Friedrich Engels

What Is to Become of European Turkey?

Written early in April 1853.  
From the English.  
[“New-York Daily Tribune”, No. 3748, April 21, 1853, leading article]

We have seen how the statesmen of Europe, in their obstinate stupidity, ossified routine and inherited intellectual indolence, recoil at the mere attempt to answer this question. Aberdeen and Palmerston, Metternich and Guizot, not to speak of their republican and constitutional successors in the years 1848 to 1852, whose names will never be handed down to posterity — they all despair of solving this question. Notwithstanding all the diplomatic notes, intrigues and machinations on the part of England and France, however, Russia advances step by step, slowly indeed, but irresistibly, towards Constantinople.

And although all parties in all countries of Europe are well aware of the fact of this steady advance, no official statesman has yet been able to explain it. They see the effect of this fact, they even see its ultimate consequence, but the cause remains hidden to them, although nothing could be simpler to explain.

The great mainspring which accelerates Russia’s advance on Constantinople is none other than the very means that should keep it back: the hollow, never-enforced theory of the maintenance of the status quo.

What does this status quo consist in? For the Christian subjects of the Porte it means nothing else than the perpetuation of their oppression by Turkey. And so long as they remain under the yoke of Turkish rule, they see in the head of the Greek Orthodox Church, the ruler of sixty million Greek Christians, their natural protector and liberator, whatever else he may be. Thus it happens that the same diplomatic system which was invented to prevent Russian encroachments compels ten million Greek Christians in European Turkey to turn to Russia for protection and assistance.

Let us consider the historical facts. Even before Catherine II, Russia let no opportunity slip to establish favourable conditions in Moldavia and Wallachia. This was finally accomplished by the Treaty of Adrianople (1829) to such a degree that the above-mentioned principalities are now more subjects to Russia than to Turkey. When, in 1804, the revolution broke out in Serbia, Russia immediately took the insurgent rayah under its protection, and after supporting them in two wars, secured them in two treaties independence in home affairs. Who decided the issue in the rising of the Greeks? It was not the conspiracies and revolts of Ali Pasha of Janina, nor the Battle of Navarino, nor the French army in the Morea, or the conferences and protocols of London, but Diebitsch, who marched into the Maritza Valley with the Russian army across the Balkan. And while Russia thus quite impudently set about dismembering Turkey, the Western diplomats never tired of continuing to guarantee the maintenance of the sacred status quo and the inviolability of the Ottoman Empire!

So long as this tradition of maintaining the status quo at all costs and the independence of Turkey in her present state remains the leitmotif of Western diplomacy, so long will nine-tenths of the population of European Turkey see in Russia their sole support, their liberator, their Messiah.

Let us suppose for a moment that the Greek-Slavonic peninsula had freed itself from Turkish rule, that a government existed there which corresponded more to the needs of the people; what then would become of Russia’s position? It is well known that in every state on Turkish soil which managed to make itself wholly or partly independent, a strong anti-Russian party immediately developed. If this is the case already at a time when the vassals see in Russia the only refuge against Turkish oppression, what should we expect when the fear of this oppression has disappeared?

But would not a world war break out if Turkish influence on the Bosphorus were to vanish, if the different nationalities and confessions of the Balkan peninsula were to liberate themselves, if the door were thrown wide open to the machinations and designs, the conflicting desires and interests of all the great powers of Europe? So asks the diplomacy of cowardice and routine.

It is of course not to be expected that the Clarendons, the Palmerstons, the Aberdeens and other European foreign ministers would be capable of such an act! They think of it only with shuddering. But whoever, in the study of history, has learned to admire the eternal change of human destinies, in which nothing is constant but inconstancy, nothing unchangeable but change; whoever has traced the iron march of history, whose wheels roll pitilessly over the ruins of great empires, ruthlessly crushing whole generations; whoever, in a word, has eyes open to the fact that no demagogic appeal and no seditious proclamation can have so revolutionary an effect as the simple naked facts of human history; whoever is able to grasp the immense revolutionary character of our epoch, when steam and wind, electricity and the printing press, artillery and gold discoveries, combined in alliance, bring about more changes and revolutions in one year than a whole century produced before, — will certainly not shrink from being confronted with this historical question because its real solution might entail a European war.

