I THE TURKS

The peoples who speak the various Turkish dialects and who bear the generic name of Turcomans, or Turco-Tatars, are distributed over huge territories occupying nearly half of Asia and an important part of Eastern Europe. But as we are only considering the Turkish question from the European point of view, no lengthy reference is needed to such Eastern groups as those of Turkish or Mongol descent who are connected with the Yenisseians of Northern Asia and the Altaians. The Russians call these peoples Tatars, and they, no doubt, constituted the “Tubbat” nation, referred to by the Chinese historians under the name of “Tou-Kiou” up to the seventh century after Christ. These very brief facts show the importance of the race and are also sufficient to emphasise the point that these people are akin to those Turks of Western Asia who are more closely connected with the Europeans.

The Western Turkish group includes the Turcomans of Persia and Russian or Afghan Turkistan; the Azerbaïjanians, who are probably Turkisised Iranians, living between the Caucasus Mountains and Persia; and, lastly, the Osmanli Turks, who are subjects of the Sultan, speak the Turkish language, and profess Islam.

Close to this group, but farther to the East, the central group also concerns us, for some of its representatives who now inhabit the boundaries of Europe made repeated incursions into Europe in various directions. In the plains lying between the River Irtish and the Caspian Sea live the Kirghiz-Kazaks, and in the Tien-Shien Mountains the Kara-Kirghiz, who have preserved many ancient Old Turkish customs, and seem to have been only slightly Mohammedanised. The Usbegs and the Sartis of Russian Turkistan, on the other hand, have been more or less Iranised. Finally, on the banks of the Volga are to be found the Tatars of European Russia. Among them the Tatars of Kazan, who are descended from the Kiptchaks, came to the banks of the Volga in the thirteenth century and mingled with the Bulgars. These Tatars differ from the Tatars of Astrakhan, who are descendants of the Turco-Mongols of the Golden Horde, and are connected with the Khazars, and from the Nogaïs of the Crimea, who are Tatars of the steppes who more or less inter-married with other races—the Tatars of the Tauris coast being the hybrid descendants of the Adriatic race and the Indo-Afghan race. They are to be found near Astrakhan and in the Caucasus Mountains, and even, perhaps, as far as Lithuania, “where, though still being Mohammedans, they have adopted the language and costume of the Poles.”1

The invasion of Europe by the Turks appears as the last great ethnic movement that followed the so-called period of migration of peoples (second to sixth centuries A.D.) and the successive movements it entailed.

Let us consider only the migrations of those who concern us most closely, and with whom the Turks were to come into contact later on. First the Slavs spread westward towards the Baltic and beyond the Elbe, and southward to the valley of the Danube and the Balkan Peninsula. This movement brought about the advance of the Germans towards the west, and consequently the advance of the Celts towards Iberia and as far as Spain. Owing to the invasion of the Huns in the fifth century and in the sixth of the Avars, who, after coming as far as Champagne, settled down in the plains of Hungary and the territories lying farther to the south which had already been occupied by the Dacians for several centuries, the Slavs were cut into two groups. About the same time, the Bulgars came from the banks of the Volga and settled on the banks of the Danube.

In the ninth century, owing to a new migration of masses of Slavonic descent, the Hungarians, driven by tribes of Petchenegs and Polovts into Southern Russia, crossed the Carpathian Mountains and took up their abode in the valley of the Tirzah. While the Magyar Turks settled in Hungary, the Kajar Turks occupied the hinterland of Thessalonica in Macedonia. In the twelfth century, the Germans, driving the Western Slavs as far as the banks of the Vistula, brought about a reaction towards the north-east of the Eastern Slavs, whose expansion took place at the expense of the Finnish tribes that lived there.

Only in the thirteenth century did the Turco-Mongols begin to migrate in their turn; they occupied the whole of Russia, as far as Novgorod to the north, and reached Liegnitz in Silesia. But, although they soon drew back from Western Europe, they remained till the fifteenth century in Eastern Russia, and in the eighteenth century they were still in the steppes of Southern Russia, and in the Crimea.

