14 
LAND & WATER 
I'Ybruary i, 1917 
Expulsion of Turkey from Europe 
By Sir William Ramsay 
IN regard to the Turkish people and their fate, I 
write as one who has known thousands of them in 
the course of the last thirty-five years, and is on 
\cry friendly terms with many. 1 am indebted 
\o I hem" for much kindness. I have eaten the bread and 
salt of very many individuals and villages; and there 
are few, if any, even among the Turks themselves, whose 
face used to be sq familiar or so welcome in hundreds of 
liirkish \illaf;es as mine. 1 claim to speak on behalf of 
the people of Turkey, both when I have denounced the 
Armenian massacres, and now when I maintain that 
Turkish domination on the great international waterway 
whicli is commanded by Constantinople, is an outrage 
that ought to be ended 
ivN-ery plan for miproving Turkish administration has 
failed ; "and the conclusion must be drawn. The streets 
uf Stamboul must be swept clear of blood. The Young 
'lurks swept them clear of filth and of dogs, but the 
stain of innocent blood shed throughout the Empire 
is deeper than ever at the centre of government. No 
true friend of the Turks would keep them where they 
lia\-e U> perfurm a gra\e international duty. It is a 
work l<n- which thev are not suited : no one that knows 
and lo\es their good qualities from intimate knowledge 
can lie ignorant of the faults which unfit them to rule 
at Constantinople. They cannot use. but only misuse, 
tlie resources of civiHsation. Anything may happen m 
'fnrkey except what is reasonable and natural 'and 
possible ; and the results are often comic, but sometimes 
tragic. Moreover, the jxjople who suffer most from the 
goxeming class have been the Turks tliemsehes. 
Tins sounds a paradox, but it is the plain truth 
Where the Best Turks Dwell 
The best part of the Turkish people and the mainstay 
of the Turkish army has always been the population of the 
Central Plateau and the mountains of Asia Minor. They 
rank in general estimation as the truest Osmanli and the 
best of^the Turks. The C.overnment of this people, 
however, has never lain in their own hands. It is about 
3,500 years since tHe governing centre of Asia Minor, as a 
wiiole," ceased to he within its own bounds : the Seldjuk 
lunpire of Kum or Konia was hardly an exception to this 
stateuK'nt. During all that period the country has been 
under foreign domination ; and the capital has sometimes 
been at Susa or Bagdad, sometimes at Rome or Con- 
stantinople. 
We are accustomed to think of Constantinople almost as 
if it were part of Asia IMinor, but it is a city of Europe ; 
and the spirit of its inhfibitants is very different from 
that of the true Turks of Asia Minor. The high-class 
Turks of Constantinople, who supply most of the oificials 
and exercise the power of the Empire, often have great 
difficulty in understanding what an Asia Minor peasant 
sajs, as" their educated Turkish is so unlike the popular 
language. 1 have known an Englishman act as inter- 
preter between a Turkish Pasha and an Anatolian peasant. 
In blood also there is much difterence. The ruHng class 
in Stamboul, from the Sultan downwards, spring from a 
mixed race. ]'"or many generations the mothers of this 
class ha\e been almost invariably non-Turkish — Cir- 
cassian or some other alien race : and all have been 
brought up in an atmosphere which is unlike that in 
which the true Turks live. Many years ago the President 
of Robert College in Constantinople said to me that his 
predecessor, who spoke from a \'ast knowledge of Turkey, 
had always looked forward to the future influx of Turkish 
Ijoys into the College as the greatest danger whi( h it 
would ha\e to face, on the ground that the IiirkisJi 
bovs of the class which would hereafter come to the 
College are either accomplished and irredeemable black- 
guards, or soft, helpless molly-coddles, brought uji in 
the harem with loving and ignorant care by Turkish 
women, and unfit to face the most ordinary difliculties 
of college life. While the former kind of boy was far 
tlie more numerous, the latter often pro\ e unfit to stand 
the moral tests and trials of life. Vet in the hands of this 
class, helped by Phanariotc Greeks or by Armenians, 
the administration of tlie country used to lie. 
Question of Education 
Formerly, these Turks were so uiieducaied tliat writing 
was a difiicnlt art, \ery little practised by them. The 
official governing a Turkish district used, as a rule, to 
keep a secretary (almost always Christian), who read to 
him all documents and .showed him where to imjjiess his 
seal. In the earUer years of my acquaintance with the 
country! was on two occasions told, as quite an extra- 
ordinary thing, that the governor of a large proxince 
was actually able to read any document ])resented to him. 
In recent years writing has become inunensely more 
familiar to the official class, and they have some smatter- 
ing of acquaintance with books on economics, gained, 
in most cases, not through reading the books, but through 
synopses and reports of their contents. 
There is so much good in the common peasainrv, 
totally uneducated as they used to be and mostly >till 
are, that English visitors, who saw Turkey largely from 
the point of view of the tourist or the diplomatist, were 
always buoyed up with hope that Turkey could r<form 
itself from inside, through its own natural rc-sources, 
with some help from wi'll-meaning external powi-rs. 1 
speak as one who cherished such hopes to the end. All 
schemes of reform, howe\'er, ha\e been framed by alien 
diplonratists with little know;ledge of the people or the 
practical possibilities of the case, and sometimes not 
free from the suspicion of dreading a reformed Turki'y. 
J-?iit, further, the reforms have been wrecked by the 
liniversal principle of European diphjinacy — that the 
existing government must be supported at all costs. 
There is in Asia a natural self-righting power, which 
does away with a certain amount of the evil of despotism 
by destroying every dynasty as soon as jt loses \'igour and 
becomes effete ; but some disorder is inevitable in the 
j)rocess. Wrong ])roduces wrong. 'The supporters of 
the dynasty have to be defeated or terrorised. A good 
deal of fighting goes on ; the streets of the metrojwlis 
sometimes run with blood ; the blood is of important 
jjeople, and persons familiar in diplomatic circles suffer. 
This sort of massacre is inconvenient to the. diplomatists ; 
it is ugly ; it takes, place at their doors. T'or a few 
days they are hardly able to go out into the streets with 
safety. Hence European Embassies have always re- 
sisted any such exercise of the natural self-regulating 
strength of the nation. Moreo\er, the example might 
spread to other lands. 
Whether it was possible for Turkey to reform itself 
ill favourable circumstances has never been actually 
tested ; and the opportunity so often missed can nevei 
he gi\en again in Europe. The one fixed jmnciple of Ok; 
Turkish administration was to leave subjects moderately 
free to live according to their own principles, until there 
arose any suspicion that they were likely to jMove 
dangerous to the (io\ernment ; then a massacre, carried 
to tlie extent wiiich thi: (iovernment thought useful 
to discourage flu; dreaded movement, was brought into 
elfect. 'The "S'omig Turk>' jirinciple is the same ; but 
they have made it more thorough, learning in this respect 
from (ierman teaching. 'The metiiod (jf massacre is too 
deeply ingrained in the 'Turkish official mind. 
'The ill-success of the latest reform movement which 
be.gan in July ic)o8 by overthrowing the power of the 
Sultan and completed its Avork in April ii)0() by deposing 
lum, is a striking lesson. It is, of course, quite ])ossible. 
for those who beheved in the "\'oung 'Turks, ami hirped 
for great things from them (among whom I number 
myself), to argue that such difficulties were thrown in 
their way by European Powers as to destroy any chanc(^ 
of their success. Jiuf, making every allowance for tin- 
external troubles which iinpedefl them, beginning with 
the seizing by Auslria-in i<)0<S of the ])rovinces of Bosnia 
and Herzegovina in defiance of treaty obligations, no 
