THE WESTERN QUESTION IN GREECE AND TURKEY A STUDY

587 Pages·2006·1.17 MB·English

THE WESTERN QUESTION

IN GREECE AND TURKEY

A STUDY IN THE CONTACT OF CIVILISATIONS

BY

ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE

‘For we are also His offspring’

CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD
LONDON · BOMBAY · SYDNEY

1922
TO

THE PRESIDENT AND FACULTY OF THE

AMERICAN COLLEGE FOR GIRLS AT CONSTANTINOPLE

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED BY

THE AUTHOR AND HIS WIFE

IN GRATITUDE FOR THEIR HOSPITALITY

AND IN ADMIRATION OF THEIR NEUTRAL-MINDEDNESS

IN CIRCUMSTANCES IN WHICH NEUTRALITY IS

‘HARD AND RARE’
PREFACE

THIS book is an attempt to place certain recent events in the Near and Middle
East in their historical setting, and to illustrate from them several new features of
more enduring importance than the events themselves. It is not a discussion of
what the peace-settlement in the East ought to be, for the possibility of imposing
a cut-and-dried scheme, if it ever really existed, was destroyed by the landing of
the Greek troops at Smyrna in May 1919. At any rate, from that moment the
situation resolved itself into a conflict of forces beyond control; the Treaty of
Sèvres was still-born; and subsequent conferences and agreements, however
imposing, have had and are likely to have no more than a partial and temporary
effect. On the other hand, there have been real changes in the attitude of the
Western public towards their Governments’ Eastern policies, which have
produced corresponding changes in those policies themselves; and the Greeks
and Turks have appeared in unfamiliar roles. The Greeks have shown the same
unfitness as the Turks for governing a mixed population. The Turks, in their turn,
have become exponents of the political nationalism of the West. The break-up of
the Ottoman Empire has been arrested at the borders of Anatolia, where Turkey
has asserted her independence as successfully as her former Near Eastern
subjects have asserted theirs in the Balkan Peninsula; and in this last stage in
the redistribution of Near and Middle Eastern territories, the atrocities which have
accompanied it from the beginning have been revealed in their true light, as
crimes incidental to an abnormal process, which all parties have committed in
turn, and not as the peculiar practice of one denomination or nationality. Finally,
the masterful influence of our Western form of society upon people of other
civilisations can be discerned beneath the new phenomena and the old,
omnipresent and indefatigable in creation and destruction, like some gigantic
force of nature.
Personally, I am convinced that these subjects are worth studying, apart
from the momentary sensations and quandaries of diplomacy and war which are
given more prominence in the Press, and this for students of human affairs who
have no personal or even national concern in the Eastern Question. The contact
of civilisations has always been, and will always continue to be, a ruling factor in
human progress and failure. I am, of course, aware that the illustrations which I
have chosen involve burning question, and that my presentation of them will not
pass unchallenged. Indeed, the comparatively few people interested in
disproving or confirming my statements may be my chief or only readers. I had
therefore better mention such qualifications as I possess for writing this book.
I have had certain opportunities for first-hand study of Greek and Turkish
affairs. Just before the Balkan Wars, I spent nine months (November 1911 to
August 1912) travelling on foot through the old territories of Greece, as well as in
Krete and the Athos Peninsula, and through my main interest was the historical
geography of the country, I learnt a good deal about the social and economic life
of the modern population. During the European War, I edited, under the direction
of Lord Bryce,1 the Blue Book published by the British Government on the
‘Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire: 1915’ (Miscellaneous No. 31,
1916), and incidentally learnt, I believe, nearly all that there is to be learnt to the
discredit of the Turkish nation and of their rule over other peoples. Afterwards I
worked, always on Turkish affairs, in the Intelligence Bureau of the Department
of Information (May 1917 to May 1918); in the Political Intelligence Department of
the Foreign Office (May to December 1918); and in the Foreign Office section of
the British Delegation to the Peace Conference at Paris (December 1918 to April
1919). Since the beginning of the 1919-20 Session, I have had the honour to
hold the Koraís Chair of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language, Literature, and
History, in the University of London; and on the 20th October 19201 the Senate of
the University kindly granted me leave of absence abroad for two terms, in order
to enable me to pursue the studies connected with my Chair by travel in Greek
lands. I arrived at Athens from England on the 15th January 1921, and left
Constantinople for England on the 15th September. During the intervening time, I
saw all that I could of the situation from both the Greek and the Turkish point of
view, in various parts of the two countries. The most important of my journeys
and other experiences were shared by my wife, and I have profited more than I
can say by constant discussion with her of all that we saw and did together,

