Friedrich Engels 

What is to Become of Turkey in Europe? 

New-York Daily Tribune. 
Nr. 3748, 21. April 1853 

What is to Become of Turkey in Europe? 

We have seen how the obstinate ignorance, the time-hallowed routine, the 
hereditary mental drowsiness of European statesmen, shrinks from the very 
attempt to answer this question. Aberdeen and Palmerston, Metternich and 
Guizot, not to mention their republican and constitutional substitutes of 1848 
to 1852—who will ever be nameless—all despair of a solution. 

And all the while Russia advances step by step, slowly, but irresistibly, 
towards Constantinople, in spite of all the diplomatic notes, plots and 
manceuvres of France and England. 

Now this steady advance of Russia, admitted by all parties, in all countries 
of Europe, has never been explained by official statesmen. They see the 
effect, they see even the ultimate consequence, and yet the cause is hidden 
from them, although nothing is more simple. 

The great motive power which speeds Russia on towards Constantinople, 

is nothing but the very device, designed to keep her away from it; the hollow, 

the never-enforced theory of the status quo. 

What is this status quo?For the Christian subjects of the Porte, it means 
simply the maintenance for ever and a day, of Turkish oppression over them. 
As long as they are oppressed by Turkish rule, the head of the Greek Church, 
the ruler of sixty millions of Greek Christians, be he in other respects what 
he may, is their natural liberator and protector. Thus it is, that ten millions 
of Greek Christians in European Turkey, are forced to appeal to Russian aid, 
by that very diplomatic scheme, invented in order to prevent Russian en- 
croachments. 

Look at the facts as history records them. Even before the reign of 
Catharine II. Russia never omitted an opportunity of obtaining favorable 
conditions for Moldavia and Wallachia. These stipulations, at last, were 
carried to such a length in the Treaty of Adrianople (1829) that the above- 
named principalities are now more subject to Russia than to Turkey. When, 

5 

What is to Become of Turkey in Europe? 

in 1804, the Servian revolution broke out, Russia took the rebel Rayahs at 
once under her protection, and in two treaties, after having supported them 
in two wars, guaranteed the internal independence of their country. When 
the Greeks revolted, who decided the contest? Not the plots and rebellions 
of Ah Pacha of Janina, not the battle of Navarino, not the French army in 
the Morea, not the conferences and protocols of London, but the march of 
Diebitch's Russians across the Balkan into the vally of the Maritza. And 
while Russia thus fearlessly set about the dismemberment of Turkey, west- 
ern diplomatists continued to guarantee and to hold up as sacred the status 
quo and the inviolability of the Ottoman territory! 

So long as the tradition of the upholding, at any price, of the status quo 
and the independence of Turkey in her present state is the ruling maxim of 
Western diplomacy, so long will Russia be considered, by nine tenths of the 
population of Turkey in Europe, their only support, their liberator, their 
Messiah. 

Now, suppose for a moment that Turkish rule in the Graeco-Slavonian 
peninsula were got rid of; that a government more suitable to the wants of 
the people existed; what then would be the position of Russia? The fact is 
notorious, that in every one of the States which have sprung up upon Turkish 

soil and acquired either total or partial independence, a powerful anti-Rus- 
sian party has formed itself. If that be the case at atime when Russian support 
is their only safeguard against Turkish oppression, what, then, are we to 
expect, as soon as the fear of Turkish oppression shall have vanished? 

But to remove Turkish authority beyond the Bosphorus; to emancipate 
the various creeds and nationalities which populate the peninsula; to open 
the door to the schemes and machinations, the conflicting desires and inter- 
ests of all the great powers of Europe;—why is not this provoking universal 
war? Thus asks diplomatic cowardice and routine. 

Of course, it is not expected that the Palmerstons, the Aberdeens, the 
Clarendons, the Continental Foreign Secretaries, will do such a thing. They 
cannot look at it without shuddering. But whosoever has, in the study of 
history, learned to admire the eternal mutations of human affairs in which 
nothing is stable but instability, nothing constant but change; whosoever has 
followed up that stern march of history whose wheels pass relentlessly over 
the remains of empires, crushing entire generations, without holding them 
worthy even of a look of pity; whosoever, in short, has had his eyes open 
to the fact that there was never a demagogic appeal or insurgent proclama- 
tion, as revolutionary as the plain and simple records of the history of 
mankind; who ever knows how to appreciate the eminently revolutionary 
character of the present age, when steam and wind, electricity and the 
printing press, artillery and gold discoveries cooperate to produce more 

Friedrich Engels 

changes and revolutions in a year than were ever before brought about in a 
century, will certainly not shrink from facing a historical question, because 
of the consideration that its proper settlement may bring about a European 
war. 

No, diplomacy, Government according to the old fashion will never solve 
the difficulty. The solution of the Turkish problem is reserved, with that of 
other great problems, to the European Revolution. And there is no pre- 
sumption in assigning this apparently remote question to the lawful domain 
of that great movement. The revolutionary landmarks have been steadily 
advancing ever since 1789. The last revolutionary outposts were Warsaw, 
Debreczin, Bucharest; the advanced posts of the next revolution must be 
Petersburg and Constantinople. They are the two vulnerable points where 
the Russian anti-revolutionary colossus must be attacked. 

