THE TURKISH QUESTION. N OWHERE in the field of foreign politics
have English- men a better right to speak firmly than on the Turkish question. And yet this question must be added to the list of those which, though capable of being promptly and plainly dealt with, have been brought into a state of " doubt, hesitation, and pain." It may not be too late yet to retrieve an almost lost position, but even if it be retrieved the Government will not be able to claim credit for foresight and courage. As usual they will have to be content with the satisfaction of having reversed a blunder. A debate on the future of Constantinople is promised for Thursday in the House of Commons, and that is the day on which we write this article. We there- fore write frankly in ignorance of what will happen in the debate.
The briefest survey of the contradictory statements • Our compliments to Maga for so delightful a ." chit." It Is as gratifying
aow as it was ninety years ago.
which have been made about Constantinople will prove that we have not been unjust in blaming the Government.
When the late war began it was perfectly well understood that the Allies intended if they won the war to end Turkish power in Europe. Mr. Asquith promised that Russia should be the new warden of Constantinople and the Straits. In due course Mr. Asquith disappeared and Mr. Lloyd George became Prime Minister. When the Russian Revolution sundered Russia from her former Allies, the possibility of Russia possessing Constantinople naturally disappeared, but not a word was breathed that there was any change of intention as regards the removal of the Turks. Every shot which had been fired on the Gallipoli Peninsula in the direction of Constantinople was fired by a man who believed that he was helping to bring about the downfall of Turkish misgovernment and intrigue in that corner of Europe for ever. On January 5th, 1918, however, Mr. Lloyd George revealed a change of view. He said : " Nor are we fighting to deprive Turkey of its capital, or of the rich and renowned lands of Asia Minor and Thrace which are predominantly Turkish in race." The political school which demands that Turkey should retain Constantinople continually describes these words as a pledge which not to honour would be to earn disgrace. We think, on the contrary, that everybody who examines the circumstances in which Mr. Lloyd George spoke must see that no pledge was given. He spoke at a time when a tremendous on- slaught by the Germans on the Western Front was imminent. No one could foretell what the result of that desperate attack would be. There was much apprehension. It would be unjust to Mr. Lloyd George to say that his spirits were sinking low, but at all events he went so far as to imply that if we could reduce the number of our enemies by word of mouth instead of by strength of arm, it would be a wise and cautious policy. In other words, he sug- gested to Turkey that if she cared to stop fighting she would be treated with much more indulgence than if she continued to fight and, were beaten. In the latter event she would forfeit all dahlia to. consideration,: .Turkey rejected the hint. She went on, and she lost the stakes. A pledge is a pledge, and cannot be either ignored or explained away by any verbal cleverness by honourable men ; but we really must protest against a particular offer at a particular moment which was rejected by those to whom it was made being spoken of as a pledge. It was nothing of the sort. Our only complaint in this one respect against Mr. Lloyd George is that he should have thought it worth while to try to do a deal with Turkey.
Mr. Lloyd George's next important statement on the subject of Turkey was made on December 18th, 1919. Just because that statement was extraordinarily emphatic, it compared almost ludicrously with the previous bargaining statement. Mr. Lloyd George said :- " What is to be done with Constantinople ? What is to be done with the Straits ? Can we leave those gates which were .slammed in our face under the same gatekeeper ? . . . ft would have made a difference of two or three years in the war if those gates had been open. They were shut treacherously in our faces. We cannot trust the same porter. '
If nothing in a contrary sense had gone before, we should have been able to take these words at their face value and have heartily applauded them, for nobody could agree with them more strongly than we do. Unhappily the emphasis has once more to suffer a ludicrous comparison. When Parliament reopened Mr. Bonar Law, speaking for the Government, in reply to Lord Robert Cecil, used the following words : " It certainly is not to our interest to impose any terms upon Turkey which by any possi- bility would rouse feelings among our Mohammedan subjects." What does this mean ? Everybody inter- preted it to mean that the Turks would not be turned out of Constantinople, for, according to Mr. Montagu and other Ministers, that would be the one act which would drive Indian Moslems into anger and disloyalty. The popular interpretation turned out to be only too true. It was quickly confirmed by the official statement that the Supreme Council had decided to allow the Sultan and the Turkish Government to remain at Constantinople.
