TURKEY'S OUTLOOK IN ASIA.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1741, 5 May 1913, Page 3

TURKEY'S OUTLOOK IN ASIA.

MORE TROUBLES AHEAD.

CLAIMS OF TIIE POWERS,

"If Turkey insists on being yet more decisively crushed, and antagonises the Powers which have given her good and Iriendly advice, the will' discover that while a process of amputation has relived i her (if her European problems, the queslinn of _,\ s j a | u , i; suddenly become acme," says Iho "Nation." "Since first the war began, llie more conservative ourrenls in diplomacy have striven to avoid lhat complication, lint' it presses win increasing urgency. "The German Ambassador, though ho used the language of friendship for turkey, lias very emphatically staked out ? <-aim iu Anatolia, and uttered tho Noli mo taagere,' which warns tl;o rest ot tho world that- Asia Minor is; for Germany 'a place in the sun.' Tn France, the financial group which 'studies' colonal problems with a rather naivo attempt to imitate the procedure of a learned society, has revived the traditional French claim to Syria: Russia long ago claimed the Armenian provinces as in some sense her political sphere of interests, and she has been able to reserve them hitherto byfrustrating every proposal to buikl railways in them or through them. "We supjioso that if any formal partition of Asiatic Turkey into zones of interest or influence were to tako place, Mesopotamia am i Arabia would fall to this country. No Liberal can desire such an extension of European Imperialism as this, and all who care to preservo what chances remain for an Oriental renascence would strain every nerve to avoid this international disaster. Hopelessness of Armenia. "But oven on a purely disinterested M lO l ' ass ' s "°t absolutely clear. A solution for Armenia is passible, if a reforming and civilised government-can be encouraged to undertake tho reorganisation of the whole Empire. If that is impossible, if the choice lies only between the stagnation of tho Old' Turks and tho disreputable violence of the loung, then, even from the standpoint of humanity, there is much to be said for partition. Our consent to it would involvo our denouncing tho Cyprus Convention, ond such an act would have large possibilities. We might give Cyprus as a dower to the new Greec on licr union with Crete, and so case the problem of partitioning Macedonia by making it possible for her to moderate her claims there and in Albania. In return for our assent to a Russian protectorate over the Armenians, we might require her withdrawal from Persia. "Tho peculiar hopelessness of the Armenians, 5 ' says tho "Nation," "is due to tho fact that as a race they aro hardly anywhere in n majority in the land they inhabit. If a self-governing Armenia were to be created with a democratic constitution. Turks and Kurds would outvote the Christian minority. . . But anything from a decade to a generation is likely to pass before a spontaneous movement for genuine provincial Homo Rule is likely to succeed. "There are, if •we try to be precise, two main objects which we desire to obtain for the scattered Christian minorities in Turkey. Each raises a distinct problem, and neither requires territorial autonomy for its attainment. These objects are: (1) Elementary security for life, property, and honour; and (2) tho -free development of its communal existence in all that concerns its church, its schools, its charities, and its language. The first essential for the attainment of security is clearly the reform and effective uso of the gendarmerie." As Von Moltlio said long -ago, a Turkey withdrawn into Asia might be an incomparably stro»!;?r mud more _ homogeneous Power'than the Turkey which has spent tho last century iu the long agony of losing her European provinces.