Anti-war and pro-Entente feelings among the Turks—Turkish pessimism about the war—How would Abdul-Hamid have acted?—A war of prevention against Russia—Russia and a neutral Turkey—The agreement about the Dardanelles—A peaceful solution scorned—Alleged criminal intentions on the part of the Entente; the example of Greece and Salonika—To be or not to be?—German influence—Turkey stakes on the wrong card—The results. There has been no lack of cross currents against the war policy of the Young Turkish Government. Ever since the entry of Turkey into the war, there has been a deeply rooted and unshakeable conviction among all kinds and conditions of men, even in the circles of the Pashas and the Court—the people of Turkey take too little interest in politics and are composed of far too heterogeneous elements for there to be anything in the nature of what we call "public opinion"—that Turkey's alliance with the Central Powers was a complete[Pg 210] mistake and that it can lead to no good. It is of course known that since the outbreak of war Turkey has not only been under martial law and in a state of siege, but that under the régime of a brutal military dictatorship, with its system of espionage, personal liberty has been practically null and void. Any expressions of disapproval, therefore, or agitations against the "Committee" are naturally only possible in most intimate circles, and that with all secrecy. Little or nothing of the true opinions of this or that personage ever trickles through to publicity, and so it is utterly impossible, except from quite detached symptoms, to get any proper idea of what are the real thoughts and feelings of those cultured Turks who do not belong to the "Ittihad" and have no part in their system of pillage and aggrandisement.
In spite of the limited information available it will be worth while, I think, to go into these counter-streams a little more fully. In pretty well every grade of society and among all nationalities in Turkey, there is the conviction that the old Sultan Abdul-Hamid would never have committed the fateful error of declaring[Pg 211] war against the Entente and binding himself hand and foot to Germany. In the case of Turkey's remaining neutral, the Entente had formally promised her territorial integrity; Turkey refused. She felt herself driven to a war of prevention, principally through fear of the power of Russia. The statements made by those who agreed with Enver and Pasha and pushed for the war, that Turkey in the case of non-participation would be completely thrown on the mercy of a victorious Russia and that Russia's true aim in the war was the Dardanelles and Constantinople, have never been authenticated. There are still Turks, anti-Russian Turks, who even admitted this possibility, and yet believed the word of the Entente—at any rate of the Western Powers—and trusted to England's throwing her weight into the scale against Russia's plans of conquest, if Turkey remained neutral. They saw and still see no necessity for the Turkish Government to have entered on a war of prevention.
Russia's aim was the Straits and Constantinople—well and good. But Russia would by hook or by crook have had to come to a friendly[Pg 212] agreement with Turkey and could not have simply broken a definite promise given by the combined Entente to Turkey. It would have been quite different if Russia had demanded Constantinople from the Western Powers as the price of her participation in the war against Germany; then, but only then, the Entente would perhaps have had to come to an agreement satisfying Russia on this head. But Russia had quite other ideas, and long before Turkey's entry into the war and without any prospects of getting Constantinople, she flung her whole weight against Germany and Austria right at the beginning of the war.
The treaty with regard to Constantinople between the Western Powers and Russia was not signed till six months after Turkey declared war, and England would certainly never have allowed Russia to encroach on a really neutral or sympathetically neutral Turkey. Then, but only then, there might have been some foundation in fact for the ideas one heard advanced by German-Turkish illusionists who would still have liked to believe that there was continual dissension within the Entente, even long after the official notification[Pg 213] of the Anglo-Russian treaty with regard to the Straits, and by some even after the speech of the Russian minister Trepoff, that the English occupation of the islands at the entrance to the Dardanelles, which could be made into a second Gibraltar, aimed chiefly at blocking the Straits and preventing Russia from gaining undisturbed possession of Constantinople. Specially optimistic people even look to that chimerical antagonism between Russia and England for the salvation of Turkey, should Germany be finally overcome.
Whether she liked it or not, then, Russia would have had to come to a friendly agreement with Turkey, had the latter remained neutral, in order to gain the desired goal. And this goal would have been necessarily limited, by the fact of Turkey's non-entry on the enemy side, rather to the stoppage of German Berlin-Baghdad efforts at expansion, the prevention of any strangulation of the enormous Russian trade in the south and desperate opposition to any attempt to keep Russia away from the Mediterranean, than to an attack on Turkey and her vital interests. And who knows whether under such an agreement, bound as[Pg 214] it was to give Russia certain liberties and privileges in the Straits, Turkey also might not have got much in exchange, at any rate on financial lines, and might not also have obtained permission at last to develop Armenia by that west-to-east railway so long desired by the Turks and so strongly opposed by the Russians?
