The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire (27 page)

Yet, until Ali Pasha’s death in 1871,
Tanzimat
restructuring of the state continued, with the Sultan under pressure from the French, British and Austrian governments to carry
through the reform programme. Changes in provincial government in 1858 were complemented six years later by the Vilayet Law, which extended the pattern of large provincial units (vilayets), with
clearly differentiated administrative departments, to the Empire as a whole. In general, law reform closely followed French models, as practised under the Second Empire: a new Ottoman penal code in
1858 was followed by a commercial code, promulgated at the start of Abdulaziz’s reign, and in 1869 by Ahmed Cevdet’s civil code, the
Mecelle
, a masterly compromise allowing the
Islamic
ş
eriat
tradition to be preserved—and even enhanced—within a fundamentally Napoleonic concept of law. French influence persisted, too, in education. The Galatasaray
Lycée (the Imperial Ottoman School), a boys’ secondary school in the heart of Pera, opened its gates in September 1869. The
Mekteb
-
i Sultani
was founded in order to
provide servants of Empire for the Ottomans—much as did Eton and Harrow in England or, more precisely, the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. The boys, Muslim and Christian alike, received
most of their tuition in French and followed a western curriculum, even to the extent of learning Latin.
¹⁸

There were, however, already signs of a reaction against
Tanzimat
. In January 1865 a Press Law set up a special department of the Sublime Porte which soon afterwards began to suppress
newspapers whose tone was considered ‘hostile’. It is significant that in June of that same year the first influential group of intellectual dissidents emerged in the capital. They were
inspired by the essayist and playwright Namik Kemal
and the writings of the older reformer Sadik Rifat. Like dissidents in the Soviet bloc during the 1980s they were
strongly individualistic, with no agreed panacea for the Empire’s problems. Namik thought the
Tanzimat
reformers too inclined to borrow ideas and institutions from the West without
allowing for the Koranic traditions which still shaped society, especially in the more remote provinces. One splinter group, led by Ali Suavi, went even further than Namik, becoming Islamic
fundamentalist in its total dedication to the priority of
ş
eriat
teachings.
¹⁹

At first these ‘Young Ottomans’ (
Yeni Osmanlilar
) received financial backing from Prince Mustafa Fazil, son of that formidable warrior, Ibrahim Pasha; and it is possible that
the Prince saw himself as the constitutional monarch of a federalized empire which would stretch from the lower Danube to the Euphrates and the Nile. But the dissidents were totally loyal to the
Ottoman state. They preached an Ottoman patriotism which, at least from 1870 onwards, began to emphasize
Turkish
nationalism, a new concept. So, too, in the Ottoman lands was their campaign
in favour of a ‘constitution’, an experiment already working in Tunisia and, from 1866 onwards, in Egypt. Namik Kemal advocated the summoning by the Sultan of a parliament on the model
of Britain or France. The Sultan’s capricious style of personal rule ensured that the Young Ottomans’ campaign for an elected chamber received increasing attention among the
intelligentsia in the greater cities. In 1873 Namik was shipped off to Famagusta, where he was imprisoned in close confinement, but his arrest scarcely checked the momentum of the campaign. It
increased the appeal of the Young Ottomans’ cause by giving them a heroic exile awaiting a summons home.

‘European systems of government, European ideas, European laws or customs—no
honest
Turk will ever pretend to admire any of these,’ Stratford de Redcliffe had remarked
to one of his aides during the Crimean War. ‘If ever Easterns (
sic
) get imbued with Liberal ideas of government their own doom is sealed,’ he added.
²⁰
Sir William Bulwer, Stratford’s successor as ambassador in 1858, was also more concerned with efficient government than with ‘liberal’ government, for his
sojourn in Pera coincided with the peak period of unrestricted encroachment on the Ottoman economy by foreign banks. When he retired from
diplomacy in 1865 he broke with
precedent by serving as agent in the Levant for a French banking institution. As ambassador he had always welcomed reforms which provided openings for financial credit.

