Conflict Between East And West ~ Tam Metin

Conflict Between East And West

CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN TURKEY

HALIDE EDIB

Maktaba Jamia Millia Islamia, DELHI.

Jamia Press. Delhi.

Conflict of East and West in Turkey

CONTENTS

Preface Chapter I Chapter IT Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Note on the ¹

Ottoman Turks as State-builder* The Decline of the Ottomans Revolution and War The Turkish Republic Literature and Culture I Literature and Culture II Turkish Women Review and Future Outlook Ahiler ' ...

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33 70 101 125 163 193 224 248

PREFACE.

This book is an adaptation of the Extension Eectures Halide Hanmn delivered at the Jamia Millia Islamia in January and February last. These lectures have been organised with the twofold object of forming contacts with lepresentative personalities of the outside world and of enriching our own experience by studying the problems and the ideals of other peoples. Halide llanuni's visit fulfilled this object admirably. Her own cultural attainments and social and moral outlook are a harmonious fusion of all that is best in the East and West of to-day 5 and the lectures tell us all that we, as the inheritors of a culture and the builders of a future society, need to know of Turkey—one of the great melting-pots of the world.

W hen I first met Halide Hanum at Constantinople in 1913, she was anxious to come to India and tell us the truth about her country, for Turkey has borne the brunt of European calumny, deliberate and organised, just as she has had to withstand the, fiercest onslaughts of European imperialism, and the most treacherous blows of unscrupulous diplomacy. But I am rather glad she did not come then, but now, when the battle is over and she can look back with confidence and pride on her own rich and varied experience and the invincible spirit of her people.

She did not come to us with a grievance and a passion, but with an intimate and accurate knowledge of men and affairs, and the true wisdom born of sober reflection, forgiveness and understanding.

The bare tacts of IJalide Han inn s life are a matter of general information, and it would be superfluous to repeat them here. What we need to remember is that she is one of those in whose life two ways of thought, two methods of social organisation came into conflict. Her early years were spent in a typically Eastern household ; her education and the problems of ner time brought her face to face with the West. It would have been easy for her, like so many educated women of the Last, to deny her own culture and assert the actual if not moral right to accept what standards she liked. It may also have been possible to take refuge behind self-adulatory prejudices and close her eyes to the new duties and responsibilities. But rather than live out her life, with an inner futility masked by cultural accomplishments and fine manners, or a social and moral atrophy decked out in the guise of ancient and established virtue, she flung herself into the thick of the tight, and has emerged victorious. She has grasped the fundamental values of the West, freedom, organisation, efficient social co-operation; and her active life of service and guidance has made her treasure all the more highly the pearls of great price, which, we are told, may be found only in the East—inner quietude, spiritual harmony, the realisation of a unity beneath fill]

all diversity, a love beyond fill hatred. She has achieved great distinction as a novelist and social philosopher ; she has been a professor and an educationist who helped to organise the system of public insti notion, a speaker ot immense courage and power, when it was necessary to raise her people from the depths of stupefaction and misery and move them to heroic ef iort; she has done the work of a news ngency and a commission of enquiry 5 ^he has worn militai y unifoinis, and served at the head-cjuarters of the nationalist army, with the din and the smoke of a grim battle around 1km*. She has also been a rebel against customs and traditions that fettered life ; she has fearlessly denounced men and policies in the name of brotherhood, justice and truth. She has loved and served her people, but with a large-heartedness that could look beyond, them to the greater human lamily; she has thrown herself heart and soul into the struggle of her nation for life and liberty, but never ceased to be aware of the worldwide moral and cultural conflicts of which it formed a pait. She speaks, theiefoie, with gi eater authority than any person living on the fundamental problems 011 whose solution will depend the future of the East.

\et I believe this book will prove quite provocative. East and \\ est being attitudes of mind rather than geographical terms, it is impossible to define them in a way that will be acceptable to all. No doubt, as Halide Hanum says, over-emphasis on spirit and on matter are the basic distinction between

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East and West, but contrary tendencies have been sufficiently in evidence to lend plausibility to aigu-ments against this generalisation. And paiticulaily in the East of to-day such arguments are likely to overstep the limits of a purely academic and objective discussion. Everything that tends to expose the inherent weaknesses of Eastern peoples is resented, because it tightens the strangle-hold of Western lmnerialism or confirms the moral and intellectual domination of the West. lint the main contention ot Halide Hamuli, that the East has succumbed to Western aggression owing to its inability to organise its material and social life cannot be challenged. And if she maintains that this has been one of the fatal

1 * * *t kdie

consequences of the over-emphasis on spin , s ie

states no less clearly that over-emphasis on ie

material side of existence is proving equally disastious

for the West. In any case, criticism coming from

such a hero of a hundred fights as Halide Hanum

should be considered more of a lesson than a reproach.

In her definition of East and West I do not personally think Halide Hanum differs from the generality of sober thinkers, Eastern or Western. But her opinions regarding Pan-islamism and her detached, objective discussion of religion and religious matters will hardly meet with the approval of the vast majority of Indian Moslems. It is in respect of this that a few explanations are necessary.

It is difficult for anyone not an Indian Moslem to realise what Pan-islamisni means to the Indian

Moslems. Ever since the Moslems came into India, more than seven hundred years ago, they have kept open house, in the widest political and social sense of the term. Arabs, Egyptians, Syrians, lurks, even Tartar immigrants, have been given full opportunity to earn the just reward of talent and merit. Hut the Pan-islamisin of the twentieth century is something far deeper than the friendliness, the democratic spirit and the desire to enlist the finest talent, even though it came from China, in the service of the state, which the open door system implied. It is something similar to the attempt made in the sixteenth century to combine the naval power of the Indians and the Turks against the common enemy, the Portuguese. It is a sentiment of which the prayers for Turkish success in the Tripolitan and Balkan wars, the Relief Fund, the Medical Mission and even the Khilafat movement were but weak and faltering expressions. It is not a sentiment inspired by interest, policy or worldly wisdom; it has no definite practical end in view. Tint strange to say, it is just for these reasons that the Pan-islamist sentiment has been one of the Indian Moslem's most sacred and exalted passions. It is because he is helpless, because all his co-religionists are equally helpless, because Western imperialism is aggressive and everywhere successful, that he has become a Pan-islamist. And because Turkey alone of all Moslem countries is free, because the Turks alone have power to defeat enemies not overwhelmingly strong and the manliness to prefer death to slavery, the imagination of the Indian Moslems converted them into as convinced Pan-islamists as they themselves, and placed on their shoulders the burden not only of defending their hearth and home, but the honour of Islam and all Moslem peoples as well. The Turks could not, of course, be expected to appreciate this quaint romanticism and chivalry, or endure such oppressive affection. When they declined the honour that had been thrust upon them, the Indian Moslems' dream-world crashed upon their head. They could not think objectively or subjectively. They just could not think and could not believe.

Time has no doubt healed their wounds, and they do not now reflect on the matter in the light ot sentiment alone. But their world is still bleak and desolate, and the wrecks of their dreams lie around them. The Pan-islamism that was once an ideal is now a vague grievance; what was once a hope and an inspiration is now a sorrow. God is still in heaven, but the world has apparently lost its balance. For the hero of the Islamic community has now become the Prodigal Son.

Yet, however tragic the situation may be for the Indian Moslems, it cannot be gainsaid that their Moslem brethren have been more directly responsible for the surrender of the Pan-islamist ideal than the Turks themselves. The Indian Moslems were guilty mainly of a confusion of issues 5 and except that there were Indian Moslems in the British forces in Mesopotamia and Palestine, one may even say that they have been consistent in their friendship and ready to help as far as their position as British subjects allowed them. But the non-Turkish Moslem subjects of the Ottoman Umpire were openly aud heartlessly treacherous. I cannot here go into the discussion whether their grievances were genuine or manufactured for the purpose, but their attitude would have convinced the most zealous Turkish Pan-islamist that there was no possibility of co-operation between them and the Turks. The Ottoman Empire is now gone and its non-Turkish Moslem subjects have all got what they wanted or what they deserved, so we may as well admit that the abolition of the Caliphate was a matter of sound policy, for the Caliphate involved the Turks in pretensions which may have given them a certain prestige, but which also exposed them to the jealous wrath of their enemies aud the shiftiness of selfish friends.

Pan-islamism in India was not in the main political. With the vast majority of Indian Moslems its appeal was purely religious. And thus a discussion of Pan-islamism ineviiably leads to a discussion of religion, and to the second charge disillusioned Indian Moslems bring against the Turks. The Turks, they say, may have had some justification for the abolition of the Caliphate. But why should they have renounced their religion, their culture, indeed, everything that was distinctive and unique, and forced upon themselves an alien culture and way of life that can

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never, perhaps, become peculiarly their own ?

Halide Hanum could not have had Indian sentiment in mind when planning her lectures, and she has not therefore attempted a direct answer to this question. She has treated her subject objectively throughout, and made no exception with religion. She has shown us very clearly how, up to the time of Abdul Ham id, in spite of a conservative and reactionary element, religious and political sentiment worked harmoniously to one end. Abdul Hainid's tyrannical suppression of political thought, his proscriptions and persecutions, destroyed in the intelligentsia this harmony of different impulses and sentiments. It was he who converted reformers into rebels, he who spread the wild and reckless belief that the past was a vampire preying on the Turkish soul, and there would be no future unless the past was killed. If Abdul Hamid's tyranny had been followed by a generation or two of peace, the rest-cure might have undone some of the harm. Rut instead there came war upon war, charging the atmospheie with impatience, intoleiance, panic and suffeiiug. Ihcie was no time, it seemed, to argue and convince. The people could not grow out of one condition, one attitude, into another. There was no alternative to force. The concentration of all power in the hands of a single dictatorial party made matters easy for the few who held that everything old, everything Eastern, everything alien to the materialism, the mechanisation of life, which had made the West so formidable, would impair the efficiency and endanger the unity of the state. The Turkish Republic became secular, and made religion into one of its most strictly supervised departments, legislating for it with the same authority as in purely secular matters. This is not, as Halide Hanum says, what one would understand from a separation of religion and the state. But those in power in the Republic will have it so.

Halide Hanum has, in her restrained and objective manner, stated all the criticisms that can be urged against the cultural and religious attitude of the Republic, and as one privileged to hnow her personal opinion, I can say that it has caused her the keenest sorrow. She is too dignified to make a futile show of emotion, and besides knows her people too well to be misled by superficialities. The Turkish people, whatever the policy of their state, are as sincere Moslems now as before, and Halide Hanum may even be right in expecting a religious revival of a nature that will have a healthy and stimulating effect on the whole Moslem world.

But I feel that Indian Moslems should also understand that their perspective is very faulty. They have a tendency, as have all those who are isolated or insular in outlook, to identify not only their beliefs, but also their manners and customs, with the prescriptions of their faith. Religion and social life are no doubt inseparable, and a society that altogether overlooks the religious element is sure to drift from one vicious whirlpool to another. But the position of a society that lacks the judgment to distinguish between conservatism and stagnation is equally insecure. Religion is the permanent basis of life, but the true religious spirit does not seek to shackle life in order to preserve a theoretical consistency between fact and belief. It endeavours rather to discover fresh sources of inspiration, which are really nothing more than fresh points of contact between the personality of the founder of a religion and of the follower across the gulf of time and altered social conditions. Rigid conformity to the letter, because it breeds a logic-worship that has no sympathy for the natural and the living, may be as injurious to society as frivolous disregard for truth. There can thus be need for reform even when the law is all written down. This reform would not imply that there are shortcomings in the faith or its law. True and healthy reform never does. Nor should we suspect an insinuation that the faith and the law was meant for a less civilised people, for though maimers, habits and environment may change, the fundamental needs of man remain the same, and the voice of a preacher of truth is not lost in space and time.

I believe we should accept Halide Hanum's assurance in regard to the religious spirit of her people all the more readily because she would not have hesitated to assert the contrary, if that were nearer the truth. That she has treated even the religious question objectively is indeed a novelty for us, because with us religion cannot be detached from sentimeut even for

Cxi]

scientific purposes, and religious opinions always have the air of finality. But Halide Hanum's intention is to inform, not to preach. She has surveyed the most important facts, in matters of disagreement and difference she has given the main arguments of the discussion. The Indian Moslem public would have doubtless preferred something akin to a harangue to Halide Hanum s sober, dispassionate treatment. I will only say that Halide Hanum's knowledgo, like her personality, is too great to be comprehended in one or many books. Her restraint is the stillness of deep waters. They must be catastrophic events indeed that stir her to the depths.

As I have already said, this book is an adaptation of Halide Hanum's lectures. Her numerous engagements prevented her revising them while she was in India, and the publishers were unwilling to risk the delay involved in her taking the MS back with her and revising it at leisure. The work of revision and editing was therefore entrusted to Prof. Mujeeb, of the Jamia Millia. Owing to the absence of Dr Zakir Husain and the pressure of work on his other colleagues, Prof. Mujeeb had to read the proofs and deal with the press as well. Some errors and omissions may have escaped his scrutiny, which I would beg the reader to overlook.

M. A. Ansari.

Delhi, •5th *Tii7i(^j<) l*)3*)t

CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN TURKEY Lecture I

ottoman turks as state-builders

The subject of the eight lectures which the Jamia Millia Islamia has asked me to deliver is the Conflict of East and West. That we are going to study it throughout 1 urkish history is primarily due to the incidental birth and life-experience of the speaker. As far as our purpose is concerned, this is a fortunate accident. For, although this conflict could be studied in any part of the world, in the history of any and every nation, still nowhere is - it so salient and clear in some of its phases as in Turkish history, past or present. Both the Imperial I urkey of old and the present Republican 1 urkey are placed where the East and West meet geographically,— namely, the Near East, an area that has bred typically Eastern and Western nations and civilisations, and has been the contending ground of all philosophical, cultural, political ideas and ideologies and human forces. Therefore Turkey is an ideal cross-section of the human world, the very best laboratory in which a student of history can make his researches on the conflict of East and West.

What is East and what is West? ⁴⁴ All nations are of one race," says the Koran. It is true, for the anatomy of man is the same all over the world. Physically, man is merely the highest species, the highest rung in the biological ladder of animals. Nor does the immaterial or the invisible part of him, that is, his mind or soul, differ in any fundamental way. Everywhere his mind works differently from that of an animal in a lesser or greater degree. It is evident that he is a part of the invisible creative energy which controls our Universe. He is a child of the Thinking Universe, of God, as well as a child of the animal. That there is a difference in his colour, features, language, civilisation and behaviour in different parts of the world, is only due to climatic influences, to specific struggles, to environment as well as to historical impacts.

Let us take first Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia and Ancient Persia as types of old civilisations, for they were either within or on the borders of the Near Bast. Further they have had a telling influence on the later civilisations in the same area. Externally the thing that catches the eye is their dazzling splendour. The facade and the frame are of unsurpassed magnificence* Those civilisations have produced three out of the seven wonders of the world. The second impression is that all this grandeur is meant for the pleasure and use of the monarch. So colossal are the rulers of the old East that they hide from view the millions they have ruled. The masses are there to produce the capital and labour to erect those magnificent monuments for the use of the few. They art?

more puppets. The term individual or nation has no significance theie. Stability and the happiness of the few are the two dominant principles of those civilisations.

But the moment one tries to get a glimpse of the individual in the East behind such a facade and under such unmitigated despotism, one is agreeably surprised. The individual of the East is the possessor of a marked and unique personality. More so than the individual of the West. How has he managed it ? Simply by detaching his mind from material and worldly realities. The hand of the monarch may strike and kill him as suddenly and without apparent reason as the lightning in the fields. But he thinks of it when he has to face it. The State is in the nature of Fate to him. He can never alter it. Hence very few or no attempts to rise and demand a voice in the workings and will of the State and Ruler. This sort of mind naturally turns to its inner self, to its soul. Phe body of such a man is not his own, the good things of the earth are not for him. Hence the spiritual values are the only values. It is no mere coincidence that the East, in which ninety-nine per cent, are the owners of this sort of a mind, has been the cradle of all living leligions.

The next most important thing for the man of the East is his relation to his neighbours. Behaviour has a great significance for him. He is the polite man of the world. His goal is inner quietude in life^ and all that ensures peace and avoids change is fanatically observed by him. All this naturally creates in him an exaggerated attachment to tradition, and anything which is a departure from tra 1-tion is hateful to him, even that which may ease his drudgery in life. In some Chinese towns men still water the streets with little pails of water ; all Eastern peasants prefer the traditional plough to tractors to till the ground. Owing to this attitude ot mind, even the contrast between the dire misery ot tne greatest number and the unashamed glitter of the wealth and plenty of the few caused next to no popular upheavals of an economic kind. ^

Those who are in love with the Eastern mind affirm that the man of the East possesses the only values of life worth while. They say that the man of the East is only concerned with the true essence of life. There is no doubt that the spiritual values are more worth while and more satisfying. But is this judgment entirely and wholly right?^ It wou be, if men were merely disembodied spirits.^ Man being a combination of matter and spirit, this sole emphasis on the spirit has produced disastrous results in the long run. The utter discarding of matenal values has made of man a subject foi exploitation, first by his own rulers, later by the more materialist West The East seems to have existed only for the sake of providing cheap labour, riches and markets to the world. Such being the case, we must admit that all is not right in the East. Reduced to its simplest expression, the supreme ill of which the East is suffering is due to a lack of proportion between the material and the spiritual nature of man.

Now for the West. No golden facade of monarchs and monuments hides the early West from view. It has produced none of the seven wonders of the world. Both the men and the civilisation of the West are late arrivals.

The religion of the AVest came to it from the East; its philosophy and science from ancient Greece; its ideas of Government and the externals ot its civilisation from Rome. Rome was the first expression of Western civilisation. Men of the A\ est built it and built it first on the European continent. Thoug'h the Romans did not possess a single original idea, they managed to synthetise existing ideas an make a brand new civilisation.

Their first great innovation was their conception of law. In the East the law was God-made or made by the ruler. In Rome it was man-made; furthei, made by the consent of the governed. In piactice this did not mean much always. But it created a new conception of life. The individual never had awe and respect for law to the degree of considering it as immutable as Fate. He never detached his mind from Society and State, but struggled constantly to have more and more of a say in both.

A man with such a mind naturally cannot immure himself within his soul. His mind is intensely concentrated on the material part of his being and that which he sees around himself. What he can see and hold has a greater value for him than what he cannot see; his values, except for short periods, and in the case of exceptional individuals, are material. Contemplation is an empty word for him, strife and doing the essence of life. _t

Christianity as a religion was expected to moderate and spiritualise the excessive materialism which the West inherited from pagan Rome. But Western Christianity had little in common with the teachings of Christ. It did spiritualise and unify the West for a time undei one name, but on the whole Christianity itself was fundamentally altered in the West.

The basic principle of Christianity was peace. The Christian was to turn his right cheek to the aggressor who struck him on the left cheek. But the Christian world went out of its way to strike every peaceful face under the sun.

The Christian was to give his second coat away if he possessed two coats. Such a teaching might have brought about a better distribution of worldly goods. It has not been the case. Though the standard of living of the average man in the West has been much higher than that of his Eastern fellow-man in the same state of life, still the distribution was bad enough to create an early and very intense struggle between the man who had more and the man who had less, namely the struggle between the capitalist and the worker. Though the revolt against capital has reftl economic reasons, still "W estern psychology plays a great part in it. Given the same conditions, even worse conditions, in the East, there would be no such revolt.

This emphasis on matter has produced scientific miracles in the West. Nature has been unveiled and its powers utilised for the benefit of mankind. Just as the sages of the East faced martyrdom to bring comfort to the spirit of men, so the savants of the West faced martyrdom to make a better world for man, to free him from a great many ugly diseases and bodily suffeiing.

Yet this source of blessing for man in the West has a seamy side. The one-sided and purely material progress has given the West an unlimited power over the rest of the world. In a tew centuiies, directly or indirectly, the West has laid its hands on the world. Huge continents and the millions living on them are there only to fetch and carry for the little continent of Europe on which Jives the man of the West.

Those who are in love with the Western mind affirm that the man of the West possesses the only values in life worth while. ^rl hey say that the essence of life lies in the material nature of man. Is this iudgment utterly right? It would be, if man were dehumanised, or rather de-souled ; if like some super-animal he had nothing but bodily appetites and needs. Man being a combination of matter and spirit, the sole emphasis laid on matter has produced disastrous results in the long run. There are ominous signs which foretell the decline, nay, the downfall of the West. To those who live in the West, the anxiety for their tottering civilisation verges on panic, and they know not where to turn to keep their materialistic civilisation on foot. Like the East of old the West is also suffering from a mortal disease. Reduced to its simplest expression, the supreme ill of which the West "s suffering is also due to a lack of proportion between the material and the spiritual nature of man.

Now we will try to survey the conflict as well as the co-operation of these two states of mind, namely, those of over-emphasised spiritualism and over-emphasised materialism throughout the three phases of Turkish history, (1) State-building, (2) Cultuie and (3) Social life.

Let us first consider the historic background of the Near East, where the Turks built up their State out of all the material they found ready to hand.

Ancient Greece had its cradle there. That it had been one of the most telling intellectual and cultural influences in the world goes without saying. But it was a civilisation which concentrated on the physical world; even its gods dedicated their immortal lives to the enjoyment of worldly goods. We can easily call it a materialist civilisation. Although Socrates did become conscious of a ^u little demon which was meant to be a soul, it differed from the conception of soul found in the Eastern religions.

However, what concerns us at the moment is

the Greek contribution to the world in the way of political ideas and ideals: Democracy and Plato's Republic .

Democracy was a typically Greek institution, and the very term comes to us from Ancient Greece. Ihe Greeks were highly individualistic, and, in piac-tice if not in theory, regarded the state as a means to serve the ends of the individual. But JPlato^ Republic', the first great political Utopia, also comes to us from Greece, and there are principles in this great work which do not agree with Greek or with modern Democracy. -For its most remarkable feature is the way it sets out to show how a governing class and caste must be trained within very definite and rigid rules. Greek Democracies were based on the popular vote, they never attempted to-create such institutions as are suggested in the Republic,' for they never desired to be ruled by experts and specially trained castes. Tt was perhaps for this reason that they were short-lived.

Rome succeeded Greece. The Roman state was a better organised structure than the Greek. It was not exclusive, but capable of ruling over the largest area possible and over the largest number of peoples. Its basis, like that of the Greek state, was material and pagan. But the Romans were realists to the end, and they had a genius for using all the available forces for the benefit of the state. Contrary to the Greeks, they emphasised the state rather than the individual. Their very name is not that of a race but that of their central city. A Roman could be of any race. He had to be a Roman above everything.

The Byzantine Empire, the successor of Koine, had a particularly Greek complexion Rome was falling to pieces through invasions. 1 he Greeks ot Europe, driven by the Avars and the Slavs, the Greeks of Asia, driven by the Arabs, concentrated in the Imperial City of Constantinople, anc &a\e i an administration predominantly Greek.

But the Byzantine Empire, which extended from the Balkans in the west to the Anatolian Peninsula in the east, was unable to hold both against continual invasions from outside. It concentrated on Anatolia. From the sixth century onward Anatolia was Hellenised and Christianised and its language became Greek. The original inhabitants, the Hittites, the Phrygians and other races were swallowed up by the Greek colonisation, though this new civilisation did not penetrate deeply enough into the peasant world. But, as Byzantium drew from Anatolia all its money, nobility, and army, and used them in the Balkans against barbarian invasions, the country was drained, and subjected to the utmost extortion. The centie of Anatolia broke away from Byzantium, the rest followed. Byzantium continued to rule nominally, but it lost all control over its Anatolian possessions.

During this Gneco-Roman decadence the Turks came into Anatolia. From the eighth century onward Turkish invasions increased; Seljuk Turks formed a state in the eleventh century in the centre and the west of Anatolia, making it completely Turkish and Moslem, though it would be wrong to imagine that this conversion and change was effected by force.^ The Seljuk kingdom decayed in the thirteenth century and broke up into small principalities. But the area over which it had extended remained Moslem and 1 urkish.

The Ottoman Turks came into this decadent Moslem and Turkish Asia Minor in the thirteenth century. Their name is not that of a people or race. Tt is that of their first Sultan. Like a Roman, an Ottoman could be of any race. ^w Ottoman " to-day means an attitude of mind in State-building.

The most striking thing about the Ottomans in Asia Minor is the smallness of their numbers, the vastness of their Empire and the shortness of time in which they built it up. Before a century and a half was over the Ottoman Empire had become one of the strongest world powers.

Western historians, specially those who deal with our decadent period, in which political passions ran very high, dismiss the Ottoman Empire as that of simple nomads, and explain its endurance as due to the fighting qualities of the Ottoman ^fI urks. Ibn-Khal-dun, who is accepted by the \\ est as a great philosopher of history and a sociologist of the old Moslem worlds says that no nomadic state could last more than three generations, that is, 120 years. Historical evidence confirms his statement. States built on

(1) See Arnold, The Preaching of Islam, Chaps. Ill and VI.

nomadic principles have rarely lasted more than two hundred years, and very rarely that long.

The Mongols, who were both great fighters and nomads, invaded Anatolia from the north-east and passed on to the west. They did not establish anything worthy ot the name of state. The Seljuks came armed with experience in state-building from Persia. Their state also did not last more than two hundred years. The Byzantines had the example of Rome, they had the learning of old Greece, a very remarkable ability for organisation, but they never managed to establish anything like the old Roman peace and order. The Ottomans could not succeed if they possessed only the physical virtues of the fighting nomad and his special but simple outlook in state-building; their task demanded a very keen and comprehensive mind and the practical ability to create a lasting and workable political system. Therefore it would be useful to survey briefly their background and to discover the sources from which they must have derived the courage to undertake, and the mental and moral power to perform their stupendous task.

The Ottoman did come to the Near East as a nomad. He had all the simple virtues, that is courage, and the practical ability of those who have to struggle against natural forces and organise their existence in the face of the ever-changing challenge of nature. This explains why the simple nomadic Turks in general managed to build states over more civilised but more passive masses. The Ottoman

Turks had no experience in state-building. But from their past they had the traditions, the lore and the folk literature which passed from mouth to mouth and on which they brought up their children. Ihese traditions are valuable not only for explaining Otto* man but also contemporary Turkish history, so we might stop and consider them for a moment.

The Turks became known to history fro mi the fifth century A. D. onward. The Chinese annals speak of them as Tou-Kiou and the Byzantine as Turki.

To their vitality and activity between the fifth and eleventh centuries there is perhaps no parallel in world history. To realise the extent of their field of action one has just to look over the map of Asia and read the names they have given to mountains, valleys and rivers. Both they and the early Mongols are looked upon as mere hordes or nomads by the West, but they had civilisations of their own before they set out for conquest and state-building in Asia. The centres of the earliest ot these civilisations were mostly in Mogulistan and on Chinese borders, and we can learn something about them fiom inscuptions that have been discovered in which idioms and words are used that occur in the Turkish spoken by the Anatolian nomads to-day. The inscriptions are of various kinds, some particularly illustrative of the mentality and character of the early Turks . One, perhaps the most remarkable, is the history of the

(1) See specially Thomsen, Lea Inscriptions de VOrkhon, Uelsingfors, 1900.

lurks as told by their King, Kiil-Tegin.

There was the blue sky above and the black** ness below when man was created and God appointed man s ancestors to rule.

^rJ he rulers and ministers in those great and happy days were brave on the battle-field and wise in counsel. But dark days followed those happy days. Sons were no longer like their fathers, rulers and ministers were cowardly, people took to evil ways. Because of these evils the Chinese took advantage and ended the independence of the Kingdom. The Beys served the Chinese, accepting rewards and titles. But the God of the Turks sent Bilke Khan, that the Turkish race may not perish."

The inscription goes on to tell how the new ruler gathered the scattered tribes and organised them. He gained many victories, and increased the nubmer of his people. He enriched the poor and brought his people to name and fame. Throughout the writings one sees a people attached to independence and ready to fight all foreign domination. But that is not all. They also object to internal tyranny. A new king called Meto becomes tyrannical, so much so that a great many Turks emigrate to China. Finally there is a rising and they kill Meto Khan, and Bilke Khan the Second becomes ruler. There is a beautiful reflection in connection with Turkish emigration to China. " The gold, the silver, the wines and the silks of the Chinese are beautiful, but they soften the Turk, he becomes lazy and dissipated.

Iii⁴ Uttuken the land of the Turks, there are no such things, but there is Freedom.

The Ottoman Turks came to the Near East with this sort ot simplicity and vigour. On the borders of it they were converted to Islam. I say ' borders because the grandsire of Ertugrul was still Shaman and the conversion of the Ottomans was of recent date. Most of their names were still Day, Jloon, Rock, Lion, Iron, etc., just as they used to be in their pagan days. We find them in abundance in the early Broussa period. And Islam must have appealed to them for some such reasons as H. (j. Wells summarises in his ¹ Outline of History.' The last Sermon of the Prophet, he says, " Sweeps away all plunder and blood feuds among the followers of Islam. (It) makes the believing negro the brother of the Caliph. (These words) established in the world a great tradition of dignified fair dealing, they breathe a spirit of generosity. They created a society more free from wide-spread cruelty and social oppression than any society had ever been before in the world."

The Ottomans first established their state in the north-west of Anatolia, a region not yet wholly Moslem or Turkish. In the early Broussa period (Broussa was their first capital), everything was very much in keeping with their love of freedom and the sense of social justice they derived from Islam. Their Sultan lived as frugally and simply as the rest, walked in the market places, even acted as a judge of peace, passing judgment over cases that were brought before him. Hammer records an instance in which he pronounced in favour of a poor Christian against a Moslem. There must have been many such cases. For the young and the brilliant element of Byzantium joined the lurks voluntaiily and accepted their religion, and the Greeks from neighbouring towns flocked into the state and settled there. To be under its jurisdiction was a privilege.

At the back of the Ottoman Turks was a solid Moslem Turkish mass, though politically they weie separate unics. Before them was Christian Byzantium and the Balkans, leading into Europe. J he logical thing for them would have been to conquer Anatolia first. That would have created a strong and unified national state in Asia Minor. But in the Ottoman mind there was no desire for a national state. It was filled with the urge to advance further west, to conquer Eastern Europe and Byzantium. I his was a more difficult enterprise ; for the subjugation of the Balkans was a challenge which had remained unanswered since the fall of Rome. All that was nomadic in the Ottomans led them to prefer the Herculean task to one that was human and easy to accomplish. That they first conquered the Balkans and then Byzantium also shows their marked preference for the harder task. And it is again worthy of notice that Macedonia was subdued by the Ottoman Turks under commanders some of whom, like Evranos Bey, were of Greek origin. The young

Greek converts who became great commanders or administrators in the Turkish state had often previously served the Byzantine Empire, yet Byzantium had been unable to pacify Macedonia. Ability and capacity in men depend rather on enviionment, on training and above all on the existence of faith in some particular line than on the accident of birth.

The Ottoman mind, the moment the lighting part of the campaign was over, must have seized the characteristics and needs of Macedonia as only the Romans had grasped them. The Macedonians were both volcanic in nature and heterogenous. Hence every one's hand was against his neighbour. Such a people primarily needed very strong, even ruthless handling. But that was not enough. There was an already established common tie between them. That was their newly acquired Christianity, their religion, and that had to be respected. Therefore a state which would combine strength and organisation, a state which could be both autocratic and liberal would alone answer the need. This may appear a paradox, but the Ottoman worked it out.

The Ottoman system, which embodies these
seemingly contradictory principles, was established
befoie the conquest of Adiianople and Constantinople.
But it evolved during and after these conquests aiuj
probably because of a better understanding of the
human element at a closer range. •

Now we have to look for the ideas in state-building which, in addition to their earlier and simpler training, could form the basis of the* Ottoman system.

The first and the closest contact of the Ottoman Turks was with the Greeks, through Byzantine channMs. Their princes married Byzantine princesses: young Turkish noblemen as well as the princes went to Constantinople for schooling. Some of them. like Mohamed the Conqueror, became scholars in Greek and Latin. Therefore* then* is not the slightest doubt about their having read Plato s Republic in the original. Further, they must have kept their eyes open in Constantinople and studied the Byzantine ideas and system carefully. And though the Ottoman Turks took both good and evil things from Byzantine civilisation, still the weakness of the Byzantine system must have aroused contempt in them. They must also have noted that the Latin aud Western Christian powers from whom the Byzantines implored help did not offer any effective principle⁴ in statesmanship. Gibbon tells us how the Latin and Western armies who came to help the Byzantines looted and massacred the Greeks. The Byzantines answered in kind.

Such keen and ambitious minds as those of the Ottoman Turks must soon have discovered that from the eighth century onward Eastern Europe and Byzantium lacked order; that the peoples over whom Byzantium ruled were very different from the passive Eastern masses over which other Turks had founded states; and that the only power which had created tasting ofrder had been Rome. Hence Rome should be an example. Its ruthless strength and its 'realism appealed most to the early Ottomans.

The formula which would explain the ingredients that went to the making of the Ottomans as stated-builders would be this.

Ottoman Turkish strength and nomadic virtues |- Islamic principles of social justice and non-discrimination of race ~f Greek ideas of bodily training 4r Byzantine organisation i lioman realism and strength + Plato's Republic.

In this formula the inclusion of Plato s- Republic' may perhaps appear as a far-fetched idea to some. But I am not the only student of Ottoman history and system who is struck by its influence. Professor Lybyer. the author of boleyman the Magnificent'', a work which I believe to be the most classical and masterly study of the Ottoman system by a modern writer, conies to the same conclusion :

"Perhaps no more daring experiment has been tried on a large scale upon the face of the earth than that embodied in the Ottoman ruling institution. Its nearest idea is found in the 'Republic of Plato.

"Plato would have been delighted with the training of the Sultan's family. He would have approved of the life-long education, the equally careful training of body and mind, the separation into soldiers and rulers, the relative¹ freedom from family ties, the system's rigid control of the individual, and, above all, of the government of the wise. Whether the founders of the Ottoman system were acquainted with Plato will probably never be known, but they seem to have come as near to his plan as it is possible to come in a remarkable scheme. Tn some practical ways they improved upon Plato by avoiding the uncertainties of heredity, by ensuring a balance of power, and making their system capable of a vast imperial rule \ Let me show in a simple diagram the fundament? Is of the Ottoman system.

A = the Central State, composed of the legislature and the executive. 1 hey were incorporated in the civil and the military departments. In the eaily stage the division between the civil and military was not very marked. The head of this body was the Sultan. He was the only individual in this body whose hereditary rights were recognised, but he had no divine rights, lie was trained from his early youth and made to serve as a private soldier in his own army and work in the civil administration, in order to get experience before he became the Sultan.

The unifying force of this body was Islam. Each individual who entered it was first trained as a devout Moslem. But there was also a definite and absolute State-ideal — ^uDovlet-i-ebet-mudet^7?the Everlasting State. A mystical turn was given to this ideal, which became as powerful and inspiring a conception as that of "Eternal Rome". And for five long centuries there was as rigid a discipline and as great, even greater, service rendered to the abstract idea of the ^tfc Everlasting State ¹ than to "Eternal Rome \ .

To ensure this almost religious devotion the individual had to be free of family ties, of old customs, and any tradition which could attach him to his particular human milieu. The individual, after being trained in all the moral and bodily requirements of the Caste, had to live within the body itself. For that reason the ordinary member of the Caste did not have a home, he was not allowed to marry.

His life was almost monastic in the rigour of its discipline

The recruitment for the governing Caste was made, from among the prisoners of war and Christian children. The age was from twelve to twenty. The selection of Christians may have been due to missionary motives, but it is equally obvious that the intention was to detach the child entirely from his environment. Each region had to provide a certain number of children. * The recruiting officer went to the village or the town inscribed on his list, studied the registers, asked for the children, and made his choice according to the appearance, manners, physique and intelligence of the candidates. This system is called Devshirmo in Turkish and **Blood Tribute" by the Western historians. There was no force used. On the contrary, parents wore over-anxious to give their children. The Moslems, who were barred from this privilege, often bribed their Christian neighbours to pass theirs as Christian boys. The boy who was selected could become a commander, a governor, a Grand Vezir.

