Correspondence Relating to Executions in Turkey for Apostacy from IslamismVarious
Islamic
Correspondence Relating to Executions in Turkey for Apostacy from Islamism
Various
Apostasy -- Islam; Executions (Islamic law)
Your Excellency will therefore press upon the Turkish Government
that, if the Porte has any regard for the friendship of England,--if
it has any hope that, in the hour of peril or of adversity, that
protection which has more than once saved it from destruction, will
be extended to it again, it must renounce absolutely, and without
equivocation, the barbarous practice which has called forth the
remonstrance now addressed to it. Your Excellency will require an
early answer; and you will let the Turkish Ministers understand that
if that answer does not fully correspond with the expectations which
Her Majesty's Government entertain, your Excellency is instructed to
seek an audience of the Sultan, and to explain to His Highness, in
the most forcible terms, the feelings of the British Government, and
the consequences, so injurious to Turkey, which a disregard for
those feelings will involve. Her Majesty's Government are so anxious
for the continuance of a good understanding with Turkey, and that
the Porte should entitle itself to their good offices in the hour of
need, that they wish to leave no expedient untried before they shall
be compelled to admit the conviction that all their interest and
friendship is misplaced, and that nothing remains for them but to
look forward to, if not promote the arrival of, the day when the
force of circumstances shall bring about a change which they will
have vainly hoped to procure from the prudence and humanity of the
Porte itself.
Your Excellency will seek an interview with the Reis Effendi, and,
having read to him this despatch, leave a copy of it, with an
accurate translation in his hands.
I am, &c.,
(Signed) ABERDEEN.
No. 16.
_The Earl of Aberdeen to Sir Stratford Canning_.
Sir, _Foreign Office, January_ 16, 1844.
With reference to my other despatch of this day upon the subject of
the execution of the Greek near Brussa as an apostate from Islamism,
I inclose, for your Excellency's information, an extract of so much
of a despatch from M. Guizot to Count Ste. Aulaire as relates to
this matter, which Count Ste. Aulaire communicated to me a few days
ago.
Your Excellency will perceive from this paper that M. Guizot
anticipates that Her Majesty's Government will be disposed to invite
the co-operation of the other Great Powers with the view of making a
simultaneous appeal to the Porte on that subject. But although Her
Majesty's Government would certainly be glad to see the other Powers
of Europe declaring their abhorrence of so revolting a system as
that against which your Excellency and your French colleague will be
instructed to protest, they consider it, nevertheless, unnecessary
formally to solicit their co-operation in a matter in which they all
may be supposed to take a common interest, and to be prepared to act
without previous concert with each other.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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