The Imperial Ottoman Bank was established with French and British capital in 1863: the Director-General was French, and his deputy was a City banker from London. A smaller institution, the
Société Générale de l’Empire Ottoman
, was set up later in the same year, and followed in 1868 by the
Crédit Général Ottoman
and
by a small Russian Bank.
²¹
Throughout the decade French funds flowed into government bonds and investments likely to promote trade. The opportunities
for foreign bond-holders were so great that successive governments in London as well as political leaders in Paris and Vienna willingly deluded themselves that ‘Turkey’ had become a
modern and reformed state. When the Ottomans suppressed the Cretan rebellion of 1866–7 there were far fewer protests in the West than during the earlier conflicts with Greeks
‘struggling to be free’.

The seal of international approval was extended to Abdulaziz in 1867, when he was invited to Napoleon III’s ‘Great Universal Exhibition’ in Paris in 1867. It was the first
occasion upon which a Sultan visited a non-Islamic state except to wage war. The Sultan was received by Emperor Francis Joseph in Vienna and, after meeting Queen Victoria at Windsor, rode in a
colourful procession through the streets of London, ‘looking like a typical Turk’, as
The Times
reported, searching none too assiduously for the fitting phrase. A fast train sped
him to Portsmouth, where the Queen made him a Knight of the Garter. When not prostrate below decks, the Sultan saw the might of the Royal Navy pass in review off Spithead and was deeply impressed,
despite being ‘not comfortable’ (the Queen’s words).
²²
Abdulaziz brought with him to the West his nine-year-old son and two nephews,
the future Sultans Murad V and Abdulhamid II. The Sultanate had shed the isolation of centuries. Rigid
kafe
immurement of princes was gone; or so it seemed.

The Ottoman Grand Tour had important social consequences. It intensified Abdulaziz’s delight in palace extravagance, and filled him with desire for a fleet of ironclads, mostly laid down
in British yards. Above all, it confirmed his love of railways, ‘
une véritable fièvre de
chemin de fer
’ as the Russian ambassador wrote in
1873, the year locomotive smoke was first seen blowing out across the Bosphorus.
²³
In that summer of 1873 trains began running in Anatolia, though
only as far as Izmit, some 50 miles along the coast from Haydarpaša, the terminus facing Stamboul. The railway was built by the French, who were also responsible for a short line opened in
the same year from Mudania, on the Anatolian shore of the Sea of Marmara, inland to Bursa. Yet, while French and British concerns still dominated the Ottoman economy, the chief beneficiaries from
Abdulaziz’s railway mania were Germany and Austria-Hungary. In 1872 a German engineer, Wilhelm von Pressel, presented the Porte with a ten-year master plan to extend the Izmit line to Ankara
and the Persian Gulf, a project which appealed to Abdulaziz, though little was done to fulfil it until long after his death.
²⁴

The Sultan was also attracted by plans for an Orient line drawn up by the Bavarian-born Baron Hirsch, whose banking interests were in Vienna and Paris. In 1870 it therefore seemed as if the
Ottoman capital would soon be linked with the railway network of central Europe. Significantly, a year later, a
Banque Austro
-
Ottomane
and a
Banque Austro
-
Turque
opened
offices in Constantinople. But all Austrian railway projects suffered from the collapse of the Vienna stock-market on Black Friday, 9 May 1873; and by the end of Abdulaziz’s reign the Orient
railway had made little progress. It linked Constantinople with Edirne and Plovdiv (Philippopolis), while a feeder line ran southwards from Edirne to the Aegean coast at Dedeagatch (now
Alexandroúpolis). Legend insists that the apparent inability of the Plovdiv route to follow a straight line across flat and open country was due to a clause in Hirsch’s contract which
provided for him to be paid, not an overall sum, but a fee for each kilometre of track laid. This tale is probably apocryphal, but there is no doubt that corruption was widespread at every level
during the railway craze.