These children came to the Palace School and underwent a very severe education. The bodily part .of it was very much on the Greek or Spartan lines. The mental consisted of a training in the classics, music. Arabic, Persian and Turkish, and other subjects considered an essential part of learning at the time. Every youth, includiug the royal childien, had to acquire proficiency in some handicraft as well. This system was as near to Plato's Republic' as it is nossible for anv institution to be.

The circle B = the Islamic Nation: Moslem ^rl urks, Kurds, Arabs, Albanians etc. The nations were* classified according to Churches. Men of the same faith and belonging to an organised church were a national unit. This classification was adopted partly owing to the Islamic principle of non-discrimination of race and partly because, under the* circumstances, no other classification was possible. I hough the Moslems were of the same faith as the Ottoman Caste, they were as alien to the¹ riding Caste as the other Church nations.

B¹the Orthodox Nation. All Orthodox peoples, Greeks, Slavs, Ullahs etc. belonged to it. Communally and culturally it was free. The Patriarch was the responsible head of the Community. It was the most privileged Church nation after the conquest >f Constantinople. The Macedonian Christian majorities which enjoyed semi-independent governments had Greek governors (Fenariotes).

B* —the Gregorian nation (Armenians mostly).

B³ = the Tews etc.

They all enjoyed the¹ same communal and cultural libertj\ Outside the community and in their obligation to the State these national units came into contact with the lines C and I).

C = the Islamic Body, the Ulema with the Sheikh-ul-Islam as their head. This was another strong and very definitely trained Caste, an independent body whose primary duty was to supervise the religious and judicial affairs of the Moslems. But it also acted as a moral control over the rigid despotism of the State, because it could depose the Sultan, and no new law could be passed without its veto. Further, it was the only representative of the moral rights of the peoples, Moslem or Christian. In more than one instance it stood up against forcible conversion.

D=the Army and the civil administration, incorporated in A.

Such was the structure of the Ottoman State, with its rigid despotic facade and the inner nation-circles where there was freedom of conscience and cultural and communal liberty.

Selim the Grim, the grandson of the Conqueror, first detected au inner weakness in the Ottoman State. It was like a mosaic of nations, and the Christian part of the design far outweighed the rest. So the Sultan turned his back to the west and directed his armies to the Moslem East. His cruel treatment of the Shiites during his Persian campaign, though partly due to his relentless nature, was also an attempt to unify Islam within itself. After his conquest of Tebriz he marched to Syria and Egypt and annexed the Arab Moslem world to the Empire. The Moslem block was vastly increased.

This sudden change of direction in Ottoman expansion is regarded as a Pan-islamist move. But it seems to me far more probable that it was the innate desire for stability in the Ottoman mind which led Selim to attempt to create an equilibrium among the nations of whom the State was composed.

Histoiically the Caliphate question, foi Tin key, also begins at this particular period, lhe last Caliph was residing in Egypt when Selim conquered it. The Caliph had lost his temporal power and was nothing but a shadow figure whose sole use, it seemed, was to bless the Moslem rulers of Egypt at their accession to the throne. General history speaks of Selim as having brought the* Caliph to 1 stainboul, and having received the title and prerogatives of the Caliphate* from him. This point needs discussion.

The first document of Selim's conquest is the 'Fetihname' which he sent to foreign Powers—Venice and Persia (1 «> 1 (). In it there is no word about the Caliphate. If to become Caliph had been the aim of a man such as Sultan Selim, it seems to me that he would have made it known to the world with a flourish. The second historical document is "The Conquest of Egypt", written by Hasan Tuloun. The mthor was a witness of Selim's conquest of Egypt, and his work is in MSS. in the British Museum, where Dr. Adnan discovered it when he was making historical researches in the MSS. part of the Ijibrary. Hasan Tuloun records the different parts of the campaign and Sultan Selim's stay in Egypt minutely, but devotes only a shoit passage to the Caliphate question. He says that the Sultan invited the llema of Egypt and asked them whether it was necessary for a Moslem ruler to be consecrated by the Caliph to legitimise his power. They answered, *Xo'. Sultan Selim dropped the subject and did not vint the Caliph.

The bringing of the Caliph to Istamboul might also be a myth. The historian of the time does not mention it. If the last Caliph had been brought to Istamboul and died there, where had he lived and died? There is no single legend about that and no legend about his grave. As it is, the Turkish annals do not speak of the Caliph and Caliphate, and Selim and the Sultans after him did not take the title for a long time. The Caliphate became a living topic only in the time of Abdul Hamid IT.

That Sultan Selim was a devout Moslem and believed in Isiani as a force there? is no doubt. The Sherif of Mecca, through his son, sent the keys of Mecca to Selim when he was at Aleppo. In the mosque, when the 'Khatib' referred to Selim for the first time as the 'Sahib-ul-Haroinoin-ish-Shci ifein, Selim said that he was not the 'Sahib —lord, but the? seivant — 'Khadiin',—of the Holy Places. After this one of the important titles of the Sultans was ^uKhadim-ul-Haremeiii-ish-Sh(»rifein". There is no doubt Selim attached great importance to this. When a 'Khatib' in Kgypt mentioned this title," Selim lifted tin* prayer rug and made his '"sejde" on the marble. If we remember the iron nerve of the Sultan, this show of emotion is vei y significant.

When Selim returned from his Eastern campaign, he proposed to have all the Christians converted by force or persuasion. He further proposed to have Arabic adopted as the language* of the Empiie.

The Shoikh-ul-Islam, Jemali Effendi, objected.

No groat stop such as this could be taken without a 'Fetva'j aud the freedom of conscience and faith accorded to the people by Mohammed the Conqueror could not be revoked. After a long and interesting discussion, around which a great deal of legend has accumulated, Selim doubted the authenticity of these liberties. Jemali Effendi produced three⁴. Janissaries, all over a hundred years old, before the Sultan. As soldiers who had served under the Conqueror they bore witness to the fact that these rights had been accorded. Selim had to give up his desire to unify the Empire by forcible conversion.

The incident is significant in more than one way. First, a man like Sultan Selim, who had killed no end of Vezirs and Grand Vezirs, bows to the Shoikh-ul-Islam, that is, to the lepiesentative of the law, a proof that the institutions of the Ottoman State and its principles were at the time stronger than any Sultan. Besides, we see that Jemali Eflfendi, as the head ot the* Islamic Body, and the three Janissaries as devout Moslems, were Ottoman enough to stand by the principles of State, though as Moslems they must have very much wished to see a purely Moslem state.

With Selim the (Jrim the Islamising urge died out. His son, Soleyman the Magnificent, once more turned towards the Christian West, and his victorious armies advanced as far as Vienna.

The Ottoman State had been founded in 1287; its best days lasted to 1778 (Treaty of Kutchuk Kaynarja). The inner decline must have begun earlier, but it became very acute after that date. lor another century and a half the Ottoman State maintained a stubborn defence against numerically superior and better equipped armies. It passed away in 11)18.

No critical and constructive Ottoman history has yet been written, though there is a vast amount of official and human records on tin*, subject. So far there has been either a compilation of data or a biassed history in favour of or against the Ottomans. It could not be otherwise. For, during the lifetime of the Ottoman State, the political passion aroused was too intense to allow any historian in the West or in the East to study the subject as a whole objectively. Fortunately, fragments of Ottoman history have been written by able historians.

Now that the Ottoman State* is buried in the past and can neither hurt nor benefit any oik*, its history can be studied with a fair and objective standard by any historian or a body of historians, Preferably this should be done by a body of men, for a single man's life and work would not suffice for such a colossal task. Moan while, one whose* early youth was passed in the* dying days e)f the Ottoman system may be permitted to speculate for a few minutes more em the subject.

To me the real significance* of the Ottoman mind in State-buildiug dews ne>t lie* in its unusual combinations, its cherice! of contiadicteuy piinciples and its method of working. Its supreme importance lies in the tact that it is recurring as a state-mind in our own time

Human society has been a matter ot growth in the world so far, West or East. The most despotic old Eastern governments let the soul of the individual alone, whatever they might have done to enslave his body. In the West governments tampered a little more with the* soul of the individual, and the struggle of the* individual to establish liberty of faith well as libei ty of thought is one of the mightiest epics of human history. Apart from that struggle, or because of it, governments in the \\ est, especially in their national area, have been a matter of growth.

On the other hand, during political, social or economic distress and confusion in the West there-have appeared from time to time plans, Utopias. One of them was by a feeble old man who worked among the musty and dusty old books of the British Museum. It is called Das Jk.apital". Yet until the post-war years no one in the West dreamed of applying an Utopia on peoples.

^Now, however, we bear witness to the rise of dictatoiships which tiy to apply a plan in its entirety on nations. Though they differ widely in their aim and piinciple, their pioceduio and their organisations are the same. The first parallel to this sort of mind and action appears in history with the Ottomans.

The dictatorship which resembles curiously the Ottoman conceptions in some of its phases, is Communist Russia. Like the Ottomans, Communist state-builders are of mixed origins. Race is utterly discarded. The individual who enters the Caste of Communist rulers may be of any race. What matters is that he must believe unconditionally in the Communist creed. With the Ottoman unit of the Caste it was unconditional belief in Islam and service to the Everlasting State.

The challenge to which the Ottoman system answered was the lack ot order in the Near East. That of Communist Russia is th** universal cry for bread and economic inequality.

In the system of selection and the training of the units of the ruling Caste Communist Russia resembles the Ottoman system still more closely. Beginning with the discarding of race (there are all sorts of people trained as communists in Soviet Russia), the next important thing is to select the units of the caste young, the second, to detach them entirely from early environment, custom, and everything that binds them to their past. The Serai school and the Janissary Hearths as training camps and educational centres arc* the prototypes of the training centres of Communist youths. Both attempts singnifythis—to fabricate a new mind in the human unit according to state proscription. With the Ottomans this fabrication was restricted to the units within the* Caste, in Soviet Russia there is the further ambition to make the now fabrication the archetype of humanity.

The result in both from the* point of view of government is the same. The trained Communist Caste—civil and military — rules over Soviet Russia just as a specially trained Ottoman Caste ruled over the Ottoman Empire. Camerado Stalin has more power

OTTOMAN TCltKS AS STATK-M'ILDKKS

than Selim the* Grim had. Like the Ottoman Sultan he has it in his power to kill or imprison any number of his countrymen. But he cannot, anymore than Selim could, go against the fundamental principles of the State. Selim's inability to convert his Christian subjects to Islam is a glaring example ot the limits to his power. T he right of the in lividual to his religion was one of the fundamentals of the Ottoman State. Stalin, if he tried to restore property-holding, though the majority of Russia may want it, could not do it in the face of tin* Communist state.

The difference between the Ottoman and tin* Soviet systems lies mainly in their aim and scope and the greater efficiency of the Soviet, which has all the accumulated administrative experience¹ of Europe and the equipment of modern science* at its service.

But both are superimposed states with a specially trained ruling Caste*. Professor A. Foynbee in his "Study of History , a remarkable*, philosophy of history, says that the*, Ottennan system was contrary te> human nature. I agree with Pre>fessor Toynbee. Tt is somewhat distasteful to me that even in the* limited area of the* ruling caste* the Ottomans tried te> fabricate* a mind as erne* fabricates a robot. But what I feel, and what my generation feel, is not of great importance. In the* West states are rising which want to fabricate not only the* ruling caste but nations wholesale. Neu* is this movement without any backing from the world of learning and philose>phy. Such minds as Bertram! Russell and H. G. Wells believe in planning society. One could safely say that for the moment it is only the artist who rebels against a planned type of humanity and stands for the freedom of the individual. And it is an artist, Aldous Huxley, who gives a picture of planned society in his ' Brave New World". It is no mere phantasy that in such a state all art, all great thought ot the Past, is banned.

To conclude: Tin* world of today is in a great confusion. The issue is between the superimposed State and a conception of growth in human institutions. The originators of a superimposed State in practice in •<» limited area were the* Ottomans. Therefore their system is of interest for the maximalists ot the superimposed state. It is also of interest to the upholders of the ideal of free and inner growth, for the Ottomans managed to allow the masses enough elbow room to grow communally. The point to note in the conflict of East and West as ideas in the building of the Ottoman State is that the East had the upper hand. It was Islam that made the Ottomans respect and recognise the inviolability of the rights of the spirit.

Lecture II

the decline of the ottomans

[Mahatma Gandhi presided over this lecture.
Addressing him, the lecturer said: - ^

A Turkish poet of old, whose philosophy of life is for all time because¹, he stood for the permanent values, has a short poem which we often read at home. It pictures the march of a lonely caravan, a small troop of the few whose goal is not the riches of this world, who are not seekers after the spiritual joy of ecstasy as a personal end, who do not aspire to a seat of honour in heaven. They are the select guard of a value without which human society would be merely a well-ordered animal state.

^fcfc Do not think our calls in the dark in vain," they cry. ^fch W e are the guards of the Fortress of Truth, in the Kingdom of Love". And yet they know not whether, when their watch ends, there* will be another watch to replace them. They are afraid lest they may hear nothing but the echo of their own voices when their hour strikes.

Once in centuries these lonely units hear tin* voice of a loader of soids. Then they rejoice. For it means that somewhere there is a centre where a groat teacher is training and mobilising fresh forces to guard the sacred V ortross. The twentieth century is

blessed in having in Mnhatma Gandhi, the New Teacher, the needed servant of humanity. No lonely guard need fear lest there¹ be no one to take up the watch. We thank our Creator for him. He is ours, and it is a part of his mission to say to any lonely private: Hold your torch high up in the darkness! When you are no more, it will pass into a \ouugci and stronger hand.)

There are two happenings in human life the exact time of which we can never tell. One concerns the¹individual, and that is. the moment he falls asleep. No one has ever been able to seize the moment of passage from being awake to sleep. The second concerns a nation. • It is the moment of decline. No one can tell the exact date* of it 5 everyeme is cejnscious of it when it is in full swing.

No matter he>w agreeable the daj s woik is, <i man must sleep oft his fatigue, rest anel 1 ecupei ate 111 order te> begin a new day. No matter how long a civilisation and a state lasts, e>r how great it is, its founders alse) need rest. Decline is the recuperation time, the rest-cure of nations. What the day is to the individual, a long historic period is to the uatiem. The decline of Remie, the Dark Age, was a period of rest for the Western world. New nations under new names awoke and built up fresh civilisations in the West. In the homes of older Eastern civilisations, where peoples seemed fast asleep to the naked eye, in China, India and the Near East there are now signs of awakening. May it be a good morning to them all!

Another aspect of decline is in the change or
rhythm, in the swing of the pendulum from one side
to the other in the nation's life. For while regimes
and states fall, and civilisations seem to lose their
hold on a people, a series of new values arises, and
an unconscious preparation for a new civilisation and
a new life within th(* nation begins. _t

To the decline* of the Ottoman Empire it is difficult to assign a date*. Because of the great defeat and humiliation of the Ottoman armies in 1774, the casual historian sots the date at that year. But conditions which made the* disaster possible were long in preparation in the ^ki Everlasting State". Further, the decline was, besides being \ ery complicated, not at all uniform. What was decline for one part meant awakening for another part. To bo clear let us once more go over our diagram.

Wo begin with the Centre*, A, the governing Caste and its machinery.

The Ottoman dynasty produced a record number of geniuses. They wore trained for the army and the; civil service and carefully educated. Their active service as governors e>r soldiers gave them first-hand knowledge and experience of the people over whom they were; destined to rule.. If a Sultan happened te> be a genius, his training made him a world figure, if he* were an ordinary man, his training and experience made¹ him work in harmony with the* system without pulling it to pie*oe s.

The recognised zenith of Ottoman Power was the time of Soleynian the* Magnificent. He ruled over three continents, and in Europe only his Empire extended to the walls of Vienna. (Treat powers sought his alliance and his forces could beat the combined forces of the Western world on land and sea. But over Soleynian ruled his wife, Hurrem Sultan, known as Roxalaue to the Western world because of her Russian origin. This little woman with red hair and a turned up nose, who was not much to look at, judging from her pictures, possessed a tempei anient and a capacity for intrigue which could heat all the Medici ladies put together.

Hurrem Sultan had a son, a degenerate youth given to drink and to other vices. She wanted him to rule after Soleynian. But there was an heir to the throne, Prince Mustafa, the son of an earlier wife, who was a magnificent specimen of military and administrative talent. How Hurrem Sultan set out to open a breach between Soleynian and his heir, and how finally she managed to have Prince Mustafa murdered, belongs to the domain of dramatic art rather than history. But she did have*- her son appointed to the* Ottoman throne.

It would not have mattered much it the thing had ended there, for the force and stability of the Empire depended more on the ingenious way the system was organised, and great statesmen often covered the lapses of incapable Sultans. But Hurrem Sultan went further. Sin* persuaded Soleynian to adopt the Cage system foi the piinccs, and with that she dealt a fatal blow to the* dynast}. The; expeii mental and bodily part of the* prince s training wa> abandoned, though he was still taught the classics and given some education, and iie was obliged to spend his life; in the* harem te> the moment he; could ascend the throne. The consequence was a series of hot-house princes, soft and ignorant of the conditions e>f the;ir Empire.

The seventeenth century is a long recoid of e\il Sultans. When they we»re not soft they were intolerable tyrants, when they were the¹ Harem brand they were vicious and incredibly corrupt. Their favourite ladies he^kgau to sell every impoitant post in the Empire. "The fish rots from the head , we say. The* civil service took its cue from the Sultan and bribery became quite* a habit in the* disposal of important offices. Merit, which had been the sole measure of promotion, became' a vain word. Thus the Ottoman Sultans, who had been more like the; virile* type e>t^§ early Roman Emperors, became like the Byzantine rulers. The Ottoman palace of these days was very much like* the* Byzantine palace. Very few Sultans elied in their heels, tor there were* chronic military risings and dethronements, often accompanied by assassination.

The decline in the army, 1), which was the backbone* of the state system, was more fatal. The Reform Bill of Cochi Bey, presented te> Sultan Murad in the seventeenth century, contains the* principal change»s

38 conflict of kast and wkst in tuhkkv

which caused the decline.

The old recruiting system, which had been based on careful selection, was abandoned. Instead of the earlier method of levying from all the races, it was now only the Moslems who were*, asked to contribute¹. Further, in the enlistment and promotions, favouritism played a great part. The army contained not only those who had some function in it but a vast number of people who remained outside the corps, and wen¹inscribed that they might receive the pay, or obtain the¹, privileges of Janissaries. Among them then* were even a French Consul and an Armenian Patriarch.

The Patriarch had been reported to the (-2 rand Vezir by the leading Armenians as being a Roman Catholic at heart. They asked the Grand Vezir to send him to the galleys. The¹ Patriarch learnt ot this and managed to get himself inscribed as a Janissary in a corps, the officer of which was a personal friend of his. One Sunday, two Janissaiy detachments appeared at the door of the Church where he was officiating, one to take him to the galleys, the other to protect him. When the officer of the first learnt that the Patriarch was a Janissary, he saluted and retired. This sounds very much like someone trying to sneak into the Communist Party or any other ruling party in the dictatorships of today for protection and privilege.

The monastic rigidity of the military order also disappeared, for the* Janissaries were now getting married and interested in matters outside. I he fanatical and mystical belief in the unique impoitance of tin* State was losing its hold on men s minds, though at times the ruling caste exhibited that iron discipline of which only the Ottomans and the Romans were capable. This was due only to the momentum of the early traditions. For now the nightmaiish tyranny and corruption of the Sultans was fast undermining the old discipline. At times the unrest was so great that the army rose about once* a month to protest against some royal abuse. Generally speaking, there was hardly a year in which it did not at least twice refuse its soup and overthrow the cauldron the sign for rising. This might have checked the Sultans, but it did not. Rising became a habit with the army, and as the political moves of the palace and parties outside always had to be carried out with the help of the military, the army became the sole arbiter in politics.

The judicial and the religious Caste-- (\ which was independent of A, but a \ci\ impoitant petit of the machinery, also began to decline. Its position as the protector of the* religious liberties of the non-Moslems it retained, indeed, down to the time ot Abdul Hamid II, aud not only in the time of Selim the Grim, but in the seventeenth century as well, it had to protect the Christians. Again, as an independent moral power which could curb the excesses of the; Sultans it no doubt brought some relief, for by their ^fcFetva' the Moina could depose the Sultan. Rut for this very reason they were forced to co-ope$|$e witfi the army and middle with politics all the tiiafe^rhe^ were no longer a neutral judicial and religions'*bod*j; and religion became a pawn in the political game.

The position and attitude of the Ulema as the sole dispensers of education to the Moslem nation, B, requires more detailed discussion.

As long as the world remained scholastic, the Moslem Religious Body did its duty admirably, and the Sulemanieh and Fatih Medressehs were the centres of learning, and of whatever science there was at the time. But when the West broke the chains of scholasticism and created a new learning and science, the effects of which were to change the face of the world, the Islamic Religious Body failed very badly in its educational function. The Ulema took it for granted that human knowledge had not grown beyond what it was in the thirteenth century, and this attitude of mind persisted in their educational system down to the middle of the last century.

The complacence of the Ulema in Turkey particularly and in the Moslem world generally had nothing to do with their loyalty to the teachings of Islam, for scholastic philosophy and theology Christian or Moslem—is Hellenic. It is more or less Aristotelian, the teaching of a Greek, a pagan philosopher. And for this reason a brief comparative review of the Christian and the Islamic teaching seems necessary here.

The Koran does not set out to explain th$ creation of the material universe in detail. It em-nhasisi^ much more the moral and social side of life, tt is OifpEferned with ⁴ Husn" and Kubuh , that is, the beautiful aud the ugly, which is nothing more than the good and the evil. Hence its law. Nor is the metaphysical and spiritual side of Islam at all complicated. It is based on the recognition of Unity of a single creative Force, of one Allah. Hence the simplicity of Islam and the comparative freedom>of the Moslem to accept new interpretations of the material world. But this admirable simplicity and open-mindedness, which could accommodate new knowledge of matter, did not last long among the Moslems. In the ninth century, not only Islamic law, but also theology was definitely put into rigid frames by the great Moslem thinkers—the Mutakallemin" ; the philosophy of Aristotle was incorporated in the new Moslem theology, and the door of ⁴Ijtihad^,u was closed.

1. Lit* endeavour, seeking (the good.). It meant in pr&cticp the right to offer opinions on Questions not definitely settled by the Holy Koran and the Hadith.

Now Christian doctrine, which is the teaching of St. Paul and the Church Fathers rather than that of Christ, contains a detailed explanation of the material universe. This had been accepted as revelation, and its truth had to be accounted for. As Christian theologians could not prove everything by observation, they tried to do so by reasoning. They had recourse to Aristotle, for the reason that Aristotle is almost a magician in his logical capacity.

When the West began to study nature by observation, by analysis and experiment, the Christian Church was shocked. When the analytical methods led to great discoveries, the Church thought that meant the end of its authority* Hence in the West we behold an age of suffering and martyrdom for the scientist and the honest seeker after truth about the material universe.

After a bloody conflict of science and religion, the Christian Church took up a realistic attitude, and scientific knowledge was gradually incorporated in the instruction given in the colleges as well as the primary schools. The universities, which were like the Medresses of the Ulema, evolved into centres of science and new learning without losing their hold over theology and metaphysics. The consequence was that the Christian Church preserved its authority over some division, at least, of the intelligentsia; the Catholic and the Protostant priest could discuss problems of every kind with the new youth, and could be reckoned among the scientifically educated elite.

The position of the Ottoman Ulema was quite different. They never persecuted new learning or new truth about matter. But in the first place there was nothing in the way of new thought to persecute. As long as they were the supreme educators of the Moslem nation, nothing new could be infiltrated; they saw to that, and their learning stagnated. Furthei during the age of decline, they wore so occupied witk politics that it seemed far the easier thing to stick to Aiistotle, to leasoning as the basis ot knowledge, rather than venture on observation and analysis. Therefore the Medresses remained up to the end of the last century what they were in the thirteenth century. The ¹ Vakf' or Mosque schools, which were the sole organisation for primary education, remained similarly unchanged.

Though the State began to found high schools of a modern type in 1860, the Medresses had still a great attendance. For the Moslems, who alone shouldered the burden of defending the Empire (from the beginning of the seventeenth century Christians gradually ceased to contribute to the Army), could escape from an indefinite and almost always lifelong military service only by being enrolled in a Medresse. So these medieval centres harboured a vast number of Moslems. On the other hand, the Moslem youth who after I860 attended the State schools where science was being taught, conceived the idea that Islamic teaching was an obstacle to progress and truth, and their anti-clericalism became as irascible and as fanatical as a new religion*

In 1860 the first primary schools with a curriculum on western lines were opened, but they were too few to cover the need. Therefore the masses remained stagnant. * And change, instead of being a matter of growth and healthy development, became a thing forced from above. And it was brought about by a minority usually, who were not content to do away with the Religious Body as an educational

conflict of bast and west in tubkey

organisation, but were also determined to undermine its moral authority.

Intellectual stagnation and the inefficiency of the educational system were not features peculiar to Turkish life, but were common to the whole Moslem world. Hence the reform movements in the middle ot the nineteenth century, such as those of Senoussis, Wahhabis, Babis etc. But the man who most clearly realised and categorically stated the decisive role a defective and antiquated system of education was playing in the decline of the Moslem communities was Sheikh Jemaleddine Afghani. He came to Turkey to propagate his teaching after a rather long and hard experience in Afghanistan. He at once attracted the attention of the most intellectual and enlightened people, who thronged to his lectures; there was quite a movement for better education, and the Sheikh was appointed a member of the Council of Education by the State. But all this was regarded with suspicion by the Turkish UJema. The Sheikh-uMslain, Fahmi Effendi, declared the Sheikh's teaching unorthodox. In 1870, after a lecture in which he spoke on the social duty of prophets, the atmosphere became too hot for him and he left for Egypt. And the Ulema continued teaching in their particular schools after the same old fashion.

So much for the decline within the system itself. As to the position of the nations represented by the circles, conditions differed.

Educationally, the non-Moalem nations fared better than Moslems. I cannot say that the Christian
nations during the age of our decline produced
anything great, but on the whole they were aware of
the changes in the* outside world, and from a material
point of view they profited by their knowledge. Ihey
were also in a position to profit,' for the Moslem peo-
ples, especially the Turks, were almost always on
the battle-field. ^

The difference between the economic position of the Moslem and Christian nations as well as the general economic decline of the Moslems is one of the important features of this period. The question has unfortunately not been sufficiently studied with an unbiassed mind. European historians are inclined to dismiss the subject by saying that the Moslem Ottomans were merely a parasitic element, ne\er the produceis or workers. But whatever data I could gather from historical documents and annals tend to show that this generalisation is utterly baseless and contrary to the truth. As long as agriculture, commerce and industry and transport depended on manual labour, organisation and a realistic grasp of facts rather lhan on machinery and science, the Ottoman Empire preserved its economic prosperity, and there was a balance between its heterogenous elements, a division :>f labour. The bulk of the Ottoman Turks were peasants and animal breeders, they supplied the Empire with all the necessary wheat, vegetable, fruit and animals for meat, for transport and domestic use. The Empire exported grains and stock on a large scale. Again, by tradition Ottoman Moslems, especially the Turks, trained every male child in some profession or craft, be he a prince or an ordinary child. Women also were trained to embroider and to weave, besides attending to the land in the rural districts. The household goods, furniture, clothing, cotton, silk and woollen textiles, leather for bookbinding 01 tiunks, potteiy, silveiwaie, carpet and embroidery were mostly made by Moslems. Except silver, all the raw material for these industries existed in the Empire. Trade and hand industry were under highly organised guilds which classified the producers and protected them, controlling at the same time all the commerce within the Empire. All the means of transport, mules and camel caravans as well as sailing vessels, were also in the hands of Moslems and Turks.

The non-Moslems, though to some degree producers or workers, were in the main iutevTuedica^ies of expoits. Natuially, they leaped the gieatest benefit from the introduction of machinery, while the Moslem Turks lost their hold over the sea transport, and their hand-made products, though infinitely more beautiful, were unable to compete with the machine-made goods that flooded their markets* In addition to this economic advantage, exemption from military service enabled the Christians to increase and prosper, while Moslem elements, especially the Turks, became impoverished, decreased in number and remained in ignorance. The Empire in its decline, just like the Byzantine Empire in its decline, was drawing all its man-power mainly from Anatolia.

The deterioration of the Empire economically was accelerated and its evils intensified by the system of Capitulations.

Capitulations were commercial and economic necessities in the Near East, and the system existed under the Byzantine Empire. The Mediterranean lands have always been inhabited by very different peoples, all of them engaged in trade and commerce. In such a world where customs varied, and the output also was of a varied nature, a certain adjustment and mutual sacrifice was necessary for the sake of all. The Ottoman Turks, the successors of the Graeco-Roman Empire, were strong enough to do away with all previous arrangements. Their ratification of all existing lights was, therefoie, not only a sign of liberalism but of realism as well, for the material prosperity of their Empire depended on those adjustments. The Conqueror confirmed the Genoese rights in 1453, Soleynian the Magnificent signed a treaty of 'Friendship and Commerce' with t ranee in 1535, and similar commercial treaties were made with other powers later. Both sides profited from these treaties, for both sides needed markets.

But when the Ottoman Empire weakened, the Capitulations, which had been mere treaties of commercial adjustment, took a different complexion. After each Turkish defeat the victorious power imnosed a new clause in the Capitulations in its own favour. Ihese newly acquiicd privileges weic not only commercial; some of them were jurisdictional and legal. The subjects of foreign powers resident in Turkey began to demand special and sepaiate judicial treatment. Some of the Christian subjects of the Em~ pire acquited foieign piotection. An\ of them as saulting an Ottoman subject was judged by the Consul of the Power sitting as a court. When an Ottoman subject^rhappened to assault a foreigner, quite often the Powers sent their fleets to bully the Sublime Porte. Further, the Sublime Porte could not adopt any economic policy without the Capitullary Powers interfering. No tariffs could be raised or abolished without their consent, railways could not be built where they were a necessity, economically or from a strategic point of view. The worst of it was that the Powers never agreed among themselves.¹

1. Foreigners in Turkey, by M. Ph. Brown; The Bagdad Railway, by Earle, give illuminating details and data on this question.

The Ottomans had'really frightened the Powers in the early period of their history. They were aggressive and for centuries victorious in Europe. The Crusades had failed to stem their expansion. Then the European Powers had begun to solicit Ottoman alliance in their own wars. But when the Empire showed signs of weakness, it became an appetising piece, and each power dreamed of carving out the best slice for itself. The Ottoman Empire was called the ⁶8ick Man , whose possession and property had to be divided among the Western Powers. They began to bargain and bicker over their prospective shares among themselves. Their rivalries, alliances, a whole series of actions and policies which constitute one of the most exciting but ugly chapters of modern history, are collectively called the ' Eastern Question .

To speed up the Ottoman decline the Powers played with the non-Moslem groups in the Balkans. They were more or less semi-independent and formed national units, and they became pawns i*\ the international game for the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. The two trump cards of the Powers were religion and nationalism.

The Greek Orthodox Church, from the moment the Byzantine Empire was gone and the Ottoman Turks had begun to rule the Near East, never ceased to cherish the ideal of Byzantine restoration. The Patriarchate was .its champion and propagandist. Every Greek child in his communal school was brought up to believe in it. Later, Russia became its protagonist. For the Russian Empire was Orthodox, it was young and had to expand, to find an outlet for its abundant superfluous energy. Peter the Great and Catherine the Great took up the cause of Byzantine restoration with the utmost eagerness and zeal, and Russia began to look upon herself as the rightful heir to the Byzantine Empire. But apart from this, the Russians had sound material reasons for wanting to capture Constantinople, as the Ottoman Empire barred them from the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. If half of .Russian Imperialism was nothing but lust for territorial acquisition in the Near or the Ear East, the other half expressed a legitimate desire for outlets. Russia, therefore, to hasten the downfall ot Turkey, openly constituted herself the protector of the Orthodox people. Further, as a Slav nation, she put forth the idea of Pan-slavism, of nationalism on the racial principle. The peoples of the Balkans were Orthodox if they were not Slavic, or Slav Orthodox. Therefore Russia could claim the allegiance of them all under a religious or national pretext.

Nationalism in the Balkans inaugurated the intermassacre of Christians. To reduce the number of one another, so that in a given area the Greeks or the Slavs may be in a majority, they throttled each other lustily. Religion next inaugurated the massacre of the Moslems by all the other Balkan nations. For religion in their minds was the tight of the Cross against the Crescent. During the Greek rising for independence, the insurgents who entered Trip6litza, in Morea, massacred two thousand Moslems, including women and children, to celebrate the triumph of the Cross. The Ottoman Government, which thought of itself as an Empire rather than a national government, in the early stage restrained the Moslems from retaliating.

In this struggle between Russian expansion and Ottoman decline, England and France have often helped the Ottoman Empire to stem too great a Slav expansion. 1o manipulate Western public opinion, there were propaganda centres in the West, subsidised by Russia, which made it their business to prove the case against the Moslem element and the Ottoman Government. Hamlin, the founder of Robert College at Istamboul, in his Fifty Years of Turkey says that whenever he read an item of news about Ottoman misdeeds, he prayed the Lord to make him-disbelieve.

The Ottoman Government realised its peril and the necessity for reform towards the end of the eighteenth centuiy* In 1774, the year of that humiliating defeat which ended in the Treaty of Kutchuk Kaynarja, they engaged Western experts for the army. But the real attempts at reform and western penetration in a new sense began in the next century, the earlier half of which produced three great Sultans and marks the Renaissance of the Turkish part of the Empire.

Selim Til (1787-1807), who had not been "caged ' by his uncle Abdul Hamid the First, was a genius in more than one way. In addition to his education in the Turkish classics, he had studied carefully the French Revolution and the ideas and aspirations it embodied. The passion for political democracy which swept across Europe in those days had its fascination for him also* He did not aim only at reformj he aimed at recreating the State on new principles.

52 conflict of east and west in tubkey

Seeing that nothing could be done with the old army, he created the nucleus of a new army, which is called the ⁴Nizam-i-Jedid\ He opened several good schools, the Engineering School being one in which he personally taught. He at once drew the hostility of the old army upon himself. But his new army was pretty strong with all the officers ardently desirous of reform, and for a time his position was secure.

Selim also attempted to rebuild the civil administration on the principle of local responsibility, the people in the pi evinces electing theii piovincial councils and having a voice in the management of local affairs. ^rlhis set all the governors in the provinces against him, for they had been practically absolute rulers so far. Therefore Selim had to reckon with both the old military and the civil service as obstacles to his reforms. When his new army marched to the Balkans to put down a rising the old army in Constantinople rose and killed him. They attempted also to kill the heir to the throne, Mah-moud II, whom he had personally educated, but thanks to the vigilance of a woman he was saved.

The new army marched at once on Constantinople under Alemdar Mustafa Pasha, and though too late to save their master, they managed to place Mahmoud (1807-1839) on the throne. The new Sultan, to gain time, had to abolish Selim s reforms. But a genius in his own way, he managed to recreate Selim's ne^w ^axmy under another name and to persuade the liberal Ulema to proclaim his reform to be in accordance with the spirit of Islam. He got the backing of the people of Istamboul too. So he exterminated the old army. After that, as far as the inner reforms were concerned, it was plain sailing.

But European powers, especially Russia, always found a pretext to declare war whenever there were signs of awakening and reform which might strengthen the Empire. And so when MahmoudV little army had hardly been in training for a year, Russia declared war. This seemed like a calamity at first. But Russia had to fight two hardly-won battles and send two numerically superior armies before she could dictate a peace, and the heroism and the fighting quality of Mahmoud's little army convinced the Moslem nation of the superiority of Western methods at once. Mahmoud's enactments for reform were now strongly backed by the people. Being a believer in centralisation, he put an end to the unlimited power of the governors. Ihey could do nothing to an individual outside the law. Be also increased the number of schools. The Medical School was equipped with professors of great renown from Vienna, and twenty-eight young lurks were sent to different parts of Europe to study. Mahmoud s enactments removed a great many official abuses, and ensured the impartiality of justice. Forme, he said on one occasion, ^u there is no difference between my subjects ; I know that some go to the mosque and some to the church or synagogue, but when they are out ot it they are all the same". This Sultan was also the first sartorial reformer, for he introduced the fez and European dress in the army.

