The entire plan and purpose of missionary work in Turkey involved the printing-press. Only a little more than two years after the first missionaries to Turkey arrived upon the field, a press under the care of a missionary of the Board arrived at Malta, commissioned to print for the use of the Palestine and Turkish missions. At that time hostilities between Greece and Turkey were in progress and no port upon the Mediterranean was safe for the American press. Malta was under the English flag, and so proved for the time the best base for the literary operations of the mission.

Undoubtedly the earlier publications were too impracticable to meet the needs of the people of Turkey. The missionaries assumed ability in the untrained Oriental mind to grasp the thoughts of the West. In the list of what was printed at Malta during the first ten years are found such works as “Serious Thoughts on Eternity,” “Guilt and Danger of Neglecting the Saviour,” “Scott’s Force of Truth,” “Content and Discontent,” “Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures.” A great variety of books was prepared, for the most part, by those who knew practically nothing of the thought and life of the people who were supposed to read them.

In 1833 the political atmosphere had so cleared that the press was removed from Malta, the Arabic equipment going to Beirut in Syria, while the Greek, Turkish, and Armenian outfit was set up in Smyrna. During the ten years at Malta, over twenty-one million pages were printed in four different languages, namely modern Greek, Italian, Armeno-Turkish, and Arabic. The largest amount by far was in Greek. No printing in Armenian was done until the press was set up in Smyrna and, previous to 1837, less than 175,000 pages had been printed in that language.

In 1829 it was decided to do more in the way of providing much needed books for elementary schools. One of these books was so popular that 27,000 copies were sold in Greece alone. In 1831 the Armeno-Turkish New Testament, translated by Dr. Goodell, was printed. That same year over five million pages of modern Greek were put out from the press. Nearly all of this was circulated about as rapidly as it could be run off.

The publication work in the Turkish missions outside Syria was carried on at Smyrna until 1853, or for about twenty years. The last and one of the most important works published there was the modern Armenian Bible translated by Dr. Elias Riggs. This one book has accomplished more to fix, unify, and simplify the modern spoken Armenian language than all other influences combined. What the King James version has done for the English speaking peoples, and Luther’s Bible for the Germans, this scholarly and accurate translation has done for the Armenians all over the world.

Besides the Bible and strictly Biblical works, a large number of school-books of almost every grade as well as translations of choice parts of English literature were printed and sold. The eagerness of the Greeks and Armenians, and especially the latter, for a literature suited to their aroused intellectual condition made it possible to sell at cost much that was published. After the organization of the Evangelical Protestant Church, hymn-books in various languages were prepared and printed. It would be impossible in the limits of this discussion to give even a classified list of the publications issued from the mission presses of Turkey since printing began. The output upon the average from 1833, even to the present time, has been at the rate of from twelve to fifty million pages each year in not less than ten languages, including Bulgarian and Koordish. In some years this has been exceeded.

At Beirut in 1906 there were printed on the American press 152,500 volumes of distinctively Biblical literature, with a total of 47,278,000 pages. To this was added nearly 9,000,000 pages of other Christian and educational books, making a total of 56,000,000 pages of literature from this one press alone in a single year.

For the Bulgarians and the Armenians the missionaries practically created their new literature in the spoken tongue. Of the first one hundred books printed in the modern Bulgarian, some seventy were the product of the missionary press. The first grammar of the modern Armenian language was printed by the missionaries. The Koords had no literature of any kind, while their language is even yet unclassified. The New Testament was translated into that tongue, written with the Armenian characters, and in that language it was printed. Parts of the Bible have also been printed in the Albanian tongue.

The Bible has been translated into Arabo-Turkish, the language read by all the educated Moslems in Turkey north of Syria and is printed and widely circulated. This, with the Arabic and Syriac versions printed at Beirut, puts the Bible into the language of all the Moslems of Turkey, except the Koords and Albanians. As yet the former have only a part of the Bible, and the latter a very poor and fragmentary version, in their own language.

However great the influence of the press has been in the preparation of books and tracts, it has probably reached and permanently moved more people still by its periodical publications. Papers have been printed for more than a generation in Armenian, Greek, Armeno-Turkish, Greco-Turkish, Bulgarian, and Arabic which have had wide circulation among all classes, but especially among the evangelicals. These papers while religious, have also been newspapers, carrying into the remote hamlets of the interior information of the great outside world of which the masses were profoundly ignorant when mission work began. The influence of these papers can best be measured by the fact that when the cholera was approaching any section of the country, the missionaries were accustomed to publish detailed instructions regarding the best methods to prevent contracting the dread disease and what to do as soon as the symptoms appeared. Those who read the papers took great care to follow directions, and so the Protestants who usually knew how to read seldom suffered from the scourge.