Would the terrible bloodshed in the present war, the complete economic exhaustion entailed, and the risk of a doubtful outcome of the fight for existence or non-existence not have been far outweighed by the prospect, in the case of a friendly agreement with Russia, of seeing the orthodox cross again planted on the Hagia Sophia, an international régime established in Constantinople—with certain Russian privileges and the satisfaction of certain Russian moral demands, it is true, but otherwise nothing to disturb Turkish life in Stamboul or in any way prejudice Turkish prestige? Even the prospect of having to raze the forts on the Straits to the ground in order to give free access from the Mediterranean, or the necessity of having to inaugurate a more humane and beneficent policy in Armenia, perhaps with[Pg 215] European supervision over the carrying out of the reforms would surely have been preferable to the present state of affairs. These would all have ensured for Turkey a long period of peace, capital wealth and intellectual and social improvement, perhaps at the expense of a momentary hurt to her feelings,—but these had been far more severely wounded already, as, for example, when she had to look on helplessly while bit after bit of her Empire was torn from her. It would have been impossible for Russia to get more than this from Turkey had she remained neutral. Her sovereignty and territorial integrity would have been completely guaranteed.
But Turkey thought she had to stake all, her whole existence, on one card, and she staked on the wrong one, as is recognised now by thousands of intelligent Turks. Believers in the war policy followed by the Government make themselves hoarse maintaining that if Russia had not gradually overpowered a neutral Turkey to win Constantinople completely, at any rate the Entente would have finally forced her to join their side; in either case, therefore, war was inevitable. They point to Salonika, and,[Pg 216] in face of all reason, maintain that the Entente Powers would in all probability have treated Turkey exactly as they treated Greece. They forget that their geographical position is entirely different, and would have a very different effect on military tactics. If Turkey had remained a sympathetic neutral, so would Bulgaria; or else the whole of the Balkan States, from Roumania and Bulgaria to Greece, would have joined the Entente right at the beginning. In either case there would have been no necessity at all for Turkey to join, for what military obligations had she to fulfil? The Entente would certainly never have driven Turkey to fight, simply to get the benefit of the Turkish soldiers available; there is no truth whatever in the statements circulated about unscrupulous compulsion with this end in view.
The benefit for the Entente of Turkey's sympathetic neutrality would have been so enormous that they would most certainly have been content with that. Neither in Germany nor in Turkey is there any doubt whatever in military circles that it was Turkey's entry into the war on the German side and her blocking[Pg 217] of the Straits, and so preventing Russia from obtaining supplies of ammunition and other war material, that has so far saved the Central Powers. Had Turkey remained neutral, constant streams of ammunition would have poured into Russia, Mackensen's offensive would have had no prospect at all of success, and Germany would have been beaten to all intents and purposes in 1915. The Turks do not scruple to let Germany feel that this is so on every suitable or unsuitable occasion.
The Entente would certainly never have moved a finger to disturb Turkey's sympathetic neutrality and drive her into war. There would have been tremendous material advantages for Turkey in such a neutrality. Instead of being impoverished, bankrupt, utterly exhausted, wholly lost, as she now is, she might have been far richer than Roumania has ever been. There is one thing quite certain, and that is that Abdul-Hamid would never have let this golden opportunity slide of having a stream of money pouring in on himself and his country. And certainly Turkey would not have lacked moral justification had she so acted.