Mahmoud is called the Peter the Great of the Turks. Like all men of action, he attempted to do things which would bring immediate results. His most remarkable qualities were his incredible tenacity and broad views as well as his ruthlessness. He had to face a series of external calamities while he was go* ing on with his reforms, yet he never wavered. The Russian wars; then the Greek rising (1826), which created modern Greece, involving, in addition to other problems, the difficult and thankless task of keeping the Moslems from retaliating after the massacres of the Moslems in the Moreaj the revolt of Meheined Ali, the governor of Janina; the revolt of Meheined Ali, the governor of Egypt, who nearly captured the Ottoman throne 5 these are the most notable calamities of his reign.

With Mahmoud ended the first era of reform, and with Abdul Mejid (1839-1851) began the second and more important reform movement, the Tanzimat. In Mahmoud's time it was more or less the government which changed itself and inaugurated reforms. During the Tanzimat the reform went deeper, the people began to change, not only through schools but also through the great school of Literature, of which we will speak in another lecture.

Abdul Mejid was fortunate in having a galaxy of great statesmen to advise and assist him, of whom

Mustafa Reshid was the most prominent. The new era was inaugurated by the royal decree of Gulhane-hatti-Humay un. In the presence of the diplomatic corps and a large gathering Mustafa Reshid lead the royal proclamation from a high pulpit in the open. The ceremony was celebrated by guns and public rejoicings. A statue was also to be erected, but at the moment it was thought wiser npt to excite reactionary opinion against the decree.

The decree gave concrete and legal form to a great many of the changes which had been brought about by Mahmoud through royal enactments. "One can never make a revolution, one can only give legal recognition and a practical application to a revolution which has been accomplished in the actual conditions of society", says Fer4inand Lassalle. The Tanzi-mat was merely legalising and creating sanctions for what had been accomplished by Selim and Mahmoud. But even a superficial study of the Tanzimat is enough to convince one that a gigantic task had been undertaken. \\ hat was accomplished in the face of great odds is extraordinary. And whatever criticisms may be levelled against the ideas and methods of the I anzimatists, one far-reaching result has to be admitted. ^rihey laid the foundation of new Turkey, and made it possible for the Turkish element to rise and create a state over the debris of the Empire in spite of world opposition.

The Tanzimatists were the second Ottoman team which consciously started to recreate the State. Let us briefly consider the ideas which inspired their

reforms and the human area to which these reforms

were applied.

Like the early Ottomans the lanzimatists were

mentally a mixture of East and West. But from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century much water had flowed through the Bosphorus. The East had taken a deeper root in the minds of Turks. A mystic and spiritual philosophy of eastern origin had been evolved which had impressed itself on their literature and their personal life. Moral and Spiritual values, essentially Eastern, had gained the upper hand in the life and thought of the masses. The thinkers and statesmen, even when Western in outlook, were not indifferent to the national culture. So that when they came under the influence of the French Encyclopaedists, they assimilated most readily ideas which were in keeping with their Eastern bent.

The French Revolution produced two sets of ideals in regard to State-Nationalism and Democracy. The Tanzimatists took up Democracy. Their hearts rang in passionate response to the declaration of the Rights of Man. And because within their remembrance and their past history Islam only had made as grand a declaration, ,the ideal they offered to the Empire had its roots in the Islamic and Turkish consciousness. The Christian part of the Ottomans, on the other hand) took to Nationalism. The Tanzimatists never realised or admitted that any such explosive and separatist sentiment could be genuine, regarding¹ it as entirely a leaction against bad government. They were convinced that reform, good government, and the pieaching and piactising of democratic principles would cure the non-Moslem subjects of the Empire of their nationalism, throughout the Tanzimat period there were no terrorist measures; the new policy of "Union of Elements'' was to be carried out entirely by persuasion and appeal to interest and loyalties. Therefore all the efforts and reforms of the Tanzimatists were mostly for the benefit of the Prodigal Son of the Ottoman State, that is, for the Christian who was no longer content to remain in the Ottoman fold.

The best administrative reforms, and by the ablest men were carried out in Bulgaria, where, principally through education, an attempt was made to unite the Elements'. In 1838, a council of education was instituted, which opened a series of primary and secondary schools. In these secondary State schools the youth of all races and religions received education. The Galata-Serai Lycee played a great part in the Tan zi mat. Here young men were trained for the civil service, and all alike, were obliged to learn the local language of the districts where they meant to seek a position. No doubt these measures had the desired effect to a certain degree. But whether, if left alone, the non-Moslem peoples would have with time become loyal citizens and given up their national ideals is very problematic, for nationalism is as strong an ideal as democracy.

As a matter of fact, the primary education of the Christian youth had emphasised nationalism thiough-out centuries, and now foreign Poweis, specially Russia, saw to it that the Tanzimat did not bring about a union. Wars and local risings, protests that the reforms were too slow, protests that the reforms were not necessary, all came from the Christian element. So, although the Christians profited from the material point of view^r through the Tanzimat reforms, its policy did not succeed on any scale among them.

There was one thing which the Tanzimatists in their attempt to make citizens of the Christians overlooked. You cannot make citizens out of people by giving them only privileges. They must have equal responsibility and duty. They must give as well as take* We rarely remain attached for long to things which yield a little profit without demanding any labour, but we can never forsake things or persons whom we have served, and for whom we have made sacrifices. It is a lasting and ever new human characteristic. The Christians made sacrifices for their national ideals, the Tauzimat democrats offered them benefits i they were not to contribute to defence, they were to remain communally as separate as ever.

Though the Turkish element seemed to be losers materially from the Tanzimat reforms, I am certain that they got something better out of it on the whole. They developed and stengthened theii native qualities, those qualities out of which nations are made. The

Ottoman Turks were already state-builders and knew how to die for their state* Now they learnt to love their country more than their State or Sultan. The individual, out ot the system as well as within the system, got a new interpretation of love of state Patriotism. Again, independence has always been a fundamental necessity with the Turks. If they had had the leisure and developed the commercial characteristics of the new West, such as the richer Levantine class had done, they might have been turned into tools and slaves of a strong and dominant capitalism. It would have been difficult, then, to make them die and suffer generation after generation for the sake of their independence, for the sake of a Turkey to be. ^c The land of the W^est contained gold and silver, wine and silk, the land of the Turk had none of these, but it had Freedom".

In addition to this everlasting loyalty to the ideal of Independence, the Tan zi mat introduced the idea of individual freedom, and created the desire to have a voice in the government. What this meant to the Turk, and how much he has suffered for it, will be discussed when we deal with literature. Tn the political domain, a movement for constitutional government developed within a nucleus of writers and statesmen known as the Young Turks.

In the later years of Abul Aziz's rule, the old autocratic spirit of the sultans began to raise its head* Men began to be exiled for their opinions without trial. But the benevolent despotism under which individuals led an almost ideally free life had strengthened the Young Turkish Association ; Abdul Aziz was dethroned, and Abdul Hamid II, who ascended the throne, gave the people their first Constitution in 1876.

In conclusion, the conflict of East and West in this reform period (1774-1876) may be summed up in this way. The New West had entered the Ottoman world as a method in thought. Institutions were changing, but in accordance with the spirit of the old tradition. The Rights of Man were regarded as an interpretation of Moslem ideals, and the State did not now observe any distinctions or discriminate in favour of any community in the benevolent institutions it tried to create. Once the Ottomans had taken peoples of other races and creeds into partnership only after converting them. Now not only outside, but also within the ruling system, the religion of a man was to be respected. The Constitution was to be a revival of the right of ^uMeshveret , which Islam had accorded to the man in the street.

Thus one by one new Western ideas and forms were interpreted, assimilated and incorporated in what Turkey had inherited from the old East, without the old or the new upsetting the balance in its favour. Indeed, like the state-building of the Ottoman, the Tanzimat movement might have resulted in a new blend of East and West—but for Abdul Hamid II.

As a prince he appeared intelligent and liberal, he gamed the confidence of the Young Turks and their

leader, Midbat Pasha, one of the greatest historical figures of new Turkey. But Abdul Hamid himself did not reciprocate this confidence. He consented to give a Constitution only that he might ascend the throne.

An International Council consisting of the delegates of all the Powers had assembled in Is tarn-boul, and was discussing the Bosnian, Serbian and Bulgarian questions. It proposed a Commission of Investigation aud a Governor-General for all these regions. This was no doubt a blow to Ottoman sovereignty. Further, a war would be fatal to a constitutional form of government, a first Parliament in its infancy. Both seemed to Abdul Hamid excellent reasons for rejecting the proposal. He went to war and dissolved the Parliament.

The war lasted more than a year. Turkey was beaten not only in Europe but also in Asia Minor. The Russian army came to Adrianople and the preliminaries of peace were signed in January 18*8. The Porte lost more than it would have done by coining to a peaceful understanding a year before. Rumania, Serbia and Bulgaria were to become principalities with borders which reached the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. In the east Russia was given Ardahan and Bayazid. This treaty was modified later at the Congress of Berlin (June 1878), which Russia also was obliged to attend. Serbian, Montenegran and Rumanian independence was recognised ; Bulgaria was divided into two parts, one of which would be under Ottoman suzerainty but self-governing, and Bayazid was restored to the Turks.

The Ottoman Empire was forced to pay for its defeat, but it had managed at least to make a defensive alliance with England by ceding Cypius. lhere was, however, one clause of the Berlin Treaty which had a far-reaching result. It mentioned Armenia for the first time and demanded reforms in the eastern provinces. This meant clearly that the racial and national struggles of Macedonia, with the Powers using each nation as a pawn in the game, were going to be repeated in Anatolia.

During the thirty-three j eais of his leign, except for the Grseco-Turkish war of 1887, the Sultan did his very best to avoid wars of any importance. He was the last Ottoman Emperor and also the last one who had a definite internal and external policy.

As a ruler of the extreme absolutist type, he must have felt keenly the transfer of power from the Palace to the Sublime Porte during the Tanzimat period. The arbitrary tendencies of Abdul Azizs last years had failed to shift the centre of power to the palace. The greatest obstacles to this were the type of men who belonged to Midhat Pasha's school. Though Midhat Pasha had been asked to leave the Country when the Parliament was dissolved, his ideas still prevailed. The Sultan trapped Midhat Pasha by asking him to return and accept the governorship of Smyrna. Then he had him arrested and tried for the murder of Abdul Aziz. It was a sham trial of the grandest kind. Midhat Pasha was sentenced to death, but the Sultan modified the death penalty to a life sentence. This graciousness was really a clever ruse. When Midhat Pasha had been for a time out of the public view in his distant prison at Taif, Abdul Hamid had him murdered along with a few others. After that the Sultan managed, not without some difficulty, to shift the centre of power from the Sublime Porte to the Palace.

Even when Midhat was dead and his followers exiled or silenced, their ideas continued to dominate the minds of the people, and this worried Abdul Hamid, His next move was to establish a censorship, and punish very severely any one who was found with Tanzimat literature in his possession, to read a page of which was high treason. The use of such words as libei ty, constitution, patriotism was pennlised, and the very words were erased from the dictionaries.

The people who seemed to be attached to the ideas of the Tanzimat with an almost religious fervour weie the links, especially the youth. Foi thirty years Abdul Hamid endeavoured to suppress Turkish thought through an unparalleled spy system. If Russia had its Siberia for her intellectuals, Turkey had the Tripolitan desert and Yemen. ^: It would be hard to imagine how oppressive the reign was for the Turkish youth and how many died in exile. Those who say that the Turks do not know how to suffer for ideas should read the annals of these years.

As against the Turks, Abdul Hamid sought and found support among his non-Turkish Moslem sub* jects through their leaders. He heaped favours on Kurdish. Arab and Albanian chiefs, and attached them to his person. As the Tanzimat literature was in Turkish and had not much affected the non-Turkish Moslems as a people, they did not suffer from the Sultan s oppressive system as much as the Turks. And they were not advanced enough to realise that the royal favours were mere bribes to turn them away irom thoughts of progress, from having ideas. Further, in this reign the burden of the military service, unlimited and extremely harsh, remained almost solely on Turkish shoulders. With his Islamic bias the Sultan was obliged to emphasise the importance of the Caliphate in his internal policy, for that would be the strongest bond of union among his non-Turkish subjects.

The other internal danger which the Sultan tried to circumvent came from the Armenians. The insertion of their name as a nation in the Berlin lieaty gave them vague but strong hopes. Russia was at their beck and call. Therefore the Armenian Political Committees began their activity. Contrary to the method of the Young Turks, they at once adopted a terrorist policy risings and a free use of bombs. Abdul Hamid suppressed them very drastically both in the capital and in the east, where he used the Moslem Kurds to keep them down. But on the whole he was not more oppressive to the Armenians than he was to the Turks.

The lever of Abdul Hamid's external policy was the fact that after 1904 England, Russia and France had arrived at a perfect understanding over the partition of the Sick Man's goods. The Sultan was shrewd enough to see that he could not trust any of these powers. Only Oerinany could be relied upon to an extent, since it was clear that she was looking for economic, but not for territorial expansion in the Near East. Ihe trump card in Abdul Hamid s exter nal policy was therefore his Pan-islamism a^id his title of Caliph. Though a political Pan-islamism is obviously impossible because of the geographical position of the different Moslem nations, it was none the less a strong card, and Abdul Hamid played it well. The dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire would be difficult as long as the Moslem elements were kept together and objected to Western rule, and while Abdul Hamid lived it was almost certain that his Moslem subjects would be on the side of the Ottoman Empiie.

But the security which the Sultan thus achieved for himself was fraught with greater danger to the Empire than he himself, perhaps, imagined. England, France and Russia had Moslem subjects. An independent Moslem power, such as the Ottoman state, with a ruler who emphasised the Caliphate, could become very obnoxious. Even if Pan-islamism and the Caliphate could not form the basis of any practical policy for the Moslem subjects of the said powers, still it was to their interest to destroy even the most shadowy emblem of Moslem unity. Therefore the partition of Tuikey became a psychological necessity for the Western powers. As to why they did not do it earlier there are two possible answers. First, it took a long time to agree on the shares, secondly, the Turkish victory of 1897 over the Greeks showed that the military power of the Ottomans could not be ignored. The immediate Western answer to Hami-dian Pan-islamism within the Empire was to begin nationrJist propaganda among the non-1 urkish subjects of the Oaliph.

Among the Arabs, with or without western encouragement, national self-consciousness was bound to come, for they are fifteen millions, as large a unit as the Turks. The point at which the West aimed was to create nationalist sentiment at a stage when the Turks, Arabs and other Moslem peoples were not politically advanced enough to find a modus vivendi which would keep the foreigner out.

The Turks were not unaware of the peril to which they were exposed. Though in Paris there was a Young Turkish Committee, it could not influence opinion in the country except by. sending in pamphlets occasionally. An organisation within the country seemed hardly possible because of the widely spread spy system and the drastic measures of the Sultan.' When, after the Bulgarian insurrection, the Sublime Porte accepted a programme of reform for the three provinces, Uskub, Monastir and Salonika, with a Turkish Inspector-General and foreign experts, these pio-vinces became relatively fre§, and political organisations of a revolutionary sort could be created there. A ^uUnion and Progress Committee'' was formed, Masonic Lodges playing the part of a model, and very soon it won over the young and staff-officer element in the army.

In 1907 after a meeting between Isar Nicholas and King Edward, which gave rise to the rumour of a new partition plan, the \oung Turks proclaimed the Constitution in Macedonia and forced the Sultan to accord it again on July 23rd, 1908. The first Parliament, freely elected, assembled in Istamboul. All the races were represented by the best of their leading men. But a counter-re^ olution, provoked by the inexperience of the Young Turks, the propaganda of the foreign powers and of the Greek Patriarchate, which subsidised a part of the reactionary press, followed the initiation of parliamentary rule. It was a bloody and ugly affair. A great many young men were murdered for the sole reason that they wore collars, the sign of an extreme anti-religious attitude of mind. Eventually Mahmoud Shevket Pasha marched on Istamboul with a Macedonian army, smashed the reactionary organisations and deposed Abdul Hamid. From now on the Young Turks really took the government into their hands.

Abdul Hamid lived confined to his home and died in 1918. His character and policy possessed hardly a single relieving feature, and if he wasieally mad, it must have been excess of selfish cunning that brouerht on the maladv. For if the modern Turks and the unfortunate Ottoman dynasty were to set aside a day for national mourning, it ought to be the day of Abdul Hamid s accession to the throne.

The Tanzimat had prepared the way for a steady and unsubversive change from a despotic to a constitutional form of government. The mind of the Turk, in this period of transition, had a well-balanced pose, his tradition and culture were the basis for the infiltration of the new Western ideas and institutions. Further the Sultans, either as creators or as supporters of reform, were to remain as an integral part of the new political and social system. The monarchy might have developed into a constitutional one and the Sultan might have been a unifying and stabilising force of the political and Social system. But Abdul Hamid destroyed the chances of such a peace* ful evolution. The two generations which lived under his rule suffered perpetual oppression and tyranny, and a half-baked intelligentsia, extremely bittei, extremely radical and revolutionary came into existence. The balance between what is the root of a people s culture and the outside ideas was now gone. Unconsciously for the majority, but very consciously for the active minority, the figure of the Sultan became as strong an obstacle to progress as the Religious Body. Abdul Hamid was unwittingly destroying the very roots of a people he wanted to preserve, To the new rulers the West may have become as great an enemy as to Abdul Hamid, but they were bound to adopt its ideas and methods wholesale. Only those methods

seemed to be successful in the world of 1909. Therefore in the conflict of East and West in what was left of the Ottoman Empire, the West had a greater chance of victory.

Lecture III

revolution and war.

The first two months of the Constitutional regime belong to lyric art rather than to critical history. The collective emotion was so strong, rejoicing over the principles of libeity, equality and justice so intense, that no one in Turkey who has lived those moments can ever think -of them without being profoundly stirred. It was the delirium of the French Revolution without its bloodshed. People kissed and embraced each other instead of tearing each other's throats. Never before or since in Ottoman history have all the 'Elements' believed in the same ideal and loved the same country.

The Union and Progress party, conscious of its inexperience, left the government to the politicians of the older school, imagining that they were sufficiently influenced and impressed by the nerw ideals to work for their realisation in the same spirit as the young men of the party. But they had reckoned without their own youthful impatience and the possibility of a counter-revolution such as they actually had to face in 1909. The honeymoon of the Union and Progress revolution lasted for two months. Then came the time to establish a united family out of almost incompatible elements, and with that the disintegration of the Empire began once more.

The causes of internal friction were many. The Christians as a mass were touched by the new enthusiasm, and inclined to make common cause with the Turks, but their Church authorities and their political leaders were not. I hey had been something like a state within a state; now also they wanted the privileges of citizenship along with the rest, but without any responsibilities. Ihe question of military seivice, from which they had been exempt for centuries, brought on the first hot discussion between the government and the Patriarchates. The very natural demand that Turkish should be taugnt in their primary schools led to a wild cry of protest that they were being Turkicised. Among the non-Turkish Moslems, the Arabs, Albanians, Kurds etc., also, the leaders were against the new regime both by sentiment and by interest. It curtailed the power and abandoned the policy of the Sultan, from whom they received huge sums as subsidy, and under whom their people could shirk taxes and military service without anyone taking them to task. Even the Turkish element was not wholly for the new regime. Conservatives w^rere justly suspicious of the radicalism of the Union and Progress party, fanatics opposed it because they had a horror of all change, evolutionary or revolutionary. Lastly, the vast number of men employed in the espionage system of Abdul Hamid were threatened with both unemployment and disgrace. The Sultan had kept very carefully classified files of all the reports which had been made to him, and not only the professional spies but ordinary men had, under the old regime, reported some neighbour for personal vengeance or for remuneration. Their dread of public exposure made the atmosphere intolerable. When the Young Turks decided to burn all the reports, these men breathed again. But-once the reports were burnt, and the evidence of their past guilt destroyed, they sneaked into the new revolutionary organisation with theii spiiit of suspicion and spy mentality.

Some of these difficulties the Tanzimat Young Turks also had to face. But there was a difference between them and the twentieth century Y'oung Turks. The Tanzimatists were the outcome of post-revolutionary Liberalism; idealism was the dominant characteristic of their time, and the romantic declaration of the Rights of Man was still a living influence. The Young Turks of 1908 were born in a more materialistic and realistic age, which pioneered the Great War. Romantic literature, indeed, romanticism of every kind had passed away. Its place was taken by commercial methods: the new ideal was to get rich. Economic competition and the ways and means to success were much more important now than any idealistic sentiment. But the men themselves had changed no less than the ideal. The earlier Young Turks, whether statesmen or writers, were all highly cultured, belonging without exception to the leisured and ruling classes. They were uncompromisingly idealistic. They were out to obtain lasting and not immediate results; the ways and means were to them as important as the ideal itself. Rather than employ radical methods they preferred to wait and rely on the slow effects of teaching and persuasion. Ihe Union and Progress Young Turks were of petty bourgeoisie origin, officers or small officials. In the formative stage one does not come across anyone among them who was a sound intellectual, able to analyse and compare the old and new world. But they were nearer to the people, entirely home-made. Further, they weie mostly Macedonians, possessing a temperament which combines realism and ruthlessness, and will stop at nothing in its endeavour to realise its aims, lherefoie, though they also were strong idealists, they would adopt all ways and means to carry out their ideas.

When the Union and Progress party took the* reins of government into its hands for good in 1909, it believed itself to be the successor of the Tanzimat* It believed that a union of the 'Elements', equal lepresentation and a pailiamentaiy system was all that was needed to change the country overnight into a new one. So when they encountered stiff opposition of the kind I have mentioned above, they resorted to direct action. They swept aside all the old privileges*

The sympathy of the European press led them to hope that Europe would give them a chance to live peacefully while their hands were full with internal adjustments. Because the Tanzimatists were great admirers of the English system, though culturally more inclined to the French, because Abdul Hamid hated the English, the Young Turks relied on English support. But in no country was the press more hostile to them once they were in power.. Apart from the settlements and agreements which had beer made against them between the Chancellories ol Europe, the English people themselves could never be really sympathetic. Aubrey Herbert rightly says that though English Liberals liked reform, they hated revolutionaries. And ^u forces ranked against the Young Turks were too formidable to admit the possibility of a rejuvenated Turkey, even if the leaders of the movement had all risen to the sustained heights of the ideals which they proclaimed. Europe wanted a client, not a competitor. Officialdom was conservative and antagonistic, for the Young Turks were not conservative but experimentalists". No truer observation has been made on the Union and Progress movement by a foreign observer.

The fear that the determined spirit of the Young Turks which stuck at nothing might after all create a strong enough Turkey and wreck the partition plans led some foreign powers to try to grab whatever they could before the internal organisation could be completed and the full resources marshalled for the defence of the country. Austria annexed Bosnia, which had been under her protection since 1876; Crete followed suit by seceding to Greece; Italy occupied Tripoli. The first two matters were settled more or less peacefully. The Italian occupation did not rouse official Turkey to anything beyond a pio-test, but unofficial Turkey, the young officers and some doctors went to Tripoli and became the backbone of the local resistance. So when the greatest blow came, and the Balkan War was forced on Turkey, the hardiest element was away from the country.

The Balkan Wars were a dress rehearsal of the Great War. The preparation and the staging of both are due to the evil genius of Iswolski, the Russian Foreign Minister, perhaps the ablest diplomat of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Ihe present w^rorld confusion is due very largely to his machinations, still one must admit that he was a patriot and gifted with an extraordinarily astute mind. Iswolski was opposed to the policy of expansion in the Far Fast, and after the Russian defeat of 1905, when he came into power, he set about manipulating the interests and ambitions of other European nations in order ultimately to secure the Straits and Constantinople for Russia. The most important consideration was somehow to obtain the consent of Great Britain ai\d France. To placate England he came to an understanding with Japan in 1907, and settled all the Russo-Japanese diffeiences, especially in regard to their sphere of influence in China. In the same year Russia signed a convention with England in regard to Afghanistan, Tibet and Persia. The former two they decided to leave alone, Persia they divided into two zones of influence. Further, Russia, to win Great Britain's favour, seemed ready to encircle Germany. But still the British were not at all inclined to approve of Russia occupying the Straits.

To get Austria on his side Iswolski met Count Aehrenthal in 1908, and suggested that Russia would accept Austria's annexation of Bosnia and Novi-Bazar if she would in turn accept Russia's domination over the Straits. The Austrian statesman agreed to this on condition that Bulgaria and Rumania also had rights. With Italy Iswolski bargained over Tripoli. Both poweiv, grabbed their promised slices before there was a general consent. But as England and France remained opposed to Russia's control of the Straits, Iswolski thought of an indirect plan. Russia would have Turkey smashed and driven out by the intermediary of the Balkan powers. Then Russia would get France and England involved in a greater European conflict in which Austria and Germany would be ousted from the Balkans. These two, the Turks and the Germans, once out of the game, Russia could easily settle in the Straits and in Constantinople.

In 1910 Iswolski resigned from the cabinet and became ambassador to France, from where he manoeuvred very ably the Balkan confederation. From 1909 on, Fan-slavist propaganda in the Balkans stiffened. Intellectuals in Russia suddenly developed archaeological and other interests in Macedonia, and there they propagated the idea of a greater Serbia at the expense of Austria-Hungary.

In the same year Russia signed a secret treaty with Bulgaria, the fifth clause of which reads! .

The realisation of the high ideals of the Slav peoples in the Balkans, which are so near to Russia's heart, is only possible after a fortunate struggle with Germany and Austria-Hungary.

In 1912 (March) Iswolski managed to persuade Bulgaria and Serbia to sign a secret treaty against Turkey. He communicated this to M. P<yincare, asking him not to divulge it. Bulgaria obtained a loan of 180 million francs, which she spent entirely on armaments. Russia seemed to want nothing beyond the right to arbitrate after the Turko-Bulgarian struggle was over.

While all this w^ras going on behind the scenes, the fears of the new regime in Turkey were being calmed by all means. In 1910 both the Bulgarian and Serbian monarchs visited Turkey and assured the Porte of their pacific intentions. The Italians invited 150 prominent Turks to Italy and assured them that Italy had no territorial ambitions and that if Turkey herself offered Tripoli she would refuse. Because of this assurance Turkey transferred her defensive forces from Tripoli to Yemen, where there was a rising. Only when the Italians occupied Tripoli did the Young Turks discover that it was the signal for a general attack.

About the same time the position of the Union and Progress party had become very precarious* The conservative element in the country had had enough of their radicalism; there was a split in the party itself. A section of the army, upholding the conservative cause, got the uppei hand. Ihe paiha ment was dissolved; after a new election Kiamil Pasha, an old statesman, came to power and formed a nonparty cabinet, also known as the Great Cabinet. The naughty boys of the Union and Progress were dismissed or imprisoned, the army which was being organised by Mahmoud Shevket and the younger and abler element fell into older and less capable hands. Kiamil Pasha himself was a statesman of the traditional pro-English type. Though it could be clearly seen that war-clouds were gathering in the Balkans, Kiamil Pasha sincerely believed that England would not allow a war. So in August 1912 he demobilised 67,000 veterans stationed on the frontiers. When war became a Certainty Turkey asked the Powers to intervene, but this was too good an opportunity for the Balkan states to let slip. Seeing Turkey ready to make concessions, Montenegro declared war and the other powers followed. The Turks had 100,000 men, all new recruits, Bulgaria had 100,000, Serbia 80,000 and Greece 50,000.

At the commencement of hostilities the Western powers declared that the status quo would be maintained in the Balkans, no matter which party won the war. This was no doubt a provision against the possibility of Turkish victory, for when Turkey was beaten, the European press adopted a medieval crusading tone—the Crescent had been vanquished by the

Cross; and there was no question now of a status quo.

The first treaty of peace was signed in London, May 1913. But the Turkish booty they had seized was too big for the Balkan powers to agree at once upon the shares, and a second war began in which the others combined against Bulgaria. In the meantime Turkey snatched Adrianople from the enemy* In the second war Bulgaria was defeated, and a second treaty was signed at Bucharest, August 1913. Owing to the moderate attitude of England and France, and of Germany, who persuaded Austria to remain neutral, the Great War was for the time averted, and the conflict was localised.

Russia had not been able to get the Straits, but she had at least gained the knowledge that it was impossible to realise her end with the Balkan powers as intermediaries, for Bulgaria had nearly got Constantinople for herself. Russia must await the greater conflict.. In this one she had moved only a step or two further. Turkey was out of the Balkans, a greater Serbia had been created, and Bulgaria which had not been docile enough, was punished.

The Turkish defeat brought about a psychological change in the minds of the Western powers. Russia was delighted at the Turkish defeat, but rather disconcerted by its completeness. Iswolski had written at the beginning of the Balkan War that a complete Turkish defeat would be disastrous to the Entente": the collapse of the Ottoman Empire must be brought about by the Powers themselves, and not by the Balkan states. The ambition and ability of the Bulgars also came as an unpleasant surprise. The weight of Russia and France's favour therefore went to Serbia. She was to be the successor of the Hapsburg Empire. Bulgaria in retaliation flirted with Vienna. France and England felt that Turkey was broken and beaten for good. Her only asset, that of being a military power of some impoitance, was no longer of any value. She ceased even to be regarded as a pawn in the international game.

On the minds of the Turks the eifects of the defeat were naturally greater still. The direct cause of the disasters had been the senile vanity of Kiamil Pasha and his blind belief in the honesty and humanity of the West, which led him to demobilise a veteran army, and the general bungling and inefficiency of men of the old school. Their chances both as administrators and soldiers were now gone for ever. But the ignominy of defeat was not all that the Turks had to bear. The spectacle of Moslem refugees, men and women and children, fleeing from the fire and sword of the enemy ; the slaying of prisoners of war, their mutilation and starvation; atrocities and massacres perpetrated on the civil population the first of their kind in twentieth century warfare—inflicted wounds far deeper than the defeat itself. For no voice was raised in the West against these horrors until the Balkan powers did to each other what they had done to the Turks. Then Carpegie sent an International Commission to study the situation. In the early stages of the war Turkish women had met in the University Hall at Istamboul and appealed to European Queens to intervene from a humanitarian point of view in favour of the Moslem population in the Balkans. No answer was received. But when the same savagery was let loose on the Christian population, the anxiety and horror of the Western world was extreme. This brutal partiality was revolting to the Turks. ^And it was not the educated Turks only who were affected. Thousands of refugees from Macedonia passed on into Anatolia with their tales of carnage, and this impaired the friendly relations of the Moslems and Christians in Anatolia.

Unfortunately the Balkan disaster did npt, as one would have imagined, bring the Moslems of the Empire closer together. To the Moslem brothers of the outside world we owe a great debt of gratitude* India helped us and showed her sympathy in every possible way. But within the Empire the sepaiatist tendencies of the Moslems became more organised and more determined.

Bearing all this in mind, there are two very grave criticisms which must be made here in regard to the inability of the Young Turks to handle the situation. When they came to power the thing that leaped to the eye was that the reduced Empire could not last. It could be strong enough to resist the overwhelming forces arrayed against it only thiough a close understanding between the Turks and the

Arabs. It is true that the Arabs were already seized with the nationalist fever, but there was an idea ascribed to Mahmoud Shevket Pasha, himself of Arab origin, which was worth a trial. It was the creation of a dual monarchy, Arabo-Turkish, with the seat of government at Aleppo. Whether it could have prevented Moslem disintegration or not, one cannot be certain, but the experiment should have been made. Again, in the face of a Pan-slavic combination, with Russia working from behind, the Young Turks should have endeavoured to come to an understanding with the non-Slavic states in the Balkans, particularly with Greece. Both from the different declarations of Venizelos before the war, and from the Memoirs of Izzet Pasha, published since, it is evident that such a move was possible, though it would no doubt have involved some sacrifice. If the Turks had made some sufficiently tempting offer, the tragedy of the Balkans would have been at least mitigated. As it is, time has shown that in the Near East there shall have to be always a balance of power through a combination of Slavic and non-Slavic nations. Peace between the two can be kept only so long as both sides realise that the strength of the other is equal to theirs, and there would be risk in attacking it. Phis cardinal fact of their foreign policy the Young Turks completely overlooked.

The net result of the Balkan wars in the sentiment and outlook of the Turkish element of the Empire was the growth of nationalism. Ihe Empire was dead or dying. The last child of the Sick Man was to be the Turkish Nation-State. It proA^Ted to be an unusually stuidy child, in spite of the age an infiimity of its paient.

A historical criticism of the Union and Progress Young Turks is a difficult matter, for there is no unity in their policy, internal or external. We can, however, appreciate and estimate their work if we Analyse the three different elements in their thought and ideology, the three principal political, social and cultural movements of their time with which they experimented, nationalism, Pan-islamism and Pan-turanism. We will only consider their political aspects at the moment, and deal with their other phases when discussing the literature of the time.

The nationalism of the Young Turks was a reaction against two particular results of the Balkan wars, first, that there was no important Christian majority left in the country, and secondly, that the Arab Moslems were drifting away. In case of a final disintegration, the Turkish element would have to be prepared and organised in such a way that it could be formed into a separate nation. In its attitude towards other nations this nationalism was very pacific, wanting merely that the Turks should be let alone in the modest area which remained after the Balkan disaster. With the Arab separatists also this nationalism could have provided a convenient and reliable basis for an understanding. But the ruling section of the Young Turks had very little sympathy for it. Because it was the strongest and most widespread sentiment the Young Turkish government kept an eye on its promoters, and very few leading figures supported it.

Pan-islamism, with Enver Pasha as the leading personality, was a movement with an organisation under the Young Turkish party. Personally, I could never make out its political platform. It was possessed with a vague desire to unite the Moslems under the Caliph, but how the numerous geographical and other barriers were to be surmounted was never clearly visualised. It could have succeeded only as a spiritual, educative and moral force, but unfortunately that phase of it remained negligible to the last. Germany toyed with it and the Allied powers eyed it with suspicion, the nationalists were against its political aspect, but as a political force it was really always non-existent. When during the War Jihad'' was declared, Moslem brothers still continued to fight against the Turks. And it could not have been otherwise.

Pan-turanism was the pet political ideal of the Young Turks and Enver was again the leading figure. Its political aim was to seek unity with the Turks outside Turkey, who were and are mostly under Russian rule. 'It was thus an answer to Pan-slavism. Of its cultural side we will speak in connection with literature ; politically it was a dangerous game. Further, its actual realisation, considering the difficulties.

was as remote a possibility as the practical success of Pan-islamism.

While the Young Turks discussed these political ideas and experimented with them, nationalism, with its modest and pacific outlook, had the upper hand up to the Great War. And the Young Turks carried through a series of economic and educational reforms rather ably, establishing at the same time a^ fairly efficient administrative machinery.

The economic revival began with the abolition of Capitulations in September 1914, and the government took active steps to reorganise tile economic life of Turkey, lhe superiority of foreigneis in the economic field disappeared with the abrogation of privileges and the imposition of equal taxes. A- new tariff which raised the duty on foodstuffs enriched the peasants to a hitherto unknown degree, and since it applied also to all imports which subjected Turkish products to foreign competition, it benefited all classes of Turkish manufacturers as well. The new language law (1916) made it compulsory for all foreign companies to do business in Turkish. Hitherto these companies had employed either foreigners or Christians, who were better equipped in foieign languages, but now there was an opening for the Turkish youth as well. At the same time opportunities for vocational training were increased. Professional colleges, mostly commercial, were established and schools for arts and crafts besides. A large number of boys Were sent to the allied countries as apprentices, labourers, mechanics etc., to provide the nation with skilled workmen. The first Turkish bank (National Credit), which was indispensable for big business, also owes its foundation to the Young Turks.

Another interesting phase of the new economic life of Turkey was the beginning of co-operatives and trade-unions. It was a revival of the old Turkish guilds, and could have become a strong element in the new economy. Unfortunately, it was oiganised by strong party men, so the whole thing was smashed by the Sultan's government in 1918, when the Young Turks were obliged to surrender authority. A similar disadvantage was that the general atmospheie and the exigencies of the situation led the government to formulate an economic policy which was definitely inclined to state control. State control and state monopolies usually degenerate into party control and graft, especially in war time, and it happened so in Turkey.

