Such are a few of the influences which have been at work to cause trouble in the Turkish Empire, and such the basis upon which is founded the most hypocritical agitation known the world over, that of the Russians in favour of their Christian “brethren” in Turkey. Who that has visited Russia as well as Turkey, and has a spark of fairness left in his composition, would not cry out in indignation at the hypocrisy of it?
No wonder Turks are loth to become reconciled to a state of things which none but this ever-patient race would have put up with so long, and have turned for sympathy to others who, whatever their selfish motives, have been less tainted with these intrigues against the laws of hospitality and common decency.
CHAPTER XIII
TURKISH TRAITS
A jewel in a ten-times-barred-up chest
Is a bold spirit in a loyal breast.
Shakespeare
There would seem to be two distinct strains of character influencing principle and conduct in the Turks. The one is that of the Turanian, the conquering Asiatic as typified, even before the Christian era, in a Mithridates, and subsequently in Attila, Tamerlane, Timur, Ghingiz Khan. The other is that of the Arab, whose code of life is contained in the teaching of Islam, with its gospel of placability and charity. Sultan Selim I represented the one in causing 40,000 Schiites to be exterminated. It is related that when he proposed to convert by force or exterminate the Christian population of his dominions, he was opposed, as already mentioned, by the Arab element in the person of the Sheikh ul Islam, who exhorted him to remember that Mohammed inculcated the duty of protecting, not harming, the Christians. These antagonistic currents were blended most harmoniously in the person of the renowned Saladin of Crusading fame. Down to the present day the Turks have instinctively recognized this duality and accepted it in the person of the Sultan, whilst they themselves have adhered to the teaching of Mohammed and by it regulated their own conduct. This explains why the Turkish people view the irresponsible acts, the extravagances, and the severities of their rulers so leniently as rightly appertaining to their exalted position; whereas the Turk himself is remarkably free from such tendencies. It explains their appreciation of the hard-working, industrious qualities of their Sultan as these were typified in Abdul Hamid, and their contempt for a lazy Sovereign like Abdul Aziz, though they themselves as a people rather incline to the indolence of a tranquil and contemplative life. Only when roused beyond endurance, excited and perplexed, is the Turk galvanized into quick action and apt to be resentful and cruel. Great crises find him placid and calm. The vast mass of the Mohammedan people is deeply imbued with its own code of ethics, and carries it into practice with a single-minded sincerity to which it would be difficult to find a parallel. From this point of view the Turk may be considered not so much “worldly” as “other-worldly.”
A deal of the mental acumen which with us is directed towards business and the accumulation of wealth is devoted in the case of the Turks to other and higher objects. While wealth and worldly position are our aims, and failure to achieve either spells life bankruptcy, the Turk appreciates conduct and good deeds as expounded in the Koran above everything else. According to Guglielmo Ferrero, “the Moslem can never pardon the unlimited materialism of Europeans.” Right conduct in all the situations of life is impressed upon him by the law of Mohammed, and in this respect the Moslem is more removed from European thought than in any other, inasmuch as there is a harmony between his precepts and his practice. He sees the stranger bowing down to rank and worldly position, whereas with him class distinctions are scarcely more than official. In Turkey, outside a comparatively few wealthy families—many of which are Phanariote Greek Christians who have supplied high official servants for generations to the Turkish State, and hold themselves somewhat aloof from the Mohammedans—there is little superiority of caste or the arrogance of class consciousness. The current standards are, in conformity with the teaching of the Koran and the New Testament, humanely democratic. Ahmed Midhat was at one time talked of as a possible Grand Vizier, for the Sultan was convinced of his integrity as well as of his ability. The fact that his father was a seller of cloth, or that he himself began life as an apprentice, was so far from constituting any disadvantage that neither he nor his friends would have been able to understand the idea of his humble parentage being in any way derogatory. All the less so since he was a man of magnificent presence, one of the comparatively few in Constantinople who by their appearance recalled the Sultans of the zenith of Ottoman power, who were fathers at sixteen and still added to their family at the age of seventy. So little does obscurity of birth constitute a stigma that a Turk, after having once been a servant who took charge of the goloshes of visitors left outside on entering a Turkish private house, became a pasha and was given the name of Papoudji (or slipper) Pasha; this cognomen was accepted by him and his friends rather as a compliment than otherwise. A Turk would be despised who was ashamed of, or endeavoured to hide, his humble antecedents, or denied his poor relations. He has no understanding of those who, having got on in the world, neglect or cut themselves adrift from their connexions because these have become irksome and they are ashamed of them. When a man rises to high position in Turkey he remembers only too readily those who belong to him, and now and then gets himself into trouble by helping his poor relations or those who have been friends of his obscure youth; and this often without any other motive than the satisfaction to be derived from a kind action. For in Turkey high position is supposed to be a reward for zeal in service, for conduct, and is freely open to all classes. That it is often bestowed upon the unworthy is only to say that judgment and selection are fallible in Turkey as elsewhere; but there can be no doubt that service rendered is in the first instance the test.
It is only among the Turks who have mixed with Europeans, particularly in diplomacy, that you find that hauteur, that “class-selfish arrogance,” and that degree of cynicism which have been acquired in social intercourse in the capitals of Europe. From the ranks of these Europeanized Turks sprang the artificial element who upset the ancient régime, with small prospect, as we now see, of putting anything better in its place.