CRISIS IN TURKEY

Then, suddenly, in 1908, occurred what was probably the most alarming event that had yet happened, from the point of view of Austria and Russia. The sultan had decided to begin taking more severe measures with the Young Turks, with the result that he precipitated a crisis. Enver Bey and Niazi Bey, two of the Young Turk leaders, openly revolted in Monastir and took to the near-by mountains, calling on all Turkish subjects to support them. The revolt spread rapidly. The Young Turks captured the city of Monastir and then the garrison at Saloniki handed that city over to them. The sultan, seeing that the whole army was against him, suddenly decided to temporize and finally agreed to proclaim a constitution for Turkey.

In November of 1908 elections were held for the new Parliament and all the various nationalities were given an opportunity to send in their deputies.

But Abdul Hamid was not going to accept the new rÉgime without another effort to regain his old control. The following winter, after the Parliament had met, he gathered together his old supporters and, having made sure that he could count on the loyalty of the garrison in Constantinople, suddenly abolished all that he had proclaimed and declared the old rÉgime restored.

Then Mahmud Shevket Pasha, the military leader of the Young Turks, established himself in Macedonia and called on all the people to support him.

The events which followed will ever rank as among the most dramatic and picturesque of recent Turkish history. First of all the fighting bands of the committee, which had already laid down their arms, reorganized again and came down from the mountains to join Shevket's army. At their head marched Yani Sandanski, the leader of the committee and the hated enemy of Prince Ferdinand. The comitajis, however, were not the only ones to respond. When Shevket finally began to march on the capital, he had in his army whole brigades of Greeks, Jews, Vlachs as well as Turks and Bulgars.

When this army finally appeared outside the gates of Constantinople, the sultan and his soldiers realized that all was lost, but it was now too late to temporize again. A large force was sent in to disarm the garrison and to drag Abdul Hamid off his throne. And at the very head of that force, together with a hundred of his best men, marched Yani Sandanski, the abductor of Miss Stone, the slayer of Prince Ferdinand's chief conspirator in Macedonia, Boris Sarafoff, the brigand chief who represented the people of Macedonia, but had been outlawed in every Balkan State. What could be more symbolical of the partnership between the Macedonia Committee and Young Turkey than that Yani Sandanski should be one of those who were to drag Abdul Hamid off his throne and send him a prisoner to Saloniki?

At that moment, and for some months after, it looked indeed as though this union of previously antagonistic elements in European Turkey would effectually balk all the intrigues, not only of the little Balkan States, but of Austria and Russia as well. Nothing could have been more disappointing to the tribe of diplomats than this unexpected turn of events.

Undoubtedly most of the Young Turk leaders were sincere and really wished to establish a new Ottoman Empire based on a broad citizenship of all its peoples and the elimination of religious and racial differences from politics. Many of them were out-and-out Socialists, as was Yani Sandanski himself, who saw far-off visions of a great European, if not a world, confederation which should banish war entirely from the earth.

But unfortunately Young Turkey had a bigger task on its hands than it could swing. The Mohammedans of Macedonia and Thrace had been won over to its progressive ideas. But the people of Islam on the other side of the Bosphorus had yet to be heard from. And when they did make their voices heard, it was not in favor of recognizing the giaours as their political equals.

Perhaps, even, if left to itself, Turkey, under the guidance of the new and younger elements, might eventually have emerged triumphant against the dark forces of fanaticism and reaction. But it was not to have that opportunity. The solidarity of all the Turkish subjects, especially in European Turkey, would be nothing less than a calamity to all the Balkan States. There would be no "oppressed" brothers to rescue, consequently no pretext for that territorial expansion which they had all counted on to take place some day in the future. There could be no Greater Hellas, a Byzantine Empire reestablished, with Constantinople as its capital; there could be no Greater Bulgaria, with Czar Ferdinand as its ruler. Russia, too, when her opportunity came to take Constantinople, would come, not as a liberator of the Macedonian Slavs, but as an invading enemy. And Austria would find her pathway to Saloniki blocked by a stronger Turkey than she had counted upon. All these powers were against the success of Young Turkey. But they did not stand shoulder to shoulder against it. Between the Balkan States and the two big powers was another division of interest quite as deep. It was the rivalry of the wolves and the bears.

The Young Turks' revolution may definitely be considered the first jar to the status quo, as established by the Treaty of Berlin, to be followed in quick succession by other similar shocks, which were presently to culminate in its complete upset and the present war. Turkey herself had broken the compact to remain quiescent, to stand pat. With the exception of the union of Eastern Rumelia with Bulgaria, there had been no changes during those twenty-nine years.

The next event in the chain happened almost immediately. Hardly had the revolution in Turkey occurred when Austria, who had, by the terms of the Berlin Treaty, been simply administrating the two provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, annexed them without any ceremony. In actual fact this was merely making theory conform to the practical situation, but it put the Young Turks in an awkward predicament. The old rÉgime under Abdul Hamid would not have been able to do more than accept, and that was what the Young Turks were compelled to do, handicapped as they were by the confusion attending their own affairs at home. But it roused the anger of the conservative Turks, and they somehow attributed it to the new rÉgime.

And at almost the same moment, as though to increase the irritation, Prince Ferdinand kicked over another theory—that his principality was under the suzerainty of the sultan—and declared himself king, or as he called himself, czar of the independent kingdom of the Bulgars and of all Bulgars elsewhere. Practically it meant nothing more than that he was making faces at the new rÉgime in Turkey, but it served the purpose of irritating the masses of Islam.

But if the act of Austria in annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina irritated the Turks, it almost maddened the Serbians, who had no cards to play in this little game of diplomacy just at that moment. Serbia, like all her neighbors, had her dreams of empire; she aspired not only to the possession of Macedonia, but to the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina as well, because of Serb population. Their annexation by Austria meant to Serbia that there could now be no rearrangement. And it meant, too, that Austria was still determined to work her way south, down to Saloniki, when time and opportunity were ripe. It was, in fact, as much of a threat to Serbia as to the Turks.

Meanwhile the Young Turks continued with their attempt to establish democracy in Constantinople. During the winter of 1908-9 the first Parliament met. And naturally, the deputies representing the backward and fanatical Mussulmans of Asia were in the majority, so that in the very beginning it became obvious that democracy itself was going to defeat its own ends. The reactionary elements, being in a majority in the empire as a whole, it was only natural that their representatives in the Parliament should be in a majority.

In the spring of 1910 there was a violent uprising of the more fanatical Albanian tribes, who resisted the efforts of the new Government to disarm the whole of the population, which was undertaken as a first step toward establishing that law and order which had never yet been known in the empire and which the committee had organized to establish, within the limits of its own communities, at least. The schools, too, were taken out of the hands of the priests of the respective peoples and put under the control of a Ministry of Education, and this roused bitter resentment on the part of the Greeks, who, unlike the Serbs and Bulgars, are under the complete domination of their church.

Under the influence of the reactionary elements that had gained majority control through the Parliament, the old repressive measures began gradually to be reestablished. To Sandanski and his colleagues it soon became evident that their fond hopes of a truly democratic Turkish Empire was not to be realized. It was not under a constitutional Turkey that the Macedonians would be accorded civic justice; that could only be accomplished through a Macedonia enjoying home rule, whether as an independent state or under the mere suzerainty of the sultan. This was the state of mind toward which the Macedonians were tending when the next serious event began developing.[Back to Contents]