An intense and honest discussion and .close study of the population question deserves to be mentioned as one of the achievements of the Young Turks. The decrease of population through war, disease and infant mortality put an end to all • illusions about the endlessness of our resources and our indifference to public health. Never had the Turks realised their weak points to the degree they did now. Anti-uberculosis, anti-malaria, infant welfare and other relief and social activities began to be organised by the flrnvfimmfint. Our statesmen were likewise forced to face tho problem of a diminishing population, a problem that confronts us even now. Long peace and a good immigration law are essential for us. Only we have to be very careful not to involve the country in political complications when choosing the elements that come to Turkey as immigrants.

The star^ performance of the Young Turks, however, and the one that endured, was their service to education. They built up the structure of our present system of public instruction. The University also owes its re-establishment to them. For though, it was opened by the Tanzimat Young Turks, Abdul Hamid had closed it down. During the last yeais of his reign instruction was permitted in the theological and science sections, but the institution worthy of being called a University began with the Young Turks of the Union and Progress. Nineteen professors, some of whom were prominent men, were engaged. They had Turkish assistants, educated in German universities, and the Turkish University became a reality during the ten years of the Young Turkish regime. The best feature of its activities was the profusion of its publications, mostly translations of scientific, historical and literary works. The Academy of History also published valuable literature on different aspects of Ottoman history.

The number of secondary and primary schools specially normal schools, was considerably augmented. A noteworthy attempt at educational reform was made by the Sheikh-ul-Islam, Hairi Effendi. He reorganised

find modernised the mosque primary schools in the capital, and opened a modern medresseh, in which scientific and historical instruction was entrusted to very able teachers. The schools were taken over by the Public Instruction Department and the medresseh was closed down after his resignation.

In 1908, when the Young Turks took over the government, literacy was one per cent, in a population oi 23 millions. In 1918, when they left, the proportion of literacy had risen to over 20 per cent, in a population of 14 millions.

In the Army and Finance departments fundamental changes were introduced. The former, under the stimulus of German instructors and thanks to the great organising ability of Enver Pasha, became thoroughly modernised. The Interior also attempted a number of reforms, but it could never become an efficient machinery because of the perpetual political interference hampering and devitalising it.

After 1913 the Young Turks showed real maturity in their grasp of the political situtation. They saw clearly that the economic rivalries of the powers in the Near Eastern market must be neutralised. They divided the concessions * between the Powers as best as they could. Between 1910 and 1914 Russia, France and England came to different agreements over Turkish railways, especially the Bagdad Railway. It looked as if the commercial rivalries could be definitely adjusted. In 1&14 the Turks even endeavoured, to soften the traditional Turko-Russian hostility. A delegation visited the Tsar in Livadia, and a Turko-Russian Association was formed in Istamboul. The opening ot the Straits was frankly discussed in the Turkish press. Similar attempts were made to come to a thorough understanding with England- and .France. Turkish statesmen tried with equal frankness to settle their differences with Greece, and an exchange of population was negotiated in ordc*r to solve the problem in Macedonia.

So by 1914 the Young Turks had managed to discover the danger spots, and with another generation of peace the Eastern question might have ceased for ever to be a source of international discord, it the Great War had not supervened. It was a turning point in human history, and the clash of ideas and forces which it involved deserves any labour that might be devoted to its study. For the moment we are, however, concerned primarily with Turkey s position as a cause, as a bone of contention, and as the most important cross-section of the human area during the conflict.

The real causes of the War may be regarded as belonging to remote history : one could go back as far as the reign of Charlemagne. Prof. Fay, in his Origins of the War , a most comprehensive study, ascribes it to the international anarchy produced by alliances, increase of armaments and secret diplomacy . The data is not complete, and historians are not objective enough at the moment, to give a strictly impartial account of the events which led. to it, but we may briefly review the immediate causes.

Russia and Germany stand out in direct relation to the events that led to the Great War, for the imperialistic aspirations of both—Pan-slavism and Pan-Germanism—were at loggerheads over the Balkans and the Near Last, namely Turkey. England and France got involved, the former for fear of successful economic rivalry, the latter for the sentimental object of regaining Alsace-Lorraine. The situation of Germany was perhaps the most critical. In 1871 she could hardly feed the 36 millions she had. In 1914 she had 67 millions to feed. To provide for this population she was obliged to import 10 billions of marks worth of grain and other necessaries and was consequently obliged to export something equivalent to her imports. Commercial expansion was a question of life and death for her. She could not find an outlet through colonial expansion, for the limited area of the East was already in the possession of other European powers. Markets were also monopolised by others. Deprived of eveiy opportunity for territorial expansion, Germany tried to capture the Asia Minor market. The construction of the Bagdad Railway by her had for its ultimate object the creation of a highly developed Turkey with a greatly increased power of buying German goods. This disconcerted England because she was an economic rival 5 it disconcerted Russia because the opening of the Bagdad Railway brought into view a

Turkey organised enough to resist Russian invasion and shatter all Russian hopes of conquering Constantinople. Between 1910 and 1914 the Young Turks had tried to neutralise the economic rivalries of European nations, and I believe they succeeded. But the forces which impelled Russia to get hold of the Straits and Constantinople they could not neutralise. And Russia meant to nip all schemes of Turkish development in the bud ; to hasten, if Necessary, the great European conflict which would crush Germany and give her the Straits.

It is perhaps suspected with justise that the tragedy of Sarajevo was the work of Russian agents. Bogatchovitz, a Serbian, in his Causes of the War", makes it pretty clear that those who worked for the greater Serbian ideal propagated by Iswolski before the Balkan war, actually were the agents of the assassination. Austria was caught by the bait. England and France, involved in the issue by previous alliances, had to join. The Great War was launched.

The Turks, as the centre of the dispute, had to think clearly and act cautiously, with a full realisation of the consequences. They had adopted a pro-German policy, because Germany had seemed the lesser evil. There is no doubt that they were aware of the strength and resources of the Allies. Moreover, the moderates of the party and public opinion were favourably inclined to the Allies. Therefore the ifoung Turkish statesmen first tried hard to be accepted as allies by the Entente. But although the

Entente was making every possible effort to win over the other Balkan states to its side, it turned a cold shoulder to all Turkish overtures. Turkey was deemed an inferior fighting force owing to her recent defeat, and besides, Russia, the most determined of the Allies, had gone to war principally with the object of dismembering Turkey.

A^ small minority of Young Turks, mostly soldiers, wanted an alliance with Germany. From the veiy beginning they had thought it an impossibility to be on the side of a party where imperialist Russia was a leading member. Germany, too, had favoured the Balkan states more than Turkey in the days when war had not become inevitable, but now she offered Turkey a treaty of defensive alliance, which was accepted and signed on 31st July, 1914. There are three clauses in this treaty which show the psychology of the contracting paities cleaily.

(a) The contracting powers agree to observe
strict neutrality in the present conflict between
Austria and Serbia.

There is no doubt that both the parties longed to have the conflict localised. But if Russia went to war both Germany and Turkey would be threatened. So the next clause says.

(b) If Russia intervenes and takes active
military measures, and the necessity arises for Ger-
many to carry out her pledges of alliance, Turkey
will be under an obligation in such a case to carry
out her pledges made to Germany.

But the bait Turkey swallowed readily was in the fourth clause •

Only three men, Enver, Tal'at and Said Pasha knew of the treaty. When it was disclosed to the Cabinet, the moderate element opposed it and a few members even resigned.

A week after this secret treaty Enver Pasha went to the Russian Embassy and proposed to attack Austria and checkmate those Balkan states which were anti-Russian, asking in return for a rearrangement of the map of the Balkans in favour of 1 urkey. Russia did not reject the proposal at once, but she did hot seem willing to accept it. Enver Pasha's strange move may be regarded as evidence of Turkey having started to play the ugly game of secret diplomacy which had been prevalent in Europe and had brought about such disastrous results. Or it may be that Etiver was playing for time, or was making a last attempt to come to an understanding with Russia. However, there is little doubt that the military party wanted to join the war, no matter on which side, but preferably on the side of the Allies. They had a sentimental as well as a real reason for this attitude. They longed to wipe out the shame of the Balkan defeat; and they felt certain that Turkey could not keep out of the war and survive in case of a great Entente victory, which would mean Russia's taking the

Straits and Constantinople.

Those who at the time believed that Turkey could and should have kept out of the war have mostly revised their opinion in the light of later developments. But at the time the peace party struggled and hoped to save Turkey from being drawn into the fray. A surprise was, however, sprung 01 them when two war-ships, which had been bought by the government but were under German command entered the Black Sea and tired on Russian vessels Russia declared war on 1 urkey (4th November) and England and France followed (oth November).

The part Turkey played in the war was against everybody's expectations. Germany, when she signed the secret treaty, counted not so much on Turkey's fighting strength as on Pan-islamism and Pan-turanism, for with the Caliph on her side, Germany hoped that the Allies would be weakened and hampered in every way by the alienation of their Moslem subjects. Events showed that Pan-islamism was not, at least at that moment, a living force. Pan-turanism, which was to bring about the disintegration of Russia, proved equally ineffective. If Germany and her allies had been victorious, it might have been of some use in the long run. As it was, it did not help the Germans or the Turks. But this disappointment was fully compensated by the extraordinary stand the Turkish army made in the field.

The Allied press was jubilant when Turkey entered the war on the German side, believing that she would collapse in three months, and could then be divided up among themselves. Hence the main pressure of the Allied attack was on the Dardanelles, Turkey's vital point. And Turkey's stubborn resistance thus became one of the most telling events of the war, important enough to make the Dardanelles campaign one of the decisive battles, perhaps, of world history. Turkey's ability to remain in the field until Germany herself had broken dovfai was another critical factor. Whatever doubt the Balkan defeat had created about the fighting quality of the Turk vanished. But a far weightier consequence was that the length of the Turkish resistance hastened the Russian revolution. It must have come sooner or later, but if Russia had been able to capture the Straits and Constantinople, it would have been considerably delayed.

By 1918, however, Turkey was definitely beaten, and an Armistice was signed at Mudros in October. Her fate now depended on which of the four partition plans was carried out and how.

The first of these plans is called the Constantinople Agreement, and was signed between England, France and Russia in March, 1915. It accorded the Straits to Russia, Constantinople was to be made a free port for Allied merchantmen, and the Holy Places were to be taken from Turkey and put under a Moslem Arab state, a matter over which Arab nationalists and the Sherif of Mecca had come to an understanding with the Allies even before Turkey joined the war. The second partition plan is called the London Pact, signed in April, 1915. Its object was to bring Italy into the war by offering her Adalia. The third was the Sykes-Picot Agreement, signed in May, 1916, between Russia, England, France and Italy. It related chiefly to the Arab regions, far out of the territory promised to Russia. It was kept secret from the Arabs, so that when the Bolsheviks published it, King Hussein refused ^to sign the Sevres treaty. I oynbee, speaking of it, says: This private and secret treaty indicates, as do the others, the way in which, anticipating the successful outcome of the war, the Allied representatives carved up an empire and planned new states, as if the countries and the peoples of the world were jigsaw puzzles, to be toyed with, shaken up and refitted as a statesman's pastime".

The fourth plan is known as the treaty of St. Jean du Maurienne, and was signed in April, 1917. In this Italy was promised western Asia Minor and Smyrna. As Russia had collapsed in the meantime and did not sign, England and France did not hold the tieaty valid, but Italj did.

The Young Turks, after losing the war, had not only to resign power but to leave the country 5 they, as well as the Union and Progress party, now passed out of Turkish politics. In concluding our account of their activity, we may briefly discuss this last stage in the conflict of East and West in Turkey.

We have already stated that the Tanzimat Young

Turks studied the higher ideals of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century West as expressed in political institutions. ^They had considered those ideals as externalised expressions of the best ideals of the East. They therefore met the West on an equal footing, and developed no infeiiority complex. They overlooked the mechanical, industrial and commercial aspects of Western civilisation, and the West cannot be said to have achieved a definite victory over their miirtls. It acquired pre-eminently the position of a collaborator and wise neighbour. The Union and Progress Young Turks saw nothing but the materialistic, the industrialised, the commercial W est. In that respect the East had nothing equal to offer. Therefore an inferiority complex was inevitable 5 also an intense 'desire to reach the standard of \\ estern civilisation as evidenced in its material progress. To reach that standard they had to accelerate the establishment of the external machinery which made the West so powerful, and this, in a milieu where traditionalists still believed in the moral superiority of the East, meant that they had to be overwhelmingly strong. So they swung back from constitutionalism to arbitrary methods. How they came about it must be properly considered, for the ^oung Turks of 1908 are the forerunners of all party dictatorships of the postwar world.

The Turkish Constitution of 1876 was very little modified when it was restored in 1908. It limited the Sultan's power to formalities and ceremonies. As

Caliph he was head of the Islamic institutions, but that did not interfere with religion at all* The government was formed by the leader of the majority, and was responsible to the Chamber of Deputies. There was a consultative Senate of forty, appointed for life by the Sultan. This was the outer form of the administrative structure. Side by side with this the Union and Progress party had a General Assembly, elected by the annual Congress, and its clubs m different provincial centres. On the whole its earlier aspect did not differ from that of any other party. But with the beginning of the Great War the Union and Progress party clearly showed that it had given up the idea of a constitutional government, such as the Tanzimat loung Turks had worked for. The Assembly, which had censured the war policy of the government, was dissolved. Its place was taken by a central Council, which was not elected by the rank and file of a properly assembled Congress, and it turned into a full-fledged secret cabinet. Party commissars were sent to each province, and they became the- moving power behind the nominal governor. Non-party officials could not afford an independent attitude. The power thus passed into the hands of a highly organised minority in the party, and in consequence the state machinery began to lose its authority and vitality»

There is no doubt that the embryonic dictatorship of a single party as inaugurated by the Union and Progress Young Turks was a powerful and highly centralised organisation. But it was not fit all the kind out of which a democratic or constitutional state could evolve. It allowed of no second party, that is, there could be no second trained and responsible group to take over the government if the administration of the Union and Progress broke down. That and the moral paralysis of the administrative system were the most glaring evils for the moment.

Though the Union and Progress Young ^#Turks were inferior to the Tanzimatists in their intellectual and cultural attainments, they were more ingenious and original in the way they produced «i pattern for party dictatorship in the world, and were nearer to the Ottomans in being the pioneers of a new method. But even a cursory comparison will show that in this respect the early Ottomans were definitely superior, for in creating their incomparable system they were able to preserve the vitality of the administrative machinery; and in spite of absolutism and tyranny this machinery endured, because their state was above the ruling Caste. A single party is apt to confound the party interests with those of the state, ignoring the people who are outside it and usually monopolising the material and moral goods of the country. To be rich you must be in the party, to be deemed patriotic you must also be in the party.

The only point the Union and Progress Young Turks scored over the early Ottomans is that they did not follow any ready-made pattern, such as Plato's Republic' was to the Ottomans. But they

100

conflict of east and west in turkey

also went for inspiration to the West. They lived at a time when, side by side with the individualistic trend in Western society, there were signs of the birth of a new state ideal. Their political philosophy is summed up in a verse of Keuk Alp Zia, the most remarkable and synthetic thinker the Union and Progress movement has produced: "There is no Individual but only Society; there are no Rights, but only Duty. The idea of the verse is taken from the French sociologist E. Durkheim, and it embodies a sentiment that has provided many a slogan to all dictatorships. It was on the strength of some such impulse that the Union and Progress leaders attempted to build up their clumsy but original pattern of a system of government that was to become fashionable in the post-war world. And thus the West had the last word in determining the sentiments and principles that went to the making of the Union and Progress creed.

Lecture IV

the turkish republic

However fervently I may hope and pray for it, yet to-day I dare not affirm that war as an institution has passed away from human society. But in 1918, after the slaughter of 20 millions of mothers sons, after the sufferingin the war-stricken areas, after the horrors of deported populations and inter-massacres, after a general uprooting of humanity, there was a universal desire for peace. The victors and the vanquished longed for it with the same degree of passionate sincerity. And never has there been a time in human history when the peoples were more disposed to lay the foundations of a new era on an equitable and human basis.

The Turks had perhaps been the greatest sufferers. They had been ten long years on the field, and the internal tragedy of inter-massacres and revolutions had bled their country white. They were ready to pay a high price for peace. But even a high price has a limit, and that limit was defined by the declarations of Western statesmen before the Armistice. Mr. Lloyd George on January 5, 1918, had stated that the homelands of the Turks and their capital would be left to them. Turkey knew that she would lose two-thirds of her possessions, but where the Turks were in a majority, they expected to be left alone to evolve their new destiny. They were confirmed in this hope by the pronouncements of President Wilson. Every territorial settlement involved in this war," he had declared once, ^umust be in the interest of the population concerned, and not as a part of any new adjustment or compromise of claims among rival states". And again. The impartial justice meted out must involve no discrimination between those to whom we wish to be just and those to whom we do not wish to be just. It must be a justice that knows no favourites and knows no standards but the ecjual rights of the several peoples concerned". He among all the old statesmen seemed to have sensed the strong human current for peace. And in the style of Shakespeare and the spirit of the Xew Testament, he enunciated his fourteen points, fourteen Commandments, four more than those of Moses. But unlike Moses he had no power to enforce his commands. He had wandered in and out of a world council, laying down the law for those over whom he possessed no authority. Peace was made by statesmen of the old school 5 all of them very able men and patriots in the pre-war sense, hut all of them too short-sighted to read the writing on the wall, too hardened to respond to the new wave from below 5 above all too blind to understand that the post-war patriot must create peace and security among his neighbours if he wishes his own beloved land to be safe.

W ith the Armistice the Allied forces occupied

Istamboul, Cilicia and Chanak. The Turks began to disarm. For six months the Turks believed that the occupation was going to be temporary and that it would end with the signing of the peace. But the sight of a disarmed Turkey with all its internal desolation and helplessness at once revived the age-old appetites expressed in the secret treaties. Like wolves about a camp-fire the Powers were prowling at the threshold with hungry eyes. lor TurJcey is rich by nature and Imperialism is greedy," as Arnold Toynbee says in his book, lurkey .

The condition of Turkey was indeed desperate. The Union and Progress leaders had left the country, their organisations lacked leadership, and there was no opposition party to take their place and repiesent the people. They had allowed none. This, as I pointed out in the last lecture, is one of the curses of a single-party government. It inevitably identifies itself with the country; so do its opponents, and ultimately everyone fights the sections of the people which they believe the rival party have represented. After the occupation, both the Allies and the opponents of the Union and Progress were trying to punish the naughty boys of the Union and Progress iu the persons of innocent Turkish people. For the naughty boys had left and there remained only some useful and vital elements which had sympathised with or supported some phase of the Union and Progress reforms.. Unfortunately there were very few leading figures who had not belonged to the party sonic time or other.

Meantime the government passed into the hands of the Sultan, who dissolved the Parliament. As it had been more or less a puppet Parliament, this did not matter much. But the Sultan did not ordjer fresh elections. So the government remained in his hands and he in the hands of the Occupying Powers and their Forces. In his Cabinet from time to time he had men of unquestionable patriotism and ability, but the moment they showed signs of unwillingness to be the blind tools of the Occupying Forces they were dⁱsmissed.

Before offering peace terms to Turkey, the Powers had come to a dangerous decision. It was to create a Greek Empire in the Near East which would include eastern and western Thrace and Smyrna' and the hinterland. This would, they thought, keep the Straits open for the benefit of the Allies; it would also keep out the Turks, the Bulgarians and even the Russians. They had, besides, resolved to establish an Armenia in the East from Samsoun to the Caspian Sea, and from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea. Not only Turkey but Persian and Russian lands were to contribute to this new Armenia.

They were not in a great hurry over the eastern part of their scheme. There already was an Armenia which Turkey had recognised. Therefore the East was suspicious of this new Armenia. Besides, Kiazim Kara Bekir was there with a regular Turkish force of about 15 thousand, the territory was beyond the range of the guns of the Allied fleets, and the dauntless spirit of the frontier people was another great drawback. But the landing of Greek armies in Smyrna was possible even at that moment. It was indeed a favourable moment, for the Italians, who wanted Smyrna, had retired from the Peace Conference. Arnold Toynbee calls this sort of Allied action picking each other's pockets. The_# Allies gave notice twenty-four hours before, saying that they would land their forces in Smyrna, which was an ugly prevaiication if not an actua^ lie. They landed the Greek army on May 15th, 1919.

There was an instantaneous change in the Turks. They stopped disarming and the people passed to action at once. Arnold Toynbee, whose fairness of mind as a historian and sense of justice as a man makes him an honour to the human race, describes the landing in his "Western Question in Greece and Turkey" in these terms •

On 15th May, 1919, a destructive force was let loose in Western Anatolia, as sudden and appa-lently incompiehensible in its action as the eruption of a volcano. One morning, six months after the close of the European war, civilians and disarmed soldiers were massacred in the streets of Smyrna} whole quarters and villages were plundered; then the rich valleys in the hinterland were devastated by further arson «and bloodshed ; a military front came into existence, which cut off the ports of

Smyrna and Constantinople from the interior and ruined the trade. As the war continued, capital investments like houses, bridges and tunnels were steadily destroyed, human beings consci ipted, deported or otherwise driven away, if they escaped murder. In fact a wholesale ruin and extermination of its inhabitants began over an area which extended with alarming speed.

In the reaction of the Turks to this treatment there is one thing which the world must never forget. The reaction came first from the people itself. All over the country vast meetings were held to protest against the action of the Allies; the front in Smyrna was created by the people, peasants and highlanders, women included; officers escaped from Istamboul and helped to organise guerilla warfare. Later, two forces converted this psychological upheaval into a successful war of independence : the vast number of ordinary and unknown people who could sacrifice their lives and were gifted with an astonishing ability to organise, and the genius of the few leading figures who knew how to utilise this material as well as moral force. As a witness and a humble participant in this extraordinary historical drama, I feel we should, after acknowledging the service and the ability of the great, attribute the success that was achieved to the psychology of despair and the determination of the people to die fighting rather than to allow themselves to be slaughtered like a flock of sheep. Bearing this in mind we will go over tlie stiuggle very briefly.

At the moment the struggle began the Occupying Forces on Turkish lands numbered 100,000. On the other side was the army in the East under Kiazim Kara Bekir Pasha, a small armed force under Ali Fuad Pasha in middle Anatolia and dispersed and half-disarmed regiments here and there. 1 he rest were guerilla forces and they were inadequately armed.

The Allies, uneasy about the situation in th« East, had induced the Sultan to send Mustafa Kemal Pasha there as the General Military Inspector to hasten the disarmament. There had been communications and contacts in secret between him and the commanders at Istamboul. On July 19th, 1919, Mustafa Kemal, Itetet, Ali Fuad Pashas and Raouf Bey met at Amassia vmd signed the Amassia Protocol, which is the foundation and the first constitutional document of the present Turkish State. Its gist is this : The central government is in the hands of foreign powers; the lurkish people by their action have shown that they are resolved to resist foreign domination 5 the activities and the forces of the people must be united and -Oiganised and a repiesentative congress must be assembled to discuss aud determine plans of defence.

i he first Congress (Erz^um, «Tuly 23rd, 1919), which met under the presidentship of Mustafa Kemal Pasha, decided to elect a representative body which could take—in case of necessity—the place of a temporary government in Anatolia to carry on the defence, to attach all the defence srrouDS to one

Anatolian centre, and to prepare «a National Pact over which the whole nation would agree. The Congress at Sivas (September 4th, 1919) worked on identical but broader lines. Anatolia broke away from the Sultan's government and took the civil as well as the military administration into its hands. Ihe Sultan, frightened at the development, dismissed DamadFerid Pasha's cabinet, which was considered a tool of the Allies, and formed a cabinet with nationalist or pro-nationalist ministers and ordered the elections. The country returned a vast nationalist majority to the Parliament, which met at Istamboul in January, 1920. Its virtual leader was Kaouf Bey. ^rlhe commanders, including Mustafa Kemal Pasha, remained fortunately—in Anatolia.

The first act of the Parliament was to issue the National Pacts in its final form. It was not different from the first draft made at Erzerum. It demanded that the lands where the Turks were in majority, and which had not been occupied at the time the Armistice was signed, should remain Turkish 5 the fate of the areas occupied at the moment—mostly Arab—should be determined by a free vote of the people. It proposed to open the Straits and the Bosphorus to commerce, provided that the security of Istamboul and the Sea of Marmora was ensured. The minority rights of the Moslems in the neighbouring countries were accepted as a basis for determining the rights of the minorities In Turkey.

This Pact was communicated to the Allies when they had not yet publicly announced the peace terms they meant to offer Turkey. They had two alternatives. They could accept the Turkish terms, which were nothing more than what they themselves had offered to the Turks before they laid down their arms; that would have ended the war. Or they could attempt coercion and carry out their partition plans. They chose the second course.

On March 16th, the Allied forces staged their famous coup d vtflt. They landed more troops in Istamboul, raided the houses of all nationalists and dragged people out of their beds. They also raided the Parliament and a number of nationalist deputies, including Raou'f Bey, were sent to Malta. Malta was already full of Union and Progress or what were supposed to be Union and Progress men* The Allied Occupation Centre further proclaimed martial law and issued proclamations that anyone who gave refuge to a nationalist would be sentenced to death. 1 o prevent the escape of the nationalists into Anatolia they armed Christian bands and put them on the roads leading inland. But Turkish bands also collected at once to help the refugees to escape. Both arms and men slipped through in spite of the Allied watch-dogs.

The Government of the Sultan instituted an ex-traodinary Court and passed death sentences on the nationalists. Mustafa Kemal Pasha, Ali Fuad Pasha, Dr. Adnan and myself were in that first list. Further, the Sheikh-ul-Islam issued a fetva tna.t. pvpi*v MTiftlpm who killed any of the seven on the list could be sure of being rewarded with heaven. It is very regrettable that for the first time a Sheikh-ul-Islam should have thus identified himself not only with the foreign occupation of the country but also with injustice and tyranny. It was a moral lapse for which the guilty Sheikh-ul-Islam suffered the keenest agony for the rest of his days.

Meanwhile Mustafa Kemal Pasha, who had come to Angora some time before, asked the country to send fresh representatives to replace those who could not or would not join the Nationalist Parliament that was to meet in Angora. It was to be a Constituent Assembly.

The Constituent Assembly, which held its first session at Angora on April 23rd, 1920, formed itself into a government known as the Government of the Great National Assembly. It was the first government in the East created by the people, and acting for the people. In that process of giving and taking which we have called the conflict of East and West this is one of the best gifts that the West made to the East. For the first time in Turkish history, and at the most critical moment, the entire responsibility of governing the country fell on the shoulders of a simple Anatolian majority, and the people's.representatives who now took charge were confronted with tasks as arduous as those of the handful of Ottomans who, in the thirteenth century, laid the foundations of the Empire which endured for seven hundred years.

The Government of the Great National Assembly can be compared to the French Convention. It combined the legislative as well as the executive authority. The President of the Assembly corresponded to the head of the Government, the Vice-President to the Speaker, the Executive to the Cabinet. Each member of the Cabinet was elected by the Assembly separately and was personally responsible to the Assembly. This constitution is worth study, for it was one of the most democratic forms of government known to history.

The most difficult period of the Government was from April to June, 1920. It had to establish judicial and civil administration throughout the country. This was comparatively easy, for there was an established administrative machinery left over from the Young Turkish period. The central structure was harder to build up, for few would or could join. But the real danger and difficulty arose from the civil war. The defence of middle Anatolia depended wholly on the Irregulars. Though there were idealists among them and they were undoubtedly the pioneers of the national movement, still it was difficult for the leaders to maintain discipline among the rank and file, and they oppressed the people at times as cruelly as the Greek forces. Further, the Sultan had, with Allied money, armed thousands of his fion-Turkish subjects to fight the Nationalists in Anatolia and given them the highsounding name of the Caliphate Army< ^

This was one event which turrt$!^vTOe tide in favour of the Government of the Great National Assembly. The other and far more effective one was the Sevres Treaty, which really amounted to nothing less than a sentence of mutilation and death on the Turkish people. It gave Smyrna and the hinterland and eastern and western Thrace to Greece; it created an Armenia that would extend from* the east to the south down to Cilicia, swallowing up the Kurdish regions 5 it handed over the ports to the Allies, the Siraits with Istamboul and the eastern and western coasts being under Allied control; it placed the finances also in the charge of the Allies, with the Capitulations restored for the exclusive benefit ot the victors; no fleet or aircraft, no army, but only a land-force of 15,000 (which would include the gendarmerie), could be maintained by Turkey. Indeed, if the treaty were executed, Turkey would have become altogether an abstract term, for even the arid bit of land in middle Anatolia had been divided into Zones of Influence. It was, however, only the Sultan-Caliph who sealed his doom by signing¹ this treaty and equipping the Caliphate forces. The Turkish nation would not submit to extermination, by treaty or by force of arms. While the Allies and the Caliph were engaged in the diplomatic formalities of the Sevres treaty, the National Government created a new army into which the Irregulars were incorporated. Certain bands resisted aud their resistance coincided with a Greek offensive But the tiny army inspired confidence in the people h$ defeating both the Greek army and the Irregulars at Inn-Eunu, and henceforth they supported the new government unconditionally.

Conferences were, however, held from time to time in London during this period to settle the Anatolian affair. We may leave them out. They gathered always after some Turkish victory and their aim was obviously to give the Greek army tyiie to recuperate.

The decisive battle between the Turkish and the Greek forces was fought at the Sakaria, The Greeks, after defeating the 1 urks at Eskishehir, captured all the railways and marched on Angora. The situation was most critical, but both the Assembly and the people rose to the occasion. Mustafa Kemal Pasha was made the Generalissimo and given some emergency powers, Ismet Pasha became the Commander of the Front, Fevzi Pasha, the Chief of Staff, and Refet Pasha, the Vekil of National Defence. The difficulties were enormous. Men, arms and ammunition were to be brought from the east, over 400 miles of roadless desert and mountains under the worst possible weather conditions. But the will of the thousands of patriotic men and women found a way. All available means of transport were offered to the Saite, and where no other means were available, human backs did the duty. Workshops were improvised ; whatever was left of the railways was torn and turned into weapons.

The Greeks had 80,000 well-equipped, soldiers, with a splendid park of 200 cannon and an inexhaustible supply of ammunition. All the railways were at their service, and they could run lorries over the comparatively better roads of Western Anatolia. The Turkish army consisted of 25,000 thousand men with rifles belonging* to four different categories, from Mauser to old Martini, only six cannon by way of artillery and very limited ammunition.

The heroism of the Turkish front is beyond description. The losses within the 23 days of open battle amounted to 1(5,500, a vast number of which consisted of officers. No one turned his face from the battle-field, though Turkish attacks were very little protected while the Greeks attacked under cover of very superior artillery. Kiazim Kara Bekir Pasha sent a wire to Mustafa Kemal Pasha during the battle which expresses the sentiment of the Army at the moment: "Until a single fighter is left on a single hill-top, the resistance will continue." There is a beautiful passage in a speech of Mustafa Kemal Pasha which also reflects the general feeling!

"As the President of the National Assembly, I declare openly before you that we do not want war: we want peace . . . (But) if the Greek army supposes that it will make us give up our legitimate rights, it is mistaken. It is perfectly natural that we should be defending our country s existence by arms against attempts to wipe out its nationhood. There can, indeed, be no more justifiable and reasonable attitude than this, Gentlemen, I assure you that we will continue our offensive pressure on the Greek army till not a single soldier is left m our lands."

The Turks won at the Sakaria. Clair Price, in his "Rebirth of Turkey,'' reveals the full significance of the battle^m,

^uThe Turkish victory on the banks ot the Sakaria radically changed the political complexion of the Near East and the Middle East. For two hundred years the West had been breaking down the old Ottoman Empire. But on the Sakaria river it encountered the Turk himself,.. .and the ^tide turned. History will one day find in this obscure engagement on the Sakaria^one of the decisive battles of our era.''

With this victory the new Government was securely established. It broke the backbone of the Greek army and it divided the Allied front. France made peace, recognised the Government of the Great National Assembly and withdrew from Cihcia. Italy retired from Adalia. So far only Soviet Russia had recognised the Angora Government. It was of immense moral and material value during the struggle to feel ourselves safe in the east when we had to concentrate on the western front. Kiazim Kara Bekir Pasha, by his campaign in Armenia, which led to the annexation of Kars and Ardahan and a definite peace with Armenia, also contributed greatly to our success, for we could draw freely upon the forces of the east for the battle at the Sakaria.

In August 11)22, a year after Sakaria, the Turkish army took the offensive under the command of Mustafa Kemal Pasha and cleared the country of the entire Greek forces by its march on Smyrna. The Turkish nation had passed victoriously through its ordeal by sword and by fire. The Powers decided to call a conference at Lausanne to settle the terms oi peace.

But they invited both the Istamboul Government and the Government of the Great National Assembly, and before going to the Conference the anomaly of two governments had to be settled. After an exciting and long session the Assembly voted the separation of the Sultanate and the Caliphate; it abolished the Sultanate, making Istamboul a province with a local government (November, 1922). Sultan Vahideddine having taken refuge on an Allied war-ship, the Assembly elected Abdul Mejid Effendi as Caliph.

The Lausanne Conference opened in November, 1922, and ended in July, 1923. The Treaty of Peace signed between the Government of the Great National Assembly and the Allies confirmed all the clauses of the National Pact.

The world may .rightly and justly admire the great names who have brought to a successful issue the struggle of the Turkish people for life and liberty. But the world knows nothing about the superhuman sacrifice of the host of unknown men and women lost in the struggle. I would beg all to remember them when they pray in their Temples and Mosques, those martyrs of both sexes and all ages who suffered and died that their nation might live in peace and honour. Such unknown heroes shall ever be worthy of the piayeis of all peoples.

On October 29, 1923, the Great National Assembly
constituted itself a Republic and established the
cabinet system. The life of the new Turkish state
could be divided into three periods i ⁰

(1) 1920*1923. This is the period of the Government of the Great National Assembly. Though there were no parties with names, still there* were three groups representing three kinds of opinion in the country, Radicals, Conservative-Liberals, and the extreme wing of Conservatives, who were in a minority. The last was spoken of as the Hoja group. On questions of national importance they voted unanimously, in other matters they did not hesitate to express their differences. The Assembly was one of the stiongest any country could ever produce. One who reads the verbatim reports of the discussions would really be surprised to see how these men, the majority of whom consisted of the simpler, less educated element, had the wisdom and the common-sense as well as the patriotism to know when they could agree to differ during such a critical time as this. The abolition of the Sultanate was voted by them all. This is very significant. It meant that all shades of opiriion at that moment were decided oil the form of government Turkey would have in the future* It was not to be a Sultanate.

(2) 1923-1925—In 1923 there was a new election* The Hoja group or. the extreme wing of the Conservatives dropped out. On October 29,1923, as has been mentioned, the Assembly constituted itself a Republic and established the cabinet system. In March, 1924, it abolished the Caliphate. It can be said that both the Republic and the abolition of the Caliphate were passed by a representative majority. The absence of any reaction among the people is noteworthy, for it pi oved beyond doubt that the Caliphate no longer commanded the allegiance of the Turkish people. This subject is peihaps too impoitant a thing to be discussed hurriedly by a lay person such as myself, but I shall just mention the obvious reasons for this revolution in Turkish sentiment. As a force ot inter' Islamic unity within the Turkish Empire the Caliphate had proved itself ineffective. Abdul-Hamid's policy of using it as a political bogy to frighten the Y\ est produced disastrous results. The "Jihad" proclamation during the Great War was a farce. Further, Vahi-deddine's troops, fighting under the name of a Caliphate Army against the people who were defending their honour and their existence smothered whatever respect and love for the institution still remained in the minds of the people.

In 1923 the People's Party was formed, but almost everybody in the Assembly belonged to that party. Yet it was evident that though on fundamental things they all agreed, there was a decided difference of opinion on many matters. There was a progressive and liberal group who were at the same time strong constitutionalists and a radical section. What they were all agreed on was that they must proceed with the reforms till a thorough westernisation in education and the state-system was achieved. The progressives believed that this could be done by constitutional methods, the radicals thought that their ends could be realised only by means of a party dictatorship and through drastic measures. However, there was no split and they continued their work of reform till the end of 1925.

