Germany -- Foreign relations -- Turkey; Turkey -- Foreign relations -- Germany; World War, 1914-1918 -- Turkey
In a speech in Liberty Square, Saloniki, in July, 1908, Enver
Pasha, who was popularly regarded as the chivalrous young leader of this
insurrection against a century-old tyranny, had eloquently declared
that, “To-day arbitrary government has disappeared. We are all brothers.
There are no longer in Turkey Bulgarians, Greeks, Serbians, Rumanians,
Mussulmans, Jews. Under the same blue sky we are all proud to be
Ottomans.” That statement represented the Young Turk ideal for the new
Turkish state, but it was an ideal which it was evidently beyond their
ability to translate into a reality. The races which had been maltreated
and massacred for centuries by the Turks’ could not transform themselves
overnight into brothers, and the hatreds, jealousies, and religious
prejudices of the past still divided Turkey into a medley of warring
clans. Above all, the destructive wars and the loss of great sections of
the Turkish Empire had destroyed the prestige of the new democracy.
There were plenty of other reasons for the failure; but it is hardly
necessary to go into them at this time.
Thus the Young Turks had disappeared as a positive, regenerating force,
but they still existed as a political machine. Their leaders, Talaat,
Enver, and Djemal, had long since abandoned any expectation of reforming
their State, but they had developed an insatiable lust for personal
power. Instead of a nation of nearly 20,000,000 developing happily along
democratic lines, enjoying the suffrage, building up their industry and
agriculture, laying the basis of education, sanitation, and general
progress, I saw that Turkey consisted of merely so many inarticulate,
ignorant, and poverty-ridden slaves, with a small, wicked oligarchy at
the top, which was prepared to use them in the way that would best
promote their private interests. And these men were practically the same
who, a few years before, had made Turkey an institutional State! A more
bewildering fall from the highest idealism to the crassest materialism
could not be imagined. Talaat, Enver, and Djemal were the ostensible
leaders, yet back of them was the Committee, consisting of about forty
men. This Committee met secretly, manipulated elections, and filled the
offices with their own henchmen. It had its own building in
Constantinople, and a supreme chief who gave all his time to its affairs
and issued orders to his subordinates. This functionary thus ruled the
party and the country something like an American city boss in our most
unregenerate days. The whole organisation thus furnished a splendid
illustration of what we sometimes describe as “invisible government.”
This kind of irresponsible control has at times flourished in American
cities mainly because the citizens have devoted all their time to their
private affairs and thus neglected the public good. But in Turkey the
masses were altogether too ignorant to understand the meaning of
democracy, and the bankruptcy and general vicissitudes of the country
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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