Page:The Rebirth Of Turkey 1923.pdf/251

 reform. Abdul Medjid I was a third great reformer who proclaimed the Tanzimat in 1839 under whose terms all Ottoman subjects were to be given an equal status in temporal law. The Tanzimat dealt with sweeping reforms in education, in methods of tax collection and in the courts, but Czarist Russia put a stop to Ottoman reform in the aggression of 1853 which resulted in the Crimean War.

Under Abdul Aziz, a Western-trained group of Turks revived Ottoman reform and when Abdul Hamid II became Sultan, Midhat Pasha succeeded in proclaiming a Constitution. Again Czarist Russia put a stop to reform in the Russo-Turkish War of 1876 and the Berlin Congress adopted the title of "the Sick man of Europe" which the Czar had invented for the Sultan. Czarist Russia and Western Europe now took over the problem of Ottoman reform themselves, directing it to the benefit of the Sultan's Bulgarian and Armenian subjects while passing over the equally urgent needs of his Turkish subjects. Ottoman reform as thus directed now became the fixed objective of Christendom from Czarist Russia to the country towns of the United States, while Islam in time from the Balkans to the back hills of Java became increasingly anxious over "our brother Turk."

Alarmed by the dividing effect of Ottoman reform in Western hands, the Western-trained Young Turks again revived their own program of reform and when Sir Edward Grey agreed with Czarist Russia in 1907 on the eventual partition of the Ottoman Empire, the Young Turks hurriedly revived Midhat Pasha's Constitution in the Revolution of 1908. But the end was already at hand. Austria