In March, 1924, the Assembly passed a series of laws which completed the separation of religion from the state. The office of the Sheikh-ul-Islam was abolished, a presidency of religious affairs was instituted and placed under the Prime Minister. The ''Evkaf" were confiscated by the state and handed over to the Finance Department, the Medressehs and the Tekkes were closed down and visits to the graves of Sultans and Saints prohibited. All these measures were passed by a properly representative body with two shades of opinion, liberal and radical. It meant that the separation of religion and the state, of which we will speak in some detail later, was one of the generally accepted necessities. An obvious defect of the act, however, is that though it freed the state from the interference of religion, religion itself fell under state tutelage. The earlier believers in separation had hoped that religion would become free to develop on spiritual lines and to play its old and appropriate part in the moral education of the people, that is, to concentrate itself on the moral and philanthropic side of Turkish life. After the measure, the Moslems are the only community in Turkey who are under state tutelage in regard to their religious life, while the Christian and the Jewish Church is entirely free.

In 1925 the Assembly split into two parties, I rogrersive Republicans and the People s Party. The Kurdish revolt of the same year which brought into existence the revolutionary tribunals also led to the disappeaiance of the Piogiessive Republicans. After 1925 the Republic has been ruled by a single party that is, the People s laity*

The radical phase of the reforms began after 192G. The measures which may give a new orientation to Turkish thought and a new complexion to Turkish society are the adoption of the Swiss Code (192fi), and of the Latin characters (1928). Of the latter we will speak in connection with literature. The first demands a fuller historical review, for therein one sees in what way the Turkish Moslem differs from the other Moslem* brothers in, his present way of thinking.

Islam is a code which aims at regulating all human relationships. In any Moslem state it is the unique law. The Ottoman Turks took it as such and entrusted its enforcement to a strong and independent judicial organisation. It was more or less the same with the other Moslem states. But while the others kept it in its earliest form, that is, they remained faithful to the idea that the Sheriat was the expression of God-made law, the Ottoman Turks began to add to the Sheriat; God-made law was supplemented by man-made laws under the name of ^uCanun."

In the early sixteenth century Soleyman the Magnificent enacted the Cauun' which was an embryo of the later criminal and commercial laws. This ^u Canun " was incorporated in the Sheriat; the Sheikh-ul-Islam continued to be the administrator of_fjustice and the Sheriat courts were the only courts.

In the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the Tanzimat reformers began to think in terms of the new West which the French Revolution had created, they made startling changes in the laws and the judicial s^ stem.

The French Penal Code and the French Commercial Code were adopted wholesale. But they did not stop at that. Between 1809 and 1877 a colossal work of codification was undertaken, the result of which was the famous Ottoman Civil Code. In appearance it was occidental, that is, it was divided into articles and chapters and it was promulgated under the authority of the State. But in spirit and in substance it was Islamic. And it became the Common Law for the Ottoman subject, whatever his creed or race.

As Islam is more than liberal and demands that the religion of a man should not be interfered with by the State, the family law of each community, marriage, divorce and* inheritance, remained within the jurisdiction of the communal church. Moslem family law remained in the chnrge of the Sheriat courts and under the jurisdiction of the Sheikh-ul-Islam. But the Tanzimat created the Nizamieh Courts and instituted a Ministry of Justice. So the law of the land, except that of the family, was administered by non-religious State Courts from 185fi onwards. In the Courts of First Instance, Courts of Appeal and the Courts of Cassation Christian and Moslem judges sat side by side.

One could analyse the beliefs of the Moslem Ottoman Turks in regard to law at the end of the nineteenth century thus: Commerce and trade are subject to change ; the laws that deal with them must be left to the State, so that it can amend them or adopt any new law which seems suitable; behaviour and the position of the individual in the State, that is, everything which comes under Common Law,— must also be in the hands of the State, but this law must be evolved out of the established Islamic law, and it must be Islamic in spirit. But—and this second limitation is more significant, the law relating to the basic part of human society, the family, must be left in the hands of each community. One may conclude that the Ottoman Moslem Turk was on the whole for man-made law. He was, nevertheless, fundamentally consei vati\ e, and his judicial and legal innovations were essentially Moslem in spirit.

The Young Tuiks went a step further. In 1916 they took over the Sheriat courts from the Sheikh-ul-Islam and placed them under the Ministry of Justice.

They also attempted to modify the family law, in the
spirit if not within the letter of Islam. By a legal
ordinance they brought into existence a new family
law. But they made it a matter of choice for the
people, in theii family affaiis (marriage mainly), tQ
make use of the new or the old law, for the old law
was not abrogated. Of this we will speak in connection
with women. These measures were annulled by the
Sultan in 1919. ,

Outwardly the judicial reforms of the Republic and the separation of the state and religion are not different from the previous reforms. Considering the times, those of the nineteenth century were even more daring. But the adoption of the Swiss Code, specially the family clauses, constitute a revolution in the spirit. The present school not only demand man-made laws, but also insist that the Common Law, that which aifects behaviour and even the family, need not be evolved from Islamic or from the established Turkish laws. This is a gigantic swing towards the West, which no Islamic society has so far ventured upon.

I am not a jurist or a doctor of law to discuss with confidence the comparative merits of the Ottoman Civil Code and the newly adopted Swiss Code. But 1 will take up a question which I have been usually asked by my Western audiences. As Islam is Law as well as Religion, do not the Turks cease to be Moslems?'' No. Whether one agrees with the other aspects of the policy of the dictatorship or not, one must say that it has restored religion to where it should belong, to the spirit, to the soul. The Turks are attached to their religion as deeply as any other people. Religion is a reality which no society daie ignore. Therefore, if the State lets the Islamic community evolve its own moral and spiritual destiny, free from the corruptive influence of politics, I should not be surprised if Turkey became the cradle of a great movement of spiritual reform.

In the domain of economics the Republic has intensified state control by means of state monopolies and official or unofficial banks which centralise busi ness and promote national industry. In its foreign policy it has shown decidedly pacifist tendencies and has contracted alliances with its former enemies. It has been an undeniable factor in the establishment of peace and stability in the Near East.

The conflict of East and West in the Ottoman State which continued for seven centuries has ended finally in a victory for the West. However unpleasant the admission of the fact may be, its truth cannot be challenged. But it is only in the externals, the state and its machinery and to a large extent the civilisation that the West has stamped itself ineifaceably. The culture, the soul of the people, that is a plant which can grow and thrive only on its native soil. We shall review this aspect of Turkish life in the next two Lectures.

Lecture V

literature and culture I

The Ottoman Turks are a race as mixed as the Americans. Greeks, Slavs, Italians, Hunganans, Albanians, especially Circassians and people of every possible race in the Near East have been as individuals or as groups assimilated, converted and Turkicised. Therefore, except in the nomads of Anatolia who wander and usually marry within their tribes, there is very little of the original Turkish race left. But be they of the city, of the rural districts or of the wanderers, one thing is common to them. It is a strong national consciousness, and that conscious unity comes to them from their language. For in spite of alien influences^ in the way of thought and of the large number of foreign words which have become current at different periods, the Turkish language has retained its structural uniqueness and its peculiarities.

The Turkish language belongs to the Ural-Altaic, or, as it is sometimes called, the Turanian group, which includes the Finnish, the Hungarian, the Tartar and probably the Japanese. Though one of the chief Semitic languages, that is, Arabic, has played a supreme part in forming its vocabulary, as it has m moulding the thought of the Turks ; though Persian,

CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN TUliKEY

one of the Indo-Aryan group, has given it many words, still Turkish has not been altered either in its grammar or in its very particular inner harmony. All these alien elements have added to it the richness, subtlety and variety which all mixed languages of the world have. Max Mill I or, the great linguist, who .studied the Turkish language scientifically, declares in his Science du Language :

"^AVe can say that it is a great pleasure to read a Turkish grammar, even if one does not intend in the least to speak or write the language. The ingenious manner in which the grammatical forms are produced, the regularity that dominates the entire system of declension and conjugation and the transparence of the whole construction impresses one with the marvellous force of the human intelligence revealed in thih tongue.

Turkish never acquired the geometrical logic of Arabic and French, but it has retained an equal clearness and native ingenuity in expressing thought and feeling in the tersest and shortest terms. It has none of the metaphysical complexity, the profound subjectiveness and the monumental tloweriness of Persian, but it is a perfect instrument for expressing subtle moods and it is able to evoke nature with unique realism if not in the stylistic Persian manner. Therefore clearness and realism mixed with extreme sensitiveness are the characteristics of the language.

The language reached the climax of its development in the Ottoman period. But within the last twenty-five years the pre-Islamic, the earliest past has acquired such prominence in our thought and literature that it is necessary to make a very brief survey of the pre-Islamic period of Turkish history.

I have already mentioned the earliest discovered forms of writing in the Orkhon Inscriptions. Apart from them there is a vast number of myths, tales and epics which have been handed down and are told to the children in the cities and in Anatolia to-dajf. W e will take the ^uOguz-Nameh' as one of the typical forms of legend and epic. It has preserved its original name and form ; further, it contains the grey wolf legend of which we have heard so much in recent times.

⁴⁴ When Oguz was born his face was blue, his mouth was as red as fire, his eyes and hair and eyebrows were black aud very beautiful. Wlien he had sucked but once at the breasts of his mother, he talked and asked for food, in forty days he grew up and played. His feet were those of an ox, his body that of a wolf, his breast was that of a bear and hairy. He led the flocks of horses and hunted without permission."

This is followed by the killing of dragons, and finally the story of his marriage with the heavenly maiden is told.

⁴⁴ When Oguz was praying to Tanri one day, the air became dark and a blue light fell from heaven, more dazzling than the sun and the moon. Oguz walked towards the light and he beheld a lovely maiden sitting in the midst of light. There was a halo

128 CONFLICT OP EAST AND WEST IN TURKifil

on her head jjke that of the polar star, so beautiful was she that when she cried the blue heavens wept, and when she laughed the blue heavens laughed with her."

Oguz had six sons called Day, Moon, Star, £$ky? Mountain and Sea. From them great Turkish Kingdoms start. The names are quite fashionable now in 1urkey.

Oguz was trapped in a war and a grey wolf descended from heaven and showed him the way to safety. This recurs in other legends. It is evident that the wolf is the racial emblem of the early Turks. They carried a golden wolf-head on their flag. The oldest legend about the grey wolf occurs in one of the Chinese annals.

^u The Tokios used to live first on the shores of the Western Sea. A neighbouring people exterminated them all. Only a youth was left, but his feet and hands were cut off and he himself left in the marshes. A she-wolf looked after him and gave him food and saved his life. Soldiers of another people came, but with the help of the Gods the wolf took the youth to the eastern shores and ascended the mountains. She entered a cave with him and she bore him two sons. One of them was called ⁴Asna\ Being the more intelligent, he became the king. In remembrance of his origin, he had a flag with the head of a wolf on the door of his tent."

The early music and literature of the Turks are both connected with certain rituals, some of which have come down to us, though in different forms.

Bards .sang during all these rituals to the accompaniment of an instrument called * iCubuz.' * This was a ctistom as early as the fifth century, when the Turks were still in central Asia, and as late as the seventeenth century in the Balkans. It still exists in a modified form in Anatolia.

.The first ritual is Sigir (Ox). This was the name given to the musical banquets held after big hunts where the bards sang. Tt came down* to the Ottoman period, as the "early Ottomans were great hunters.

Another important ritual is the "Shulun," the sacrifice of animals, during which the gods were supposed to come down and commune with the people. This was abandoned in the Moslem period.

^u Yug," or 'Mourning over the Dead', was another important ritual, in which bards sang of the life of the dead hero or made him speak in the first person. In these compositions, nature played a great part, for mountains, rocks, clouds, all spoke and sang. T.his articulate nature dominated in the Ottoman tales and epics; the horse of the hero was very often as important a person as the hero himself. He was burnt and buried with his owner.

This form of literature, that is, elegy, is one in which the Turks have always excelled, and Islamised forms of mourning for the dead, with hymn-singing, Koran and Mevlud ehanting have remained very important parts of* Turkish communal and social life down to our own time.

Religion was evidently another subject which exercised the mind and imagination of the earlj Turks, and their religious literature is very remarkable. The cosmogony of the Altai Turks is, I believe, quite onginal.

"Before the Earth and the Heavens were created, everything was water. There was neither earth nor sun nor moon. The Beginner of all Life, the Father of Mankind, Tanri Kara Khan, created a being in his own image and called him Man. Tanri Kara Khan and Man flew over the face of the waters like two black swans. But Man rejoiced not in the happiness of quietude. He wanted to soar above, higher and higher, but losing his strength he fell into the limitless depths of the waters. In danger of being drowned, he implored the help of Tanri Kara Khan. Tanri Kara Khan commanded Man to rise to the surface of the waters and Man rose.

"As Man could no longer fly, Tanri Kara Khan willed to create the Earth. He commanded Man to plunge into the depths of the waters and bring some earth from there. When Man brought up the earth in his mouth, he kept some of it in his mouth that he might create a separate world for himself. But the earth swelled up in his throat, so much so that Tanri Kara Khan ordered him to spit it out. Man would have choked, unable to breathe because of the earth that was in his mouth.

⁴'The Earth which Tanri Kara Khan created was all plain, but when the earth from the mouth of Man fell out, the Earth became covered with marshes and hills."

Tanri Kara Khan in his wrath at this named the disobedient man 'Erlik Khan'. He expelled him from the circle of Light.

Erlik Khan is the same as the Devil of other cosmogonies and it is an original departure to con ceive of the Devil as the first man and not as a fallen

angel. ,

^uWhen Erlik Khan saw that the new dwellers of the Earth were beautiful and good, he asked Tanri Kara Khan to give them to him. Tanri Kara Khan refused, but Erlik Khan knew how to tempt them and take them by teaching them evil ways. Tanri Kara Khan was wrathful and decided to leave men alone henceforth. And cursing Erlik Khan once more, he expelled him to the third layer below the Earth, in the Abode of Darkness.

The struggle between God and the Devil is picturesquely told and it ends with the triumph of God. Apart from its archaic beauty there is m it a subtle sense of humour and understanding of human weakness all through.

Potamine, a Russian scholar who has studied the Mongol and Turkish mythology and classified, them as North Asiatic Mythology, states that these legends were early enough to have influenced the Jewish writers of the Old Testament, that the first epic forms among the Slavs, Finns and Germans were derived from Turkish and Mongol sources.

Apart from myths and legends, the Turks possessed a considerable number of didactic poems and proverbs.

The most striking feature of this folklore, which the Turks carried with them to the Near East, is its originality and the mixture of fierceness and contrasting tenderness. We see clearly that, considering the time and the environment, the moral nature of the early Turks was highly developed. We are also struck by the outstanding communal character of the early productions. No name is connected with any epic, myth, legend or poem. The group rather than the individual always is in the foreground.

1, Turkish solicitude for the Poles, from the early eighteenth century onwards, the hospitality shown at an enormous risk to Count Tekeli, the Hungarian chief, to Charles XII of Sweden and the Hetman Mazeppa and above all to the Hungarian refugees in 1848 are convincing proofs of this chivalry being innate in the Turkish nature. Regarding the courteous protection given to the Hungarians in 1848, Sir 3dward Creasy says: While the Porte was thus wisely pacific and conciliatory

Everywhere we find the same virtues emphasised: hospitality, generosity, lespect to paients and above all truthfulness. All these are, of course, human virtues rather than Turkish virtues. But there are two traits which have remained peculiar to the Turks down to our own day. The first is a natural impulse always to help the weaker side. The Ottomans were very particular about it} the legend of the creation of their early state is based on it; further, throughout their history, they have shown this tendency very strongly.¹ I do not know whether this admirable trait will remain. But their other peculiarity was very apparent during the national struggle. It is their Spartan endurance of every possible haidship and suffering.

in its general conduct towards foreign powers, a memorable and noble proof was given in 1849, that Sultan Abdul Medjid had not degenerated from the high honour and chivalrous generosity of the ancient race of Othman and Ertoghrul, the "Kight-hearted Man". When the united forces of Bussia and Austria put an end to the Hungarian war of independence, many chiefs, who had been most active in the Magyar cause, escaped into Turkey, and received hospitable shelter in the Sultan's dominions. The Courts of Vienna and St, Petersburg peremptorily demanded, first, their extradition, and afterwards their expulsion from Turkey. Sultan Abdul Medjid met these demands and the threats with which they were accompanied, with a dignified and firm refusal to violate the laws of hospitality, and betray the old principles of his race and creed. The two Emperors menaced more and more loudly, but in vain". •'The History of the Ottoman Turks', p. 533-34. This valuable work, published by Bentley in 1877, is

After the conversion of the Turks to Islam, literature was naturally coloured by the new religion they had adopted, but it did not lose its fundamental characteristics. We must begin our study of the new phase with the Seljuk period, the starting point; of all the intellectual movements and the literature of the Turks in the Near East. The literature and culture of the Seljuks attained its highest development in the thirteenth century, the time when the Seljuk state was declining. But great movements, especially the spiritual and philosophical, often coincide with theperiods when states have ceased to be oppressively strong. This period is being specially studied by a few remarkable young Turkish scholars, but what we know of it is yet incomplete, lhis is a gieat pity, for the Seljuks were perhaps more remarkable than the Ottomans, in literature if not in state-building.

The court language of the Seljuks was Persian and that of learning was Arabic. But the masses* spoke Turkish and the masterpieces were translated and interpreted, commented upon and propagated among the masses to an unprecedented degree by a host of secondary teachers and writers. The terms ^u Ulema-i-Rusum " and ^uKhalk TJlemasi,' the official Ulema and the people's Ulema, belong to that period, and their use continued throughout Ottoman history. But it became less ^nd less important towards the end.

We shall review the literary activities of the Seljuk age in the three aspects which seem to be the most impoitant.

1. Religion dominated literature as well as other activities in the thirteenth century. Its influence was especially intense because the Turks of the Near East had to face the onslaught of the Crusades. The war-cry of the Turk, ⁴Ur ha!adopted by the English and turned into Hurrah!' — was dropped and 'Allah, Allah!' took its place. The Turkish epic became religious. The heroes of whom the people sang were those fighting the Christian forces. Among a vast numb.er of epics there is one which is particularly noteworthy, "Battai Gazi.'' It deals with the series of

liter at ube and cultube I 135

wars against the Byzantine Christians, and it was the epic on which the valour and the ambition of the Ottoman Janissaries was nurtured.

2. In non-religious literature the profusion of animal stories continued} the love-stories are reminiscent of the early days in which nature spoke and the number of heroines, a dominating characteristic of old Turkish literature, is still considerable. But towards the end of the Seljuk and during the early Ottoman period a new epic of a semi-political kind developed, which celebrated the struggle of individual heroes against the state, very much in the spirit of Robin Hood, by championing the people s and the poor men s rights against the king and the rich. This sort of epic flourished mostly in the Smyrna region. Those who have been in Turkey probably know that the Smyrna highlander, called Zeibek or Effe, is a very characteristic person in life and in history. Not only have these highlanders always struggled against state tyranny in the Ottoman period; they were the first to take up arms against the Greek invaders in 1919* There is the grave of a girl highlander which is visited by Smyrna Turks as if it were the shrine of a saint. This girl was the head of a political band, fighting the government and the rich and protecting the poor.

The music and the dance of these Effes or Zeibeks is now becoming very fashionable. There is a ballad of the Fair Highlander, with yery expressive music, which reminds one»of the earliest Turkish ballad in which the horsfe shared the honour with the hero

⁴⁴The Pair Highlander leans against the mountain. It rains and his ammunition rusts. His mad heart will be tamed one day. Shame on thee, 0 Golden Chestnut, see'st thou not the blood on his purple vest?

⁴⁴ Clouds have gathered over yon mountains. Three hundred horsemen, live hundred men on foot are marching against him. lhe Fair Highlandei was unique in this world. Shame on thee, 0 Golden Chestnut, see'st thou not the blood on his purple vest!

3. But the most valuable and enduring achievements of the thirteenth century literature are the writings of the mystics. The basis of mysticism are different verses of the Koran and the sayings of our Prophet. Like the mysticism of other peoples, it is pantheistic and believes in the transmigration of the soul and its final union with the Supreme Being. In its evolution it was affected directly by Nestorian Christianity, Manichaeism and Neo-Platonism; indirectly by Indian mystical thought translated into Arabic by Alberuni.

Three contemporary figures in the thirteenth century stand at the head of the movement, Ahmet Yesevi, Haji Bektash and Yunus Imre.

Ahmet Yesevi was a Turk of Samarkand who never came to Asia Minor. His principal book is ⁴Divan-i-Hikmet'. It is believed that he is not the author of all that is written in the book, additions having been made at a later period. But the work was in simple Turkish, dealing more with human conduct than complex metaphysics, and so Ahmet Yesevi's teaching spread among the people vei y swiftly through his disciples and followers. Haji Bektash and Taptik Fmre, or Yunus Imre, are among his best known disciples.

The Bektashi orders really established themselves a little later, during the Ottoman period. '1 he Janissary organisation had Haji Bektash as its patron saint, it is often said that the force and the rigid organisation of the order was due to this >mystic spirit as well as the democratic tendency which dominated it throughout. ^rl he curious part of it is that though connected with the state, the order has also been the greatest.source of inspiration for those who fought against state tyranny. Ihe teachings of the order were not popular in Anatolia only but also spread very rapidly in the Balkans. Albania was one of the Bektashi centres. Another reason for the strength of its appeal was the ruthless way in which it attacked the complex theology of the orthodox. It stood up for love and grace in religion against the conception of a God of Wrath and Vengeance. A great number of anonymous hymns, poems and religious songs originated from the order, and there can be no doubt that we owe to it the development of the critical faculty in the Turkish masses.

Yunus Imre, the other great disciple of Ahmet Yesevi, is regarded at the moment as the greatest Anatolian poet of his age. He wrote a great many hymns for children and simple people which remained in vocrue for hundreds of vears. He also vp.rv humorously and. delicately satirized the theological and orthodox tenets of Islam. Here is one of the best known of his pieces.

"What have I done to Thee, Oh Lord, that Thou shouldst decree my frailty ere I was born ? Thou has conceived me as a rebel, Thou hast been free to shape me according to Thy will. When I opened my eyes to this world, I found myself in a prison cram* med with jins and fiends, and boiling with lust.

"Thou hast made a bridge like to a hair and said to me, 'Cross, save thyself from thy doom foretold!' How should a man cross over a bridge like to a hair? He will surely slip and fall headlong beneath. When Thy servants build a bridge, it is for the good. They build it that folk might safely cross the flood. They make it spacious and strong that those who cross may say, Behold, this is the Right Way!

Thou hast set a balance to weigh evil deeds; Thou hast designed to cast me into fire straightway; scales are meet for him that is a grocer, a merchant, a spice-vendor or a goldsmith. Thou art ever present and knowest all my ways.

"Sin is the uncleanest of all things unclean* Why should'st Thou search and weigh that filthi* ness? It would be seemlier if Thou didst cover it with Thy Grace!"

Many other mystic orders were established about this time whose names are known to you all. They no doubt played a great part in moulding thought and creating social solidarity in the age of

Seljuk decline* But the one which has exercised the greatest influence on the literature, music and thought of the people is the order of Mevlevis.

Hazret Mevlana Jelal-eddin Rumi, the founder of the Mevlevi order in Anatolia, was one of the greatest figures of the Islamic world. He came as a boy with his father to Konia from Balkh, after a long journey through Persia, Syria and Eastern Anatolia. His father was from Balkh, but as to his real origin there is some difference of opinion between Persians and Turks. His mother was a descendant of the Khwarazm royal family and he and his father were well received by the Seljuk Sultan Alauddin Keykubad. I believe the discussion about the Mevlana's origin is due to the fact that he wrote his greatest work in Persian. But that seems natural, as both Persian and Arabic were classical languages and works of scholarship could be written in either of them; the Mevlana, besides bis Persian works, wrote in Turkish, a little in Arabic and even in Greek. The Mevlevi order, though it had a popular side, was in Turkey the 'Tarikat'¹ of the intellectual, of the artist and of the elite. The Chelepi of Konia always belted the Sultan at the coronation ceremony and enjoyed a very high position in the Turkish social order.

1. The orthodox law and the way of life it prescribes is the Sheriat /the mystic rule of life is by contrast called TarikatV (Ed).

Of all the common traits of Islamic and Eastern mysticism the Turks emphasised the moral and communal side, while the Persians dwelt altogether on the aesthetic and the philosophical. In that the Persian is, perhaps, nearer to the Indian. Though the Mevlana s teaching is of all Turkish mysticism the one nearest to * the Persian conception, still he attaches great importance to social and moral conduct. Ihere is a legend regaiding this peculiarly Turkish trait that is told in Anatolia.

Sheikh Sa'adi, of "Gulistan" fame, sent his book to the Mevlana when he had finished it. The Mevlana wrote on the cover, ^uBe nemek est," and when Sheikh Sa'adi read it he answered, Velakin hulu est!"¹ The Mevlana cared for the salt, the substance, and Sa'adi for beauty and sweetness.

1. J3e nemek est" means, It is without salt", also, It is tasteless. Velakin hulu est me&ns. But it is sweet. (Eel.)

A contemporary of Hazret Mevlana was Muhiud-din Arabi. He was an Arab of Andalusia and came to Konia when the Moslems were being persecuted by the Spanish church. Here he married a Turkish woman and his step-son, Sadreddin Konevi^ became one of his disciples and commentators and spread abroad his teachings. Both the Mevlana and Muhiuddin Arabi are great artists besides being great teachers and philosophers. Muhiuddin Arabi is very much in the front page at the moment because Miguel A sin Palcinos, a modern Spanish writer, in a work published in 1919, declares that the ^uDivine Comedy" was inspired by his works and by the "Risalatul-CJhufran of Abul Ala al-Ma ari.

An anonymous religious poem which seems to have a great deal of the JMevlevi spirit is this i

Come, 0 Dervish, wander not in .desolation i whatever thou lookest for is, believe, in thee. If thou art in search of Ka'aba, Grace and Salvation is in thee.

"Follow not the mirage, roaming in the deserts; if thou art in search of truth, do not look for it in the Book: if thou knowest how to read, the JKoran is in Thee.

With thy knowledge thou dividest a hair into forty. Whom art thou looking for? In thy dreams there is none but thee; the one who has built the empty arch over thy head is in thee.

"Call not this good and the other evil; call not this true and the other a lie—none exists, the lie is in thee.

"Enter the city of hearts, wander around. Compare the sun and the atom. Thou only art capable of good and evil. If thou inclinest to evil, Satan is in thee.

Think not of ' I' and ⁴ Thou '; take no colour, white or black. The Creator of Ijig'ht shines in thy heart; remain not in darkness : the Everlasting is in thee.

" I have heard that thou art a son with no father, that thou wast born in Heaven and expelled therefrom; that thou hast wanted in plenty and hast ended in want** \\ hy blame Allah, the revolt is in thee.

Why look for help to others, if thou hast been exiled from Heaven, 0 Vagabond; the serpent that tempted Eve is in thee.

Though of low oiigins thy quality is great. If thou art a pagan thou canst worship all i if thou art drunk with the cup of love, thy Beloved is in thee.

" Oh ignorant one, worship not the externals as truth and light, a candle at each corner. ^rJ he stream of events flows for ever, the Everlasting is in thee !

Under the influence of this mystic ideology a very remarkable economic and social organisation, called the ⁴⁴ Ahiler ",¹ came into existence during the age of Seljuk decline. They are said to have established a regular state in Angora, but this subject has not been properly studied yet. It was the organisation of guilds and corporations among small traders and originated with the association of tanners. It is an organisation symptomatic of the thirteenth century in general, if one considers the guilds and city corporations of Europe and similar corporate bodies in the Islamic world. But in Turkish Anatolia they seem to have been very firmly rooted and to have had a very particular complexion.

1. Lit. 'Brethren'.

It is evident that political decline and anarchy must have been one of the reasons for creating associations which would ensure solidarity and at the same time raise the moral standards. Ibn Batuta tells us a great deal about them in his book of travels.

⁴ ^rlhe Ahiler, he says, arc against exploita. tion, they are against banditism from below and against tyranny from above." In one of the ⁴ Futu-watnamehs^,, ¹ one reads: ^uThe Ahi' must not go begging at the doors of Beys, the Sultan and the Bey should not know of the existence of the A hi or the Sheikh."

1, In. the language of the Sufis Futuwat is the expression for a disposition which is manifested in different ways and therefore cannot be expressed by a single word. In general

' Futuwa' is described as ¹ placing others above himself............ This

finds expression in liberality, unselfishness, self-denial, self-effacement, superiority to disappointment, indulgence to the faults of others, etc. (Encyclopoedia of Islam, ArL Ifutuwa ). A * Futuwatnameh ' is thus a book of rules and general moral guidance for the members of the order, here used with special reference to the Ahiler*. (Ed.)

2. Foolish talk .

3. Raving .

When the apprentice or the novice donned his apron and joined a corporation, he had to take an oath to seek seven virtues and to eschew seven vices; he had, in the symbolic language of the Ahiler , to open seven doors and to close seven doors. The door of Meanness must be closed and that of Generosity must be opened; the door of Oppression and Tyranny must be closed and that of Gentleness and Kindness be opened ; the door of Luxury and Self-indulgence must be closed and that of Restraint and Asceticism and Self-discipline must be opened ; the door of Popularity must be closed and that of Justice must be opened; the door of Herze¹ and ' Hezeyan*³ must be closed and that of Learning and

Knowledge must be opened ; the door of Ambition must be closed and that of Contentment must be opened; the door of Falsehood must be closed and that of Truth must be opened.

There is given a list of those who are not to be admitted to the order i the atheist, the astrologer, the butchei, the suigeon, the tax-gatherei, the hunter, the money-lendei.

It was a strict rule of the order that the 'Ahi' must be self-made. If he boasts of ancestry he cannot enter the doors of the brotherhood. 'Fven if he be the son of a prophet,' they said, ⁴it means nothing when he himself is lacking in virtue

This of course denotes a supreme, a real democracy; not the democracy of the modern world with its mad competition and seltish individualism, but a democracy where contentment, a really equitable distribution of the necessaries of life and the good of the group are the supreme aim. A passionate desire to serve the people and to uplift them morally is evident throughout the teaching of the Ahiler.'

Yahya bin Khalil,*the writer of the oldest Futuwat-nameh, says in his book (Futuwatnameh, 901, Fatih Library), ⁴ In my youth I knew not how to read and write. But I saw that 'Ahi' organizations were getting lax and that they needed guidance. Allah in his Koran says that every people s piophet speaks in their language. To the Futuwat people I must teach in their own language. I learnt how to read and write and studied the principal books. Then I wrote this book".

With the strengthening of the Ottoman state and the centralisation of authority all these guilds and corporations were placed under state protection*

In the Ottoman period Turkish became the Court language, and then it really developed and came to its own. When the Seljuks passed away it was, in spite of some masterpieces, like the English of Chaucer compared to that of tb.e post-Shakespearian period. It now acquired a matchless flexi bility and harmony lacking in the other Turkish dialects. Probably the mixture of peoples led to the development of new vowels of a great and rich variety; and with time the harsh Arabic consonants

(j) ^and Or⁹ (£) dropped out very much. The alien words the people adopted were Turkicised, treated according to Turkish grammatical forms and given peculiarly Turkish meanings. Thus alien words helped to enrich the popular language.

The writings of the Ottoman elite, on the other hand, took a different direction. The number of the alien words imported was greater and their original significance and grammatical form was preserved; subjects as well as words were freely and abundantly adopted, an artificiality was developed and an alien colour acquired which restricted the number of those who could be proficient in the language.

The written literature of the Ottomans may be divided into various groups.

Turkish Annals. I believe the Ottoman Turks, hav6 been' greatest in their annals. Beginning with the fifteenth century, Ottoman Turkish history has been recorded.by a Court historian day by day. Though the language, specially duiing some peiiods, is heavy, still the writers themselves are blessed with that frbjectiveness and realism which makes their works of Immense value both for the historical student and for the artist. They record life as it was, with character sketches of sultans, vezirs, the great in general as well as those of the man in the street. I know no ■ other writing which has so faithfully recorded the acts of the mob in revolution as these annals. There is no attempt at criticism. Fortunately, as neither they nor the Ottomans of the period were afflicted with the inferiority complex which falsifies literature and thought, they could faithfully record life as it was, without being concerned as to how it would affect the foreign reader. Only two of the annalists have been translated into English, and they also in parts, Evlia, who was also a traveller and is often carried away by his own fantasy — which was that of a genius,—and Nairn a.

The Ottoman classics consist of 'Kassidas', Gazels and 'Merciehs', as well as mystic poetry. As in India, those who excel in the former class of literature are called the authors of 'Divans'. Though as Qazel' and 'Mercie^ writers Turks have at times surpassed their original models, the poets of Persia, in tho Kassida' they can be ranked only with second-rate Persians. Battles, sultans, vezirs are the topics

LITERATURE 'AND' CULTURE I* X47

if not the spring, the rosefor the nightingale. At times in the description of horses or of certain battles they fall into a free strain and produce something worth while. Baki, who was one of the greatest in this, line, composed a very remarkable elegy on the death of Soleynian the Magnificent. Though the rest of his Kassidas' are rarely if ever read, this one is still quoted. It is of course loaded with the inevitable imagery of the imperialist poet.

Wherever thy noble steed has set its hoofs, the great from far and near have thronged around thee, to give their lives for thy glory. Across the face of the earth thou hast hurled forth from end to end thy iion-giidled woild-champions .

Mystical School. The two greatest poets of the Ottoman period belong to the Mevlevi order. Soleyman ])ede, who lived in the fifteenth century, is the first. He was a simple Imam of the great. Mosque at Broussa, where he used to teach the people and was a beloved figure. His greatest work—also the greatest in the Turkish tongue is the Birth-song of Mohammed/ Though other poets have . written Birth-songs, none have had the lasting hold of Soleyman Dede s. It has been chanted in every house as a Moslem requiem down¹ to this day. Eve^i those who« profess to be rid of religion and affect a snobbish Western style of life go to this ceremony. The part relating to the Prophet's birth, as described by his mother, is> a masterpiece of simple TftrkiSji and deserves to be quoted.

"I beheld a light'to which the sun was out a moth; it flashed from my dwelling¹ like lightning) mounting the skies and illumining the world. Rank on* rank, angels from heaven encircled my house*

The Heavens opened and all gloom passed away............................. "

She goes on to tell us about the celebration of the birth in that strange night when universal light irradiated all existence. It is a night when birds, beasts, men and jinn and all Creation dances with joy because of the revelation of the mercy and love of God.

Creation had only jcy, delight and mirth* Grief passed away and new life filled the earth. Every atom of the Universe took up the tale and raised its voice crying, Hail!

"Hail, 0 Soul of Souls most tender, Hail!

"Hail, 0 Sun of Love's Brotherhood, Hail!

*Hail, 0 Pleader for the Fallen, Hail!

"Hail, 0 Friend of the Portionless, Hail! Galib Dede was the next and last mystic poet. He lived in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. His great theme is love and beauty, mostly woven around the story of Leila and Mejnun. But his was a monumental genius, and I believe if a poet such as Fitzgerald translated his verse, he would delight the world as much as Omer Khayyam has done*

The Naturalist School. Towards the close of the eighteenth century, though the atate was rapidly declining, refinement, beauty and enjoyment of life had reached their apogee. There was a revulsion against religious subjects and 'Kassidas' which had only sultans as their theme. Turks became interested in life itself, and also desired to depict it as they saw it. From this desire sprang the naturalist school of the early nineteenth century. Though the writers are all secondary, yet, thanks to their works, there is no period in which the purely human side of Turkish society could be better studied. They widened the range of literature and produced remarkable character sketches.

There is a study of contemporary types by Vassif-i-lLnderuni, pai ts of which I shall quote. It is the advice of a mother to a daughter and the daughter s answer, its chief interest lies in the fact that it is in the colloquial Turkish spoken by the women of Istamboul, that it is the character sketch of a young woman and an old one who belonged to the class that cook their own food and wash their own clothes, that its subject and 'the human way it is treated makes of it a lasting and universally valid presentation ot the struggle between two geneiations.

"Listen girl, be sweet and true, be neither a hypocritical prude, nor too bold. Do not wander about dragging thy skirts in mud and mire. Don t be a street-broom, be a womanly woman.

"Do not flirt, you plague, you pest, do not run after every dandy and beau, do not pass thy time in feasts and entertainments. Learn howto embroider... (A list of a great many different stitches is here given).

