'The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal by Tekin Alp' [‎3v] (11/58)

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movement bears a certain analogy to the modernization of Japan with its
Samurai and Bushido traditions—now sometimes styled the embryo
Prussia of the Far East—but the analogy with Hungary and its Magyariza-
tion policy after 1830 and with Prussia after 1813 is much closer. In
fact, when in 1913 the Jugendbund anniversary celebrations took place
in Prussia, there was more than a sympathetic echo in Young Turk
circles, and Turkey of the present day may well be looked upon as the
Japan or Prussia of the Near East.
General Bernhardi said that “ Turkey is Germany’s natural ally ”,
and, apart from “the anti-Slav brotherhood” of the two races, the Turkish
concept of the Deity, called Tenghri, is much more akin to the Prussian
Thor, or War Lord, than to the Arab, i.e. Semitic, Allah or to the Latin
and Western God. The Prussian ideals of brute force are closely allied to
those of the Turanian heroes like Genghiz Khan and Oghuz Khan now
invoked by the Young Turks, who are now avowedly striving to revive the
period when their “armies were the wonder and terror of the old world”.
The Turkish ideal has indeed been already half accomplished. The
Turkey of 1908 has gone not to return. The non-Turkish Armenians have
been practically eliminated, while the Greek population outside the towns
has been similarly dealt with. The Arab problem from the Turanian point
of view is more difficult of solution. Jemal Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. has hanged or deported
hundreds of the Arab leaders with their families. According to reports,
some 80,000 of the Christian Arabs of the Lebanon have been deliberately
starved to death, while the mortality among the Arab divisions sent to
the frigid highlands of Armenia must have been considerable. If, however,
the Arab revolt aided by the Entente Powers is successful the Turanian
idea will be a failure in Arabia.
The Turks feel that Arab culture is superior to the Turanian. In
the past, it has swamped the Turk in the matters of religion and language.
Tekin Alp and his Pan-Turanian coadjutors would remedy this by
translating the Arabic Quran into Turkish, and are endeavouring to
eliminate from Turkish the dispensable Arabic and Persian words. As
literary Turkish contains more than 80 per cent, of Arabic and Persian,
their task is more difficult than that of e. g. Young Englishmen who
would restore the language of King Alfred’s day by eliminating all the
dispensable Norman-French, Latin, and Greek words from English. The
Young Turk effort in this respect resembles somewhat the action of their
Mongolian brethren, the Hungarians, who, more than half a century
ago, revived Magyar instead of Latin and have ever since caused endless
friction by their forcible methods of inducing the other races of Hungary
to use an idiom exotic to the Indo-European races within their borders,
e. g. in Croatia, Slavonia, and Transylvania.
It would seem difficult, at first sight, to reconcile the realization of
the Pan-Turkish ideal with the predominance of German influence
connoted by the Berlin-Bagdad and Berlin-Cairo ideas. The Germans,
while encouraging Pan-Turanianism as an anti-Russian and anti-British