[Pg 218]
These considerations I have put forward rather from the Turkish anti-war point of view than from my own. They are opinions expressed hundreds of times by thoroughly patriotic and intelligent Turks who saw how the ever more intensive propaganda work of the German Ambassadors, first Marschall von Bieberstein, then Freiherr von Wangenheim, gradually wormed its way through opposition and prejudice, how the German Military Mission in Constantinople tried to turn the Russian hatred of Germany against Turkey instead, how, finally, those optimists and jingoists on the "Committee," who knew as little about the true position of affairs throughout the world as they did of the intentions of the Entente or the means at their own disposal, proceeded to guide the ship of State more and more into German waters, without any reference to their own people, in return for promises won from Germany of personal power and material advantage. These were those days of excitement and smouldering unrest when Admiral von Souchon of the Goeben and the Breslau, with complete lack of discipline towards his superior, Djemal Pasha, arranged with the[Pg 219] German Government to pull off a coup without Djemal's knowledge—chiefly because he was itching to possess the "Pour le Mérite" order—and sailed off with the Turkish Fleet to the Black Sea. (I have my information from the former American Ambassador in Constantinople, Mr. Morgenthau, who was furious at the whole affair.)[2]
These were the days when Enver and Talaat threw all their cards on the table in that fateful game of To Be or Not to Be, and brought on their country, scarcely yet recovered from the bloodshed of the Balkan War, a new and more terrible sacrifice of her manhood in a war extending over four, and later five, fronts. The whole result of this struggle for existence depended on final victory for Germany and that was becoming daily more doubtful; in fact, Ottoman troops had at last to be dispatched by German orders to the Balkans and Galicia.
[Pg 220]
Turkey had, too, to submit to the ignominy of making friends with her very recent enemy and preventing imminent military catastrophe by handing over the country along the Maritza, right up to the gates of the sacred city of Adrianople, to the Bulgarians. She had to look on while Armenia was conquered by the Russians; while Mesopotamia and Syria, in spite of initial successes, were threatened by English troops; while the "Holy War" came to an untimely end, the most consecrated of all Islam's holy places, Mecca, fell away from Turkey, the Arabs revolted and the Caliphate was shattered; while her population in the Interior endured the most terrible sufferings, and economic and financial life tended slowly and surely towards complete and hopeless collapse.
Not even yet, indeed now less than ever, is there any general acceptance among the people of the views held by Enver and Talaat and their acolytes. Not yet do intelligent, independent men believe the fine phrases of these minions of the "Committee," who are held in leading strings by these dictators partly through gifts of money, office, or the oppor[Pg 221]tunity to enrich themselves at the expense of the people, partly through fear of the consequences should they revolt, or of those domestic servants who call themselves deputies and senators. On the contrary, it is no exaggeration to say that three-quarters of the intelligent out-and-out Turkish male population—quite apart from Levantines, Greeks, and Armenians—and practically the entire female population, who are more sensitive about the war and whose hearts are touched more deeply by its immeasurable suffering, have either remained perfectly friendly to England and France or have become so again through terrible want and suffering.
The consciousness that Turkey has committed an unbounded folly has long ago been borne in upon wide circles of Turks in spite of falsified reports and a stringent censorship. There would be no risk at all in taking on a wager that in private conversation with ten separate Turks, in no way connected with the "Committee," nine of them will admit, as soon as they know there is no chance of betrayal, that they do not believe Turkey will win, and that, with the exception of the much-feared[Pg 222] Russia, they still feel as friendly as ever towards their present enemies. "Quoi qu'il arrive, c'est toujours la pauvre Turquie qui va payer le pot cassé." ("Whatever happens, it's always poor Turkey that'll have to pay the piper") and "Nous avons fait une grande gaffe" ("We have put our foot in it") were the kind of remarks made in every single political discussion I ever had in Constantinople—even with Turks.
So much for the men, who judge with their reason. What of the women? The one sigh of cultured Turkish women, up to the highest in the land—who should have a golden book written in their honour for their readiness to help, their sympathy, and humanity in this war—is: "When shall we get rid of the Boches; when will our good old friends, the English and the French, come back to us?" Nice results, these, of German propaganda, German culture, German brotherhood of arms! What a sad and shameful story for a German to have to tell! Naturally the drastic system of the military dictatorship precludes the public expression of such feelings, but one needs only have seen with one's own eyes the[Pg 223] looks so often cast by even real Turkish cultured society at the German Feldgrauen who often marched in close formation through the streets of Constantinople—for a time they used to sing German soldiers' songs, until that was prohibited at the express wish of the Turkish Government to see how the land lies.
There was a marked and ill-concealed contrast in the coldness shown to Imperial German officers and the lavish affection showered on the Austrians and Hungarians who used for a time often to pass through Constantinople on their way to the Dardanelles or Anatolia with their heavy artillery. They were a great deal more sociable than their German comrades, and one could not fail to note the significance of such freely voiced comments as "N'est-ce pas, ils sont charmants les Autrichiens?" ("The Austrians are delightful, aren't they?") The sight of us Germans, especially the very considerable German garrison stationed for a time in the Capital, awakened in the Turks, however much they might recognise the military necessity for their presence, remarkable ideas about the future "German Egyptising of Turkey," and everyone blamed Enver Pasha[Pg 224] as the man responsible for Germany's penetrating thus far.
