Ashtabula weekly telegraph. (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1880-1886, 1880-10-15
The Turkish Question.

--A'- N"N"NANAa
THIS Is not merely the apparently
insignificant one whether the town
Of Dulcigno shall be ceded to
Montenegro, whether the Grecian
boundary shall be moved q
few miles to the north, whether, even,
Eastern Roumelia shall be permitted to
follow her natural instincts and unite
with Bulgaria in a Bulgarian State; it is
whether the power of the Caliph shall
be renewed, the whole Mohammedan
world united under one head, all the
fierce fanaticism of the sixth and sew
enth centuries revived in Eastern Eu-
rope, Asia Minor, and perhaps India
and Africa.
The Caliph is the successor of Mo
hammed-the word means Vicar, or
successor-and he thus stands in the
same relation to the Mohammedan re
ligion that the Pope does to Roman
Catholic Christianity. In Mohamme-
dan theories he is invested with quite as
great authority, regarded with quite as
great reverence, and obeyed with quite
as unquestioning zeal. But the Moham-
medan world has been rent by contests
between rival caliphs as the Western
world by conflicts between rival popes.
The Sultan of Turkey has long claimed
30 be the Caliph; and this claim, grad
ually fallen into allegiance, the present
Sultan is endeavoring to re-establish.
He is fighting not for a strip of Grecian
territory, but for quasi papal author
ity over Asia, India, Africa. For the
Sultan as the civil ruler of Turkey the
Mol, N 81 la Il 4
would not draw a sword nor march a
mile; for the authority of the Caliph as
the Mohammedan Pope they are ready
to battle and, if need be, die. And the
Ulemas, the Mohammedan priesthood,
the pagan Jesuits of Turkey, are ready
to stimulate their fanaticism and to di-
rect it whenever opportunity shall offer
any prospect of success.
Three years ago the present Sultan
was put into his Office by a clique of
ministers who expected to use him as
their tool. He had been educated
among the Ulemas, and possesses all
the fanaticism, all the narrowness and
all the bigotry, without the courage, of
the fiercest of the Mohammedan hier-
arcny. Thus his religious instincts
stimulated his political shrewdness; he
perceived that the road to power lay in
a reassertion and establishment of
the power and authority of the Caliph
that if this could be reasserted and re-
established it would not only give him
absolute authority in his own Turkish
Empire, but throughout the Mohamme-
dan world. Within eighteen months he
had concentrated the whole power of
the Turkish Government in his own
hands; the " tool" was the master; and
from that time all his energies have
been directed to regaining the larger
authority of Caliph, with its consequent
supremacy over Asia Minor, Central
Asia, India and Africa. Hence the an
nOuncement of the Grand Council of
Ulema that the Sultan reigns as Caliph;
hence the repeated murders of Christ
ians in and around Constantinople, so
far with absolute impunity; hence the
occasional threats of a "religious war;
with which Turkey kept the Beacons-
field Administration in fear for India.
Now the war of words has accom-
plished all that it can accomplish. The
Sultan has, by his identification of him
self with the Mohammedan hierarchy,
attained once more hold on the Arabi-
ans and the Indians but his supremacy
with them depends upon the question
whether he is able to resist Europe. If
he yields to European influence, that is,
to Christianity, he resigns all hope of
the power of the Caliphate. If, on the
contrary, he can show that he is able to
defy or to defeat Europe, he will regain
the lost position of the Sultans as Ca
liphs. And that means a great deal; it
means that all through Asia Minor there
will be revival of Mohammedan fanat-
icism; itmeans general massacres of the
Christians; it means that in India and
Central Asia the whole influence of the
Mohammedan population will be raised
against the English Government to over
throw the English dominion in India; it
means general return to the state of
things of one hundred years ago.
The indications are that England has
at her head statesman who so reads
the Turkish Question; but it is not so
clear that it is so read by the rest of
Europe. Austria has monomaniacal
dread of Russian influence in the East,
and fears any change lest it be a
change for the worse. It is
the policy of Vienna to let Turkey
in Europe die natural death. France
and Germany are watching each other,
each chiefly anxious that the other shall
get no advantage through Eastern COM
plioatiOns and alliances, and that it shall
not itself become involved in a distant
war and so endanger its own frontier.
Russia has her watchful eye open to the
possibilities of gaining water way
through the Bosphorus TO the Mediter-
ranean Sea. The one power that is in
terested in preventing the Sultan from
regaining the power of the Caliph is
England, for the one power whose In
dian supremacy would be endangered
by yarevival and concentration of Moham-
mechanism is England. 1t is England's
diplomacy which has brought the allied
fleet together in Ragusa harbor; it is
the English Yice-Admiral who COM
mands IT. it is English determination
which keeps it there. For England has
at the head Of her government q man
who will act alone II he can not act in
alliance, and who will not, if he can
prevent il, see Mohammedan uprising
throughout the East, with all the fright
ful calamities which would certainly fol-
low II this pale horse, whose rider is
Death and whose train is Hell, were once
let loose to ride forth in Asia, India and
Naturalization Union.