WHAT IS TO BECOME OF TURKEY IN EUROPE?

And all the while Russia advances step by step, slowly, but irresistibly, towards Constantinople, in spite of all the diplomatic notes, plots and manoeuvres of France and England.

Now this steady advance of Russia, admitted by all parties, in all countries of Europe, has never been explained by official states-men. They see the effect, they see even the ultimate consequence, and yet the cause is hidden from them, although nothing is more simple.

The great motive power which speeds Russia on towards Constantinople, is nothing but the very device, designed to keep her away from it; the hollow, the never-enforced theory of the status quo.

What is this status quo? For the Christian subjects of the Porte, it means simply the maintenance for ever' and a day, of Turkish oppression over them. As long as they are oppressed by Turkish rule, the head of the Greek Church, the ruler of sixty millions of Greek Christians, be he in other respects what he may, is their natural liberator and protector. Thus it is, that ten millions of Greek Christians in European Turkey, are forced to appeal to Russian aid, by that very diplomatic scheme, invented in order to prevent Russian encroachments.

Look at the facts as history records them. Even before the reign of Catherine II Russia never omitted an opportunity of obtaining favorable conditions for Moldavia and Wallachia. These stipulations, at last, were carried to such a length in the Treaty of Adrianople (1829)[35] that the above-named principalities are now more subject to Russia than to Turkey. When, in 1804, the Servian revolution broke out, Russia took the rebel Rayahs at once under her protection, and in two treaties, after having supported them in two wars, guaranteed the internal independence of their country[36]. When the Greeks revolted, who decided the contest? Not the plots and rebellions of Ali Pasha of Janina, not the battle of Navarino, not the French army in the Morea[37], not the conferences and protocols of London, but the march of Diebitsch's Russians across the Balkan into the valley of the Maritza[38]. And while Russia thus fearlessly set about the dismemberment of Turkey, western diplomatists continued to guarantee and to hold up as sacred the status quo and the inviolability of the Ottoman territory!

So long as the tradition of the upholding, at any price, of the status quo and the independence of Turkey in her present state is the ruling maxim of Western diplomacy, so long will Russia be considered, by nine-tenths of the population of Turkey in Europe, their only support, their liberator, their Messiah.

Now, suppose for a moment that Turkish rule in the Graeco-Slavonian peninsula were got rid of; that a government more suitable to the wants of the people existed; what then would be the position of Russia? The fact is notorious, that in every one of the States which have sprung up upon Turkish soil and acquired either total or partial independence, a powerful anti-Russian party has formed itself. If that be the case at a time when Russian support is their only safeguard against Turkish oppression, what, then, are we to expect, as soon as the fear of Turkish oppression shall have vanished?

But to remove Turkish authority beyond the Bosphorus; to emancipate the various creeds and nationalities which populate the peninsula; to open the door to the schemes and machinations, the conflicting desires and interests of all the great powers of Europe;—why is not this provoking universal war? Thus asks diplomatic cowardice and routine.

Of course, it is not expected that the Palmerstons, the Aberdeens, the Clarendons, the Continental Foreign Secretaries, will do such a thing. They cannot look at it without shuddering. But whosoever has, in the study of history, learned to admire the eternal mutations of human affairs in which nothing is stable but instability, nothing constant but change; whosoever has followed up that stern march of history whose wheels pass relentlessly over the remains of empires, crushing entire generations, without holding them worthy even of a look of pity; whosoever, ) in short, has had his eyes open to the fact that there was never a demagogic appeal or insurgent proclamation, as revolutionary as the plain and simple records of the history of mankind; whoever knows how to appreciate the eminently revolutionary character of the present age, when steam and wind, electricity and the printing press, artillery and gold discoveries cooperate to produce more changes and revolutions in a year than were ever before brought about in a century, will certainly not shrink from facing a historical question, because of the consideration that its proper settlement may bring about a European war.

No, diplomacy, Government according to the old fashion will never solve the difficulty. The solution of the Turkish problem is reserved, with that of other great problems, to the European Revolution. And there is no presumption in assigning this apparently remote question to the lawful domain of that great movement. The revolutionary landmarks have been steadily advancing ever since 1789. The last revolutionary outposts were Warsaw, Debreczin, Bucharest; the advanced posts of the next revolution must be Petersburg and Constantinople. They are the two vulnerable points where the Russian anti-revolutionary colossus must be attacked.