A Turk in a high official position—whose name I shall naturally not divulge—even went so far as to say to me in an intimate personal discussion we were having one day between friend and friend: "We Turks are and will always remain, in spite of the war, pro-English and pro-French so far as social and intellectual life is concerned; and it would need twenty years of hard propaganda work on Germany's part, quite different from her present methods, to change this point of view, if it ever could be changed." He went on to recall the time of the pro-English era, and the enthusiastic demonstrations that had taken place at the Sirkedji station when the horses were taken out of the English Ambassador's carriage. "I was there myself," he said, "and believe me, apart from the war, heaps of us are at bottom still of the same mind." And, growing heated, he added: "What is your Embassy, tell me? Is it really an Embassy? No representation, no intimate intercourse with us, or at best only with your political agents, no personal charm, nothing but brusque[Pg 225] demands and a most humiliating economic neglect of the Turkish population. The English and the French and even the Russians would treat us quite differently."
This man is no exception in his ideas. He is a thorough Young Turk, who holds with the "Committee" through thick and thin and has to thank them for a very pleasant billet, but he is, besides, a youngish man with a modern European education. He is thoroughly imbued, as are all of his kind, with modern French ideas, and even the war cannot alter that. It only needs the final collapse of the Central Powers, and then the break-down of the whole political system under the direction of these jingoistic emancipationists who think they can get on without Europe, and the Turks will all, every one of them, be as thoroughly pro-English and pro-French as they ever were and will hate Germany and everything German with fanatical hatred.
Towards Hungary, their blood relation, they will probably retain some friendliness in memory of their alliance in the Great War and the cause of Turanism; they will be quite indifferent to Bulgaria; they will lose their fear of[Pg 226] Russia and come to an agreement with her; but after the war there will be no bridging the gulf between Turkey and Germany, and if Germany, on the conclusion of peace, is allotted any part of smaller Turkey by the rest of the European Powers, she will have to reckon for many a long year with the very chilly relations that will exist between Germans and Turks. Even those who went heart and soul into the war as a war of defence against Turkey's powerful northern neighbour foresee that when peace is declared Turkey will, so far as her enormous indebtedness to Germany permits, rather throw herself on the mercy of England and France and America and beg from them the capital necessary for reconstruction and for freeing them from the hated German influence—an aversion which is already evident in hundreds of different ways. Even Germany is beginning to recognise the existence of this tendency, which, hand in hand with the jingoistic attempt to turkify commercial life, bodes ill for German activity in Turkey after the war.
These are the opinions of the educated classes. The people, however, the poor, igno[Pg 227]rant Turkish people, were ready long ago to accept any solution that would liberate them from their terrible sufferings. The Turkish people have not the mental calibre of our German people which will perhaps make them fight on, just for the sake of leaving no stone unturned, even after it is quite evident that they are tending towards final collapse. The stake for which they are fighting is not so valuable to this agricultural people, who with an inferior and extortionate set of rulers have never been able really to enjoy life, as it is to the population of a modern industrial country like Germany, where every political gain or loss has a direct result on their own pockets; defeat will certainly have much less effect on the Oriental. One can therefore speak with confidence of a general longing for the end of the war at any price. The Turks have had quite enough of suffering, and there are limits to what even these willing and mutely resigned victims can bear.
Nevertheless it is quite certain that the courageous Turkish soldier, in obedience to iron discipline and in unconditional submission to his Padishah, will continue to defend his lost[Pg 228] cause to the very last drop of his blood, with an unquestioning resignation that absolutely precludes the idea of any defection within the army. Only a purely political military revolution, originating with the better-informed officers, who now really no longer believe in ultimate victory, is within the bounds of possibility.
