Turkish nationality is equally meaningless. The descendants of Asiatic nomads became masters of western Asia without ever conferring the boon of government or of nationality upon the land and its peoples. In Gibbon’s mordant words “the camp and not the soil is the country of the genuine Tatar.” And Turkey is still a vast field in which the Turk has pitched his tent and merely waits, knowing that the day is not far off when he will have to break camp and seek new pasturages for his herds and flocks. But the site on which he has settled for the past five centuries had been the seat of a highly organized government. Seeing himself master of this estate the Turk unhesitatingly adopted its institutions. Thus, under the mantle of Islamic theocracy, Byzantine government and customs have continued to flourish in Ottoman dominions. Barring special features belonging to Mohammedanism, the ceremonials of the Sultan’s court may be traced, step by step, to Byzantine forms. The very absolutism of the caliphs is alien to the fundamentally democratic character of both Tatar societies and Koranic teaching. It is Byzantine and a relic of the despotism of the Roman Caesars.
In speaking of the Turks it is necessary to carry two distinct types in mind. The pure Tatar vagrant, true to his native indolence, which unfits him for sedentary occupation, is in the minority. The mass of the Turkish population consists of a mixed element in which the racial strain of given localities persists along with characteristics imparted by fusion with Turki conquerors. This mingling is indicated further by the spirit which moves this people in the performance of their daily tasks. Its members are recruited among the plodding, gentle-mannered and kind-hearted peasants of the land. Local influence accounts for these qualities. Occasionally, however, the foreign strain will crop out. Then, like their nomad ancestors, who, from peaceful shepherds roaming leisurely from patch to patch of green, are transformed into fiends incarnate by the approach of a thief or a beast of prey, or whom a passing storm will throw into fits of uncontrollable rage which vents itself in passionate outbursts of shrieking and gesticulation, the Turkish peasants can cast their natural softness of character to the winds and become either bloodthirsty murderers smiting unarmed Christians or else heroes performing gallant deeds on the battlefield.
The majority of this Turkish population finds a congenial home on the Anatolian upland. Their ancestors beheld here an environment in which the physical characteristics of the plateaus of central Asia were reproduced. They took to it naturally. The table-land is a rolling expanse mournfully devoid of vegetation, save for rare clusters of stunted trees. Scanty plots of grass, surrounding sickly pools or streams, resemble holes in a ragged garment spread over its surface. Sun-baked in summer, chilled in winter, with a climate too deficient in moisture for the favorable development of human societies, the land could only appeal to Asiatic sons of semi-arid areas. In recent years, the tendency of Turks to retire to this region is observable wherever the industry of Christian populations of the encircling coastland has rendered life too arduous for Turkish love of ease.
The penetration of this table-land by nomads from the heart of Asia goes on today as in the past, albeit with abated intensity. It is no rare occurrence in Asia Minor to meet Tatars or Turkomans who have been on a slow westerly march for periods of from five to ten years at a time. Most of them come from the Kirghiz steppes. A vague desire to change their residence from a Christian to a Mohammedan country impels their wanderings, according to their own accounts. Constantinople looms as an objective nebulously impressed in their minds. But the goal is rarely attained. In reality their migration is as unconscious as that of their forefathers and merely carries them out of sheer necessity from pasturage to pasturage in the manner it affected former generations.
Mohammedan Immigrants
Ever since the establishment of Turkish authority in western Asia the policy of the Sultan’s officials has been directed towards attracting Mohammedan settlers from foreign countries to the unpopulated districts of Turkey. Particularly at the end of unsuccessful wars, special efforts are made to induce Moslem inhabitants of lost provinces to return within Turkish boundaries, where land often exempt from taxation is assigned to them. Widely distributed Circassian, Tatar and Turkoman settlements owe their origin to this Turkish method of increasing the Mohammedan element in the country. The Bithynian peninsula, where Cretaceous limestones and sandy Eocene beds provide excellent soils, is a region favored by immigrants.
Russia’s southwesterly spread of empire is responsible for the movement of some 500,000 Circassians from the Caucasus highlands to Asiatic Turkey. Lithe of figure, brilliant-eyed and nimble in mind, these immigrants are morally and physically far superior to their new countrymen. They bring with them the higher standard of living of their native land. Their dwellings are more solidly built than the customary shanties or hovels of the Anatolian table-land, and their food is of the average European quality. Wherever settled, they live in a degree of comfort unknown to the Turkish peasant. Flourishing farming communities have grown up around their villages. In cities they are distinguished by a natural aptitude for commerce, and many an able government official has been recruited from their numbers.
In race, language and religion the Circassians of Turkey present, according to tribal origin, the confusion existing in their cradle land. The Kabardian group of the Uzun Yaila are of western Caucasus extraction and speak an incorporative language. The Chechen settled in Syria are derived from Daghestani highlanders. In some cases Circassians bear Christian names, but worship in mosques. Representatives of central Asiatic, European and even Semitic races are found among them.
A colony of Noghai Tatar refugees was founded in the lower Jeihun valley after the Crimean War, at which time it consisted of some 60,000 individuals. Their numbers were speedily reduced, however, by the malaria and fevers of the unhealthful Cilician coast land. A decimated remnant is now engaged in farming the marshy lands originally bestowed on their fathers. They maintain excellent relations with the Turks, with whom they intermarry.
The Turkomans of Asia Minor are, according to their statements, refugees from Muscovite Christianity. In reality they seek escape from Russian pressure exerted to force them to abandon nomadism. This name is applied generally to immigrants coming from Turkestan who preserved their roving habits. The cruel Turki type of lineament and expression is observable on their faces. They are Sunnis, or orthodox Mohammedans, and a Turkish-speaking people, but have little intercourse with native Turks.