TURKEY 



5907 



TURKEY 



A Fortification on the Bosporus 



THE STORY OF TURKEY;""/;* <\ 



f 



URKEY, tur'ki. At the outbreak of the 

 War of the Nations, which so changed the 

 political structure of the world, Turkey was a 

 great empire in Europe, Asia and Africa, cover- 

 ing over 1,000,000 square miles of territory. In 

 this vast area nearly 34,000,000 persons paid 

 the Turkish sultan nominal or actual allegiance. 

 These figures, however, do not tell the whole 

 story. Even in 1914, when Turkey elected to 

 join Germany and Austria in the great war, the 

 empire was in some respects "a house of cards." 

 Its ruling classes had kept the common people 

 in poverty and ignorance, and had time after 

 time subjected the alien subjects of the sultan 

 to the crudest kind of persecution. In fact, 

 Turkey stood at the lowest possible level in the 

 esteem of most of the other nations, and its 

 political integrity rested on an insecure foun- 

 dation. Had the European powers not been 

 afraid of unsetting the world balance of power 

 they would never have permitted the decadent 

 to defy the sentiment of the civilized 

 world. What European diplomacy feared to 

 bring about, the War of the Nations accom- 

 plished. In that war Turkey went down to 

 utter defeat, and at the peace conference fol- 

 lowing the armistice it was generally agreed 

 that the time had come to dismember the coun- 

 try of the "Sick Man of Europe." 



In 1914 the chief divisions of tin Turkish 

 Empire were 10382 square miles in the south- 

 east corner of Europe (Constantinople, Chatalja 



\ilri:in..|,l.-i ; Asia Minor, or Anatolia, the 

 "iily part of t! in which Turks wen in 



'. a n. I Kurdistan, com- 

 mit 72,000 square miles of 

 west of Asia Minor; Mesopotamia; Syria <m- 



rm Palestine); part of Arabia, and Egypt. 



sultans authority in Egypt was purely 

 nomm.il. .m.l in January, 1915, that con 

 was declared a British protectorate. The other 

 portions of the sultans domain came into pos- 

 session of the allies through conquest or by 

 Turkeys unconditional surrender, and the em- 



pire ceased to exist after November, 1918. ( For 

 territorial settlement, see History, below.) Ana- 

 tolia without question remains Turkish, in ac- 

 cordance with the principle of national unity. 



The People. More than ninety per cent of 

 the subjects of the Turkish Empire were Mo- 

 hammedans, and the country was the center of 

 the Mohammedan religion. The Koran, the 

 basis of the faith, was the foundation upon 

 which the government, in all its functions, was 

 built. There were three principal classes of 

 Turkish subjects. The fortunate class embraced 

 the officials, and of these there was a vast num- 

 ber. Their authority was derived from 

 sultan, who appointed and removed at will. 

 Next there was the tradesman class, some of 

 th* in wealthy and many in moderate circum- 

 stances, financially, but by far the greater num- 

 ber in a doubtful position and always at 

 mercy of the overlords. The peasant class 

 numbers millions of souls, and possibly nowhere 

 else in the world is the peasantry so much in 

 need of a merciful government. It was as well 

 for them to remain in poverty as to try to accu- 

 mulate the means to better their lot, for officials 

 kept a constant check upon them and took 

 everything beyond barest necessities. 



Th< ir Cities. To any other people than the 

 Turks the land would have been a heritage. In 

 some of its cities the nu>\ inn * \cnts of the an- 

 cient and medieval world were enacted. Fore- 

 most is Constantinople, a truly royal city, now 

 ragged and dirty. y< t one <>i the most important 

 on earth, the meeting place of the East and the 

 West. On the Mediterranean shores the com- 

 merce of the woil.i had its beginning, but th. 

 Phoenician oftfel 1"\< < rumbled. There is 

 Jerusalem, the !><>!> city of the Christian world, 

 th center of the activities of Christ; the Cru- 

 saders wasted thousands of lives in vain 

 tempts to wrest it from the hands of the in: 

 Halfway down the narrow western arm whirl, 

 borders the Red Sea, in Mecca, the prophet 

 Mohammed was born; it is the sacred city to- 