^u Pembe, my child, why do you buzz round me like a mosquito ? Why dost thou shake thy belly like a dancer, you good-for-nothing girl, you bag-S^S^i y^ou minx. What is this romping about, what is this chaffing with men from behind lattices ? You are already thirteen, how can you think of tambourines and dances ? Why deck your head with spangles ? It will attract the eyes of drunken and worthless men.

^ ^u \our elder sister is already married. Allow yourself to be chaperoned by her. You are no longer a child, although you are not tall. See how Attika is married. May her luck follow you.

^u I wish your dad would marry you to a judge with a villa by the sea, so that we could visit you. Already mothers come to inspect you every day. That old lady may bring an engagement ring today. Go, put on your jewels, hang your coins around your neck.

^u You stiff-necked girl ! Why do you draw yourself up and shower abuse on your mammy's head ? Alas for the toil spent I have spent on you ! Don t be a street-broom, be a womanly woman!

This flapper of a century ago answers very significantly. Part of the answer is what she thinks 5 the other is conversation.

^u If mammy preaches again, I will scratch her eyes cut. I mean to act on my own. Did she stay at home when she was young ? See how the neighbours are in coaches to ride and to roam.

Why do you drone like a spinning-wheel ? Go and do your weaving, irfammy. Why do you tell me this and that is to be my husband ? May you and husbands wither like corn on the cob ! Even if I were to sell every pot and pan in secret, as long as there is life in me* 111 seek a boy of fifteen and him my sweet-heart make.

^u Washing greasy rags in the kitchen will .spoil my hands. Mammy makes me cook in the kitchen and entertain her friends. May my dact break her pate for it. She uses nie as if I were a slave bought with her money. How can I spoil my soft_rwhite hands? The fitting thing for them is to weave silken threads.

⁴⁴ How summers and winters pass • \et she wants me to sit in the house. I will be getting old at this rate before my wisdom-tooth cuts. I will seek a boy of fifteen and him my sweet-heart make.

⁴⁴ Come, Esma Hanum, rouge my face, trim my locks 5 everybody praises my face. Let me give, myself a touch in the glass. I will borrow .Tutti Hanum's red trousers, wind her yellow shawl around my slender waist, I will deck my hair with spangles, I will step thus into coaches with coquettish airs, <I will sit in pleasure boats with costly fans in my hand* ] can always wheedle daddy, just let me pass my white fingers through his beard,

⁴⁴1 do not care for moustached bullies. If;a husband refused to do what I wanted, I would kick him into a well. I only want frisky lads with jaunty cocked caps—I will seek a boy of fifteen and him my sweet-heart make".

From an artist s point of view it is a pity that this naturalism was swept away too soon. But what took its place, though inspired both in form and ideas by the French, is still a turning point in the history of the Ottoman Turks.

Though in the Tanzimat period there is a departure from the earlier form and the subjects, still there is one thing in common with the earliest school • literature is used as a means to propagate ideas, just as by the thirteenth century mystics. Till the Tanzimat era, Turkish writer's and thinkers had not looked for ideas and sentiments outside of religion, and by trying to borrow or to create an ideology independently of religion the Tanzimat writers took, a new step. Dr. Adnan, speaking of the Tanzimat in his (unpublished) history of science and religion, calls the Tanzimat the passage of the first group of Moslem writers from the medieval to the modsrn times.

The founder of the Tanzimat school of literature was Shinassi (1826-1871). He was also the political leader of the Young Turks. He began life as a simple clerk at the Arsenal at sixteen. It was fortunate tor the school that he was a profound student of Turkish and Moslem classical literature. He knew the Turkish dictionary by heart at that age, which sounds absurd, but not in his case, for he was destined to study scientifically each Turkish word in all the stages of its development, from the earliest Turkish literature to his own day*

At the Arsenal Shinassi made friends with an officer who was a French aristocrat turned Moslem and married to a Turkish woman. From him Shinassi learnt French and began to read the new philosophical and scientific works. He attracted the attention of Mustafa Reshid Pasha, the Grand Vezir, and even of the young and liberal Sultan Abdul Mejid, and was sent to Paris to specialise in Finance.

The first years of his life in Paris were devoted to philosophical and scientific studies, nevertheless he found leisure for the perusal of literature as well, for he was gifted with a colossal, almost unparalleled capacity for work. These rare gifts, coupled with simplicity of manner and dignity as well as extreme austerity, attracted the attention of the French intellectuals. He became an intimate friend of Lamartine, Litti^, the philosopher and lexicogiapher, and of Ernest Renan.

On his return he was made a member of the newly-formed Turkish Academy and a member of the Finance Council, controlling the expenditure on the army. He is also counted among the intimates of Sheikh Jemal-eddin Afgani. It looked as if he might easily become a Grand Vezir. But he was of an uncompromising nature and gave offence to the great. He was even involved in a plot against Abdul Mejid. Thanks to the angelic quality of Abdul Mejid's heart, he escaped punishment. But after Abdul Mejid's death he persisted in his uncompromising attitude towards absolutism. He caricatured Aali Pasha, the ■ new Grand Vezir, who was almost fanatically opposed to the constitutional movement among' the Young Turks. 'Aali Pasha dismissed him from all his offices in inanlting terms.

Though disappointed in service, Shinassi was firm in ms resolve. He took to journalism and laid the foundations of the modern press in Turkey. Up to* his time there were only official papers. He published the ' Terjuman' and later Tasvir-i-Efkar, which played a most important part in the thought and life of new luikey. Piinting as an ait, publications on a large scale to create and to educate public opinion, were all his work. His paper continued to be published except during Abdul Hamid's time and finally ceased in 1925.

When the first issue of the 1 asvir-i-Efkar appeared, Abdul Aziz sent five hundred pounds as a token of his appreciation. Shinassi sent the money back with the laconic answer, I desire to buy nothing that costs five "hundred pounds''.. But with his uncompromising nature and his general reputation of being a republican and an atheist, Shinassi could not preserve both his personal liberty and his independent attitude. When his colleagues began to be persecuted and he himself constantly attacked, he left for Paris and lived most of his time there, paying only occasional visits to Turkey; During his last years he was in Istam-boulj living in his printing-house and working at the;, same' .feverish pace which, characterised his whole life. He died of brain fever.

His most cherished and ambitious work was his monumental Turkish dictionary, which was to be in 14 volumes of 1000 pages each. He compiled it up to the twentieth word we have thirty-one giving the derivation of each word and its use throughout the various stages in the development of Turkish literature. The MSS of the dictionary is partly in the library of the Asiatic Society in Paris and partly in the University Libiary of Budapest.

The translations given in Shinassi's paper of Corneille, Racine, La Fontaine and Fenelon are considerable. He evidently was a love* of animals and keen on natural history. He wrote several animal stories in verse. Though the Turkish folklore is rich in animal stories, Shinassi is the first and last, 1 believe, among the classical school who wrote of animals. He was also the author of a comedy, "The Marriage of a Poet , in which he caricatured both the old school and his own. The bulk of his writings, articles on every conceivable subject, is to be found in the collections of the Tasvir-i-Efkar. The hard and bare life of an intellectual pioneer in Turkey is well represented in the words of Zia Pasha,, the didactic and satirical poet of the age: ¹ Unfortunate is he who acquires knowledge and virtue only to suffer persecution at the hands of the ignorant".

Namik Kemal took up the torch of new thought, both as the leader of the school in literature and in politics. The son of a high official who lived in different parts of the Empire, his early education was also on purely Turkish and classical lines. He met Shinassi in early youth and became an admirer and a disciple.

Shinassi had laid the foundations of the new school, but he had been a cool intellectual and a rationalist, while Kemal was a great romantic. The ideas Shinassi advocated in a restrained and matter-of-fact style, Kemal turned into great epics. Hence the modern school reached its highest emotional level in the works of Namik Kemal. But the thing to be noticed in both is that they were not mere imitators. Both attacked the imitators as bitterly as the old school. They were out to build up a literature and a philosophy of life that would be fudamentally Turkish.

Kemal's life-work is as colossal as that of Shinassi. Though Shinassi might have been both an atheist and a republican, Namik Kemal was not. He was a loyalist who wanted a constitution. He was also a very devout Moslem, beheving in the accumulated power of the thought and the arfc which the Turkish nation had inherited*

Both by way of translation and original composition he left a large number of works. .He was more interested in history than in science, though he was an ardent admirer of Francis Bacon. He also made translations from Montesquieu, Condorcet and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His principal works are his 'Introduction to Ottoman History,' ⁴The Age of Conquest,' novels, poems, theatrical pieces, and a critical survey of Turkish literature under the title of Ruin of Ruins." In every new form of literature he appears as a pioneer.

He crystallised and turned into a religious creed two great ideas of the middle nineteenth century West. But in spirit he was thoroughly Turkish.

1. Battles fought by the Prophet and his firjsit followers against Arab tribes who were determined to exterminate them. (Ed.j

Patriotism in the modern sense owes its inception to his ardent mind. He analysed and turned into poignant pictures the suffering of the land. His "Dream" and "Lamentations," one in prose and the other in verse, are the works in which this idea is very emotionally worked out. He dreams of Turkish lands as asupernaturally great, wounded mother in a shroud, wandering about in pain, yet pressing her children to her breast. In Lamentations" he asks the mother to put on black over her white shroud and stretch out her arms, one to Kerbela, the other to the tomb of our Prophet. "Tell Allah that the battles fought in the Turkish lands are each a ^Bedr', a *Hunein He traces the trail of Turkish blood throughout the Empire, telling over the vast number of martyrs whose blood has watered the Turkish lands. Though this imagery is somewhat worn out, it was then new and the writer felt its influence very strong* ly. The other work on this theme is a drama, called ^Fatherland/ When it was first played the emotion of the audience was uncontrollable. After the theatre the audience demonstrated throughout the night,

CONFLICT OF EAST AND- WEST IN TURKEY

lanterns in'hand, in the -unlit-streets of^f Istamboul* The next day Namik Kemal was arrested, exiled and then imprisoned.

The second idea^-which he presented with equal force is that ,of the rights of man in the state.- With this he did not mix any religious fantasy. "No. man is fit to govern another man without that'other man s sonsent," said Abraham Lincoln. Kemal went out to prove that all government not based on the consent of the governed ends in tyranny, and every individual should fight and suffer to the last for the sake of the rights of man. ...

Though each historic period has its own ideology, and freedom of the individual is not an important feature to-day, still Namik Kemal's lesson remains true and great. It was the teaching of sacrifice and uncompromising resistance, if necessary, martyrdom for the ideas that a man believes in. The -emphasis on the rights of man outside the sphere of religion was a new thing in the East.

Namik Kemal's classic piece, which epitomises this idea of his is his ^uKasside-i-IIurriet^,, (Ode to Freedom). There is here none of the lyric and overdone imagery of his other works. It is a dignified and magisterial statement of his creed,-for the sake of which he prefers to suffer all his life, rather than bow to and flatter the great in the hope of a position. For Kemal also, like Shinassi, if he had stooped to compromise, would have been a Grand Vezir. I will give you the spirit of the 'Kassida' in a short and

LITERATURE - AND CULTURE I" 159

Seeing that the tide* of events has deviated froiri honesty and truth, w*e have resigned power in the statd with honour and glory. Man, worthy of that name{ never tires in the service of men.^fc He must always give his hand to the down-trodden, to the unjustly persecuted, ihe suppoiteis of tyianny aie only the villainous in heart and mind. Dogs only delight to fetch and carry for the bloody hunter. Leu¹ it be said of me that the least of all my sufferings for my cause has given me greater honour and joy than the position of a Vezir, nay, a Grand Vezir.

Though the rope of the executioner is the hand of the dragon of death, a thousand times is it preferable to life with the chain of slavery around one's neck. Though the field of Freedom may be that of fire and hell, man will not forsake it for mere life. Let Tate call all its tools of oppression and attack me, I shall be a cad if I turn my face from the path of service and struggle. How magic art thou, Oh Freedom, that we have becbme thy slaves, though we have broken all other chains."

Namik Kemal's life was a prolonged martyrdom. Sometimes in prison and sometimes in exile or in alien lands, in spirit he always remained the great and valiant fighter that he was to the end. He died in exile in one of the Islands and is buried at Bulair.

But among all the Tanzimat or earlier figures who devoted their literary power to the service of a cause, none has achieved his ends to the extent Namik

Kemal has done. For over a quarter of a century during Abdul Hamid's reign, thousands and thousands of youths sacrificed their career, even their lives, for the sake of reading his works in secret and pro pagating his ideas* Steamer after steamer sailed- from Istamboul to Yemen or to Tripoli, carrying hundreds of young men, often school-boys, to the two classic places of exile—the Yemen and Fizan deserts.

A s an artist, if not as a man and a teacher, Abdul Hak Hamid was the greatest of the Tanzimat school. He is even considered by some as the greatest poet of all 1 urkish literature. Most of his life he lived in London as our Charge d'Affaires, and his great gift to Turkish literature were dramas and theatrical pieces in the most tasteful and developed modern style, though his subjects also were taken from the heroes or events of Islamic history. Abdul Hak Hamid is our last great romantic. His work raised the literary standard of the modern school, and I believe he would be accepted as an international figure if he were translated. But apart from this, his writings are full of allusions to tyranny and injustice, which he condemns in very strong terms. Though the characters and events he depicts are historical, the hints at Abdul Hamid's tyranny are obvious and very significant. Tyranny, blindness to the change of the times, indifference to public welfare and education, lack of confidence and co-operation between the rulers and the ruled are the four evils which, according to him. lead to the downfall and the ruin of a country.

As an illustration, both of his style and his views, I will give a free translation of parts of his Monologue of iarik Ibn-i-Ziad , the conqueior of Spam.

"You are in the treasury of the Spanish kings, Oh Tarik! From whence, and whither? From Syria to Toledo, from a hut to a royal treasury, finally to a grave. (Looking at the crowns and handling them)* What are these shining objects in your hands,> which dazzle your eyes? The broken and the trampled crowns of great rulers. You hold them in your hands—twenty-five proofs, twenty-five witnesses of past glory and power. Yet, 0 victorious commander, you are nothing but a keepei of giaves.

"Never follow the example of those who* owned these crowns. They were ignorant and proud. Never had they the fear of the power of the Lord, never did they consider the helplessness of men and never did they see the changes in the times.

"Now you are in their palace of splendour, you own their wealth, you have discovered their buried secre ts.

"Behold the change in the course of the river of Fate—behold the doom of the great nation rolling at your feet. All this because of the change you have wrought. Nevertheless, 0 Tarik Ibn-i-Ziad, you are nothing. You are a nought!

"Read, Tarik Ibn-i-Ziad, read! Each of these crowns tells you the tale of the adventure of an unhappy king. Read, 0 slave of Ibn-Nassir!

"Roderick tyrannised over his people, so much so that.there was nothing but the fire of hatred and revenge in the heart of his nation. The wise shunned his company, he was surrounded by flatterers and his realms were ruled by the ignorant and the incapable* Not a school, not a hospital have I seen amid the monuments of this city nothing but palaces, prisons and churches !

"Poderick never dreamt that a state whose ruler is a tyrant, whose inhabitants are ignorant and helpless, is doomed to be trampled over by alien states!

TjECTURE VI

LITERATURE AND CULTURE II

Abdul Hamid set out to destroy the Tanzimat literature—that is, the literature of ideas and ideals. Outwardly he succeeded. The works of th.2 Tanzimat writers disappeared from circulation and the particular words which expressed their ideology— 'Constitution', 'Freedom', 'Fatherland'—from the dictionary. To read a smuggled page of Tanzimat literature or to utter one of these tabooed words was an offence against the state and often punished with perpetual banishment. The press was reduced to official announcements and a strict censorship scrutinised every line before it was published. The daily news consisted of lists of promotions, praise of the Sultan and whatever else the censor allowed.

In spite of all these drawbacks a school of literature did flourish in Abdul Hamid's time. It was the ⁴Edebiyat-i-Jedide\ With all ideas excluded one would have expected the writers to turn to the simple naturalism of the early nineteenth century. But they were not that sort at all. With their inner frustration, their ideas developed into strong complexes. These complexes can be analysed into three different sentiment^: an anti-religious feeling, due to the notion that Islam shackled the Moslem and frustrated his attempts to mordernise his political and social life; an anti-past feeling, because in the past people saw their great adversary who stood between the East and the West; and, finally, a childish craze for westernisation, for the West seemed to contain all that was perfect and good. The conception our writers had of the West was limited to certain of its aspects only: science, rationalism and extreme materialism. But they were for everything that was Western.

In technique and externals these writers reached a high level. The novel in its modern form was produced by Hahd Zia Bey, the novelist of the school. The subjects of his novels were taken from a* very limited milieu—that of the super-westernised Turkish society. But his short stories are masterpieces, for they depict what was more representative and real, not merely a second-hand copy of alien types. On the whole this school was as faithful an imitator of the AVest as the old 'Kassida' writers had been of the Persian poets. Because of this tendency to emphasise change in externals, because of this disregard ,of the realities of the past and of man's soul, the school had very little root. That is perhaps why they were also called by some the ' Decadent School»

The greatest figure of the school is Tewfik Fikret, the poet. He produced very little and with difficulty, and it was of very unequal value. There are some creations of his which will live for ever in

Turkish literature, as they would in any literature, there are others which are already forgotten. He himself was a very dominant figure a kind of apostolic character of rigid and uncompromising puritanism. Those works of his which have come down and remain as powerful influences in thought deserve analysing.

'Mist'. This is a picture of the moral degeneration and misery of the city of Istamboul. The poet looks at it through one of those beautiful white mists which fall over the city and over the Bosphorus at tunes. He sees the tyranny from above, the debauchery, the luxury of the rich around the seat of absolutism and the demoralisation and the destitution of those below seethe and boil and form contrasting pictures. Istamboul is to him the Byzantinised Turkey. The refrain of the poem is, ' Veil thou, 0 City, 0 Tragedy, veil thou and sleep forever". Istamboul is the sinner of the age. Tewfik Fiki*et^Ts stand for the higher moral values of Right against Might, of liberty against political slavery is heroic. The poem was written during Abdul HamidV reign, and as it could not be published then, it was copied and passed from hand to hand. And it did play a part in the downfall of Abdul Hamid.

In 1908 Tawflk Fikret came forward and published the 'Tanine'. In his early writings after the Constitutional Revolution there is an optimistic trend* But he was disillusioned by the autocratic tendency of the Union and Progress and retired from public life, his last position being that of the President of the Galata Serai School. As an educator he was matchless* In spite of his retirement he continued to write and publish from time to time*

His most powerful and longest work in verse is called Ancient History". It is an uncompromising attack on leligion piimarily and.against the past in general^ which, to him, obstructs the progress and development of a people. Its effect was not unmixed. Its supreme defect was its indiscriminate anti-reli-gousness. Such men as Tewfik Fikret could be pure and great in character without religion. But in all countries the fundamental moral education of the people is based on religion. One may criticise the superstitious, the obscurantist part of it, but on the whole religion should be respected and used as the basis for the moral education of the youtji of all countries. Tewfik Fikret's wholesale attack engendered an irreverent*attitude towards sacred values in the minds of a certain group of young people. Further, it produced a wholesale hatred of the past a feeling which*has come down to our own time.

Apart from this, however, there are very excellent and enduring thoughts forcibly expressed in this poem. Tewfik Fikret is a pacifist, an internationalist, a believer in the brotherhood of man and in the supreme ascendancy and use of human reason in all spheres of life.

The poem begins with the appearance of the Spectre of the Past, a looming skeleton, blood trickling down its teeth, a spectre that prolongs the nights and delays the morning to which all humanity is looking forward. It is the most violent attack on violence one could find in literature.

^uWe want a morning—a good morning to those who have slept the long, dark nights. 0 Spectre, slinking away in the dark! You look as if you

have handled bloody objects.............................. You have been

the destroyer of my race ! ^ ^

"Heroism you say ? Its basis is blood and barbarism. Victory that is to trample over cities, destroy armies, cut, break, ruin, drag, crush, bum and demolish knowing no mercy, heeding no sighs and tears. Wherever you pass there is death and agony, all the harvest gone, even the grass and moss withered} families uprooted, homes desolate, every hearth a tomb, every roof a heap of ruins over orphan heads .

Fikret s ideal is, 'No sultanate, no domination, no extoition, no exploitation, no petsecution you are vou and I am I, no lord and no servant!⁷

This anarchist tendency in religion and established order softens and takes a constructive form in his "Credo of my Son.

"There is a great Pow$r, High and Unseen with all my conscience, I believe.

"The devil and the gin is in us, there is no angel nor Satan. The world will be turned into Heaven by Man, I believe.

"Evolution towards perfection is innate in creation. In this perfection and evolution with Tevrat, Injil and Koran, I believe.

^uMan is man's brother—a dream you say...Let it be! With a thousand hearts in this dream I believe!'

Apart from this Tewfik Fikret, throughout all his poems, stands against tyranny as a symbol of destruction. The opening lines of one of his national hymns, which was sung in the early days of the Constitutional Revolution, is, If Tyranny has cannon, shells, fortresses—Right has an arm that cannot be twisted,* a face that never turns!"

His best poem for me is his "The Head of the Camel". He wrote it for children and in very simple and beautiful language. I believe that it ought to be translated and. taught to every child in its early years.

"Once upon a time a big camel had a head. There is no camel without a head, but take this as a tale.

"This brainless, this rotten head led the poor camel over hill and mount and rock, exhausting him for nothing. To Whom could the poor heavy body complain but to a crow, who said, 'Ood gave you the head, carry it .

"His hump was bewildered, his tail wandered about. May Allah never take the power of leading from the head and give it to a tail. People at first listened to the camel's complaints a little, but by and by got tired and snubbed him. The poor camel at last quietly leaped into a ditch and laid down its head saying, ^lTo Hell with you, dirt!

"The head that is unjust is broken oif one day."

Reading it through, the last line seems to contradict what has been said before. For he speaks of a stupidity of the head all through and calls it unjust only in the last line* But from the point of view of an educator I believe it is just wonderful. For in the mind of the child injustice and stupiditj^r remain identical. With a simple stroke the story, does away with the glamour, the cleverness, which the popular mind attaches to.wickedness, and which I believe is one of the causes which makes the lure of wickedness so strong. <»

Outside Fikret s school there are two strong figures in Turkish literature who still live and write.

Hussein Rahmi, the novelist, followed a line of his own. A satirist and a realist, he has drawn from every possible class and type of people in Istamboul. On the whole he is, I believe, the greatest novelist we have produced within the last thirty years.

Mehemmed Akif, the othei' great figure, is a poet and if anything stronger and more masterly than Fikret. His subjects are taken from the people s life and from realities, but realities which were out of fashion in his time. Though he and Fikret attacked each other uncompromisingly, both after all wanted the same thing—a better and more equitable world. Fikret thought that man could attain this end by denying the past and by developing his reasoning power, and that only. Akif believed that no nation which discarded its past could have a future and that only through a better conception of religion could man be better. But though a strong Moslem, he did not mean to flatter the Islamic world in the least. Here is an extract of a long poem of his, called the East.

^u 'Youhave wandered a lot through the East, what have you seen? ' they ask. 'I have seen from end to end ruins, nations with no leaders, broken bridges, closed canals, empty highways, sickly and wrinkled faces, bent backs, brainless heads, indifferent hearts, rusted judgments, tyrannies, slavery, miseiy, hypocrisy, disgusting vices, divers diseases, burnt foiests, cold chimneys, wild fields, dirty faces, lazy aims, Imams with no following, brother killing brother, days with no definite aims, nights that expect no de-unite monowi

During the Young.Turkish regime, the Edebiyat--l-Jedide' carried on one part at least of its campaign uncompromisingly: westernisation at all costs. People at the time were very much interested in education, not only of the higher classes but still more ot the masses. For that aud also for further and closer unification with the West it advocated the adoption of Latin characters. The strongest protagonist of this innovation was Hussein Jahid, the journalist and writer of Fikret's school. The idea did not originate with him, but he was the first to make it a subject of discussion in the daily press. Hussein Jahid s proposal of introducing Latin characters was very fiercely opposed by more than one class of the intelligentsia, not to speak of the people in general. Pan-islamists were against it because they feared it would cut us away from the Islamic world. We could not write the Koran in Latin letters* The Pan-turanists argued that the cultural unity of the Turks would be destroyed. There were some thirty millions of Turkish-speaking Turks in Russia who used the Arabic script. Our culture had been more or less adopted by them. Lastly, it was contended that all our cultural wealth was treasured in literature in the Arabic script. The classical languages of the Turks were Persian and Arabic. The Arabic script in the hands of the Turks had developed in its own way and its spelling had been rendered more phonetic, so that with a little more attention to phonetics, the Arabic script could be easily taught to the people. This was the objection urged by the nationalists.

The proposition of the Latin script was by no means the only suggestion of the kind put forward. A man called Ismail Hakki evolved a new alphabet, more phonetic and more legible, and worked for its acceptance. Enver Pasha j himself took up the question and devised- a new way of writing the Arabic letters that would make the spelling easier and the writing more legible. But neither deyice was seriously considered.

In regard to the modernisation of Turkish thought and letters, Dr. Adnan, in his history of science and religion, affirms that if we had studied the ancient classics in the original, instead of taking them second-hand from Western literature, we might have produced something very unique and original, foi* we already-had a culture enriched by the Eastern classics* Besides the 'Edebiyat-i-Jedide', there were three other schools of literature which came into existence during the Union and Progiess regime.

The Pan-islamist school, whose most outstanding figure was Mehemmed Akif, published the ^uSebil-ur-Reshad", a weekly advocating their ideas. They were very much in favour of reviving Islam in its primitive purity. Any talk of social change or reform was lilie a red rag to them. The Union and Progress watched them with suspicion. To counteract their super-conservatism they themselves published the "Islamic Review, under the guidance of Keuk Alp Zia, the only sociologist and to some extent the philosopher the Union and Progress regime produced. The "Islamic Review ' is of great importance, for in it a critical study of Islam in its bearing on thought and society was attempted to some degree. It set out to translate the Koran into Turkish. Keuk Alp Zia himself strongly believed in the necessity of a complete reform, if not according to the lettei, at least in keeping with the spirit of Islam.

The Pan-turanist School started their activities in Salonika after the Constitutional Revolution, Keuk Alp Zia being the most prominent in the group. They were purists in language, and opposed to the use of alien words. Keuk Alp Zia was a very able poet among other things, and he drew not only upon those pure Turkish words which were current and included in the Ottoman Turkish literary vocabulary, but even imported words from pge-Ottoman Turkish aud Central Asiatic Turkish dialects, which did not .mean anything* to the people. This phase of his did not, however, last long. Sut he and the school were rabid detractors of the Ottoman past, setting up against it their racial past. Keuk Alp Zia has defined Turkish nationhood and the Turkish land thus! "Our 'Fatherland' is neither Turkey nor Turkistan, it is an immaterial climate*""^-"-ruran!" The best achievement of the school was its serious study of the Turks from a sociological point of view. Mehemmed Fuad Kuprullu, a young scholar and poet of the time, has been studying this subject and has produced very remarkable works within the last twenty years. At the moment he is the best known Turkish scholar in the western and Russian academic world. Another valuable contribution of the school was its attempt to explain reforms as an outcome of the state of the Turkish soul rather than an imitation of the West. The nio.tto of the school was, ^u Our race is Turkish, our religiori Moslem and our civilisation Western".

The Nationalist School has no figure which can be called its founder or leader. It includes perhaps the gieatest number of writeis, publicists, critics, poets and scholars of all shades of political opinion. It is a more natural growth and belongs to the soil and from the artistic point of view its achievements are considerable.

It was as keenly a purist as the Pan-turanist school, but without being artificial, as its aim was to preserve all the alien words which had been Turki-cised. But it also put an end to the intrusion of alien grammatical rules into the Turkish language. That is to say, it followed the genius of the people in their assimilation of alien words rather than the rule of the earlier classical writers. It accepted the leality of religion and was inclined to reform. Its difference with the Pan-turanist was in its conception of the past. *t believed in studying the past critically and it believed that the Ottoman Past was the real and the nearest patrimony of the Ottoman Turks.

I will here discuss only two authors, Refik Halid and Omer Seyfeddine, purely for their artistic signi-ticance.

The most remarkable thing about Refik Halid is his use of the colloquial Turkish in a way that makes it an extraordinary instrument of all thought. His is Istamboul Turkish, that is, the women s Jurkish, so subtle and yet simple and so rich in idiom. He was a strong satirist, and like all satirists lacks comprehensiveness. His brilliant mind looks at an object through a crack, but it gives a most realistic picture of what its gaze lights on. He looks at the mean, at the detestable, at the absurd. A rabid enemy of the Young Turks, he wrote masterpieces in the form of character sketches or caricatured the events of the time. All that he produced during this period is included in a collection called, What the Hedgehog Said.'' Later, after the assassination of Mahmoud Shevket Pasha, he was exiled to an Anatolian city.

From the point of view of Turkish literature it was a good thing. He came out with a series of stories of small Anatolian towns and of some village figuies which would be masterpieces in any literature. Here also he looks at the mean, at the sordid; therefore it is not an all round realism. But within its narrow scone it can be termed a work of genius.

Omer Seyfeddin, instead of the limited power or satire, possessed that precious, that rare quality of the simple Turk—a sense of humour. This means ne could see men and things from all sides, therefore he is of perhaps greater value for those who want to understand the Turkish soul. Even when he is exposing the defects of the Turk and his simplicity and inability to cope with the more shrewd and unscrupulous elements of the country, he does it in such a way that one understands and sympathises with everyone's point of view.

In the sphere of the novel the new figures were those of Yakub Kadri and Res'had Nury, both of whom have produced several remarkable works. Yakub Kadri's "Father Light/ as a study ^of the inner life of the Bektashis, and Reshad Nury s Wren, the study of a young schoolmistress in the provinces, are extremely good.

To review the Rupublican era from a purely literary point of view would not take long. There are only a few new figures who deserve notice, but th^re is no definite school of literature outside the writers belonging to different old schools, especially to the nationalist school. Yet one conld dwell on the intellectual movement of the present age at some length, for it is rich in possibilities and aims. I shall discuss the culture and literature of the age in its two aspects or divisions.

I have already said that throughout the history of Ottoman thought two distinct classes of thinkers and writers were recognised. The first were those whose learning and teaching possessed an official, orthodox character, and who were called the ⁴Ulema-i-Rusum'. We will call them the official Ulema all through. They were the ones in the beginning of the Ottoman Empire who created the Ottoman ideology, and in a semi-theocratic manner defined the position of the individual in the state and his relatione to his fellow-creatures. What their system was I illustrated in a diagram. Their aim throughout the ages was the stability of the system, therefore they insisted on keeping it within a rigid frame. Tt was the business of the poets to idealise the regime.

The second class of the learned or the artist we called those of the people, 'Khalq-Ulemasi\ Their writings and ideas were based on observation and on tendencies derived from the people or from a group of people*

The official Ulema lost their position and influence because of intellectual stagnation and through changes which came about in spite of them. In the age of decline the Tanzimat thinkers and

.writers held a position between the two classes of intellectuals, official and popular. They never became exactly official, for the Turkish state never wholly took the form they wanted. However, their influence was telling enough to justify our calling them the pioneers of all thought and literature in the new Turkey.

The Young Turkish regime, after 1908, really
created the nucleus of the official Ulema^ those
who were to interpret and propagate the philosophy
and the ideology of their regime. Keuk Alp Zia is
the founder and the most important figure of
the new ⁴Ulema-i-Rusum\ * „

Now we will study the literature of the present regime and its thought in the productions of these two classes, the writers who are out to teach and to establish its ideology, whom we will call the official intelligentsia, and the writers outside it, whom we will call the independents.

The official intelligentsia naturally forms the majority; some belong to it through conviction and some because it is more profitable. The group among them who must be carefully studied are in the 'Kadro' movement.

'Kadro' is the name of a periodical. It means a frame or a military or administrative formation* If a man is dismissed from government service, we say, ⁴He is out of the Kadro.' The name is enough to give one a clear-cut idea of the writers who belong to it. They are out to put all the ideas and the ideology of the present regime in a rigid frame. And what they are putting within the frame is very much like what Keuk Alp Zia believed in, with certain modifications.

In politics Keuk Alp Zia had expressed the state-ideal in this verse, There is no Individual, but only Society, there are no Rights, but only Duty". This meant the end of democracy, or a new democracy. It meant in practice the rule of a minority, and that was a single-party government. The Kadro' writers accept this piinciple.

'I am of Turkish race', was the first principle of Keuk Alp Zia's credo. Race with him meant culture and the nation-consciousness which has come down to us in the Turkish tongue and what it has produced. Keuk Alp Zia specified the past culture. He was anti-Ottoman and an upholder of the Central Asiatic culture. So are the writers of the 'Kadro'. But as all that has been left from the pre-Ottoman culture of Central Asia does not satisfy the philosophy and the need of the age, the 'Kadro' writers set out to interpret history in a new way. They declare that the earliest human culture and civilisation was Turkish, the earliest human species the Turks. I will omit the discussion whether it is really so or not. But one can say that it is more than sufficient compensation to offer the civilisation of Ancient Greece, of the Hittites and Sumer-Accad to a generation whose nearer and historic past is being taken aw a} .

So much for culture.

⁴ My civilisation is Western' is the second, principle of Keuk Alp Zia. The ⁴Kadro' writers accept this also, taking civilisation to mean the externals, the machinery and the procedure of all social and economic activity.

⁴1 am Moslem by religion" was Keuk Alp Zia's third principle. Needless to say that he meant by Islam a reformed Islam, one which could be adapted-to the necessities of the age. Phe new official Kadro' writers and others outside this group leave this part of the credo out. Religion and the state have been separated, they would say, religion is out of our domain. If you ask them why a secular state keeps the direction of religious affairs under its control, I do not know what they would say, but I guess that some would answer, ^uTf we let Islam organise itself in society without control, it might endanger the young secular state by engendering some new reactionary force". Some perhaps really wish to leave its religion to the Islamic community, without allowing the state to interfere.

Now all present-day literature, whether it be novels or short stories or merely essays or articles, is animated by these principles. Education, pres* and literature all co-operate most efficiently in teach-* ing them. They have a unique chance and possibility to overcome their greatest difficulty, that of fighting the effects of the Ottoman past, an opportunity such as neither Russia, nor Fascist Italy nor Nazi Ger-» many possess. And they have this because of the change of script.

In speaking about the earlier movement in favour of the Latin script, I had said that there were three objections to it, first, that of Pan-islamists, who feared the loss of Islamic unity, religious and political. In that the new regime no longer believes. The second objection came from the Pan-turanists, who insisted that we would lose our cultural unity with the Turks in Russia. In 1926, a lepiesentative congress of Turkish-speaking peoples at Baku accepted the Latin characters. Cultural unity with the Turks outside Turkey in the future lies, therefore, in the adoption of the Latin alphabet. The nationalist fear that we would be cut off from the Ottoman past does not count with the official Ulema. Therefore the Latin script could be easily adopted in 1928.

I have said in an earlier lecture, that of all the reforms that have been carried through by the new regime, two may have the greatest effect on Turkish life, the adoption of the Swiss Family Law, from the social point of view, and the adoption of the Latin alphabet, from the cultural point of view.

The Latin script can be considered both advantageous or otherwise according as one is disposed towards it. I will only repeat the arguments of both sides.

Those who are favourable to it hold that it unifies the Turks culturally with the West; it is easier to teach, and already great work has been done in the spread of literacy and mass education ; it is the only

way of escaping from the domination of Arabic and Persian culture ; it is the only way of cutting adrift the coming generation from the burdensome Ottoman past. Those who are hostile to the measure urge that cultural unity with the West cannot be attained just by a change of script, but rather by a realisation of the common sources of human culture. The study and the acceptance of Latin and Greek classics as their own by the Ottomans in the fifteenth century might have united us culturally with the West, but now it is too late for us to attempt it. The spread of literacy is not an absolute end in itself, for an increase in the number of those who can merely read is not an increase in the number of educated people. It is not desirable tor us to disown the Persian and Arabic influences in our culture; we have neither been Persianised nor Arabicised by them. We are Moslems, and ours is the common culture of all Islamic peoples. Lastly, it is by no means" desirable to cut adrift the coming generations from the Ottoman past. Our real roots are in the Ottoman culture. Without them we will be second-hand Europeans.