But the most confiding endurance on the part of the Turkish soldier, even when the military cause has long been lost, will not hinder this same soldier, when he is once more back in his own home as a peasant, from realising that European influence and European civilisation are a very competent protection against the miserably retrogressive Turkish rule, and that he has drawn more material profit from that single example of European activity, the Baghdad Railway, than from all Turkish official reforms put together, and so would willingly see Europe exercising a powerful control in his country. He would accept the military collapse of his country which he had so long and so bravely defended, and the dramatic political changes, with a quietly submissive "Inshallah." And although, deprived as he is of every kind[Pg 229] of information and without even the beginnings of knowledge, he perhaps still believes in ultimate victory for the Padishah, he will probably heave a sigh of relief when the unexpected collapse comes, and he will not take long to understand what it means for him: freedom and happiness and an undreamt-of material well-being under strong European influence.
The late successor to the throne, Prince Yussuf Izzedin Effendi, was the highest of those in high authority who openly represented the pessimistic anti-war tendency. It was for this that he was murdered or perhaps made to commit suicide by Enver Pasha. The whole truth about this tragic occurrence can only be sifted to the bottom when the dictators of the "Committee" are no longer in their place and light finally breaks on Turkey. Whether it was murder or suicide, the death of the successor to the throne is one of the most dramatic scandals of Turkish history, and Enver Pasha has his blood, as well as the blood of so many others, on his head. As far as is possible during the war, Europe has already collected all the information available on the subject. I myself was in Constantinople when the tragic oc[Pg 230]currence took place, and I can speak so far from personal experience.
In connection with this sensational event, the world has already heard how Yussuf Izzedin was kept for years under the despotic Abdul-Hamid shut off from the world as a semi-prisoner in his beautiful Konak of Sindjirlikuyu, just outside the gates of Constantinople, where he became a sufferer from acute neurasthenia. In recent years, however, his health had improved and, although latently hostile to the men of the "Committee" and their politics, he had come more into the foreground, especially after the recapture of Adrianople, which he visited with full pomp and ceremony as Crown Prince of the Turkish Empire. While the Gallipoli campaign was going on, he even made a journey to the Front to greet his soldiers. Early one morning he was found lying dead in a pool of his own blood with a severed artery. He had received his death wound in exactly the same place and exactly the same way as his father, Sultan Abdul-Aziz, who fell a victim to Abdul-Hamid's hatred. The political significance of Yussuf Izzedin's death is perfectly clear. What we want to do now is[Pg 231] to demonstrate Enver Pasha's moral culpability in the matter and to show how he was more or less directly the murderer of this quiet, cultured, highly respected, and thoroughly patriotic man, who was some day to ascend the throne of Turkey.
So much at least seems to be clear, that Prince Izzedin, who was naturally interested in retaining his accession to the throne undisturbed and who in spite of his neurasthenia was man enough to stand up for his own rights, foresaw ruin for his kingdom by Turkey's entry into the war on the side of Germany. He was more far-seeing than the careless adventurers and narrow-minded fanatics of the "Committee" and recognised that the letting-go of the treasured Pan-Islamic traditions of old Sultan Hamid was a grave mistake which would lead to the alienation of the Arabs, and which endangered both the Ottoman Caliphate and Ottoman rule in the southern parts of the Empire. He could not console himself for the evacuation of the territory round Adrianople, right up to the gates of the sacred city, which meant much to him as the symbol of national enlightenment. He had a real per[Pg 232]sonal dislike for upstarts of the stamp of Enver and Talaat. Apart from these differences of opinion and personal sympathies and antipathies, deep-rooted though these undoubtedly were, Yussuf Izzedin was and always would have been a thorough "Osmanli" with fiery nationalistic feelings, who wished for nothing but the good of his Empire and his country. And yet he was got rid of.
It would be difficult for the present Turkish Government to prove that the successor to the throne, apart from his feeling of sorrow that his country had been drawn into the war, apart from his readiness to conclude an honourable separate peace at the first possible moment, did anything which might have caused them trouble. The officials of the Turkish Government had themselves made repeated efforts through their Swiss Ambassadors to find out how the land lay, and whether they could conclude a separate peace; so they had no grounds at all for reproaching Prince Yussuf Izzedin, who, as a leader of this movement, naturally let no opportunity of this kind slide. But he was far too clever not to know that any attempt in this direction behind the backs of the present[Pg 233] Government would have no chance of success so long as Turkey was held under the iron fist of Germany.
Perhaps the "Committee" had something to fear for the future, when the time came for the reverses now regarded as inevitable. Yussuf would then make use of his powerful influence in many circles—notably among the discontented retired military men—to demand redress from the "Committee."............