It would be a mere effort of fancy to give a detailed scheme as to how 
the Turkish territory in Europe might be partitioned out. Twenty such 
schemes could be invented, every one as plausible as the other. What we 
have to do is, not to draw up fanciful programmes, but to seek general 
conclusions from indisputable facts. And from this point of view the question 
presents a double aspect. 

Firstly, then, it is an undeniable reality that the peninsula, commonly called 20 

Turkey in Europe, forms the natural inheritance of the South-Slavonian race. 
That race furnishes seven millions out of twelve of its inhabitants. It has been 
in possession of the soil for twelve hundred years. Its competitors—if we 
except a sparse population which has adopted the Greek language, although 
in reality of Slavonic descent—are Turkish or Arnaut barbarians, who have 
long since been convicted of the most inveterate opposition to all progress. 
The South-Slavonians, on the contrary, are, in the inland districts of the 
country, the exclusive representatives of civilization. They do not yet form 
a nation, but they have a powerful and comparatively enlightened nucleus 

of nationality in Servia. The Servians have a history, a literature of their own. 

They owe their present internal independence to an eleven years' struggle, 
carried on valiantly against superior numbers. They have, for the lasttwenty 
years, grown rapidly in culture and the means of civilization. They are looked 
upon by the Christians of Bulgaria, Thrace, Macedonia and Bosnia as the 
center, around which, in their future efforts for independence and nation- 
ality, all of them must rally. In fact, it may be said that, the more Servia and 
Servian nationality has consolidated itself, the more has the direct influence 
of Russia on the Turkish Slavonians been thrown into the back ground; for 
Servia, in order to maintain its distinct position as a Christian State, has been 
obliged to borrow from the West of Europe its political institutions, its 
schools, its scientific knowledge, its industrial appliances; and thus is ex- 

What is to Become of Turkey in Europe? 

plained the anomaly, that, in spite of Russian protection, Servia, ever since 
her emancipation, has formed a constitutional monarchy. 
Whatever may be the bonds which consanguinity and common religious 
belief may draw between the Russian and the Turkish Slavonians, their 
interests will be decidedly opposite from the day the latter are emancipated. 
The commercial necessities arising from the geographical position of the two 
countries explain this. Russia, a compact inland country, is essentially a 
country of predominant agricultural, and perhaps, one day, manufacturing 
production. The Graeco-Slavonian peninsula, small inextent, comparatively, 
with an enormous extent of shore on three seas, one of whichit commands, 
is now essentially a country of commercial transit, though with the best 
capacities for independent production. Russiais monopolizing, South Slavo- 
nia is expansive. They are, besides, competitors in Central Asia; but while 
Russia has every interest to exclude all but her own produce, South Slavonia 
has, even now, every interest to introduce into the Eastern markets the 
produce of Western Europe. How, then, is it possible for the two nations 
to agree? In fact, the Turkish South Slavonians and Greeks have, even now, 
far more interests in common with Western Europe than with Russia. And 
as soon as the line of railway, which now extends from Ostende, Havre and 

20 Hamburg to Pesth shall have been continued to Belgrade and Constantinople, 

(which is now under consideration,) the influence of Western civilization and 
Western trade will become permanent in the South-east of Europe. 

Again: The Turkish Slavonians especially suffer by their subjection to a 

Mussulman class of military occupants whom they have to support. These 
military occupants unite in themselves all public functions, military, civil and 
judicial. Now what is the Russian system of government, wherever it is not 
mixed up with feudal institutions, but a military occupation, in which the civil 
and judicial hierarchy are organized in a military manner, and where the 
people have to pay for the whole? Whoever thinks that such a system can 
have a charm for the South Slavonians, may study the history of Servia since 
1804. Kara George, the founder of Servian independence, was abandoned 
by the people, and Milosh Obrenovitch, the restorer of that independence, 
was ignominiously turned out of the country, because they attempted to 
introduce the Russian autocratic system, accompanied with its concomitant 
corruption, half-mihtary bureaucracy and pasha-like extortion. 

Here then is the simple and final solution of the question. History and the 
facts of the present day alike point to the erection of a free and independent 
Christian State on the ruins of the Moslem Empire in Europe. The next effort 
of the Revolution can hardly fail to render such an event necessary, for it 

can hardly fail to inaugurate the long-maturing conflict between Russian 
Absolutism and European Democracy. In that conflict England must bear 

Friedrich Engels 

a part, in whatever hands her Government may for the moment happen to 
be placed. She can never allow Russia to obtain possession of Con- 
stantinople. She must then, take sides with the enemies ofthe Czar and favor 
the construction of an independent Slavonian Government in the place of 
the effete and overthrown Sublime Porte. For the present, the duty of those 
who would forward the popular cause in Europe is to lend all possible aid 
to the development of industry, education, obedience to law, and the instinct 
of freedom and independence in the Christian dependencies of Turkey. The 
future peace and progress of the world are concerned in it. If there it to be 
a harvest, too much care cannot be given to the preparation of the soil and 
the sowing of the seed. 

5