It would be a mere effort of fancy to give a detailed scheme as to how the Turkish territory in Europe might be partitioned out. Twenty such schemes could be invented, every one as plausible as the other. What we have to do is, not to draw up fanciful programmes, but to seek general conclusions from indisputable facts. And from this point of view the question presents a double aspect.

Firstly, then, it is an undeniable reality that the peninsula, commonly called Turkey in Europe, forms the natural inheritance of the South-Slavonian race. That race furnishes seven millions out of twelve of its inhabitants. It has been in possession of the soil for twelve hundred years. Its competitors if we except a sparse population which has adopted the Greek language, although in reality of Slavonic descent are Turkish or Arnaut barbarians, who have long since been convicted of the most inveterate opposition to all progress. The South-Slavonians, on the contrary, are, in the inland districts of the country, the exclusive representatives of civilization. They do not yet form a nation, but they have a powerful and comparatively enlightened nucleus of nationality in Servia. The Servians have a history, a literature of their own. They owe their present internal independence to an eleven years' struggle, carried on valiantly against superior numbers. They have, for the last twenty years, grown rapidly in culture and the means of civilization. They are looked upon by the Christians of Bulgaria, Thrace, Macedonia and Bosnia as the center, around which, in their future efforts for independence and nationality, all of them must rally. In fact, it may be said that, the more Servia and Servian nationality has consolidated itself, the more has the direct influence of Russia on the Turkish Slavonians been thrown into the background; for Servia, in order to maintain its distinct position as a Christian State, has been obliged to borrow from the West of Europe its political institutions, its schools, its scientific knowledge, its industrial appliances; and thus is explained the anomaly, that, in spite of Russian protection, Servia, ever since her emancipation, has formed a constitutional monarchy.

Whatever may be the bonds which consanguinity and common religious belief may draw between the Russian and the Turkish Slavonians, their interests will be decidedly opposite from the day the latter are emancipated. The commercial necessities arising from the geographical position of the two countries explain this. Russia, a compact inland country, is essentially a country of predominant agricultural, and perhaps, one day, manufacturing production. The Graeco-Slavonian peninsula, small in extent, comparatively, with an enormous extent of shore on three seas, one of which it commands, is now essentially a country of commercial transit, though with the best capacities for independent production. Russia is monopolizing, South Slavonia is expansive. They are, besides, competitors in Central Asia; but while Russia has every interest to exclude all but her own produce, South Slavonia has, even now, every interest to introduce into the Eastern markets the produce of Western Europe. How, then, is it possible for the two nations to agree? In fact, the Turkish South Slavonians and Greeks have, even now, far more interests in common with Western Europe than with Russia. And as soon as the line of railway, which now extends from Ostende, Havre and Hamburg to Pesth, shall have been continued to Belgrade and Constantinople (which is now under consideration), the influence of Western civilization and Western trade will become permanent in the South-east of Europe.

Again: The Turkish Slavonians especially suffer by their subjection to a Mussulman class of military occupants whom they have to support. These military occupants unite in themselves all public functions, military, civil and judicial. Now what is the Russian system of government, wherever it is not mixed up with feudal institutions, but a military occupation, in which the civil and judicial hierarchy are organized in a military manner, and where the people have to pay for the whole? Whoever thinks that such a system can have a charm for the South Slavonians, may study the history of Servia since 1804. Kara-George, the founder of Servian independence, was abandoned by the people, and Miloš Obrenović, the restorer of that independence, was ignominiously turned out of the country, because they attempted to introduce the Russian autocratic system, accompanied with its concomitant corruption, half-military bureaucracy and pasha-like extortion.

Here then is the simple and final solution of the question. History and the facts of the present day alike point to the erection of a free and independent Christian State on the ruins of the Moslem Empire in Europe. The next effort of the Revolution can hardly fail to render such an event necessary, for it can hardly fail to inaugurate the long-maturing conflict between Russian Absolutism and European Democracy. In that conflict England must bear a part, in whatever hands her Government may for the moment happen to be placed. She can never allow Russia to obtain possession of Constantinople. She must then, take sides with the enemies of the Czar and favor the construction of an independent Slavonian Government in the place of the effete and overthrown Sublime Porte[39].

Notes

[39] The editors of the New-York Daily Tribune inserted the following passage at the end of the article (which was also reproduced in the New-York Weekly Tribune): "For the present, the duty of those who would forward the popular cause in Europe is to lend all possible aid to the development of industry, education, obedience to law, and the instinct of freedom and independence in the Christian dependencies of Turkey. The future peace and progress of the world are concerned in it. If there is to be a harvest, too much care cannot be given to the preparation of the soil and the sowing of the seed."