Whether one favours the change of script or not, it is certain that there will be a profound change in the mind of the coming generations, the form of which is incalculable.

Another noteworthy attempt of the official writers is in the direction of purification of the language. Here also they are following the lines laid down hv Keuk Aln Zia. who used to borrow words from dialects outside Anatolia, though he discontinued the practice in his later years. The effect of this has been a little confusing, and I doubt the possibility of its success. For a language is a li\ing thing and grows in the consciousness of the people as they learn more and more, feel more and more and create words (which are nothing more than thought or image symbols) to expiess them.

Tips is a short and objective presentation of the really very remarkable activity of the official writers. Outside it there are two prominent figures whom I will discuss briefly.

The first is Nazim Hikmet, a young Communist poet. I have selected him, for he is a very powerful writer. In his open attack on religion he goes much further than Tewfik Fikret. He has been trained in Moskow, therefore his methods and his style have been affected by the new and militant Russian thought. But he has considerable originality and possesses that sacred gift which conies very near to what one may call genius. It would interest Indians to know that his best work is on India. It is a play called, "Why Banerji Killed Himself." He does not know India beyond what he has read or what he has learnt from Indian Communists in Russia. So the characters are really Turkish, with Indian names. He thus achieves the double purpose of attacking W estern Imperialism and criticising things in his own country. Though he is not very different from the Kadro' writers iii th6

spirit which scorns the old liberal tendencies, by temperament he is against them.

Here are a few lines in which he describes a a gathering in Calcutta.

A crowd in the open, brother, oh, such a crowd. Like a forest in a hurricane it roared, the terrible crowd.

^u Workers from Calcutta, workers from Cashmere and sailors from Bombay—like sand brought from seventy-seven seas, there assembled human beings.

^u Naked children hung in bunches on branches, old women sat on door-steps, and if you plucked out a hair from your beard and threw it, it could not reach the ground, let alone a pin.

"⁴ A crowd in the open, brother, a terrible crowd. Like billowy and black waters it got hold of me, oh brother, the crowd, the terrible crowd ! "

He is very much against the fantasy and strangeness of the East as conceived by certain Western writers. Here are a few lines addressed to Pierre Loti.

Mysteiy, contentment, kismet, caravanserai, fountains; a princess dancing on a silver tray, maharaja, padishah and a thousand years old shah; a woman with henna-ed nose, weaving with her toes, a green-bearded Imam chanting on a windy minaret: There never was or is or will ever be such an East, the East is the land on which naked serfs toil and die,' the earth which belongs to everybody except to the man of the E?>st! "

The most symptomatic poem of this young poet is called, ^u To be a Machine I V\ ant." It expresses the almost mystic passion of the young Communist world for a mechanised, materialised, soulless order. One understands why the Communist Russian peasant carries an ikon with the picture of a machine on it with the same fervour as he used to carry an ikon with the picture of a saint.

Tin mm? tiiriuni, tiiiium, tiak, tiki, tak, to be a machine I want.

^u in my brain, flesh and bone the longings rise, every dynamo T long to ride. My tongue licks every copper wire and in my veins auto-cars race with locomotives.

Timum, timum, tiiiium^ tiki, tiki, tiak, to be a machine T want.

" I shall only happy be, the day I can set a turbine on my navel and double propellers on my tail.

^u Tirrrum, tirrrum, tirrrum tiki tiki trak, to be a macnine i want i

Besides the extreme left Communist writers whose representative is Nazim Hikmet, and the classical and official writers represented m the ⁴Kadro^? movement, there is another remarkable figure of the present era in Turkey. His name is Zia Hilmi. He is a highly cultured young scholar whose thought has taken a singularly new direction. The Turkish intelligentsia within the last hundred years of westernisation concentrated on the nineteenth century West, the West whose achievements have consisted in mechanising life and in utilising

literature and culture II

the scientific discoveries of the preceding tliree centuries That is a West which is entirely materialistic. Zia Hilmi is the first .Eastern youth, to my knowledge, who has gone beyond that. Again, the westernised Turkish intelligentsia of the last two generations have gone for inspiration to the prehistoric Turkish past, leaping over the Ottoman and the Near Eastern, that is, the Seljuk. Zia Hilmi goes for inspiration to the thirteenth century ^Anato-lian-^rI urkish past, the age of the Seljuks. If one were to connect Zia Hilmi with any trend of thought in the West to-day, he would claim kinship with what is called the New Humanism. But he is not an imitator, he thinks that the forces and thoughts necessary to build up his philosophy are to bo found in the Near Eastern Turkish past.

'His best work is called, ^u Morals of Love. It is a daring and \eiy cleaily woiked out political Utopia. Though the influence of Plato is undeniable, the author is original enough to make of it a very noteworthy achievement. It is a work that deserves to be translated into the language of every country involved in the conflict of Eastern and \\ estern ideas find ideals.

No record of the literature of a people would be complete without some study of its histrionic art. I shall therefore give a brief account of this also.

Dramatic art among the Turks begins with storytelling. The 'Meddah', or the artist who tells stories, impersonates the characters in the story. Ihis was also common among¹ the Arabs and the Persians. The stories told or acted have both an entertaining and a moral quality. The artists entertained the sultans as well as the people in the coffee-houses or in market-places and fairs.

Ur Konush, a Hungarian orientalist, the pioneer in the study and collection of old Turkish stories says: ⁴⁴If I, your obedient servant, the son of a Magyar, had not heard and preserved these stories 48 years ago, they would have been lost. Thank God they have reached my ears. I pass them on to you as a sacred gift". Apart from the work of Dr Konush, to whom the Turkish people should be very grateful, we get a great deal of scattered information about the personality of the story-tellers in the Turkish annals, printed or still in MS. Some of the stories they have told are to be found in the Istamboul Library. The best and most complete story found there is that of the* Lady of the Dagger'. It is about the life of an heir to money, a class that has always been an object of scorn. The story is full of dramatic effect.

Story-tellers have come down to our time. Some are of modern appearance, such as one sees on the European stage. But old or new, they are very able impersonators. It is a real treat to hear a good story-teller impersonate one character after anothei, a peasant, a slave-girl, a pasha, a donkey, a dog or a cat with equal facility. There is no special decor; with a handkerchief or a piece of cloth which becomes a veil, a turban or anything else, the story-teller creates the character he wishes. Throughout thp performance there are veiled attacks on social or political personalities and reflections on events.

In connection with story-telling there grew up theatrical companies, and they became a very distinct feature of life, specially in the seventeenth century, when there were twelve recorded companies of importance. They consisted at times of 200 players, and were provided with an orchestra, a ballet, an acrobatic section, mimics, story-tellers and actors.

The most famous company was that of Akide. Its director and manager was called Eyub Peh-Uvan¹ (Eyub the Wrestler), who was a poet, a traveller, a musician and a man of great ditsinction and charm as well as humour. His dancers were famous throughout the seventeenth century. In his repertoire quite a number of plays are mentioned, Garden and Gardening', Cat and Kat', Rat and Squirrel, Geese, Hen-crows, Ducks, Life Among the Street-dogs,' Life Among the Camels/ Opium-smokers/ Tobacco-smokers.' Tobacco-smoking was at the moment a tragic as well as comic actuality. The practice had just been started in Turkey, and Murad IV, one of the most ruthless tyrants of Turkish histoid, peisecuted smokeis just as Neio persecuted the Christians. He would go about in the street incognito, smell chimneys or unearth smokers who had concealed themselves in cemetries. Akide was a past master in reproducing all situations and events in their most comic aspect.

These companies also gave us what is called the open theatre. It was half low comedy mixed with reviews and also masterly studies of the customs and life ot the masses in Turkey. Women s parts in these shows were played by men.

\\\ addition to these theatrical forms there was and is the Hayal 01 the Karageuz . Dr Jacobi, in his 'Geschichte des Schattentheaters', published in 102.5, tells us that the art came to the Turks through the Mogols, who had taken it from the Chinese. Turkish writers dispute this theory, and I believe rightly. F or the likelier theory is that the Ottoman Turks learnt the art from the Arabs and the Persians, 01 that it developed simultaneously in all the three nations in the Near East. With the Arabs there is no doubt that it had a mystical and philosophical significance. Muhiuddin Arabi made use of it in the thirteenth century in Damascus to explain his mystical teachings. For him the world of Shadows was the symbol of the Created Universe, the curtain was the symbol of the Creator's powers to conceal or reveal Himself. In Egypt also the art was used for didactic purposes.

Among the Turks we find the art fully cultivated at Broussa in the fourteenth century. But the Turkish shadow-play had none of the religious quality

of the Arabian. Thprp wprp nlwa\rs vpilprl allncunna

made to the politics of the time, and suspicious rulers like Abdul Hamid had them carefully watched. The legend of the foundation of this art has a great social significance. During the building of the Great Mosque there were two workers who constantly talked and joked and made the others laugh and stop work. They were executed. It is evident that the said characters and the legend prove a kind of early rebellion among the workers. Karageuz, the principal character, is still considered a popular saint in Broussa. He represents the Turk in the street, with all his common sense, realism and matchless humour. He is always making fun at the expense Of the great. Haji Eyvat, his fiiend, is the impersonation of an officially learned man and also somewhat of an opportunist, always interpreting life so as to suit the great of the land.

Up to the nineteenth century histrionic art continued to express itself in these primitive forms. Though simple they had both creativeness and th£ naturalistic trend which characterises the Turkish mind wheii it is free of alien influence. The modern theatre began with the Tanzimat. Its first well-know playwright was Namik Kemal. A theatre was built at Gedik Pasha and a company, led by a very talented Armenian, Gulli Agop, began to give Namik Kemal's plays and other translated ones. The theatre became all of a sudden the instrument for the teaching of new ideas. It evoked tremendous enthusiasm. But the plays, though useful from a propagandist point of view, lacked the originality and the genuine art of the simpler popular theatre. Abdul Hamid naturally put an end to the utilitarian and political significance of the drama. Translated stuff continued to be acted with more or less ability. In the early stage, specially when translated stuff was being produced, the actors and actresses were Armenian. Though some of them were undeniably good artists, the drawback was their Turkish, for a people demands peifection in the language of its stage and its tribune. However, as the appearance of Turkish women on the stage was aii inconceivable thing, the theatres continued to employ Armenian actresses.

Another centre of the theatre in Turkey was Broussa. A playhouse was established there by Ahmet Vettk Pasha, one of the governors, who was also one of the outstanding literary figures of the Tanzimat period. His adaptation and translation of Moliere into Turkish is the best I know of in any language. His taste was more for the classical, but the theatre he founded became a purely Turkish centre of the histrionic art. The lurks have produced very remarkable Molieriaii actors, but the adaptations have very little of the original left in them. Vefik Pasha put on the Turkish stage really Turkish versions of clerical hypocrisy and social degeneration m its most realistic and devastating form.

Apart from these the open theatre, which also took cover during Abdul Hamid's rule, produced a

few really great actors. But the moment any of them became a popular favourite, Abdul Hamid attached him to the palace, which was a way of removing the artist from the public eye.

In 1909 the Young Turks engaged Antoine, the famous French regisseur, to establish a conservatoire and a new theatre. With him the Turkish Conservatoire, under the name of "Dar-il-Bedayi", came into existence and began to flourish. It also produced pretty good actors and writers took to representing actual Turkish life on the stage. JThe dramas staged up to the present time have been generally comedies, partly because Turkish histrionic talent is more effective in the comedy. After 1923, two events wrought a fundamental change in the theatre. First, Turkish women began to adopt the stage as a profession, and secondly, the theatre found in Ertogrul Muhsin a man with high ideals and an excellent artist and manager. Apart from a great natural talent for acting, he has studied his art in Paris, Germany and finally in Russia under JVleyerhold and Stanislavski. In Russia he was even entrusted with the direction of a film. Phe theatre where Muhsin is the regisseur can now produce Western as well as Eastern classics very ably, and Shakespearian dramas are better produced there than in many other non-English countries. Very original comedies, written by a blind old man who specialises in the Ottoman period, are among the star features. Now not only Istamboul, which is the intellectual centre of Turkey, but also the provinces have become intensely interested in the drama, and the national theatre during certain months tours Smyrna, Trebizbnd and other provinces, repeating its i epertoii e.

This is a brief review of the history of the Turkish theatre. In it also one sees the conflict of East and West as in politics and literature. But fortunately in this sphere the native soul has not been exterminated. Though the Turks now study the technique of the Western theatre — which they should, — their dramatic art is still struggling to express itself in its own way.

Lecture VII

turkish women

In Turkey we have a saying*, ^u Women are all one nation". Experience has taught me to believe in the wisdom of this saying. Though men may belong to differentiated groups called races <ind nations, the female of the human species remains the same. A man from Turkey may not be able to understand Indian men, a woman from Turkey will understand Indian women, and vice versa. The fundamental problems which affect a woman's life and her duty to society have always been the same all over the world. The evolution of women in the earliest ages, according to the data available at present, has common characteristics, irrespective of race and climate. All over the world the female appears invariably as the pioneer who has built up human society as distinct from animal existence. There was a mother thousands and thousands of years before the father was recognised as having anything to do with the propagation or the care of the offspring. It was the mother who started agriculture and industry in their most primitive aspects, in order to feed and to clothe her young. She also created the family as the unit of human society. ₃ The rest has evolved around that. The woman must have had the time of her life endeavouring to induce man to settle down and tie himself to the family, for man is individualistic, militant, egotistic, which is as it should be, for these characteristics were evidently also essential to bring civilisation into being.

Since Nature appointed the mother to create the family, and since aggregations of families have inevitably grown into nations, Nature also endowed woman with two seemingly incompatible characteristics, extreme conservatism and extreme revolutionism. Customs, traditions, language, thought and literature evolve and accumulate around the family or group of families. Woman is conservative as long as those values are the ones which keep the given family or the group alive. But a small human unit is like a cell. In order to live it has to break, to multiply and to form larger and more complex units. Because of this necessity women also uphold great revolutions and great religions which supply the aging, the stagnating human society with new forces, spiritual or material. Christianity had women adherents, Islam's first recruit was a woman, so was the first martyr. There were a great many women who worked and died for the French and the Russian revolutions. They are rarely in the forefront in such upheavals, and strange to say the new forces called into play do not necessarily add to women's happiness, but. they, or at least a considerable part of them, will stand by and suffer for anything that adds new life to a tired old society on the verge of decline. All these things I say are naturally about the average men and women. For there are also geniuses, mostly men, who. are difficult to classify, and who are not always an unmixed blessing to human society. I am dealing with the average.

I believe that woman is the organic part of society. She is Nature's means of producing life and pi eventing its stagnation. Man is the abstiact, the inorganic force. He imagines the new shapes he sets out to conquer nature and woman. He wants to stamp civilisation with his own personality. It has been so in the past ages. For the moment we will leave the future alone and review the part of man and woman in the past and present civilisations only.

Because civilisations in their more advanced forms have been more man-made than woman-made, the position of woman has differed according to the values each civilisation has emphasised. When the objective of a great civilisation has been great art, great philosophy, in short, beauty and thought, wotoian's position in that society has not been seriously considered. Such a society was that of Athens in ancient Greece.

In Athens the position of women, or rather of the respectable women, was decidedly inferior. There were three classes of women, the slaves, whose status was like that of men-slavesj the citizen women, who were the only ones eligible for marriage, and whose children alone were considered legitimate and worthy of citizenship. They had no public rights, and they were confined to their upper apartments, where they occupied themselves with their household affairs. Their lack of education as well as the prevailing custom debarred them from being the companions of their highly cultivated husbands ; they left next to no trace in Athenian history. The third class were the hetairao, or the companion women. They had no marriage rights, but they had every public right. They were often women of great culture and education, and exercised great influence on the intellectual and artistic life of the city. Aspasia was a prominent figure in the age of Pericles, the golden agt* of Greece 5 Socrates mentions Diotima as his in spire r and teacher. They were all alien women and of the hetaira class.

Now there is 110 doubt that this aort of society was favourable to the breeding of geniuses. But was it a lasting or valuable society from a social point of view? Not by any means. The position of the companion women was the cause of very loose morals and promoted an official prostitution, and life in general at Athens was very unstable. To the student of old Athens two Questions at ouco occur. Would it not have boon better to educate the respectable women and make them the companions of their husbands? Did not this peculiar arrangement which led to loose morals hasten the downfall of Athens?

Some such questions must have arisen in Plato's mind when he studied Athenian society, and also another Grecian civilisation, which was based on different principles. For in his ideal state he advocated equality of the sexes, though their tasks may differ from each other.

The civilisation which struck Plato evidently as sounder than the Athenian was the Spartan. It emphasised health, strength and stability rather than great art and great philosophy. In such a society each individual must be carefullv trained, esneciallv the mothers. They must be fully developed physically to bear healthy children; they must be traiiled and educated in order to be able to handle them; above all they must be morally elevated, to create character and morality in their offspring. Spartan society had a high standard of moral and physical virtue; each citizen, as the unit of such a society, had to be hai moniously developed in body and mind. Every strong nation or society which had this ideal before it invariably devoted much care and thought to the training of its women.

The Romans took a healthy and well-balanced view about women's position in society, dividing the basic social duties rationally between men and women. Men worked outside and women mostly at home, but they were equals and companions. The Roman matron was a superior being in character and mind, and has left a definite impress on Roman history. But though in practice there was equality between men and women, it was not so in the laws. W on^en were under the guardianship of their fathers or their husbands to the end of their lives, that is to say, in theory they were perpetual minors. When the early and robust ideal of Roman society began to lose its hold, hushands took advantage of their superior rights. They lepu-diated their wives with little reason, or ill-treated them. Women in their turn began to revolt. We have husband-poisonings on a large scale at first. Then, towards the end of the Republic, Livy, the historian, records feminist risings very much like the rising's ot militant suffragettes from 1906 to 1913. Towards the end the Republic was obliged to give women equal rights in marriage and in property, and marriage took the contractual form so much favoured by certain groups of feminists.

Because Rome also was out to create a healthy and enduring society, it is there that one sees very reasonable theories in regard to women's position in society. These theories came from a Stoic philosopher, Musonius Rufus by name. He said that women should have equal education and equal chances with men. As women and men were not alike, the tasks they undertook would and should differ, but no tasks should be exclusive, for there would always be a few men fitted for the lighter and a few women fitted for the harder. In reference to morals he demanded a single standard, a high and pure one, &oth for men and women. In marriage he advocated equality and brought marital relations to a standard of companionship and joint responsibility.

The Christianity of Christ made no difference between men and women. Its strong point ip. the early stages was the sacred character, the indissolubility of marriage, and its insistence on monogamy added great strength to Western society. But in the Middle Ages, when the Roman Church organised a new society according to the teachings of St. Paul and the Church Fathers, the position of women fell very low. Sex and marriage were declared evil things^ the centre of society shifted from the home to the monastery. Women who lived as nuns *ind died as martyrs were respected, but the rest were the Creatures of the devil. Phey were responsible for the original sin and the fall of man, and an (pcumeni-cal council even denied them a soul.

In the sixth century came Islam, with a very different attitude towards women. The supreme aim of Islam being social justice, it could not leave half of society out of consideration. In pre-Islamic Arabia the position of women was degraded to that of cattle. A man could take as many wives as he wished, he could kill them, even bury his infant daughters alive. Islam instituted marriage, limited the number of wives and in case of divorce bound the husband to pay alimony. It inculcated a chivalrous attitude towards women in general and meted out equal punishment in cases of immorality. But its greatest significance for the modern world is that it is the first system which accords property and economic rights to women and makes them independent of the guardianship of their men, Men shall have the benefit of what they earn and women shall have, the benefit of what they earn/⁷ says the Koran (Sura IV, verse 32), I believe this verse contains the two greatest and most enduring truths without which no decent society can exist. It recognises woman as a free human being, responsible for what) she does—more than twelve centuries before the West recognised the principle. The second significance of this verse goes far beyond women's rights and far beyond the Islamic world. ;It establishes a principle of universal validity, which must and shall be the foundation-stone of the future human. society. One can receive the benefit only of what one earns; that and only that. There can be no toiling and starving masses \vith individuals, receiving phenomenal wages. Put in a nutshell this verse means, You shall not exploit your fellow creatures, be they men or women".

Nevertheless Islamic society adopted two customs which are regarded by the civilised world in general and by modern Moslems in particular as the causes of its decline, the seclusion of women and polygamy.

We do not find seclusion of women among the first -Moslems. If one studies the life of the Prophet, one sees that from the very beginning he fought against the uncivilised habits of the Arabia of his'days, where men and women went about nearly naked. Decency was one of his great passions. His nurse tells the story that as a baby he cried whenever hie was undressed. Now, we know that there are two distinctly human characteristics.which create civilised society, decency and disgust disjjust for material dirt and unseemliness, disgust for moral filth and unseemliness. Both these characteristics of civilised life Mohammed tried to develop in the men of his age. It is not by mere chance that in Islam good and evil are expressed as Beauty and Ugliness* (Husn' and Kubuh').

The Koran (Sura 24, verse 31) commands women to pay due regard to their dress, enjbrning them to wear veils that will cover the sides of their head, their hosom and their ornaments; there is no order to cover their faces, still less are they expected to shut themselves up and abstain from social activities. The Prophet's own wife was one of the most remarkable women, with a great social reputation. In this commandment we see two things, first, that women should be decently dressed, even if they desire to make themselves beautiful, and secondly, what is more significant, they are asked not to use their beauty and sex to exploit their fellow-creatures. This is just what a modern feminist or any healthy society aims at. With this very reasonable beginning, we see in the early days of Islam a host of women working as teachers, poets and preachers, some even enlisting as' soldiers. But when Moslems came into contact with old and socially decadent civilisations, their ideas underwent a change. Women were not only veiled; they were shut up and debarred from social ^r service. This seclusion 'did immense harm to Islamic society. Women gradually lost their health, they were not carefully educated and the perverted belief that women are the property of men also crept in.

Polygamy existed in pre-Islamic Arabia. Islam tolerated it in a restricted form. ^uTake three and four, but if you fear that you will not do justice between them, then marry only one," (Sura IV, verse 3). This is the condition under which polygamy is permitted by the Koran. The four Imams of the Faith, who interpreted .and codified the law in the ninth century, could very well have construed this verse on polygamy differently; they could have even made polygamy a penal offence. They did not. Both seclusion and polygamy continued as institutions. 1 he former cannot be defended from any point of view. It meant the gradual deterioration of half of the Islamic world. The second, that is, polygamy, has something to be said in its favour. It restricted prostitution, it legalised the children of the second wife. But it also undermined the unity*, the strength of the Moslem family. While women in the Christian world suffered from lack of economic equality, the women of the Moslem Fast never became full partners of their husbands in that basic unit of human society, the family.

In the W est, chivalry first raised the status of women. The Renaissance restored the family to its rightful position. The French Revolution went further and advocated equal rights for women. Condorcet, the French philosopher, disapproved of disabling half of the human race from taking part in the formation of the laws. ^uThe rights of men," he said, result solely from the fact that they are sensible beings, susceptible of acquiring moral ideas and reasoning on these ideas". Olympe de Gouge said in her declaration of the Rights of Women, ^uThe sovereignty of a nation is nothing but the reunion of its men and women". And again, ^uAs a woman has the right to mount the scaffold, she should also have the right to the tribune''.

A world-wide movement in favour of women s rights began after 1848. Finland gave full parliamentary suffrage to its women in 190G, Iceland in 1907. Denmark and Norway in 1910 and 1015. These countries are considered the most civilised from a social point of view all over the world.

Space and the fear of becoming tedious forbid my dwelling on the historical development of feminism in the West. But in order to understand the agitation and the changes demanded in the East, I will briefly gp over the two important phases of Western feminism.

The first phase was democratic. It was an outcome of the French Revolution. Tts aims were educational, social and political. Its finest vindication is to be found in the masterpiece of John Stuart Mill, 'The Subjection of Women'. The movement began and developed through its striving for equal educational facilities. W^hen this object had been nearly attained, women took up the social aspect. They not only obtained better marriage rights, a thing which concerns primarily their own sex, they also became very useful organisers and efficient workers in the cause of social uplift. Thanks to women, social welfare has become a scientific process in the West. America, England, France and especially Belgium have been training women to raise the social status of the more unfortunate section of their society. Women, children, the sick and the criminal have become objects of study for the women of the West, and thfey are guided towards a healthier and fuller life. The last phase of the emancipation of women is the political. I cannot say they have made any useful contribution to political life, and they may not in the future. Democracies are themselves at the cross-roads.

The second phase of women's emancipation in the West is the industrial and the economic. While the democratic aspirations of women involved a struggle of one sex against another, here it was that of men and womfcn as a class against each other. The mechanical progress and the industrialisation which changed the constitution of Western society towards the middle of the nineteenth century, also shifted the centre of social gravity from the home to the factory. The home was no longer the unit of the social organism. The important part of the question which concerns women in the world of labour is that in the highly industrialised countries it is impossible to send them back to the home. America is perhaps the most typical example of this contingency, for there women have very little they can do at home. In the earlier stages of human life woman was saved from parasitism by her work at home. Now even the bringing up of the child has gone into the hands of the expert and the kindergarten teacher. Therefore, if women remained at home they would be nothing more than parasites. Half of mankind, especially mothers, turning paiasite would mean a degeneration of the human species which cannot be suffered. This new problem in the West has become very complicated and might have incalculable effects if industrialisation and mechanisation continue to be as swift and all-pSi vading, as at present. Fortunately, the East is not facing that sort of a dilemma. So we shall leave it at that, and turn to the question of Turkish women and try to find out the result of the conflict of West and East in their life.

It is neither fair not scientifically correct to generalise, but from all the data available at the present we are obliged to classify Turkish society with the Spartan type rather than with the Athenian. h rom the literature as well as from the political characteristics of the Turks, the reader might have gathered that they emphasise social rather than individual values. Their aim was to build a healthy, strong and lasting society rather than a highly intellectual or artistic one. Such a society naturally demands an equal share of service and labour from its women.

Fortunately for us, we can study the simplest form of Turkish society in the Turkey of to-day.

Thei*c are tribes still in a nomadic state who must have entered the Near East before or after the Ottoman Turks. We call a large portion of them the ⁴ Yuruks'. They preserve their early customs and they are as purely Turkish as it is possible to be. Unlike the city-dwellers and the peasantry, they have not intermarried. Ih_te language and what belongs to the language also has remained pure. I was told by a Russian Turkologist in New York that there are words in their vocabulary which are found in the Orkhon inscriptions. They are also Moslem, though mostly Shiites. The position of women among them is such that in certain aspects it would appeal greatly to Western feminists. There is absolute equality; work is shared; though women have veils over their heads their faces are open. For beauty they can beat anything I have seen so far. Yet they associate with men freely within and outside their tribes and remain strictly faithful to the high moral code of their tribe. * Marriage is contracted between the young without any interference of the parents. The youth of both sexes work together and play together. When they are once married there is no divorce and I have not come across any case of polygamy. Divorce is only allowed in case of adultery, which is extremely rare, and both parties are punished very seveiely and equally. An equal standard of morality applies to both men and women.

From this we may rightly deduce that the early Ottomans, who also came as a handful of nomadic people, led more or less the same sort of life. Some of the earliest tribes mentioned in connection with the early Ottomans, such as Black Goat, Black Mutton, White Goat and White Mutton still exist, though they are half or wholly settled. They also preserve a great many of their early customs. I he woman is the manly type. That is, her virtues are those* of strength of character and straightforwardness. Women are praised by the masses in Turkey generally with some such remark, She is like a man". No one says, " She is very beautiful". In the consciousness of the race the moral virtues have retained their higher place for men as well as for women.

The Ottoman Turks first built their state in Broussa. In the early stages of that simple but very lovely and lovable civilisation and culture one sees that they adhered faithfully to their early family virtues. Ibn Batuta, the Arab traveller of the fourteenth century, visited Broussa. There he went to call on the Sultan, who was not at home. The Sultan's wife received him and discussed state affairs with him. Equality, freedom and simplicity were virtues that adorned the palace as well as the hut. Ibn Batuta complains of the freedom of Turkish women, especially in the Crimea, where he saw them going about in the streets, buying and selling. It evidently shocked him, for that section of Moslem society to which ,he belonged had different views on women and different customs.

The Ottoman Turks who began theii* civilisation and state on such simple and admirable lines began to alter gradually. There were flrst intermarriages of Sultans and Beys and I suppose of the people too with women of other races. But this by itself did not affect the state of affairs much, for the women were assimilated. But there were other causes, such as conquest and intimate contact with other civilisations, specially with Byzantine manners and customs, Which led to piofound changes.

After the conquest of Istamboul, Turkish society split definitely into two classes. The Sultan and the high officials modelled their households on the Byzantine idea of seclusion, the harem and the eunuch guards. Not only did polygamy increase, but the habit of keeping concubines, which is an even more pernicious custom, became prevalent. The Sultans had so far married alien princesses; now they married only slaves. Their women existed for their pleasure* and not for their society.

The middle and the lower classes, however, retained some of their old customs. Though veiled, their women went about freely, but intercourse with men outside the family circle was, with very few exceptions, prohibited. Though theie was slavery, concubinage was not frequent, nor was polygamy. Turkish women of the middle class, if their husbands took another woman as wife, made life impossible for the men. At times even the two women combined to punish the husband* All that meant great unhappiness and was very bad for tho children*

One class of women throughout all conditions of society retained their privileges. They were the mothers. Though love and honour for the mother is a universal feeling, with the Turks the instinct was and is very deep-rooted. It was not always very comfortable for the- daughters-in-law, but before the old lady of the house passed away there was no possibility of escape from her iron rule.

There is a period in Ottoman history,* roughly between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which we call "Women's Sultanate," and it coincides with the worst era of decline. The sjiltan's harem was not, as is usually believed, a pell-mell herding of ignorant women. It was extremely well-organised and its members received an education according to their capacity. But women living only in their own society, cut off from the outside world, become morbid if not actually hysteric. When Soleyman the Magni-ficent's wife, Hurrem Sultan, managed to create the cage system for the princes of the royal family, she condemned the future rulers to a very special, morbid and sex-conscious society. The Sultans became mere toys in the hands of the palace women.

Though there have been some intelligent and able women who have managed to do good, still the interference of the hn-rem in politics, especially under such conditions, was a great evil. The worst of it was that the Vahdeh Sultan (dowager Sultana) automatically enjoyed political authonty. Mothers

conflict of bast a1wwbst in tcjrkey

always shared the power of their sons to some degree, but the dowager Sultana acted oh her own initiative. The unwritten law of the realm gave her that right. But the wives and royal conciibines had no such rights. They worked through the stiltan, there was no end of intrigue, and corruption raged as it had never raged before. Offiues were Hold and bought through these fair ladies; for their whims the treasury was plundered, the people of the bazaars robbed of their jewels or silks at all times of the day and night. On top of these wives there were also women story-tellers or entertainers who entered the palace and joined in the intrigues. "The Sable Period', eight years of wickedness, owes its name to the imagination of one of these women. Sultan Ibrahim, a monster of cruelty and madness and immorality, was told in a story that some ancient king had his palace walls lined with sables. He at once ordered the provincial governors and 'the well-to-do to supply him with sables. He would build such a palace for a favourite.

Though the political domination of the palace women wns disastrous, women in general exercised a very beneficent influence in promoting public welfare wild education even under such adverse conditions, l^hat not a few of the architectural glories of Tmrkey were erected in memory of some mother and wife goes without saying. What is more important is that they themselves were great builders of mosques, inns, fountains, bridges and othe.r foundations of public utility. In 01 out of the palace, partly through religious feeling and partly because it was the custom, a woman did almost always devote her means to some good work. The majority of public buildings were built and endowed by women. One who goes through the archives of the 'Evkaff* will be profoundly impiessed by their spirit of service, their thoughtful-ness and their generosity. Health was one of their supreme cares. Most if not all the hospitals have been built by women and very wisely and* richly endowed. Among the most important and best hospitals left over are the "Gureba", a huge hospital for the poor, and "Nisa", another very Urge hospital for women. Thanks to the endowments both are very up-to-date and extremely useful institutions.

The care of the insane, which is considered one of the signs of higher civilisation, reached a remarkably high level in lurkey owing to the public spirit of women. When, in the seventeenth century, Europe was treating its insane by putting them into strait jackets, lurkey could boast of a hospital in Magnissa where the insane were looked after very kindly and music used for their cure.

At least one woman in the seventeenth century was intensely interested in prisons. It was Kussem Sultan, the mother of* Ibrahim. She used to visit prisons yearly and buy the freedom of those imprisoned for inability to pay their debts. As she had a personal interview with the head of the prison and studied the log-books, it must have had a beneficial

conflict of bast and west in turkey

effect on the treatment of the prisoners., Nor was her charity restricted to prisons. Every yeai she had twelve young girls and twelve young boys taught some trade and found them work. Every year twelve marriages took place in Istamboul between her protegees and adopted children.

'Imarets'. or Soun-kitchenk, were another institution women endowed on a large scale. No one need have starved in those days; and yet this kind of philanthropy did not lead.to pauperism in the earlier days, for it was considered contrary to human dignity to accept alms when one could work. I think it of supreme importance to establish such ^limarets' in countries where famine or unemployment pi evails, but to run them on more scientific methods.

Education was the sphere of our social service in which women displayed the most passionate concern. Most of the higher schools in Turkey have been founded by women and richly donated. Primary schools attached _tto mosques were also mostly of women's creation. Those who could not afford to open schools invariably undertook to educate some of the poor children of their quarter or street. I have gone over some of the most interesting Vakfnamehs , or trust-deeds, of these institutions founded by women. They show that it was not-only money that was devoted to the purpose but intelligence, forethought and careful study of educational requirements. Instructions are given regarding cleanliness and the care of the children, even the diet has been thought out, but tli6 best feature is tbe insistence on giving children the opportunity to play in the open air. Quite a number of the deeds have a separate endowment fund for the purpose, and contain clauses which make it incumbent on the teacher to take the children to the countiy legulaily.

Apart from these institutions there were also private schools for boys and girls conducted by women teachers. They existed even thirty years back and they were better managed than the mosque schools. The education of the women of fifty or sixty years ago was due to these schools, and judging from the number of women poets and writers throughout Ottoman Turkish history, it would be correct to say that the well-to-do educated their daughters carefully in their own old-fashioned way. During the age of decline the only defect in these institutions was their inability to take into consideration the change in the times and adjust themselves to the new thought which had come * to the Western world.

It might be said generally of Turkish women that they were very self-willed and both the government and their menfolk found them hard to handle. In the early eighteenth century there were several royal decrees regulating women s dresses; On© understands that as late as the early nineteenth century the bulk of women outside the palace were-not veiled as their menfolk or the sultan wished them to *be* Thrpfts rpofciilAitions nAver ' could he, • rmnosfid" on them.

Abdul Haroid hunself would issue a royal Irade' or ordinance every Ramazan and the police got busy in the streets cutting the dresses of the women who were not attired according to regulations. But the enforcement of the 'Trade' was never attempted for more than three days.

Selim the Third, the great reformer, was also the first feminist. He had a remarkable sister, Hadije Sultan, who evidently tried to awaken women and make tiiem aware of the progress the world had made. The women of the palace were won over to the ideas of reform. But work in this field really began with the Tanzimat. Namik Kemal particularly and his school generally advocated with their usual passion and indignation the education and social emancipation of women. Although the school was undoubtedly influenced by Condorcet and the French writers, they regarded the subject from an Mamie point of view. They argued that Islam itself required Ml its followers to be well-educated» So far the old classic literature had tabooed all reference to women. The Tanzimat took them up seriously. In the tragedies of Abdul Hak Hamid especially, Islamic women are given a most important part. His saying that ^uTh6 measure of a people's civilisation is the standard of their women/* is the motto of the Women's Training College now.

About 1860 Jthe state opened a normal school t<i train women as teachers and founded primary schools for girl®- In the principal provincial cities . there were such schools. Women teachers became state officials. These schools were attended mostly by the children of the masses and the teachers were also recruited from the poorer classes, for unfortunately the women of the richer class were still strictly confined to their home duties. Foreign schools also multiplied and in the later part of the nineteenth centuiy the foieign governess, especially the English governess, became an institution. There was a deeply-rooted idea in Turkey that the Englishwoman was serious and manly and must therefore be the model for the modern Turkish woman.

