Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 15.djvu/128

 TURKISH

98

TURKISH

(ancient Cyrenaica whose coasts in antiquity were very fertile), the oasis and city of TripoU (30,000 inhabitants), and inland the oasis of Ghadames. On this territory of 462,767 sq. miles there are scarcely one million inhabitants. The principal resources are the cultivation of fruit trees and in the oases date palms.

II. History. — The countries which form this immense territory represent what remains of the (conquests of the Ottomans, a Turkish tribe originally from Khorassan, which emigrated into Asia Minor about 1224, at the time of the cataclysm produced in Central Asia by the Mongolian invasion of Jeng- hiz-Khan. The chiefs of this tribe of the Kei-Kan- kali became the mercenaries of the Seljuk emirs of Asia Minor. One of them, Othman, prochiLraed himself independent at the end of the thirteenth cen- tury, and took the title of sultan, or padishah. Under Orkhan was organized with some Christian captives the jjermanent militia of the Janissaries; and then began incessant war between the Ottomans and the Byzantine Empire. In 1359 Suleiman entered Europe by the occupation of Gallipoli. Murad established himself at Adrianople (1360) and attacked the Slavonic peoples of the Balkans. The battle of Kossovo (1.3S9) gave him Servia. The struggle continued until the taking of Constantinople by Mahomet II, who put an end to the Byzantine Empire (1453), and conquered the Peloponnesus (1462), Negropont (1467), Trebizond (1470), Bo.snia, and Wallachia. lie died in 1481, after failing to take Belgrade and Rhodes, but achieving the conquest of Anatolia as far as the Euphrates, and the peninsula of the Balkans as far as the Danube. To these con- quests Selim I added Azerbaidjan, S>Tia, and Egypt (1517), Diarbekir and Mesopotamia (1518); he received from Mecca the banner of the prophet, and took the title of caliph, which as.sures to the Sultan of Constantinople the spiritual authority over all the Mussulmans of the world.

Soliman I took Rhodes from the Knights of St. John (1522) and conquered Hungary while Khaired- din Barbaro.ssa subjected the Barbary States (1522). Selim II took possession of the Island of CjTJrus (1570), but the Turkish domination had reached the limits of its extension. Soliman had been unable to take either Vienna (1526) or Malta (1562), and in 1571 the great victory of the Christian fleet at Le- panto weakened the naval power of the Turks in the Mediterranean. At the end of the sixteenth cen- tury the Turkish Empire had attained the zenith of its power on land. The siege of Vienna of 16S3, which failed, thanks to the intervention of the King of Poland, John Sobieski, marks the last aggressive at- tempt of the Turks on the West. Henceforth the west- ern powers encroach on the Turkish Empire and begin it.'' dismemberment. In 1699 by the treaty of Karlo- vitz the Sultan ceded Hungary and Transylvania to Austria. It is true that in 1739 the Turks succeeded in retaking Belgrade, but this was their last military success. The powerful militia of the Janissaries was of no further use; the administration was corrupt and venal. Moreover, the Turks were unable to impede the progress of Russia; in 1774 by the treaty of Kain- ardji the Turks ceded to Russia the Crimea and the coasts of the Black Sea, and to Austria Rumanian Bukowina. The French Revolution of 1789 saved Turkey from the project of division planned by Catherine II; the Peace of Jassy (1792) restored only a jiart of Bessarabia and the left bank of the Dniester. Egypt, occupied by the French in 1789, surrendered to Turkey in ISOO, but in the most pre- carious condition. After the nineteenth century began the forward movement of tlic Cliristian nationahties which had submitted up to that time to Turkish domination; public opinion in Europe upheld this movement, and the governments themselves were

won over. Meanwhile the rival ambitions of the powers prevented the "Eastern Question" from being regulated in a definitive manner. In 1821 the insur- rection of the Greeks, supported by Eiu'ope, ended in the creation of the Kingdom of Greece (Treaty of Adrianople, 1829; and Conference of London, 1831).

The Servians formed an autonomous principaUty as early as 1830, and in 1832 the Pasha of Egj'pt, Mehemet-Ali, revolted; his independence was con- ceded to him in 1841, on condition that he would recognize the suzerainty of the sultan. In vain the Turks tried to reform; after the massacre and the dis- solution of the Janissaries (1826) Mahmoud organized an army resenibhng the European, established military schools and a newspaper, and imposed the European costume on his subjects. In 1839 Abdul-Medjid or- ganized the Tanzimdt (new regime) and accorded to his subjects a real charter, libertj', rehgious toleration, and promises of a liberal government. In 1854 the Tsar Nicholas of Russia strove to take up again the project of Catherine II, and to do away with "the sick man". Protected by France and England, Turkey kept, at the Congress of Paris (1856), aU of its territory save Moldavia and Wallachia, which were declared autonomous. The Hatti-Humayoun of 16 Feb,, 1856, proclaimed the admission of Christians to all employments and equahty with other subjects before the law, but after the Liberal government of Fuad Pasha they resumed their former ways. On all sides the provinces revolted, and about 1875 formed the party of Young Turkey, desirous of reforming the empire on the European model.

Two sultans, Abdul-Aziz and Murad, were succes- sively deposed. A new sultan, Abdul-Haniid, pro- claimed on 23 Dec, 1876, a constitution resembling the European with a parliament and responsible minis- ters; but the reforming grand vizier Midhat Pasha was strangled, and the opening of parliament was no more than a comedy. Europe decided to act, and in 1877 Russia took the lead and sent an army across the Balkans, after the difficult siege of Plevna, and would have entered Constantinople had it not been for the intervention of an English fleet. The treaty of San Stefano (March, 1878) established a Grand Princi- pality of Bulgaria, and cut Turkey in Europe into many sections. Bismarck, alarmed by the progress of Russia, had this treaty revised at the Congress of Berhn (1878); the independent Bulgarian principality was reduced to Mcesia to the north of the Balkans; Eastern Rumelia alone was autonomous, and Mace- donia remained Turkish. The independence of Ser- via, Montenegro, and Rumania was sanctioned. Greece received Thessaly; Austria occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina; England established herself in the Island of Cyprus. This treaty, ratified by all the powers, was followed by new dismemberments. In 1885 Eastern Rumeha was annexed to Bulgaria. In 1897 Crete revolted, and tried to reunite with Greece. After the victorious campaign of his army in Thessaly the sultan kept the sovereignty of Crete, but with an autonomous Christian governor, a son of the Iving of Greece.

In contrast to his predecessors, who had sought to restore their country by reforming it, the Sultan Abdul-Hamid established a r(^gime of ferocious repres- sion against the Young Turks, who were partisans of the reforms. A formidable police pursued all those who were suspected of Liberal ideas, and an unpity- ing censorship undertook the impossible task of de- priving Turkey of European publications; the intro- duction of the most inoffensive books, such as Bae- deker's guides, was prohibited. Emissaries every- where revived Mussulman fanaticism; to the claims of the Armenian revolutionaries the Sultan responded by frightful mns.sacres of the Armenians of Constanti- nople (Sept., 1895), followed soon by the slaughter which in 1896 drenc^hed Kurdistan with blood; every-