Page:The Rebirth Of Turkey 1923.pdf/76

 than a week the Parliament was restored. Four of its deputies—two Turks, a Christian and a Jew—presented themselves before Abdul Hamid with the demand of the Young Turks for his abdication. The last of the out-and-out Easterners left Yildiz Kiosk to spend the remainder of his days in a Salonica dungeon, and Mohammed V succeeded him with the Young Turkish Parliament as the seat of authority in his Government. And the seat of authority in the Young Turkish Parliament was the Committee of Union and Progress, which ruled the capital from its headquarters at Salonica.

Ottomanization had won and held its opportunity by force, but in the application of its Westernism to a large Eastern community of Moslems and smaller Eastern communities of Christians, it met with instant difficulties. If Moslems and non-Moslems were to be made equals in an Ottoman citizenry, it was necessary that both should give up their dividing community institutions and assume instead equal duties and equal rights under the Parliament. This only shocked the Old Turks and as for the Christians, the suggestion only made them cling the more tightly to their community institutions. The application of Ottomanization only drove them into nationalism. Westernism was as unpalatable to the Rûm and Ermeni communities as to the dominant Islamic community. The Empire was locked in the dead grip of ancient religious usage. Moslems and Christians alike were gripped by the dead fingers of the past. Even if the Empire had had a longer span of life ahead of it than it did have, it is quite possible that nothing but force would have pried away those dead fingers and