Finally, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Osmanli Turks invaded the Balkan Peninsula, where they met such of their kindred as the Kajars, the Tchitaks, and the Pomaks, who were heathens or Christians, and later on embraced Islam. They invaded Hungary and made incursions into Lower Austria.

Then began the migration of the Little Russians into the upper valley of the Dnieper, and in the sixteenth century they set off towards the steppes of Southern Russia, while the Great Russians began to advance beyond the Volga towards the Ural, a movement which reached Siberia, and still continues.

It follows, necessarily, that in the course of these huge migrations, the so-called Turkish race was greatly modified; the Turks of the Eastern group mixed with the Mongols, the Tunguses, and the Ugrians; and those of the Western group in Asia and Europe with various Indo-Afghan, Assyrian, Arab, and European elements, especially with those living near the Adriatic: the Greeks, the Genoese, the Goths, etc. Thus the Osmanli Turks became a mixture of many races.

Though ethnologists do not agree about the various ethnic elements of the Turco-Tatar group, it is certain, all the same, that those who came to Asia Minor early associated for a long time with the people of Central Asia, and Vambéry considers that a Turkish element penetrated into Europe at a very early date.2

Though the Arabs in the seventh century subdued the Turks of Khiva, they did not prevent them from penetrating into Asia Minor, and the Kajars, who were not Mohammedans, founded an empire there in the eighth century. At that period the Turks, among whom Islam was gaining ground, enlisted in the Khalifa’s armies, but were not wholly swallowed up by the Arab and Moslem civilisation of the Seljukian dynasty, the first representatives of which had possibly embraced Nestorian Christianity or Islam. Henceforth Asia Minor, whence the previous Turkish elements had almost disappeared, began to turn into a Turkish country.

All the Turks nowadays are Mohammedans, except the Chuvashes (Ugrians) who are Christians, and some Shamanist Yakuts.

As will be shown later on, these ethnographic considerations should not be neglected in settling the future conditions of the Turks and Slavs in Europe, in the interest of European civilisation.

About half a century ago Elisée Reclus wrote as follows:

“For many years has the cry ‘Out of Europe’ been uttered not only against the Osmanli leaders, but also against the Turks as a whole, and it is well known that this cruel wish has partly been fulfilled; hundreds of thousands of Muslim emigrants from Greek Thessaly, Macedonia, Thrace, and Bulgaria have sought refuge in Asia Minor, and these fugitives are only the remnants of the wretched people who had to leave their ancestral abodes; the exodus is still going on, and, most likely, will not leave off till the whole of Lower Rumelia has become European in language and customs. But now the Turks are being threatened even in Asia. A new cry arises, ‘Into the Steppes,’ and to our dismay we wonder whether this wish will not be carried out too. Is no conciliation possible between the hostile races, and must the unity of civilisation be obtained by the sacrifice of whole peoples, especially those that are the most conspicuous for the noblest qualities—uprightness, self-respect, courage, and tolerance?”3

For a long time this state of affairs did not seem to change much, but after the recent upheaval of Europe it has suddenly become worse.

Very different races, who have more or less intermingled, live on either side of the Bosphorus, for Elisée Reclus says:

“The Peninsula, the western end of the fore part of the continent, was a place where the warlike, wandering, or trading tribes, coming from the south-east and north-east, converged naturally. Semitic peoples inhabited the southern parts of Anatolia, and in the centre of that country their race, dialects, and names seem to have prevailed among numerous populations; in the south-west they seem to have intermingled with coloured men, perhaps the Kushits. In the eastern provinces the chief ethnic elements seem to have been connected with the Persians, and spoke languages akin to Zend; others represented the northern immigrants that bore the generic name of Turanians. In the West migrations took place in a contrary direction to those that came down from the Armenian uplands; Thracians were connected by their trade and civilisation with the coastlands of Europe and Asia sloping towards the Propontis, and between both parts of the world Greeks continually plied across the Ægean Sea.”4

Thus the common name of “Turks” is wrongly given to some Moslem elements of widely different origin, who are to be found in Rumelia and Turkey-in-Asia, such as the Albanians, who are akin to Greeks through their common ancestors, the Pelasgians, the Bosnians, and the Moslem Bulgars, the offspring of the Georgian and Circassian women who filled the harems, and the descendants of Arabs or even of African negroes.

