The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1622. THE SULTANATE.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 November 1922, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1622. THE SULTANATE.

In suppressing the Sultanate of Turkey and repealing the law of succession to the throne, the Kemalists have accomplished at one stroke that which the Western Powers would have been only too glad to attempt years ago, but shrank from arousing the people of Islam to a fanatical war. It needed the Turks themselves to carry out this revolution and put an end to the most rotten Government in existence. At last the long-desired separation of political from religious power in Turkey has been achieved. The situation eould not have been much worse so far as the Sultanate is concerned than l as been the ease since the Great War, but whether the Kemalists will open up a new ■and better era for Turkey has yet to be seen. As is generally known, the Caliph (or Kalif) is the name assumed by the successors of Mohammed in the government of the faithful and in the high priesthood, ft is unnecessary to trace the, struggles and. schisms connected with the Kalifate in the East and in the West, it being sufficient to recognise that for many years past the Sultan of Turkey has been regarded as the Khalif. Religious and racial animosity have ascribed and wrongly so—the decay of ’Turkey partly to the Mohammedan religion and partly to the characteristics of the Ural-Altaic race, but the fault has been proved to lie elsewhere altogether, being found wholly and solely in the absolutist and rigidly autocratic form of Government, to which has been due the backward state of the nation and its consequent decline. What the Turks needed was time I and leisure to emancipate themselves, under the protection of | growing enlightenment, from the bonds of despotic government, and this fact was recognised by the Allies when they were engaged in settling the terms of peace with Turkey after the Great War, hilt always the religious isj sue, as well as a certain cupidity on the. part of the Western Powers, has stood in the way. of the regeneration of Turkey. There have been Pashas before Kemal who were imbued with the modern spirit, but none of them had energy or credit enough to work any lasting good. It seems they must have, one and all. failed to grasp the fundamental idea of the reform movement, and had no adequate conception of what was required. They were not, however, alone to blame, and were confronted with a two-fold problem. In the first place they had to apply the necessary remedies to a body politic diseased in every joint; in the second, to satisfy the .friendly Powers of Europe which were pressing for reforms. Had

the West shown a fuller comprehension of the means whereby Turkey could be regenerated; had the cloak of friendly advice not been so often used to cover the unfriendly purpose of adding to the weakness of Turkey, it is fairly certain that many things would have fallen out quite otherwise than was actually the case, and it is quite possible that the Turks would have been found on the side of the Allies in the late' war against the Central Powers. In Turkey, revolutionary movements take their rise in the upper strata of society, not in the lower. Foi’ many years in the last century the spirit of modern civilisation had knocked so loudly at the gates of Asiatic life that it had roused some of the younger generation of Turks from sleep, and even in the reign of Abdul-Mejid, faint signs of the revolutionary movement had come to the surface, and ' was fanned into a glow of patriotism by such poets as Kemal Effendi. It is more than likely that had not the last Russo-Turkish war intervened, the old absolutist and aristocratic regime would, have long since given place to a ■democratic government. What Kemal Pasha has now accomplished is only the beginning of a new order of government, but there are wanting those indications of goodwill to the other Powers whereby alone Turkey’s regeneration can be carried out. It is yet too early to accurately estimate the effect of the new regime instituted by Kemal. We can only hope that he will lay the foundations of Turkey’s new era on solid and acceptable lines, not in antagonism to the Western Powers, but claiming their friendship and co-operation.