House with Wisteria by Halide Edib

Author:Halide Edib [Edib, Halide]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138525252
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2017-10-06T00:00:00+00:00

Part II

NEW TURKEY IN THE MAKING

Chapter 7

The Period of Political Reform; The Tanzimat, 1839-76

From the eleventh century to the fourteenth the new Turkish Empire produced extraordinary sultans, men of great ability and organizing capacity. The fact that the empire governed more justly and humanely than its predecessors, and than the neighboring powers, gave it stability and insured its continuance in a region where the native population much outnumbered the rulers. Able administrators, austere and clean fighters, makers of law, patrons of art, the Ottoman Turks created an Ottoman citizenship which was envied by the members of the neighboring states; and they created an art and a life which have left as much of a mark on the world as any ancient empire, and a greater one than any medieval state.

It is no wonder that the divine right of sultans turned the heads of the ruling dynasty and that they degenerated into tyrants with no ideals except those of personal glory and pomp. The empire lasted for centuries, however, thanks to occasional able leaders and to some wise sultans, and to the vitality of the Ottoman nation.

Besides the internal causes of decay and perpetual wars of aggression so ruinous for the empire, Europe in her feverish progress after the fifteenth century was gaining at a tremendous pace over the Ottoman Empire, for which the seventeenth century saw internal deterioration of every kind, a condition of anarchy at frequent intervals; in the eighteenth century there were feeble attempts to better the conditions of the empire, while its statesmen seemed aghast at the distance gained over it by Europe.

In addition to the serious causes of anxiety which the failing condition of the empire aroused, the French Revolution, which shook political institutions all over the world, quickly sent its loud echo into Turkey.

Selim III (1789-1809), the most progressive sultan in Ottoman history, first declared the desire and necessity for a change, and paid with his life. Gentle and good beyond his time, perhaps beyond ours as well, he was powerless to resist the tremendous momentum of an old and gigantic empire which finally crushed him and his reform. Although his successor, Mahmoud II (1808-39), wrote Selim’s progressive ideas in blood and terrorized opposition into mute obedience before he started his reforms, still it took a hundred years more to put reform, even political reform, into shape.

The necessity of reform, born at first in the minds of the few, showed at the same time to these minds the tremendous distance between the Ottoman Empire and the European states, a distance which the empire had to cover as fast as possible. She was so placed geographically that she was pressed by the surplus energies of the Mediterranean peoples and by the growth and upheaval of the Slavs. There is no nation in the world more in need of a cool head, a strong power of defense, and a pacific development of its internal resources.

Change and reform in nations follow two courses: first, the speedy and bloody

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