By position first, at the junction of three continents and therefore on the main field of history; secondly, as the site of convergence of the main avenues of continental travel and, thirdly, by its situation in one of the two regions in which climatic conditions proved most favorable for the early development of humanity, Turkey, at first glance, appears to have been eminently favored by nature. These advantages made it the meeting place of races which are generally associated with the three continents which the country unites. Aryan, Tatar and Semitic peoples therefore are strongly represented in the land.
In considering Turkey as the meeting place of three continents it is necessary that we should confine our conception of this fact to the strictly literal sense of the term. The country is a meeting place and nothing more. It has never been a transition zone physically and, as a consequence, there has been very little mingling of the different elements in its population. The very shape of the land prevents fusion of the inhabitants into a single people. The interior upland rises abruptly above a narrow fringe of coastal lowland. Its surface features, consisting partly of deserts and saline lakes, recall the typical aspect of central Asia. On the other hand, the rich vegetation of the maritime fringe reflects European characteristics. No better relic of Asia Minor’s former land connection with Europe exists than this strip of the west soldered to the eastern continent. But the physical union is clean-cut and, as a result, the change from the low-lying garniture of green scenery to the bare tracts of the uplands is sharp. These features make of Turkey a land of strange contrasts. Its coasts are washed by the waters of half a dozen seas and yet in places a journey of barely twenty-five miles from the shore lands the traveler squarely in the midst of a continental district.
So diversified a country could not be the land of patriotism, and as we pick up the thread of its troubled history we find a woeful absence of this spirit. In Byzantine times as in Ottoman a selfish bias towards local interests, a parochial attachment of the sordid type, pervades its population. A medley of peoples, each filling its particular geographical frame and animated by widely divergent ideals, are constantly engaged in looking abroad rather than toward the land for the attainment of their hopes. Nature fostered this condition. Communications between the different regions have always been difficult. From the narrow fringe of coastland to the interior plateau the ascent is steep. More than that the maritime dweller of the lowland dreaded the total lack of comfort which he knew awaited him on the arid highland. Conversely the indolent inhabitant of this elevated district realized that were he to settle near the coast he could not compete successfully with the more active seafarers. As time went on the coastal peoples—mainly Greeks—accustomed themselves to look beyond the sea for intercourse with the outside world while the Turkish tenants of the interior land still kept in their mind’s eye the vast Asiatic background out of which they had emerged.
In the same way the imposing barrier of the Taurus prevented contact between the occupants of the districts lying north and south of the mountain. The significance of this range to Europeans cannot be overestimated. The mountain has proved to be the chief obstacle to the northward spread of Semitic peoples and their civilizations. Successive waves of southern invaders, invariably of Semitic descent whether highly civilized or drawn from tribes of savages, spent themselves in vain dashes against the rocky slopes. The fact is verified historically whether we consider the failure of Assyrians in antiquity, of the Saracens during Middle Ages, or of the Egyptians and Arabs led by Mehemet Ali in modern days. At present the linguistic boundary between Turkish and Arabic occurs in this mountain chain and Hogarth has expressed the fact in a realistic phrase by stating that, at an elevation of about 2,000 ft., the Arabic speech is chilled to silence.
To come back to the factor of Turkey’s geographical position, we find that while this feature has generated an attracting force the shape of the land, on the other hand, promoted a constantly repellent action. We have in this situation a remarkable conflict which has exerted itself to the detriment of the inhabitants. The centripetal action of position was always reduced to a minimum by the centrifugal effects of form. The mountainous core made up by the Anatolian table-land and the western highland of Armenia was a center of dispersal of waters, and hence to a large degree of peoples. Furthermore, however much the land was a single unit with reference to the broad divisions of Asia, the fact remains that it was greatly subdivided within itself. The six main compartments into which it may be laid off have fostered totally divergent civilizations. All of these conditions were fundamentally fatal to the formation of nationality. They only favored intercontinental travel and trade. In this respect the country has been of the highest importance in the history of the eastern hemisphere, and at present commands world-wide attention.
