Pessimists have often said of the Turkish question that the Turks' principal aim in determining on a complete Turkification of Anatolia by any, even the most brutal, means, is that at the conclusion of war they can at least say with justification: "Anatolia is a purely Turkish country and must therefore be left to us." What they propose to bequeath to the victorious Russians is an Armenia without Armenians!
The idea of "Turanism" is a most interesting one, and as a widespread nationalistic principle has given much food for thought to Turkey's ally, Germany. Turanism is the realisation, reawakened by neo-Turkish efforts at political and territorial expansion, of the original race-kinship existing between the Turks and the many peoples inhabiting the regions north of the Caucasus, between the Volga and the borders of Inner China, and particularly in Russian Central Asia. Ethnographically this idea was perfectly justified, but politically it entails a tremendous dissipation of strength which must in the end lead to grave disappointment and failure. All the Turkish attempts to rouse up the population of the Caucasus either fell on unfruitful ground or went to pieces against the strong Russian power reigning there. Enver's marvellous conception of an offensive against Russian Transcaucasia led right at the beginning of the war to terrible bloodshed and defeat.
People in neutral countries have had plenty of opportunity of judging of the value of those arguments advanced by Tatar professors and journalists of Russian citizenship for the "Greater-Turkish" solution of the race questions of the Russian Tatars and Turkestan, for these refugees from Baku and the Caucasus, paid by the Stamboul Committee, journeyed half over Europe on their propaganda tour. The idea of Turanism has been taken up with such enthusiasm by the men of the Young Turkish Committee, and utilised with such effect for purposes of propaganda and to form a scientific basis for their neo-Turkish aims and aspirations, that a stream of feeling in favour of the Magyars has set in in Turkey, which has not failed to demolish to a still greater extent their already weakened enthusiasm for their German allies. And it is not confined to purely intellectual and cultural spheres, but takes practical form by the Turks declaring, as they have so often done in their papers in almost anti-German articles about Turanism, that what they really require in the way of European technique or European help they much prefer to accept from their kinsmen the Hungarians rather than from the Germans.
To the great annoyance of Germany, who would like to keep her heavy hand laid on the ally whom she has so far guided and for whom she pays, the practical results of the idea of Turanism are already noticeable in many branches of economic and commercial life. The Hungarians are closely allied to the Turks not only by blood but in general outlook, and form a marked contrast to Germany's cold and methodical calculation in worming her way into Turkish commercial life. After the war when Turkey is seeking for stimulation, it will be easy enough to make use of Hungarian influence to the detriment of Germany. Turanistic ideas have even been brought into play to establish still more firmly the union between Turkey and her former enemy Bulgaria, and the people of Turkey are reminded that the Bulgars are not really Slavs but Slavic Fino-Tartars.
In proportion as the Young Turks have brought racial politics to a fine art, so they have neglected the other, the religious side. More and more, Islam, the rock of Empire, has been sacrificed to the needs of race-politics. Those who look upon Enver and Talaat and their consorts to-day as a freemasonry of time-serving opportunists rather than as good Mohammedans come far nearer the truth than those who believe the idea spread by ignorant globe-trotters that every Turk is a zealous follower of Islam. It was not for nothing that Enver Pasha, the adventurer and revolutionary, went so far even in externals as to arouse the stern disapproval of a wide circle of his people. With true time-serving adaptability to all modern progress-and who will blame him?—he even finally sacrificed the Turkish soldier's hallowed traditional headgear, the fez. While the kalpak, even in its laced variety, could still be called a kind of field-grey or variegated or fur edition of the fez, the ragged-looking kabalak, called the "Enveriak" to distinguish it from other varieties, is certainly on the way towards being a real sun helmet. Still more recently (summer 1916) a black-and-white cap that looks absolutely European was introduced into the Ottoman Navy. The simple, devout Mohammedan folk were most unwilling to accept these changes which flew direct in the face of all tradition. They may be externals of but little importance, but in spite of their insignificance they show clearly the ruling spirit in official Young Turkish spheres.
This is in the harmless realm of fashion, or at any rate military fashion, exactly the same spirit as has caused the Turkish Government to undertake since 1916 radical changes in the very much more important field of private and public law. Special commissions consisting of eminent Turkish lawyers have been formed to carry through this reform of law and justice, and they have been hard at work ever since their formation. What is characteristic and modern about the reform is that the preponderating rôle hitherto played by the Sheriat Law, founded on the Koran and at any rate semi-religious, is to be drastically curtailed in favour of a system of purely Civil law, which has been strung together from the most varied sources, even European law being brought under contribution, and the "Code Napoléon," which has hitherto only been used in Commercial law. This of course leads to a great curtailment of the activity and influence of the kadis and muftis, the semi-religious judges, who have now to yield place to a more mundane system. The first inexorable consequence of the reform was that the Sheikh-ul-Islam, the highest authority of Islam in the whole Ottoman Empire, had to give up a large part of his powers, and incidentally of his income.
The changes made were so far-reaching, and the spirit of the reform so modern, that, in spite of the unshakable power of Talaat's truly dictatorial Cabinet which got it passed, a concession had to be made to the public opinion roused against the measure. The form was kept as it was, but the Sheikh-ul-Islam, Haïri Effendi, refused ostensibly to sign the decree and gave in his resignation. Not only, however, was an immediate successor found for him (Mussa Kiazim Effendi), who gave his signature and even began to work hard for the reform, but—and this is most significant for the relationship of the Young Turks towards Islam—Haïri Effendi, the same ex-Sheikh-ul-Islam who had proclaimed the Fetwa for the "Holy War," gave up his post without a murmur, and in the most peaceable way, and remained one of the principal pillars of the "Committee for Union and Progress."
His resignation was nothing but a farce to throw dust in the eyes of the all-too-trusting lower classes. After he had succeeded by this manœuvre in getting the reform of the law (which as a measure of Turkification was of more consequence to him now than his own sadly curtailed juristic functions) accepted at a pinch by the conservative population who still clung firmly to Islam, he went on to play his great rôle in the programme of jingoism. A "measure of Turkification" we called it, for that is what it amounts to practically, like everything else the men of the "Ittihad" take in hand.
I tried to give some hint of this within the limits of the censorship as long ago as the summer of 1916 in a series of articles I wrote for the Kölnische Zeitung. Here I should like just to confine myself to one point. Naturally the reform of the law aimed principally at substituting these newly formed pure Turkish conceptions for the Arabian legal ideas that had been the only thing available hitherto. (Everything that this victorious Turkey had absorbed and worked up in the way of civilised notions was either Arabian or Persian or of European origin.) It set to work now in the sphere of family law, which hitherto had been specially sacrosanct and only subordinate to the religious Sheria, and where tradition was strongest—not like commercial and maritime law which had been quite modern for a long time.
The reform went so far that it even tried to introduce a kind of civil marriage, whereas up till now all marriages, divorces, and everything to do with inheritance had taken place exclusively before religious officials. I may just add that these newest reforms give women no wider rights than they had before. Perhaps this may be taken as an indication that they have been conceived far less from a social than from a political point of view. What induced the Turkish Government to introduce anything so entirely modern as civil marriage in defiance of age-old custom was more than likely the desire to put an end to non-Turkish Ottomans contracting marriages and making arrangements about inheritance, etc., before their own privileged, ethnically independent organisations, and so to deal the final death-blow to the Armenian and Greek Patriarchates. If Family Law was modernised in this way, there would not be the faintest shadow of excuse left for the existence of these institutions which enjoyed a far-reaching and influential autonomy.