The vast majority of Englishmen were pained and surprised. Still, they knew that other announcements of the Supreme Council had been reversed, and therefore there was no disposition to think that the Turk was finally secure in his capital. But now we come to some strange incidents which cause us to believe that the Government, having wobbled over to the wrong side, partly because Mr. Montagu had worked upon their fears about Indian feeling and partly because they had been so susceptible to French Turcophile representations, wanted to deprive Parliament and the public of all possibility of effective criticism. They wanted to ease their difficulties by pretending that what had been announced had been irrevocably decided. We find that before Parliament had been given any information on the change of policy a statement had been made in India to the effect that the Turks would be allowed to stay at Constantinople, and another statement had been made to the Turkish Grand Vizier on behalf of the British Government by Admiral de Robeck. This manoeuvre was almost an exact reproduction of the manoeuvre over the Indian Reform scheme: It will be remembered that Mr. Montagu made a statement to Parliament and ever afterwards spoke of the British Government as being pledged to the reforms because he had talked about them to the House of Com- mons. This sort of proceeding rules out Parliament altogether. How can.he Government with any appearance of sincerity denounce Direct Action by Labour leaders when the supreme Executive of the country resort to Direct Action themselves ? We have before us a copy of the Pioneer Mail dated January 30th. The first piece of news in that issue reads as follows :- " The following Press ammunique has been issued : ' His Excellency the Viceroy desires to issue a public and emphatic denial of the statements and rumours to the effect that His Majesty's Government have been pressing at Paris for the expulsion of the Turks from Europe.' " It may be said that this announcement by Lord Chelmsford is not a promise that the Turks shall be allowed to stay at Constantinople. In explicit words, of course, it is not, but it is nevertheless a plain declaration of the inten- tions of the British Government. Otherwise it would have no meaning, and would indeed be so misleading as to be dishonest. All this being so, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the Government wanted once more to escape from a difficult position by the argument of the chose jugee. Such is the tangle which we can only hope is being straightened out in the House of Commons. As we have already said, there is no reason to despair. The position can yet be saved. The Government will certainly never find safety by yielding to the side which puts up the more alarming bogies. There should be no yielding at all except to the sense of right. Can Mr. Lloyd George or Mr. Montagu point to a single British administrator of the first rank in our history who accepted the principle that Moslem opinion should be allowed to determine our policy ? We must be just to Moslems—we cannot possibly be too scrupulously just—but we shall create for ourselves far more dangers than we shall evade if we allow it to be thought that Moslem threats of unrest can make us swerve from a policy which up till now has been accepted as an honourable British tradition.
For our part, we sincerely believe that the greater part of Moslem feeling about the Caliphate at Constan- tinople, of which we hear so much, has been deliberately manufactured. When the campaign in Gallipoli was in full swing, when it was seriously believed by optimists that the ' Queen Elizabeth ' and her fellow-ships would have no difficulty in forcing the Straits and anchoring off Constantinople, we heard nothing about Moslem feeling. Hundreds of thousands of Moslems were fighting on our side in a war of which one -of the admitted objects was to obtain that very British success at Constantinople. The talk about Constantinople being a Holy Place in the Moslem view is equally futile. Constantinople is not a Holy Place as Mecca-or Medina or Jerusalem or Damascus is a Holy Place. There is na mention of Constantinople in the Mohammedan sacred writings. Mohammedans were not really concerned with Constantinople, either from the point of view of religion or prestige, till they took it in 1453. As a matter of fact, no definite religious significance attached to the city till the Sultan Selim assumed the title of Caliph in the sixteenth century. The removal of the Turks from Constantinople would be no more a loss of a Holy Place than was the loss of ether cities taken by the Turks in their triumphal march weetwaras, such as Bucharest, Budapest, Sofia, and Bob. grade. If once we set out to appease the demands of Indian Moslems, which grow day by day, we shall find ourselves required to upset the whole Hedjaz arrange- ment by making the Sultan once more the warden of the Holy Places. We should not be able to refuse the Turks the right to stay at Adrianople (and that would mean a large part of Thrace), since Adrianople, with its Imperial tombs, is in a way a holier place than Constantinople itself. The path of so-called safety, in fact, would lead us into a wilderness of new dangers. It is proposed by some persons who shrink from the idea of permitting the continuance of Turkish authority at Constantinople that the Sultan should be allowed to remain there symbolically as Caliph. The political power would be removed to Asia Minor, but a religious symbolism would survive. Our own view is that no such half-way house as this could be a resting-place for the Allies. The Turks are notoriously masters of intrigue, and since their military power dwindled they have lived by intrigue alone. Let us remember that if some vestige of Turkish authority, call it religious or political as you will, is tolerated at Constantinople, the International Commission will find itself being worried and bamboozled at every turn by intrigue. There is no question of course of removing Mohammedan individuals from Europe. Wherever they are settled in agriculture or trade or the professions, or even as " idle rich," they have a perfect right to stay and to be protected. The one thing that ought not to be allowed to stay is any vestige of Turkish power, whether exercised through politics or religion. It cannot be too often remembered that when we speak of dealing with Turkey we mean dealing with the Young Turks. The Young Turks have overcome all their Turkish rivals. They are the party who have done to death some million civilian Christians during the war. It is their military leader, Mustapha Kemal, who this year has accomplished the massacre of another 1,500 Armenians in Cilicia. All the massacres of history pale before the massacres by the Young Turks. The policy of retaining the symbol of the Turkish religious faith at Constantinople is a policy of Vaticanizing Constantinople. Does any impartial observer pretend that the Vatican had no influence during the late war other than a religious influence ? To us this policy seems only less objectionable than the proposal advocated by a good many Frenchmen, that the Turks should be allowed to hold the Bosporus, and even the shores of the Sea of Marmora.
The best solution of all would be that the League of Nations should have its seat at Constantinople. All the alleged dangers arising from the eviction of the Turks would then be removed. The Turks would be turned out only in the sense in which Christians would be turned out—in order that all nations and races might alike acknowledge the function of the League to keep men at peace.
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