In only one respect did position and form operate harmoniously. Both agencies combined to create Turkey’s relation with the world beyond its borders. This relation was facilitated by the admirable set of natural routes which led in and out of the country. Beginning with the broad band of the Mediterranean Sea, land and water routes succeed each other in close sequence. The inland sea itself is prolonged through the Ægean and the Turkish straits into the Black Sea, the shores of which are closely dotted with the terminals of great avenues from northeastern Europe, as well as all of northern and central Asia. On the European mainland, the far-reaching Danube has an outlet into Turkey through the Morava-Maritza valleys in addition to its own natural termination. The Dnieper valley plays an exceedingly important share in connecting Turkey to northern lands. To the east the trough-like recesses in the folds of the mountains of Armenia and Kurdistan lead to the great Tabriz gate beyond which the Persian Gulf affords sea travel to centers of civilization of the monsoon lands or westward to the African coast. Land connection with this continent also exists in the rift valley of Syria where the beginning of the African rift system is found. Through the occurrence of all these channels of penetration the history of Turkey finds place as a special chapter in the history of the world’s great nations. A greater share of responsibility falls on the land for this relation than on the Turks themselves.
The world relation of Turkish lands antedates, however, the coming of the Turks by many a century. Problems summarized in the familiar term Eastern Question have their origin in the existence of the narrow waterways consisting of the Dardanelles, Marmora and Bosporus. This water gap has exerted profound influence in shaping the relation of Turkish territory to the outside world. The Eastern Question is as old as the history of civilization on this particular spot of the inhabited world. It could not be otherwise because, fundamentally, this momentous international problem is merely that of determining which people or nation shall control the strait. Who shall gather toll from the enormous transit trade of the region? This is the economic problem which has always deeply agitated the leading commercial nations of the world. Its continuity is a proof of its geographical character. As long as these straits exist at the point of nearest convergence of the Balkan and Anatolian peninsulas, identical problems are bound to recur on their site. Beneath the shifting scenes of human events the abiding stage persists in directing them into its own channels.
Accordingly as early as in late Minoan times and surely in full Mycenean period, some fifteen hundred or two thousand years before our era, we find the Eastern Question already vexing the world. It centers first around Troy, because the city commanded the southwestern outlet of the straits and played the same leading part in the history of its day as Constantinople has played since then. The shifting of the site to the northeastern end of the waterway represents the gradual spread of Hellenic influence in northeastern maritime territory.
We can only come to an adequate conception of the rôle of Troy in history by a clear understanding of the value of its site. The city was a toll-station. Its citizens accumulated wealth in the manner in which the burghers of Byzantium laid the foundations of their vast fortunes. Schliemann’s excavations brought to light amazing treasures of precious metals and jewelry. These riches may well be regarded as the price paid for the right of the passage of vessels and their freight through the straits. Nor is it strange to find that coincident with the decline of the Homeric city, the earliest mention of Byzantium, its successor, appears. Consistently with this method of viewing Trojan history it becomes possible to reach a rational understanding of Homer’s classic epic as the account of a secular struggle for the possession of an eminently profitable site.[203] The testimony of history on the number of sieges which Constantinople has undergone is at least precise, although no literary masterpiece sheds lustre on the events. It is impossible to escape from the parallelism in the histories of Byzantium and Troy simply because the geographical background of both sites is similar in every respect. In the case of Troy, it meant convenient access to the Pontine rearland, probably the first El Dorado recorded by history—the land of fabulous treasures, in search of which the Argonautic expeditions were equipped. With Byzantium, it meant access to the luxuries which Asia could supply as far as the Pacific.
So much for the antiquity of the Eastern Question. Passing to another phase of Turkey’s world relation we find that the land’s influence has even affected the discovery of America. We now stand on the threshold of modern history and deal with a broad economic problem which affected late medieval commerce and which is an ever recurrent theme in that splendid period of active human enterprise known as the Age of Discovery. The dominant idea of the day was to find means of facilitating east-west trade in the eastern hemisphere.