TURKEY n6 3 



and Servia together issued one note to the plenipotentiaries of Austria-Hungary, 

 France, Germany, Great Britain and Russia, declining the proposal, and another to the 

 Ottoman plenipotentiaries requiring that the reforms should be carried 

 out un der the joint control of the Great Powers and the Balkan States, 

 the appointment of Belgian or Swiss governors, and the immediate de- 

 mobilisation of the Turkish army. On the same date the Porte declined the pro- 

 posal of the Great Powers, declaring that Turkey was ready to carry out reforms but 

 could permit no foreign interference whatever. On the i5th, the Porte having received 

 the communication of the note issued by the Balkan States, recalled the Turkish 

 ministers from Athens, Belgrade and Sofia. On the i6th peace was concluded with 

 Italy, on the basis of a disguised but really complete cession of the vilayets of Tripoli 

 and Cyrenaica. On the iyth Turkey declared war on Bulgaria and Servia. By a piece 

 of diplomatic finesse, the Greek note was supposed not to have been communicated; 

 to the last Turkey really hoped to detach Greece from the Balkan League. On the 

 i8th Greece declared war on Turkey. MM. Sarafoff, Gryparis and Nenadovitch, 

 ministers of Bulgaria, Greece and Servia, left Constantinople that same day. The 

 Balkan war was about to begin. 



The events of the war and its international aspects are dealt with elsewhere (see 

 " International Affairs," in Part I: Sect, i.), and the direct results in Constantinople 

 need only be noted. Mukhtar's willingness to accept the application of 

 Art. 23 of the treaty of Berlin, agreeably to the suggestions of the foreign 

 ambassadors, had caused the widest dissatisfaction in Stamboul, which 

 a Grand manifested itself on October yth in a demonstration of the students of 

 vizier. Stamboul University, in which some Young Turk politicians partook. 



This occasioned the proclamation of martial law on October 8th, and the 

 arrest of four or five malcontents, amongst them Obeidullah Effendi, ex-deputy for 

 Aidin, and Aka-Gunduz, an editor of the Tanin, who were respectively condemned to 

 five and seven years' detention in a fortress. On October 2gth Ghazi Mukhtar resigned, 

 transmitting the seals to Kiamil Pasha, the avowed object of the resignation being the 

 hope to obtain Great Britain's full support in the conflict with the Balkan States by the 

 accession of Kiamil Pasha to power. In the course of November an attempt was made 

 by some general officers of the old regime, seemingly without the connivance of the 

 cabinet, to suppress the Young Turk party by arresting and deporting to Konia all the 

 ex-ministers, ex-deputies, leading journalists and politicians of the " Union and Prog- 

 ress " party to be found in Constantinople. Djavid Bey, Talaat Bey and a few others 

 managed to escape with the help of foreign friends, but nearly a hundred prominent 

 Unionists were arrested by order of the Court Martial and imprisoned at the War Office 

 at Stamboul. However their detention lasted but a few days. On Nazim Pasha's 

 return to Constantinople, after the signature of the armistice at Chatalja, the composi- 

 tion of the Court Martial was altered, and all the political prisoners released, including 

 even those who, under the preceding Court Martial, had been tried and condemned, 

 as, for instance, the ex-deputy Obeidullah. (LEON OSTROROG.) 