No, diplomacy and government in the traditional sense will never solve this difficulty. The solution of the Turkish problem — like the solution of so many other problems — is reserved to the European revolution. And it is no presumption to include this question, strange at first sight, in the sphere of this great movement. Since 1789 the milestones of the revolution have advanced further and further. Its last were called Warsaw, Debrecen, Bucharest; the outposts of the next revolution must be Petersburg and Constantinople. These are the two most vulnerable points at which the Russian anti-revolutionary colossus must be attacked.

It would be an idle fancy to draw up an exact plan for the division of European Turkey. At least twenty such plans could be devised, each as plausible as the next. But we do not wish to occupy ourselves with idle fantastic projects, but to try to draw general conclusions from indisputable facts. And viewed from this standpoint we see that the question has two sides.

First, it is an indisputable fact that the peninsula which is called par excellence European Turkey is the natural inheritance of the South Slav race. Of the twelve million inhabitants, seven million belong to this race. For twelve hundred years it has been in possession of the soil. Apart from a thinly scattered population which, although of Slav origin, has nevertheless adopted the Greek language, their competitors are Turkish or Arnaut barbarians, who have long proved themselves stubborn opponents of all progress. In contrast, the South Slavs in the interior of the country are the exclusive bearers of civilisation. They are not yet a nation, but they already have in Serbia a strong and comparatively enlightened national nucleus. The Serbs have a history of their own, a literature of their own. They owe their present internal self-government to an eleven-year brave struggle against an enemy far superior in numbers. In the last twenty years they have advanced rapidly — so far as culture and general civilisation are concerned. The Christians in Bulgaria, Thrace, Macedonia and Bosnia see in Serbia the centre around which they will all rally in the approaching struggles for their national independence. In short, it may be asserted that the more Serbia and the Serbian nationality have consolidated themselves, the more the direct influence of Russia on the Turkish Slavs has been pushed into the background; for Serbia, in order to maintain its own position as a Christian state, has had to borrow its political institutions, its schools, its science, the organisation of its industry from Western Europe. This also explains the anomaly that Serbia, despite Russian protectorate, has been a constitutional monarchy ever since its emancipation.

Even if blood relationship and common religion may still tie so many bonds between Russians and South Slavs, their interests will nevertheless diverge decisively from the day when the latter become free. The requirements of trade arising from the geographical position of the two countries explain this. Russia, a compact inland country, produces today predominantly agricultural products, later perhaps also industrial products. The Greek-Slavonic peninsula is, it is true, of comparatively small extent; but its extensive coasts are washed by three seas, one of which it commands; it is today mainly a trading country with transit traffic, although it also possesses excellent resources for the development of its own production. Russia’s economy is directed towards monopoly, that of the South Slavs towards an extension of the market. Moreover, they are competitors in Central Asia; but while Russia has there the keenest interest in exclusively selling its own products, the South Slavs already have the keenest interest in introducing the products of Western Europe on the markets of the East. How, then, would it be possible for these two nations to agree? The Turkish South Slavs and the Greeks have, in fact, today far more common interests with Western Europe than with Russia. And when once the railway lines which run from Ostend, Le Havre and Hamburg to Budapest are continued as far as Belgrade and Constantinople (which is now planned), the influence of Western civilisation and of Western trade in South-Eastern Europe will become a permanent one.

On the other hand, the Slavs of Turkey suffer particularly severely under the bondage by a Mohammedan class of military occupants, whom they have to maintain. This military garrison unites in itself all public functions, military as well as civil and juridical. But what is the Russian system of government — wherever it is not interwoven with feudal institutions — other than a military occupation, in which civil authorities and judicial hierarchy are organised on military principles and where the people has to pay for the whole? But whoever believes that such a system can entice the South Slavs should become acquainted with the history of Serbia since 1804: Karageorge, the founder of Serbian independence, was abandoned by the people, and Michael Obrenovitch, who restored independence, was driven out of the country with scorn and disgrace, because they had attempted to introduce the Russian autocratic system with its concomitant features of corruption, semi-military bureaucracy and pasha-like exploitation.

Here, then, is the simple and final solution to the question. History and the facts of our time point in equal measure to the necessity of erecting, in Europe, on the ruins of the Moslem Empire, a free, independent Christian state. The very next revolutionary thrust is capable of bringing about the long-ripened conflict between Russian absolutism and European democracy. England must take part in this conflict, whatever government may be at the helm. England can never allow Russia to take possession of Constantinople. It must make common cause with the enemies of the Tsar and favour the formation of an independent Slav Empire in place of the decrepit, rotten Sublime Porte.