1 Whose death has removed one of the most experienced and distinguished Western students of
Near and Middle Eastern questions, though this was only one among his manifold interests and
activities.
1 Just a month before the change of government and consequent crisis in Greece, which I (like
most other observers at a distance) had not foreseen.
though I alone am responsible for the verification and presentation of the results
of our observations.
My itinerary was as follows:2
(a) Jan. 15-26: Athens;
(b) Jan. 27 – March 15: Smyrna, and the following journeys into the
hinterland:
1. Feb. 1-8: Alashehir, Ushaq, Kula, Salyhly, Sardis;
2. Feb. 11-18: Ephesus, Kirkinjé, Aidin, Tiré, Torbaly;
3. Feb. 26-March 10: Manysa, Soma, Kinik, Bergama,
Yukhara Bey Keui, Aivali, Dikeli;
(c) March 17-Aug. 2: Constantinople, and the following journeys into
the hinterland:
1. March 27-April 5: Brusa, Pazarjyk, Kovalyja,
Nazyf Pasha, Yenishehir, Köprü Hissar;
2. April 7-13: Brusa, Gemlik, Ermeni Sölös;
3. May 24-25: Yalova;
4. June 2-6: Gemlik, Ömer Bey, Yalova;
5. June 13-18: Gemlik, Omer Bey, Armudlu;
6. June 22-27: Armudlu, Gemlik;
7. June 27-July 3: Ismid, Baghchejik, Karamursal,
Eregli, Deirmenderé;

2 The route is plotted out on the map at the end of the volume.
(d) Aug. 3-8: Smyrna;
(e) Aug. 9-Sept. 1: Athens, and the following journey into the
hinterland:
Aug. 16-26: Tripolitsa, Sparta, Mistrá, Trýpi, Kalamáta, Vurkáno,
Mavrommáti, Meligalá, Isari, Astála, Kokolétri, Bassae, Pavlitsa,
Kyparissía, Samikó, Olympia, and back via the Pyrgos-Patras-
Korinth railway;
(f) Sept. 1-9: Athens to Constantinople via Lárisa and Salonika, with
an excursion to Flórina, Kozháni, and Shátishta;
(g) Sept. 9-16: Constantinople.

My wife arrived at Constantinople, a few days before me, in March and
started home by sea from the Peiraeus on the 15th of August. Between those
dates we were travelling together.
This summary will indicate what facts I am in a position to know, and it is
for readers to judge whether I have presented them impartially and drawn fair
conclusions. When a writer passes from statements of fact to judgments of right
and wrong, his propositions become doubly controversial. But the observer of
any conflict is bound to form moral judgments in the process of informing himself
about events, and to abstract the one from the other, though it may give the
appearance of scientific objectivity, is really less scientific than to put all his cards
on the table. I have therefore expressed freely, though carefully, my judgments
of right as well as of fact, and I submit that I am not convicted of partiality by the
fact that, in discussing particular chapters of a long story, I sum up against one
party in favour of the other. If that disqualifies me, then every verdict must be
accounted a miscarriage of justice. The fact that I am neither a Greek nor a Turk
perhaps creates little presumption of my being fair-minded, for Western partisans
of non-Western peoples are often more fanatical than their favourites. I hope
that it will appear from my method of treatment that my own interest in Greece
and Turkey arises from curiosity (the most respectable of human motives), and
that I am as much interested in their past, about which it is futile to break lances,
as in their present and future.
It may, I fear, be painful to Greeks and ‘Philhellenes’ that information and
reflections unfavourable to Greece should have been published by the first
occupant of the Koraís Chair. I naturally regret this, but from the academic point
of view it is less unfortunate than if my conclusions on the Anatolian Question
had been favourable to Greece and unfavourable to Turkey. The actual
circumstances, whatever personal unpleasantness they may entail for me and
my Greek friends and acquaintances, at least preclude the suspicion that an
endowment of learning in a British University has been used for propaganda on
behalf of the country with which it is concerned. Such a contention, if it could be
urged, would be serious; for academic study should have no political purpose,
although, when its subject is history, its judgments upon the nature and causal
connection of past events do occasionally and incidentally have some effect
upon the present and the future.
In this connection I ought to add that I made my journeys in 1921 as
special correspondent for the Manchester Guardian,1 and to mention the
reasons. I did so first in order to pay my expenses; secondly, because the
Guardian is a paper which it is an honour to serve; and thirdly, because without
this status it would hardly have been possible for me to learn what I wanted. My
travels coincided with a historical crisis; and, during such crisis, travelers like
myself who are not persons of eminence have little chance of meeting the
important people and witnessing the important events, if they travel as students
or tourists; while journalists, however unimportant personally, have greater
opportunities in such circumstances than under normal conditions.
ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE.
London, 22nd March 1922.

1 The sketches appended to Chapters IV.-VII. were originally published in the Manchester
NOTE ON SPELLING
I CANNOT pretend that my spelling of Greek and Turkish proper names, of which
this book is full, has been consistent, though I have been careful always to spell
the same name in the same way—except in quotations, where I have purposely
left the names as they stand. I have used the following symbols:
(i) In Turkish words—
‘=’ain (impossible to transliterate into the Roman alphabet).
‘=hemzé (a hiatus in the middle of a word).1
gh=ghain (like the German gutteral g).
q=qaf (hard k).
y (when a vowel)=hard yé or hard esseré (something like the u in English
‘until’ when rapidly pronounced).
other unmodified } =
vowels } =Italian vowels.

Gardian, and are reprinted here by the kind permission of the Editor.
1 Except in the proelision of the Arabic definite article (e.g. in ‘Abdu’l-Hamid’), which I have
indicated by using this sign in the ordinary English way.