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.