In Abdul Hamid's time there was a remarkable group of women writers who published a weekly paper, "The World of Women," which did very useful work, for it had a large circulation among both sexes. Its contributors and editorial staff were all women. Women writers were no longer mere poets singing of love, of nightingales and nature; they studied deeply the social and educational questions which affected their lives.

Women got their real chance in 1908. The Young Turkish or the Constitutional Revolution brought forward men who meant business. Their political and social creed laid strong emphasis on education, and especially in women's education they accomplished something very memorable and great, rhe very atmosphere became freer for women and it was fully realised that a new Turkey could never be created without earliest days to create organisations. Their first club, the *Taali Nisvan', invited men of different professions to deliver lectures for women. They also created a small centre for teaching women to look after children. Quite a number ot social organisations were started all over Istamboul, the most useful being the joint organisation of men and women teachers, who opened night or day schools to teach the adult population to read and write. Education became the motto of women and for the first time women of the richer classes also threw themselves into the work. When the Balkan war broke out aud tragedy followed tragedy, women did their full share of duty by oiganising piotest meetings, nuising, establishing centres where the orphans and the widows of the Balkan refugees could learn some craft and thereby earn their bread. I personally believe that the nursing of common soldiers by Turkish women served more than anything else to educate the masses in the new outlook* about women.

On the other hand the state took a very energetic step. It modernised the entire educational system of Turkey and equalised educational rights. The normal schools were multiplied and conducted on better and modern lines; women's colleges sprang up all over the country. The finest building of the period is the Women's Training College in Istamboul. I can say with some degree of certitude that it is as good as any one could find elsewhere. The Young lurkish regime began also to send women students to European universities and colleges; in 1916 the Istamboul University opened ¹ its doors to women. In 1921 there were two lady doctors practising.

The pressure of the Great War urged women forward io many an* indispensable service and sacrifice, turkey's manhood was on the frontiers. The country was nearly blockaded. From end to end the only producers were women. The army had to create women's batallions to do the work behind the lines. The needs of the army, its food and clothing, weie supplied entirely by women. Further, the governmental departments had to recruit employees from among women. By 19l?6 women had really reached a stage in education and experience when they could take considerable part in the work of administration.

Perhaps more remarkable than the education of women in principal cities and the labour of the agricultural regions was the activity of the women of smaller towns. The cure of the family had fallen entirely on their shoulders. They became the inter-medianes, tia^elhng all ovei the country, buying and selling and carrying on the entire small trading for the sake of keeping alive their children. Without the activity and the enormous service of women, Turkey would have collapsed internally during the Great War.

In acquiring their new position and learning to fulfil their new*duties women were helped enormously by the nationalist institutions which we called *Turk

Ojagi* {Turkish Hearths). They were founded by the
Turkish intelligentsia and the students of all shades of
political opinion, and they enabled men and women
to cooperate in order that they may better under-
stand the needs of the nation and the conditions of
piogiess. 11

The activities of the Ojaks would take a chapter by themselves. I shall leave them alone. But the im-, porjtant thing about them is that they gave a national as well a& a religious sanction to women s equality in educational and social matters. The Tanzimat had given a religious sanction, but it had been limited. Keuk Alp Zia, Jie Pan-turanist sociologist now proved in a large number of works that in their pre-Islamic stage also the Turks gave equal rights to women, and that only had made them great and enduring as a race. Owing to his activity and his influence both as a writer and as a member of the central Young Turkish Council, he managed to have the new family law promulgated in 1916. It did not do away with the old regulations, but it gave men and women the right to choose between the two forms. The new; law was also based on Islamic principles, at least'id the spirit if not in the letter. In Islam marriage is based on mutual consentj therefore the new regulation created a* kind of contractual marriage. A woman could demand the right to divorce or prevent polygamy or make any other condition she liked*

This new regulation was not regarded with favour by the, majority of, women or men, although quite a number made use of it. What Turkish women wanted was not easy divorce, but a firmer and more indissoluble marriage. They did not look at marriage from a selfish, individualistic point of view, but as the organic bond of society. What they wanted was to abolish polygamy and to take away the right of divorce from the individual and give it to society, that is, to the court of law.

' Such was the situation of Turkish women in 1918, when the Armistice was signed. The mosi salient features of the gradual emancipation of Turkish women and their evolution as useful and beneficial social units, features in which it differs Western feminism in its democratic aspect, are, first, that it was not the revolt of one sex against the other^T& domination. It was a part, and an integral part of Turkish reform and accepted as such by all progressive parties in Turkey. In whatever else they might have disagreed, they all believed in that. Secondly, as against other reforms, the conflict of East and West has in this one played only a minor part It was considered a natural revival of the best, both in Islam and in the racial culture and tradition of the Turks. This, I believe, gave it its greatest force. There is only one point which brings the Service of Turkish women in the economic field into line with universal conditions. Their education and present social position are due to deliberate work and effort, but «the wide scope of thei>r activities from an economic p6wt Qf view is the outcome of the present world situation, mostly created after the Great AVar.

The national calamity, which reached its apogee in the foreign occupation in 1918, made every one in Turkey realise what a country really meant to its women. They were, struck and bereaved to an unimaginable degree. Beginning with the Balkan wars, they had slaved for their country and sacrificed their best and dearest, and it all. looked as if their supreme sacrifice had been in vain. Therefore if any human beings at the time were really exhausted and drained of all' life and energy, it was the Turkish women. But one saw at the same time that a countiy was a big home for its women—-their collective home. For its honour as" well as for its security and well-being they felt themselves responsible to the last.

In innumerable private meetings of political organisations, young women in black with their note-books on their knees sat discussing with men the ways and means to deliver the country from its stupendous adveisity. , In public pi otest. meetings of thousands and thousands women also predominated; not only the young and the educated, but the old, those who had looked on the change in the life of women* as something absurd. In villages they gathered in the evenings around fires, knitting and talking. No man can want peace as passionately as a woman. Fqi* order and peace is a necessity for the happiness' of the home and the little ones. But this time there lyould < be, neither home nor country without a last and supreme struggle. And they threw themselves into that supreme struggle. It caused us no wonder or even surprise to hear that women in the Smyrna mountains or in Cilicia were actually fighting or helping their soldiers.

When the government of Angora was established and the irregular forces incorporated in the regular army, women ceased to be active fighters. But still nothing could be accomplished without them. In every city and town women s associations of ^Defence of National Rights" were organised to help the JRed Crescent and other associations. But the most impressive and perhaps the most essential part of service was rendered by the peasant women. Once more they had to sow and reap and produce all the means of livelihood all alone. Once more one saw them bare-footed, clad in rags, inarching from one end of the country to the other carrying ammunition on their backs or leading ox-carts. Some of this service was obligatory, but there was also a host of volunteers. I remember a transport unit composed entirely of women, consisting of eleven ox-carts and eleven women. Their leader was Sergeant Fatima, an old woman of about seventy, six feet tall and straight-backed, with a face as strong as a rock. She had come with all the rest, holding her dumb and blind grandson by the hand. One of the drivers was in the family way. They worked in silence and dignity, leading their carts not only through mud and mire but also up to the firing line.

However gallant and brave the men, no country can preserve its independence under such conditions as of the Turkish lands in 1918, unless its women are attached to the values which create a state and a country. I met an old woman in a Smyrna town, or rather, on the rests and rums of a town, who had emigrated five times since the Balkan war because she did not want to die under a foreign flag. What is there in a red piece of cloth with a crescent on it? It is the symbol which matters and the symbol meant more than life. I will not multiply instances of women s sacrifice in those days. They are beyond number. Fikret says that ^tfia country rises only on the shoulders of the brave," and New Turkey rose on the shoulders of its brave children, men and women. But there is one thing I must say in regard to the women. Great as the material part of their service was, the moral part of it was still greater. For once they had thrown themselves into the struggle, I never saw a woman lose heart. That had an incalculable value in such a struggle as we went through.

The Republic started its reforms after the Lausanne Conference. The scope of women's education was widened. If there were only three Turkish women doctors in 1921, there are something like fifty now. There is a considerable number of women working as assistants in hospitals all over the country and as officials in the hygiene department. The number of women with university qualifications, both Turkish and foreign, has increased, the University has several women as assistant professors* Ali the public departments employ women on a considerable scale. They are taking great interest in the study of law, in the provinces there are even women judges, and some important positions in the police department aie occupied by women. Everyone takes all these things as a natural cdnseijuence ^v6f the changes which have been going on very ^;!fla#ly since the Tanzimat period and a little ntbre swiftly since 1908.

1. Women Wer& granted political suffrage shortly after this lecture had b&en delivered. (Ed.)

Two important measures have been ^passed ^in regard to women in society under the, BepuWican regime. A new civil code has been promulgated which abolishes polygamy, equalises iiifhefttance ahd entrusts the right of divorce to a ^court. This 'is a copy of the Swiss Civil Code. Secondly, women have been given the municipal v6te and are eligible to the councils. There are in important provincial towns women members at the moment. This perhaps is more important than the political vote, for municipalities are after $tll the domestic sections of the city, and the city is ft big home, fts care, hygienic, aesthetic and general would be best understood by women. Whfether they will have the legislative vote in a near or far future does n6t matter so much.

Lecture VIII

review and future outlook

We have traced the conflict of East and West in Turkey in the last seven lectures. At the moment the West seems triumphant on the surface. But the East i3 still there all the same in the soul of the Turk as an undercurrent, and its force is undeniable. It has been so whipped that only the finest and purest essence of it is left. When this Eastern element in the Turkish soul develops freely, the future blend of East and West in the Near East might present a model solution for turning what has so far been a conflict into co-operation.

Let us now in conclusion review this conflict from the original standpoint, the emphasis on matter (or the seen) and the emphasis on the spirit (or the unseen), which are the distinctive features of the Western and the Eastern mind.

My simple definition of West and East has evoked considerable written and spoken Qriticism. Some have thought me unjust to the West because of my assertion that the dominant characteristic of Western civilisation is materialism* They have replied by giving instances of the great social work accomplished by Western men and women. I want to repeat what I have already said before, that

materialism as a philosophy is not necessarily a selfish one* It is a belief in the betterment of the material world and the material condition of men. It is not immoral either• It has its own strict code of human behaviour and relationship.

Among those who have objected to my definition is Dr Iqbal. His criticism, which appeared in the ^uCivil and Military Gazette , is a brilliant piece of reasoning and shows the serious study the great poet has made of the subject. I shall refer to the Western and Eastern aspects of his objections respectively as I deal with each. But^ I think I may state without ■ any fear of contradiction that 'emphasis on matter', however vague and crude the term may be, is accepted by most Western jScholars as the dominant characteristic of Western civilisation. Dr Iqbal states that Plato, the first European philosopher, was also the thinker who invented the idea of pure spirit, and that idea has affected both the West and the East. This is perfectly true. But that does not change our objective observation that the W estern civilisation such as it stands is materialistic. \Ve are not looking at ali at certain phases of its thought. We are looking at the results.

I propose to review the Western civilisation of to-day according the interpretation of it by Di Haas, a German scholar who has published, in the form of a small b<jok, three lectures which he delivered at Geneva on " What is European Civilisation ?"

I choose him because he belongs to that set of Western thinkers who deny every Eastern influence in the making of their civilisation. He is proud of its uniqueness, but he is also honest about its sorry results. I take the stages as he presents them, and as they are generally presented, and work them into the same sort of diagram as that of the Ottoman Empire.

A—Ancient Greece. The aim here was to develop man harmoniously in all his faculties. The supreme measure was the beautiful body. It clearly emphasised the seen. The physical education—games and dancing—and the mental education—poetry and music, drama, philosophy, even the sciences—were kept in proportion so as not to develop the mind at the expense of the body. Its religion had no spirituality, no theology, no priestly caste, no mysticism. The mystical aspects of Greek life, such as the Orphic Mysteries, Dr Haas deems as Eastern and he does not include them in the culture of ancient Greece.

B—Koine. After the making of man as such the West set out to build society and state. It regulated and organised all human relationships. But it still remained materialistic, still emphasised the life of man on earth as the most important.

1. An Englishman onco said to me, Christianity was Eastern in essence (because of its emphasis on the soul), we have Westernised it; Island was Western in essence (because of its emphasis on society), you have Easternised it".

C—Christianity. At this stage the West shifted its attention from the visible to the invisible. One can safely affirm that the. monastic period of early Christianity is Eastern. But the author of What is European Civilisation?" dwells more especially on the ever-recurring characteristic of the European mind. "The European mind, in the philosophy and faith of the Middle Ages, shapes the supematuial and the physical according to the image of the living organism". "In all Christian speculation about the mysteries, the image of the living body is continually being used in order to make clear the truths of faith and the relations between them , he says. Because of this he does not consider Western Christianity as Eastern. For him, whatever its origins, it has become a Western institution.

D—Study of Nature. The Western mind, according to Dr Haas, sought scientific knowledge with absolute disinterestedness and pure idealism* It looked on nature from a purely mathematical and intellectual angle. And to look at it from such an angle demanded the banishment of life, soul and meaning from it. This was a great sacrifice. For to think of nature as merely matter with no soul and purpose behind it naturally leads man to think of himself also as a being with no soul. But the sacrifice was necessary at the time and the Western man made it. For Dr Haas the attitude of the Western mind in its early ftudy of nature is its most unique phase.

E—'The results—probably the unforeseen results of such a study with its extraordinary scientific discoveries have been the folio wingc First, it gave a mechanical interpretation of life. Soul was explained by sensations, which, like atoms, foim complexes and disintegrate according to the laws of cause and effect. A. nature without a soul means life without a soul or purpose. Secondly, history began to be interpreted as a purely material process and to be explained as a play of economic interests, which religion and spiritual or moral values only served to further or conceal. Thirdly, the Western mind lost its belief in the creative faculty of man. He was controlling nature through the knowledge and discoveries of the great minds of an ₍earlier age. He had nothing to do with it. He could no longer believe in his own creativeness. Fourthly,this phase led some Western scholars, specially in Germany, to a very pessimistic attitude of mind in regard to Western civilisation. For them Western civilisation seemed to have said its last word and was doomed to pass away.

G is the unfailing organising power of the Western mind, which runs through all the cycles or phases ot Western civilisation.

The author of What is European civilisation ?^M, after presenting it in these four cycles, refuses to believe that the Western mind has touched the limit of its creativeness. He predicts that after having gone through its past phases of oiganisation of Man, Society, Natuie, it will begin over again with man and evolve through rinother series of cycles.

An Eastern scholar may well ask ^tcWhat sort of new cycles ? How will the organising power of the Western mind manifest itself? Will it again take material values as standards or will it adopt the unseen, the spiritual as its measure?" The forces in action in the W^est are so confused that it is difficult to foretell the future Western world. However, we may attempt to feel our way through certain aspects of European thought and speculate a little on their possible results.

There are two decidedly opposite directions in which we may venture:

1. The new scientific discoveries of our century. They have been destroying slowly but surely the

230 conflict of east and west in tukkey

century. No philosopher can any longer explain with any degree of confidence the living organism in terms of physical and chemical processes. Science is no longer so cock-sure. The incalculable, the Unseen has been entering its domain. There is space and room for a belief in the unseen force in creation. Owing to this there is a revival of interest in the philosophies and religions of Asia. There is a considerable number of scientists who show definite mystic tendencies.

Among the people in the West also there is an obvious curiosity for the Unseen. In the Anglo-Saxon world quack religions and revivalist phenomena are frequent. In France the pilgrimages to Lourdes have increased and a considerable number of French actresses have been retiring to convents. Even Devil-worship and Black Magic have more adepts than one would imagine.^{^[1]}

These are tendencies which lead one to speculate on the possibility of a spiritual revival in the West. And to the question, On what line is the Western mind going to organise life?", one may give the same answer as Steinmatz, the electrical genius. He was asked by Roger Robson, the business magnate, what line of research would see the greatest development in the next fifty years. Instead of mentioning some line concerned with electrical experiments, he said the greatest discovery would be made along spiritual lines.

Here is a force which history clearly teaches and which has been the greatest power in the development of men and history. Yet we have merely been playing with it and have never seriously studied it as we have the physical forces. Some day people will learn that material things do not bring happiness and are of little use in making men md women powerful and creative. Then the scien-ists of the world will turn their laboratories to the study of God and prayer and^J the spiritual forces which as yet have hardly been touched. When this lay comes the world will see more advancement in me generation than it has in the past four".

Although in a considerable part of the world of science, philosophy and even of art as well as in jociety itself there is this unmistakable urge towards idopting a spiritual basis, it is by no means certain /hat such a development will take place in the West in any near future. For philosophical thought takes some time before it can penetrate and shape human activities, although it does and always has shaped human society within a certain period. But side by side with this spiritual fovce which has the blessing of science, at least a considerable part of it, we see other forces in action. And to get some idea about them we have to look to another field of activity in the West.

2. Economic and Political life. Here the forces still at work are the product of nineteenth century materialism. The old politicians are as stiongly under the thumb of the old capitalism as they were in the pre-war years. They are decidedly materialistic. Their opponents, the communist politicians, are also materialists. Admirable as their desire is to do away with the abuses of capitalism and to distribute wealth on a more equitable b<isis, their disiegaid, nay, their hostility to all spiritual forces threatens to 3 radicate every value which is not in the domain of the seen. Will the West reorganise itself on a more thoroughly materialistic or on a more spiritual basis? That is the problem of the future West. But as to ihe continuation of the conflict between the two worlds )r the possibility of co-operation, we can speculate mly after reviewing the East and at least some of the forces at work in it.

My simple definition of the East as over-emphasis on spirit has met with opposition from various sources. Quite a number of Hindu and Moslem intellectuals said to me in almost exactly these terms

*⁴We are not spiritual, we have the technique of it; our incessant talk of religion is a sort of religiosity and not religion; quite a number among us, both Moslem and Hindu, use spirituality for the puipose of exploitation." But it is impossible to have the technique of a thing without having possessed the thing itself some time or other. We cannot exploit a non-existent sentiment. The Western leaders use or abuse, in short, exploit economic and political beliefs because they are realities in the West. If the Eastern politician or the leader of another sort exploits religion and spiritual ideals, it is because they are realities in the Eastern world.

Dr Iqbal objects also* to the assumption that the East emphasises spirit as the basis of its philosophy. He cites Mani, the ancient Persian poet, who taught dualism, and Buddha, who denied the existence of pure spirit as a substance. Those are facts just as Plato's philosophy of pure spirit in the West is a fact.^{^[2]}But in dealing with the civilisations we are only considering their final results. The final results of Eastern civilisations, such as we see them to-day, are that they have in the main failed to organise material existence, and that they are not masters

of their own parts of the material world their land and economic resources, while the We^t is not only master in the West but very much so in the East. The other argument which I constantly hear, that Hindus are good business men and merchants is no argument at all. For even spiritual people are not disembodied spirits and must live somehow.

Let us now proceed to work out the East in the same way from the starting-point, just as we have worked out the West. What is its starting-point ? The essence of the Western mind we have found in ancient Greece the human body as its symbol. The essence of the Eastern mind is in ancient Hindu India. For all other cultures of the East are adulterated with some emphasis on matter, while the Hindu mind remains solely bent on the unseen and the psychic. If the laws of the psychic are to be discovered and used for the benefit of mankind as the laws of nature were discovered and used for the benefit of mankind*in the West—the Hindu mind holds the key. This is one point on which Dr Iqbal would agree with me. For he says, In ancient India the whole structure of thought was built on a conception of free spiiit •

Mahatma Gandhi also admits the over-emphasis on the spirit, ascribing it to a wrong interpretation of early Hindu writings. We shall return to this point later* In the meantime, to understand this emphasis on the spirit throughout all Eastern cultures,

Hindu, Moslem, Persian, let us consider certain passages from The Essential Unity all Religions", by Dr Bhagvandas. All religions came from the East, and Dr Bhagvandas makes comparative quotations from most of the sacred books.

"The proclaimers who proclaim the Truth use
many varying forms to put it in, but yet the Truth
implied in all is one. (Upanishads).

"Let the names differ, beloved! _tAll truths are only one,
In the sea-wave and the bubble
Shines the lustre of one Sui^". (Sufi).
But to one Goal are marching everywhere all
human beings, though they seem to walk on paths
divergent^ and that Goal is 1—the Universal Self*~~*
Self-Consciousness." (Gita).

One of the fundamentals of Maul ana Jelaleddin Rumi's teachings also is derived from that verse of the Koran which tells us that we all return unto Hiwi.

^Teachers are sent to each race that they may teach it in its own tongue, so there may be no doubt as to the meaning of their mind". (koran).

"This that I am uttering now unto you, the Holy Korau""-*"it is to be found within the ancient sbbv's writings too."

For teachers have been sent to every race." "And aught of difference we do not make—for disagreement there is none betwixt them."

(koran).

This insistence in all the sacred books of the

East on the oneness of spiritual truth has been an essential feature of old Turkish mysticism. Two oi the quotations I have selected from the Koran are connected with, the lives of two very important figures in the history of our mystic thought. ^ lhe first I quoted when speaking of Yahya bin Khalil, the leader of the ⁴Ahiler' in the thirteenth century, who was among those aiming to organise the economic forces of Turkish society on a spiritual basis. The second, to which the two that follow are closely related in spirit, has a legendary significance in the life of Soleyman Dede, the writer of the Mevlud , that great human masterpiece of the fifteenth century. Soleyman Dede was teaching in the mosque at Broussa and he read the second of these quotations. A Persian, who was an orthodox Moslem, objected to his interpretation of the verse and declared him a 'Kaffir'. The people of Broussa backed Soleyman Dede. The man went to Egypt and Aleppo and obtained ⁴Fetvas' from the Moslem Ulema pronouncing Soleyman Dede a ⁴Kaffir\ The people refused to recognise those Fetvas'. The legend is that Soleyman Dede was assassinated in the street by the same man.

We may thus conclude that a belief in spiritual unity underlies much of Eastern thought, and the emphasis laid on it has been real and undeniable. Only the emphasis has varied in different parts of the East, being strongest in Hindu India. Therefore we may take this over-emphasis of spirit as the starting-point and trace around it the different cycles of the development of Eastern peoples. But, curiously enough, the cycles do not work out into a diagram of the same kind as has been drawn when representing the development of Western civilisation. Eastern civilisations do not follow each other, each emphasising a particular phase of life, such as ancient Greece, Rome and the medieval and modern West. They appeal in parallel lines, longei or shoitei, but each beginning and ending in itself. And through them all runs this over-emphasis on the Unseen. ■>

A B

Let A, B, C, D, E, F, each represent any Eastern civilisation at random. We find that they all rise and pass away in their own particular area, like beads strung on the threads of time, connected with each other no doubt, but not formed into a composite unity by any social or political purpose that survived their physical existence. In those which we see to-day, the inability to organise material existence on any solid and'durable basis is glaringly evident. It would be difficult to find a better definition for their common characteristic—represented by tbe line O in the diagram than that of overemphasis on the spirit.

These civilisations have not been able to work out their material problems in a synthetic way. Just as the West, specially in the last century, found its over-emphasis on matter fatal, so has the East found its over-emphasis on spirit fatal. Just as the technical age in the West has used the earlier scientific discoveries to exploit men and to enslave them through its material power and organisation, so the rulers and the priesthood of the decadent East exploited leligion and spiiituality to accjune power or riches. M. Akif, the Turkish poet, is right when he says of the East:

^6tI have seen from end to end ruins, nations with no leaders, broken bridges, closed canals, empty highways, sickly and wrinkled faces, bent backs, brainless heads, indifferent hearts, rusted judgments, tyiannies, slavery, misery, hypociisy, disgusting vices, divers disease^ burnt foiests, cold chimneys, wild fields, dirty faces, lazy arms, Imams with no following, brother killing brother, days with no definite aims, nights that expect no definite morrow!'

Although we are not able to discuss the evolution of all the Eastern civilisations, we can say that most of them claim to have started with some sort of synthesis and to have taken suffi* cient account of the material necessities of - life. Dr Iqbal states that Islam, among all civilisations, Eastern and Western, has achieved the highest

synthesis. I agree. Islam left the relation of man and his Creator in his own hands. There was no priesthood, no complicated and ligid theology, in its early stages. It worked out the synthesis of spirit and matter, of soul and body logically and completely, in all the aspects of human life. It gave a code to the Moslems which aimed at forming both the individual and the society. Health, cleanliness, bodily tiaining, diet, moral and physical restraint are all given their due importance in the teachings of Islam. Its principles of social justice and equality will always be indispensable piinciples for every human state or .society which bairns at continuity and stability.

The degeneration of Moslems and their subjection are ascribed to two different causes by two different sets of critics* 1. I he penetration of mysticism, which ovei-emphasises the spiiitual, and develops man's soul at the expense of his body. To this set Dr Iqbal belongs, io this set quite an important part of the Turkish intelligentsia also belonged. The abolition of all mystical orders in Turkey is the psychological and practical lesult of such a belief. 2. The rigidity of the Sheiiat, which left no margin for adaptation to a changing world, led to stagnation. Turkey is the only Moslem country where this belief had a strong hold and a large following. The practical consequence of this has been the separation of religion and the state.

These two points concern only Moslems. But there are three more criticisms which concern the East as a whole.

1. Owing to the fanaticism and unreasoning conservatism of the priesthood in the East (including our mullahs), their desire to keep the power in their hands, and their co-operation with selfish and incapable tyrants, the development of the East was always stopped at a certain stage, beyond which some peoples have not passed even now.

2. In modern times, the intelligentsia of the East have never studied both East and West in any objective or comparative way. Those who have studied the West have specialised in its last, that is, the mechanical age. They got dazzled by its power and supei-ficial splendour. They never took the trouble to understand the more important historical phases which gave Western society its strength, its inner moral and social organisation and stability. Neither have they had the courage to study the roots of their own civilisation with any degree of seriousness. They have either remained fundamentalists, denying all necessity of re-adaptation, or they have fallen into a superficially critical attitude of mind, trying to demolish all historic forces in the East, without seeing any possibility of revival and rejuvenation. Eor a-long time in the East, theiefoie, the intelligentsia have been divided between the fanatical and the ignorant and apish imitators who believe that a wholesale adoption of the mechanical civilisation will give the indispensable inner organisation, the strength

and the stability to the passive and inert Eastern .masses. The result has been that the Eastern masses have remained devoid of all new thought or idealism, and enslaved by foreign powers or by their own despotic rulers.

3. This shortcoming in the intelligentsia of the East has prevented the formation of a definite philosophy, system 01 plan to reoiganise Eastern society.

In the nineteenth century, however, the Eastern intelligentsia began bit by bit to realise that their disregard of their moral responsibility was suicidal, if not criminal. In every part of the East there was some sort of awakening.. Turkey was> the country in which reform movements started soonest. I have described in my early lectures our struggle for change. The final phase of the Turkish movement is the conviction of the necessity of adopting the methods and the organisation of the West in economic and political life. That is one solution, of our comr mon problem. Since coming to India I observe that here another method is being followed, a synthetic method- This may be as good, or even better than ours. The verdict belongs to the future. It would be interesting to hear other Eastern scholars tell us how they are working out their solution. And I hope that the Jamia Millia will be the platform where scholars from all parts of the East will communicate their views on the evolution of new life in their people. Apd I also sincerely hope that Western scholars as well will be asked to give their views, both in regard to what they are doing" in the West and in regard to the relation of the West to the East. From such an exchange there may arise a better understanding between the Eastern countries and a more effective effort may be made to turn the conflict of East and W^est into co-operation.

When and how can the East co-operate with the West? It can do so only when it feels itself equal with the West, when it wants to do it in all freedom. Those who co-operate must not be only equals but must also possess mutually valuable things to

ex-

change. A restricted class in the W^est is taking a step forward by a tardy recognition of the supeiiority of Eastern philosophy and thought. Ihe East, by recognising that hitherto its material life has lacked organisation while the West is very ably organised —is taking another step forward. With this in mind and with all deference to the oldest and wisest East, a member of a comparatively younger Eastern nation may be allowed to give a general verdict.

To the casual observer the crying need of the East in general and of India in particular seems to be inner organisation. From time to time strong men and rulers have done dazzling things in the East. But a nation organised on principles which will give it the strength to hold its own at critical moments has been rare. A nation cannot be organised from above. It must develop from within, according to its own laws of growth. With extiemely few exceptions, nationhood in the East has not been a crystallised

and powerful conception. I say nationhood and not nationalism, for the former brings into play and harmonises inner forces in all their variety from a utilitarian and aesthetic point of view, while the latter may cause inner disintegration and create conflict with the suirounding peoples.

The fundamental and simplest elements of nationhood being race, religion and language, let us analyse these briefly in regard to India.

The race theory cannot stand on its feet here the moment a historical analysis is made. Race understood as culture is there, but as blood it tnkes us nowhere. Many Moslems are of Hindu origins, many foreign tribes have become Hindus by 'adopting the religion and customs of the land during the great racial immigrations. It is fortunate for India that Islam (one of its principle cultures and religions) is against race, that the Arya Samaj has valiantly tried to break the castes, which were originally meant to preserve the purity of race, and that Mahatma Gandhi is working to bring about a unity on more universal pi inciples.

Religion being the greatest reality everywhere, but specially in India, it would have been a blessing if Indian nationhood rested on the unity of faith. But that cannot be. Not only is India composed of different religious communities, but each religion has no end of sects. A universal religion such as Akbar tried to impose was and is an impossibility, for religion cannot be fmposed by a ruler. It is best to leave religion alone. But between all religions it is possible to create a tie by adding a new article of faith. "Love of country is a part of Faith, is the teaching of Islam. There may be such a principle in Hinduism as well. Each religious community could perhaps make it a part of its dogma to teach all children their oneness as Indians. This, I believe, will one day remove friction, if it does nothing else.

That each group should be free to preserve and develop its culture in a nation with varied cultures goes without saying. But that a common language is a necessity also goes without saying. A country may have a hundred languages, but it must have one adopted by its educational system throughout, a language which every child must be obliged to learn no matter to what school it goes for education.

Yet supposing that all these problems were solved in India, would that establish a nationhood? Not by any means. The standard of living of the Eastern masses is far below that of the most miserable slum*dweller of the West. I am saying this after having seen the inside of Indian village huts. The percentage of the slum-dwellers in the West does not exceed ten per cent, while the percentage of the peasants in the East is ninety. Neither do the industrial workers in the East fare better. The natural result of this is that though the poor man in the East may stick to his religion for comfort, he cannot ever afford the luxury of devotion and service to any abstract idea such as nationhood

voluntarily or intelligently. 1.hough man does not
live by bread alone, he cannot exist without it and
he needs something more than bread. There is a
minimum standard of living below which man is
bound to turn into a mere drudge, dragging through
his life and hoping for a better state in the coming
world. Such a man can never be made to think of
any part of the earth as his country his country is
where he can find better comfort. And so when a
believer in the materialistic interpretation of history
tells me that religion or spirituality in the East was
invented to deceive the masses into accepting their
miserable destiny, I may not agree with him entirely,
but I have to bow to his h)gic. • ^J

Because ninety per cent of all Eastern populations are peasants (with the possible exception of Japan), the East in its internal organisation is forced to turn to the village at once. The social, the economic and the moral regeneration of the East depends on the development of its village life. It is fortunate indeed for Indians thctt Mahatma Gandhi has turned his attention to this vital question.

Mahatma Gandhi's attempt is an enterprise which should interest the whole East. P^or he is trying to regenerate the Eastern villager economically and moially, while he is fighting against a too rapid industrialisation. Whether he will suceed or not is another question. As it is, considering the time he has given, he has suceeded in a very large area. He is evidently quite aware of the fact that a swift, mechanised industry among such primitive masses
may enslave them further to Western industry and
capitalism. So far they have been the slaves of
misery due to the wretched social and economic
conditions. He is trying to make of them men who
are both free and productive and self-supporting.
He is trying to make the Indian villagers organic
units of the Indian nation and not its passive slaves.
Further, he is woiking out the pioblem syntheti-
cally. He firmly believes that the body and the spirit
cannot be taken as separate things.¹ The rege-
neration of one is not possible without the
regeneration of the other. They must co-operate and
stimulate each other. Mahatma Gandhi's effort
reminds me very much of the economic and moral
organisation of the Turkish society by the mystico-
economic orders called the Aliiler' in Anatolia in the
thirteenth century.

1. It would be interesting here to cite Aldous Huxley, the most prominent English novelist, in his double and contradictory reaction to the East andtWest—that is, to an over-emphasis on spirit and an over-emphasis on matter. During his visit to India he noted this over-emphasis on spirit and reacted wildly against it. If the Western civilisation is unsatisfactory, it is because we are not interested enough in the ^actual world. We are not materialistic enough", he wrote in Jesting Pilate , his book of travels. Hub when he visited America and came face to face with the most typical result of Western civilisation, he changed his views at once. He says in the same book— My own losses, as I have said, were enormous (this was because of the great number of convictions and beliefs he lost on the voyage). But... I acquired two new convictions i that it takes all sorts to make a world, and that the established spiritual values are fundamentally correct and should be maintained .

All Hindu Indians should support him and serve him in this work, for he is the only person capable of using the best in Hinduism and of sorting out the superstitious, the degenerative elements which have crept into it. All Moslem Indians should also support him and further his cause, for his synthesis is dominated in its fundamentals by the everlasting principles of Islam. He seems to me if I may be permitted to say so an ideal neo-Moslem, with his cleanliness of body and mind, his self-restraint, his readiness to co-operate and love, his respect for bodily labour, education, truth and peace.

Both the Eastern and the Western *World should study him seiiously, fer he is offeiing one of the ways which may lead to the salvation, not only of the East but also of the West, by enabling it to cooperate with a free, strong, moral and peaceful East. I will say in conclusion i The key of the future will belong to that nation which knows how to blend the material and the spiritual in as near and equal a piopoition as it is possible to do .

Note on ⁴ Ahiler'.

When this book was in the press the author sent an article for The Jamia' on the Order of the Ahiler', which contains a considerable amount of fresh data and the most up-to-date information on the subject, in the light of which a few corrections and additions to what is said of the Order on p. 142 ff. seem necessary. The name Ahi' is not derived from the Arabic word meaning brother', as in the footnote on p. 142, but it is of Turkish origin. The earliest Ahiler* or People of the Futuwat' as t y were also called, were an order of knights. They played an important part in the establishment of the Ottoman state, the g at Osm<m himself being an Ahi. The early Janissaries were A s or 13ektashis, the Spahis, or cavalry consisting of the land d gentry, were also Ahis\ The sign of the Order was a shalvai* (trousers) of a special kind.

After absorbing the fighting element of the Ahiler', and when the system of Blood Tribute" had been adopted, the Ottoman state began to look with disfavour on the political power of the Ahiler . I3ut wherever the power of the central state was weak, as in Angora and Kirshehir, the Ahiler or the People of the Futuwat' continued to rule. When the Ottomans conquered Angora in the middle of the fourteenth century the political power of the Ahiler in Middle Anatolia ceased to be of importance. As an economic force and organisation, however, they continued to be supreme up to the eighteenth century, and existed till as late as after the Great War. (Ed.)

[1]How the lack of soul or of belief in the Unseen not only among the artists but among the people in general has killed art is seen in the writings of a considerable number of intellectuals and artists. One could take no end of examples from contemporary literature. I have chosen what I believe to be both a representative and beautiful passage from an article entitled, Art without God, or Vain Idols , by Herman Gregoire, a young French dramatist: "There is no art where there is no Faith. Our epoq|h because of this truth produces artists but

leaves them without work......Deprived of these bases and of this

order all things lose their direction, evil turns into good, vice into virtue, pleasure into boredom. Oh, world without a soul! Led by what sort of a whim of vengeance has the Divine Dramatist composed the Contemporary Comedy acted only by moving corpses ?

[2] Dr. Bhagvandas, whom I revere and admire, says in a letter which he sent before I left India, In your lecture at the Jamia you expressed the idea that while the East had rightly striven for the things of the spirit, it had not taken sufficient and rational account of the things of matter. This view is no doubt true of the later centuries, but I believe it does not apply Quite bo the earlier tim^s, when ideals «of social organisation were more genuinely pursued....

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