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 CHAPTER II

BACKWARD TURKEY INVITES ECONOMIC EXPLOITATION

The reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1876-1909) began with a disastrous foreign war; it terminated in the turmoil of revolution. And during the intervening three decades of his régime the Ottoman Empire was forced to wage a fight for its very existence—a fight against disintegration from within and against dismemberment from without.

One of the principal problems of Abdul Hamid was the government of his vast empire in spite of domestic dissension and foreign interference. His subjects were a polyglot collection of peoples, bound together by few, if any, common ties, obedient to the Sultan's will only when overawed by military force. In Turkey-in-Asia alone, Turks, Arabs, Armenians, Kurds, Jews, Greeks combined to form a conglomerate population, professing a variety of religious faiths, speaking a diversity of languages and dialects, and adhering to their own peculiar social customs. Of these, the Armenians were receiving the sympathy, support, and encouragement of Russia; the Kurds were living by banditry, terrorizing peasants and traders alike; the Arabs were in open revolt.[1]

Nature seemed to make more difficult the task of bringing these dissentient peoples under subjection. The mountainous relief of the Anatolian plateau lent itself to 9