Greymouth Evening Star, AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1901. REFORM IN TURKEY.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 6 September 1901, Page 2

Greymouth Evening Star, AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1901. REFORM IN TURKEY.

No country in Europe has greater possibilities than Turkey ; no country in Europe is more degraded, mismanaged, and its people kept in servile conditions and ignorance than Turkey. And the Sultan is blamed for all the cruelties, all the vile intrigues, corruption and distress that has been connected with the Turkish nation. As the nominal head, he is to blame—but only nominally so. It is those surrounding the Sultan —those who control, deceive, and mislead him. Of a weak intellect, indolent, and lacking courage, he is an easy tool in the hands of his advisers, who pillage, debauch, and ruin the country, while by judicious lying they keep their master in constant dread of assassination, and cause him to look upon his countrymen and other nations as his enemies. From the surroundings of these men the Sultan is never permitted to go; indeed he fears to leave them, believing they are his only friends—the only human beings that would not take his life. In Turkey there has of late years sprung up a reform party—The Young Turkish Party—as it is termed—who realise this position, and are making determined efforts to bring about a remedy. It is possible that the trouble with France may be seized on as a favorable opportunity. In the Hungarian Delegation in June last Count Golnc-. howski in debating with the Macedonian question and the intrigues of Russia, declared that a lasting settlement would only bo possible if a radical change in the methods of the Turkish Government is brought about. But the Turkish Government never changes its methods. It crushes revolutions when they occur, but does nothing to prevent revolutions arising. It persecutes the Young Turks, but never trios to appease the discontent which continually breeds a crop of fresh martyrs. Every week the Government seizes and throws into prison as many of the Young Turks as it can get hold of, and when any escape the armies of spies

and informers by flight to other countries they are condemned by the secret < tribunal which sits in the porcelain i kiosk at Yildiz to death, to confiscation of goods, to loss of civil rights— ’ the last a less severe penalty, in that they have never possessed any rights. 1 On the other hand, the Secretaries of the Turkish Embassy in Paris and the Consul-General there published their ; ultimatum to the Porte—they say they must receive their salaries, ot they will join the Young Turks. Here is a definite issue. Pay us the money you owe us, they say, or we will make a revolution. But this is not the normal attitude of the Young Turks: there are very few of them officials ; few of them have a personal grievance. It is the evils of their country Which they desire to remedy ; they ask that the universal discontent may bo appeased, and until the demands of the country are satisfied it will be useless for the Government to make martyrs of a few of them—their numbers are legion and their cause is just. In the eleventh chapter of the Koran, which treats of Sodom and Gomorrah, the ory of the despairing people goes up : “Is not the morning at hand?” When Abdul Assis died, a quarter of a century ago, and not two towns, but two hundred towns, of the Ottoman Empire were destroyed or torn from the Turk, all eyes were turned on the young Sultan Abdul Hamid, the son of the liberal-minded Abdul Meshid, o,nd all true Turks asked themselves if the morning was not at hand. Since then the earth has revolved many thousand times, and for Turkey the night is darker than ever. The Constitution of Meshid is dead and buried, and it is a criminal offence to think of it. It was once supposed that Turkey was incapable of reform because the religion of Islam could not endure change. It is not Islam which is to blame, but the deadly government which presses alike on the Mohammedan and Christian subjects of the Porte. It was once supposed that the Turks were not worthy of freedom. But now the people are awake —only the Sublime Porte is sleeping the sleep of the Middle Ages, and will not see the signs and wonders of the times. And yet, marvellous to relate, it is not against the Sultan—the Sacred person of the shadow of God—that the movement of the young Turks is aimed. They say the seraglio has caused the deadly sickness which is destroying the realm of Osman its founder, of Mohammed the conqueror, of Soleyman the lawgiver The Sultan is not responsible for the disease; he is its victim. So it is not a movement for the deposition of the Sultan, but for his deliverance and the deliverance of the Empire from the cabal which surrounds the Sultan. Their aim is to unite the Sultan with the people in the defence of the nation. And the advisers of the Sultan are foolish in the extreme. They forget that Ardul Hamid is only on the throne because popular revolution destroyed his predecessors, and they are bringing him to the end to which those predecessors came. They have allowed the Sultan to, make on paper, certain concessions ; they have no intention of making the necessary “ radical change in the methods of Government.” They have shut the Sultan within the walls of Yildiz, surrounded him with fanatics, filled him with the fatuous ideas of PanIslamism. But the people, whom he never sees, know better that Pan Islam is a dream. The people are awake to modern ideas—imbued with the nervous unrest of the modern nations—have thrown off the lethargy of the Oriental. And the whole country, with the exception of the clique in power and the spies which they employ, have now one watchword : “ Reform of the country, and first of all reform of the Palace.” And that this pious hope may be realised is the wish of all true friends of the Sultan and of the Ottoman Empire.