The Manitowoc tribune. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1866-1878, 1877-07-26
THE BLOODY TURK.
Ref9Rf,sJ by 1SsaSsitati01,
TFrom the Cincinnati Times I

|
It may interest the few people and
there are still few over here-whose
sympathies run with Turkey in the pres
ent struggle, to look into a peculiar
phase Of her " civilization which, SO
far as we are aware, has not yet been
touched upon by the press. We refer to
the tenure by which a large proportion
of her sovereigns have secured or held
their thrones-the tenure of assassina-
ton. The story, to be properly written,
should be in letters of blood, but brief
outline of it might run as follows
In 1859 Orohan, the grandson of
Othman l., founder of the Ottoman
dynasty, assembled the throne. He WAS
a sovereign of great force, and a success
full soldier, but narrowly escaped losing
the scepter through a conspiracy of one
of his sons. The rebel son, once over
powered, was promptly executed and
the precedent, thus established, soon
became recognized principle, to wit !:
| That upon the accession of anew Sultan,
all possible rivals to the throne should
be strangled. Authority for such a
course was easily manufactured from
doubtful passages in the Koran, and, as
we shall see later, was soon formally de-
creed as the law of the realm.
Murad IL, who became Sultan in
1421, promptly proceeded, under this
principle, to strangle his two brothers !;
but was prevented, for the time, by their
escape to Ccnstantinop1e. His successor,
Mohammed L., conqueror of CONSTANT
nople, procured the issuance of a fetwa
authorizing the strangulation of the royal
family, and put it in practice upon his
two uncles, whom his father, Murad,
had been unable to catch. The successor
of Mohammed, Baiazet IT,, procured the
assassination of his brother Diem,
through the Borgian Pope, Alexander
vi, With whom. he had taken refuge.
He was residing in the Vatican itself
and was poisoned there by order of the
Pope--a phase of hospitality not strictly
Arabian.
SeIim l., who became Sultan in 1912,
strangled his eldest brother and five
nephews in one day, under authority of
the fetwa above mentioned. His sue
cessor, Soliman, "The Magnificent, r" had
five of his SONS strangled by the Persian
Shah, and paid him 100000 ducats for
the job.
r., ,l,0o
has the credit of attending to business
under the fetwa more energetically than
any of his predecessors. He murdered
no less than nineteen princes Of the
royal family, which left him clear title
to the throne, and, possibly, to the Mo-
hammedan heaven also. His successor,
Ahmed I. Q6O3), had seven sons. and
six of the seven were promptly stran-
g1ed.
Mustapha I. 1618), being too idiotic
to murder anyone else, vas himself poi
soned in his harem. His successor,
Orman H., was strangled. Murad ",
who took the throne in 1923, strangled
and beheaded, according to the records,
"a, 900 persons, but how many OF the
royal family were among them we are
unable to say. Ibrahim I. Q640) was
himself strangled "amid curses" as the
record runs.
Over the remaining 200 years of the
Ottoman reign it is unnecessary to run,
as it is but a repetition of the above.
I 1ryJ1
simple dilemma either to murder their
brothers and sons, or to be murdered by
them. AS a rule they chose the first
horn, unless the second was thrust upon
them too suddenly. With such state
of affairs, the world can only rejoice /
Russia puts an end to the race of Sultans
in Europe