When the cholera was raging with unusual virulence in Aintab, taking for the most part the Moslems and ignorant Gregorians and leaving the Protestants almost unscathed, a learned Moslem asked a missionary if God spread a tent over the Protestants that the cholera should pass them by. Through the periodicals in the various languages, the missionaries and leading Armenians have been able constantly to speak directly to the most intelligent classes of people in the entire empire.

When the missionaries began work in Turkey in 1820 there was no newspaper worthy the name in the country in any language and the number of books was but few. Printing was not left, however, entirely in the hands of the missionaries, for, after a time, to meet the demands of the different religious communities other presses were started. These were small in output and power and did not amount to much until within the last twenty-five years. During this time the Armenians have prepared and published some excellent text-books, many of which have been and still are in constant use in Protestant schools. They also have started a few periodicals that for the most part have little permanent value. The Moslems have done but little in the way of printing books or periodicals of any kind. They do not allow the Koran to be translated into the vernacular of the people, and it is their policy to exclude from their subjects, as far as possible, all knowledge of the outside world. The Moslem press has produced little of real value to the people.

Great freedom to the work of the press was given in the earlier days, all of which has changed during the last thirty years. While the Turks were never favorable to it, they tolerated it under a silent protest. Gradually the opposition became more and more open and violent. Undoubtedly all this originated among the Roman Catholics and the Jesuits, who even in the early days of the mission fought against the circulation of the Bible and Protestant books. They did much to stir up opposition to Protestant books, among the Greeks first and later among the Armenians, always assuming that the Bible is a Protestant book. There is no doubt that this hostility was helped on also by the representatives at the Porte from Russia. The Turks were not so much concerned with what they regarded as squabbles between the various Christian sects.

About 1878 Dr. Wheeler, President of Euphrates College, imported a printing-press into Harpoot, where he set it up and ran it with great industry for several years. Only a local work was done there, while the general publication operations of the missions were carried on at Beirut and Constantinople. In the eighties the Turkish government began to put severe restrictions upon the press. The one at Harpoot was silenced and has so remained to this day.[1] Strict rules were promulgated to restrict printing in the empire. Formal permission must be procured in order to own a printing outfit, and strict rules were formulated for its conduct. All matter to be printed must first be submitted to a royal censor whose stamp of approval upon every article is necessary before it is put upon the press. The same stamp of approval which carries with it the sanction of the sultan must be printed upon the first page of every book, otherwise its issue, circulation, or even possession by a subject of the empire constitutes a crime. This approval must be obtained for every edition of the same book. It is almost as difficult to secure permission to-day to print a new edition of the Bible as it was after the appointment of the first censorship to print the first edition. Permission to print a book like the Bible carries with it no authority to print separately any part of the same. These rules have greatly hampered the work of the press, but have not by any means been able to stop the constant output of useful books and periodicals in the leading languages of the country.

There is no department of missionary effort which has done more to open the eyes of the people and stir in them new desires and ambitions than this work of publication, taken in connection with the general educational operations. Many English books and periodicals find their way into these schools and are included in the libraries of the teachers and students. These too are subject to all the restrictive laws which hamper the press. The tendency is more and more to exclude all foreign books and periodicals and to have it almost a crime for a subject of Turkey to have in his possession a library of any kind. Many an Armenian has been arrested and thrown into prison for no other crime than the possession of a few harmless English books. No one has yet been bold enough to confiscate from the libraries of the missionaries the books which they possess, but this step has been repeatedly threatened. The officials, however, intercept many books in the mails or in transit by freight.

In all work of reform which marks the history of missions in that country this agency has been supremely potent. Undoubtedly to-day there is no more vitalizing force in the empire affecting the intellectual and religious life of the Moslems than that which is exerted not only through the Bible and especially prepared literature, but through books on science. These contain startling revelations to the old-school Moslem, since modern science runs counter to nearly every teaching of the Koran. He cannot deny their truth forever, and when he yields he has already met with a mighty intellectual and religious evolution.