The experience of the recent war and the prospect in the future made continuance and accentuation of military government in the Ottoman Empire inevitable.  The Committee, which had made its way back to power by violent methods, now suppressed its own Constitution almost as completely as Abdul Hamid had suppressed Midhat’s parliament.  Re-organization of the military personnel, accumulation of war material, strengthening of defences, provision of arsenals, dockyards, and ships, together with devices for obtaining money to pay for all these things, make Ottoman history for the years 1912-14.  The bond with Germany was drawn lighter.  More German instructors were invited, more German engineers commissioned, more munitions of war paid for in French gold.  By 1914 it had become so evident that the Osmanlis must array themselves with Austro-Germany in any European war, that one wonders why a moment’s credit was ever given to their protestations of neutrality when that war came at last in August 1914.  Turkey then needed other three months to complete her first line of defences and mobilize.  These were allowed to her, and in the late autumn she entered the field against Great Britain, France, and Russia, armed with German guns, led by German officers, and fed with German gold.

9

The Future

Turkey’s situation, therefore, in general terms has become this.  With the dissolution of the Concert of Europe the Ottoman Empire has lost what had been for a century its chief security for continued existence.  Its fate now depends on that of two European powers which are at war with the rest of the former Concert.  Among the last named are Turkey’s two principal creditors, holding together about seventy-five per cent. of her public debt.  In the event of the defeat of her friends, these creditors will be free to foreclose, the debtor being certainly in no position to meet her obligations.  Allied with Christian powers, the Osmanli caliph has proved no more able than his predecessors to unite Islam in his defence; but, for what his title is worth, Mohammed V is still caliph, no rival claim having been put forward.  The loyalty of the empire remains where it was, pending victory or defeat, the provinces being slow to realize, and still slower to resent, the disastrous economic state to which the war is reducing them.

The present struggle may leave the Osmanli Empire in one of three situations:  (1) member of a victorious alliance, reinforced, enlarged, and lightened of financial burdens, as the wages of its sin; (2) member of a defeated alliance, bound to pay the price of blood in loss of territory, or independence, or even existence; (3) party to a compromise under which its territorial empire might conceivably remain Ottoman, but under even stricter European tutelage than of old.

The first alternative it would be idle to discuss, for the result of conditions so novel are impossible to foresee.  Nor, indeed, when immediate events are so doubtful an at the present moment, is it profitable to attempt to forecast the ultimate result of any of the alternatives.  Should, however, either the second or the third become fact, certain general truths about the Osmanlis will govern the consequences; and these must be borne in mind by any in whose hands the disposal of the empire may lie.