The truth of the matter was that Turkish nationalism was evolving in a
direction which could only mean heightened antagonism between the
Turkish element on the one side and the non-Turkish elements, Christian
or Moslem, on the other. Turkish nationalism had, in fact, now reached
the second or "racial" stage. Passing the bounds of the limited, mainly
territorial, idea connoted by the term "Ottomanism," it had embraced the
far-flung and essentially racial concepts known as "Pan-Turkism" and
"Pan-Turanism." These wider developments we shall consider later on in
this chapter. Before so doing let us examine the beginnings of
nationalism's "first stage" in other portions of the Moslem world.
Shortly after the Ottoman Turks showed signs of a nationalistic
awakening, kindred symptoms began to appear among the Arabs. As in all
self-conscious nationalist movements, it was largely a protest _against_
some other group. In the case of the Arabs this protest was naturally
directed against their Turkish rulers. We have already seen how Desert
Arabia (the Nejd) had always maintained its freedom, and we have also
seen how those Arab lands like Syria, Mesopotamia, and the Hedjaz which
fell under Turkish control nevertheless continued to feel an
ineradicable repugnance at seeing themselves, Islam's "Chosen People,"
beneath the yoke of a folk which, in Arab eyes, were mere upstart
barbarians. Despite a thousand years of Turkish domination the two races
never got on well together, their racial temperaments being too
incompatible for really cordial relations. The profound temperamental
incompatibility of Turk and Arab has been well summarized by a French
writer. Says Victor Berard: "Such are the two languages and such the two
peoples: in the latitude of Rome and in the latitude of Algiers, the
Turk of Adrianople, like the Turk of Adalia, remains a man of the north
and of the extreme north; in all climates the Arab remains a man of the
south and of the extreme south. To the Arab's suppleness, mobility,
imagination, artistic feeling, democratic tendencies, and anarchic
individualism, the Turk opposes his slowness, gravity, sense of
discipline and regularity, innate militarism. The Turkish master has
always felt disdain for the 'artistic canaille,' whose pose,
gesticulations, and indiscipline, shock him profoundly. On their side,
the Arabs see in the Turk only a blockhead; in his placidity and
taciturnity only stupidity and ignorance; in his respect for law only
slavishness; and in his love of material well-being only gross
bestiality. Especially do the Arabs jeer at the Turk's artistic
incapacity: after having gone to school to the Chinese, Persians, Arabs,
and Greeks, the Turk remains, in Arab eyes, just a big booby of barrack
and barnyard."[139]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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