After the internal conflicts between some of these elements, the quarrels with other foreign elements, and the keen rivalry which existed generally, each section seems to have held the Turk responsible for whatever wrong was done, and the Turk was charged with being the cause of all misfortunes—almost in the same way as the Jews: the Turks have become, as it were, the scapegoats.

Yet, in 1665, in his account of his travels in the East, M. de Thévenot, who died at Mianeh in 1667, praised Turkish morality and tolerance.

Elisée Reclus wrote:

“Turkish domination is merely outward, and does not reach, so to say, the inner soul; so, in many respects, various ethnic groups in Turkey enjoy a fuller autonomy than in the most advanced countries of Western Europe.”

Ubicini speaks in the same manner, and Sir H. Bulwer states that:

“As to freedom of faith and conscience, the prevailing religion in Turkey grants the other religions a tolerance that is seldom met with in Christian countries.”

Unfortunately the Turk’s mentality, in spite of what his enemies say, does not help him. Owing to his nature, he is quite unable to defend himself and to silence his slanderers.

For, as E. Reclus remarked:

“They are not able to cope with the Greeks, who, under pretence of pacific dealings, take vengeance for the war of extermination, the traces of which are still to be seen in Cydonia and Chio. They do not stand an equal chance of winning; most of them only know their own language, while a Greek speaks several languages; they are ignorant and artless by the side of clever, shrewd adversaries. Though he is not lazy, the Turk does not like to hurry; ‘Haste is devilish, patience is godly,’ he will often say. He cannot do without his ‘kief,’ an idle dream in which he lives like a mere plant, without any exertion of his mind and will, whereas his rival, always in earnest, can derive profit even from his hours of rest. The very qualities of the Turk do him harm: honest, trustworthy, he will work to the end of his life to pay off a debt, and the business man takes advantage of this to offer him long credits that shall make a slave of him for ever. There is an axiom among business men in Asia Minor: ‘If you wish to thrive, do not grant a Christian more credit than one-tenth of his fortune; risk ten times as much with a Mohammedan.’ Encumbered with such a credit, the Turk no longer possesses anything of his own; all the produce of his work will go to the usurer. His carpets, his wares, his flocks, even his land, will pass gradually into the hands of the foreigner.”5

But since the time when this was written the Turkish mind has changed. The Turks have set to work to learn languages, especially French. A large part of the younger generation concern themselves with what takes place in the West, and this transformation, which the Greeks and other Europeans looked upon as endangering their situation in Turkey, may be one of the factors of the present conflict.

Besides, E. Reclus added: “The Greeks already hold, to the great prejudice of the Turks, numerous industries and all the so-called liberal professions, and as dragomans and journalists they are the only informers of the Europeans, and control public opinion in the West.”6

Footnotes:

1 J. Deniker, Les Races et les peuples de la terre (Paris, 1900), p. 438. Zaborowski, Tartares de la Lithuanie (1913).

2 Deguignes, Histoire générale des Huns (1750 and 1756); L. Cahun, Turcs et Mongols, des origins à 1405 (Paris, 1896); Vambéry, Das Turkenvolk (1885).

3 Elisée Reclus, Nouvelle géographie universelle (1884), ix., p. 547.

4 Ibid., p. 536.

5 Elisée Reclus, Nouvelle géographie universelle (1884), ix., p. 546.

6 Ibid., p. 550.