee of Union and Progress that had performed the miracle, and of the men who had gone about the country, disguised as pedlers and dervishes, feeding the hunger for liberty and the courage to demand it, and of the women who carried messages from harem to harem and so delivered them without writing, and of the revolutionary circles that flourished under the eyes of spies, subordinate to the larger circles of Constantinople, Salonica, and Paris, wherein only one or two members knew of the definite existence of another circle, and then of only one or two of its members.

When the lancers rode through the streets that Friday morning of the 24th of July to guard the Sultan on his way to mosque, a few Greeks cheered them. The soldiers looked uneasy. Such a thing had never happened to them. That afternoon a few shopkeepers hung out their flags. The police went about zealously taking down the offenders’ names. By the next day, however, the police gave up trying to keep track of the flags. The whole city flapped with them. And other strange manifestations took place. Music marched through the streets. Orators sprang up at every corner. Newspapers quadrupled their editions and burst into extras at the novelty of containing news. Hawkers everywhere sold long red badges bearing golden words that it had been forbidden to utter—Liberty, Justice, Equality, Fraternity. It was as if a cover had suddenly been taken off. For thirty years this people had been kept in constantly closer restriction, had lived under the eyes of that vast army of informers from which they were not safe even within their own doors, had been robbed one by one of all the little liberties of life so common in other countries that we think nothing of them—to visit one’s friends, to gather for amusement or discussion, to read the book of one’s choice, to publish one’s sentiment or protest, to go out at night, to travel at will. Hundreds of thousands had grown up to man’s estate knowing no other manner of life. And from one day to another they were told that it was all at an end—that they were free. Was it any wonder that at first they were dazed? Was it not rather a wonder that they did not lose their heads?

The natural goodness and peaceableness of a race that has been accounted one of butchers could have had no more triumphant proof than those trying days when the whole machinery of government was disorganised. But of the sanguinary scenes that have marked other revolutions there were none. In Salonica, to be sure, where the constitution was proclaimed one day earlier, a policeman was shot for tearing down the proclamation. Ten notorious spies were also shot in honour of the date. Their comrades had the Julian calendar to thank that the number was not twenty-three! In Broussa another spy, the infamous Fehim Pasha of Constantinople, was killed by a crowd he unwisely went out of his way to insult. In the capital, however, although the Stamboul troops were ready to occupy Pera and cut off Yîldîz, extreme measures proved unnecessary. The moderation of the revolutionists, the astuteness of the Sultan, and the character of the people combined to make the affair pass off without bloodshed. If it had not been for foreigners employed in some of the public services, who promptly set about fomenting strikes, nothing would have occurred to disturb the peace. Zeki Pasha, it is true, the man who would have repeated the Bloody Sunday of St. Petersburg, had his windows smashed. Otherwise the hostility of the people toward the ringleaders of the old régime restricted itself to cartoons of the most primitive drawing and satire, which had an enormous sale in the streets and which were ultimately suppressed by the Committee of Union and Progress. The Committee sedulously fostered the belief that the real author of the Hamidian régime had merely been the victim of his advisers.

The Bloody Sunday which might have been was the Sunday after the coup d’état, when all day long deputation after deputation marched up to the Palace in the July sun, until a hundred thousand fezzes and turbans packed the avenues of approach. They had been the day before to each of the ministers in turn, demanding their oaths to maintain the constitution. They now came to the Sultan, loyal and unarmed, but asking from him too an assurance that he would not a second time withdraw the instrument which he had been the first of his line to promulgate. The Palace guards did not resist, but within was such terror as those without had never dreamed of inspiring. The Sultan, always chary of his person, uncertain as to the designs of a mob the like of which he had never seen before, refused to show himself. He merely sent messages to the people and begged them to disperse. They would not. Then Zeki Pasha, Grand Master of Artillery, asked leave to clear the crowd away—with his cannon. Fortunately, most fortunately, the old martinet’s advice was not taken. But still the Sultan did not appear. Finally, late in the evening, the last deputation of all arrived. It was composed of the more enlightened element of the population and contained members of the Committee. Like those who had preceded them, they respectfully asked to see his majesty. They were told that his majesty had retired. They insisted, with what arguments one may never know. And at last, near midnight, his majesty appeared on a balcony of the Palace and asked the people what they wished. They, amid frantic demonstrations of loyalty, said that they wished to see the imperial master who had so long been kept from them by traitors, and to hear him swear fealty to his own constitution. He replied: “My children, be certain that I shall shrink before no sacrifice for your happiness. Henceforth your future is assured. I will work with you in common accord. Live as brothers. I am overcome by the sentiments of devotion and gratitude which you show. Return to your homes and take your rest.” This speech, characteristic of its maker’s adroitness, satisfied the thousands who did not hear it, and they went away.

It did not satisfy the instigators of the demonstration, who later obliged the Sultan to make the desired oath on the Koran. It was his only chance to save his throne. But bitter as his surrender doubtless was, he must have had moments of compensation. One of them occurred on the succeeding Friday, when a hundred thousand people gathered again to see him go to mosque. Hours before the time of the ceremony the precincts of the Palace were invaded, and hamals kicked their heels from the edge of the terrace reserved for visitors with cards from their embassies. A great tree near the mosque was so full of men and boys that two or three branches cracked off. When the imperial cortège came down from the Palace there was such cheering as Abd ül Hamid, accustomed to the perfunctory “Padishah’m chok yasha!” of his guard, could scarcely have heard before. The monarch who all his life had been most afraid of bombs and bullets may never have been so nervous, but he stood up like a man, saluting his people with the red-and-white rosette of the constitution pinned to his shoulder. They responded in a frenzy of emotion, tears streaming from many of their eyes. After returning to the Palace the Sultan showed himself again at a balcony and spoke a few words. Could there have been only terror for him in the joyful shouting of a mob that would have torn an assassin to shreds? Could he have seen there only enemies who had overcome him by the brute force of numbers? Could he have felt only the irony of his undoing by the very schools he had created, by the very means he had taken to stamp out individual liberty?