Shock-waves from Vienna’s ‘Black Friday’ shook the already fragile Ottoman financial system. Almost half the total resources of the government was absorbed by the need to meet
annuities, interest payments, and the demands of a sinking fund on a dozen foreign loans contracted by the Sultans since the Crimean War. As the Treasury accounts made no
distinction between the needs of state and the inroads of the sovereign, it is small wonder that, with less than one-tenth of the loans being spent on measures to increase the
Empire’s economic well-being, Abdulaziz’s conduct of government should have exasperated a succession of ministers. When Emin Ali died in September 1871 he had completed five terms of
office as Grand Vizier, effectively dominating the Porte for some eighteen years, even though he had often clashed with his sovereign. This relative continuity of government ended with Ali’s
death, for Abdulaziz resolved to rule as an autocrat. He sought pliant Grand Viziers, whom he would dismiss as soon as they began to form political groups of personal followers; and he also
nominated provincial governors, choosing those whom he believed capable of speedily collecting taxes in their particular vilayet. Between September 1871 and February 1874 there were six different
Grand Viziers; in the provinces there were so many changes at the top that the average length of term for a governor was little more than four months.
²⁵
With Grand Viziers flipping in and out of office every seven months and provincial governors every four, the widespread frustration at persistent misrule was turned against the
Sultan himself rather than against his ministers or officials. If the ousted viziers possessed any strength of character, they could count on support from the Young Ottoman dissidents.

Two of these transient Grand Viziers were powerful personalities. Ahmed Midhat had served as an enlightened provincial governor on the lower Danube and in Baghdad. He was appointed Grand Vizier
in the last week of July 1872, soon after his fiftieth birthday. Within three months, however, Midhat was dismissed, having fallen foul of the Sultan on three counts: he aired the possibility of a
federalized structure for the Empire; he set up an Accounting Department; and, most disturbing of all, he began to investigate corruption at the heart of the Dolmabahche itself. The second
masterful Grand Vizier was Hüseyin Avni, who held office from February 1874 to April 1875. To foreign diplomats Hüseyin seemed more formidable than Midhat, but he was less intelligent: he
had served as
serasker
(Commander-in-Chief) for four years. No one was better placed to organize a military coup; and it was therefore foolish of Abdulaziz to dismiss Hüseyin because he
resented his attempts to divert
funds from the palace to meet the needs of the army. It was also foolish of the Sultan, four months later, to make Mahmud Nedim his Grand
Vizier, for Nedim was popularly believed to be in Russian pay. There was no doubt that he treated the Tsar’s ambassador, General Nikolai Ignatiev, with a consideration similar to the
exaggerated respect which earlier viziers had accorded to Stratford de Redcliffe.

By now Abdulaziz’s behaviour seemed to justify the rumours of his mental instability. Paroxysms of fury became more violent and more frequent. The Sultan seemed incapable of checking his
extravagance. He would still spend lavishly on the harem and his palace, especially a new pavilion at Yildiz in high parkland to the north of the Dolmabahche. Yet in October 1875 the wretched Nedim
was forced to announce a suspension of payment of interest on the Ottoman Debt, thus virtually admitting state bankruptcy.
²⁶
The financial chaos
caused by twenty years of European bank loans and extravagant mismanagement left the Ottoman Empire dependent for survival on the good will of foreign governments.

The state bankruptcy could hardly have come at a worse moment. In June 1875 the Christian South Slavs of Herzegovina rose in revolt, their old resentments over taxation fed by intensive Panslav
propaganda originating in Moscow (as distinct from official Tsarist policy, which was determined in St Petersburg). The rising soon spread from Nevesinje, near Mostar, into Bosnia and along the
restless borderland with Montenegro. It was followed in the spring of 1876 by a Bulgarian rebellion in the villages of the Rhodope Mountains, beyond Plovdiv. While this rebellion was taking place,
a riot in Salonika over a Bulgarian Orthodox girl—said (wrongly) to be a convert to Islam against her will—resulted in the murder of the French and German consuls, killed in a mosque by
fanatics whom the Ottoman governor was powerless to restrain. The Salonika murders caused instant indignation in the European chancelleries. Worse was to follow. Throughout June graphic newspaper
reports from Bulgaria shocked public opinion. Eyewitness accounts of thousands of Christian men, women and children found dead after six weeks of repression by local volunteer militia (
ba
ş
i
bozuka
) stirred humanitarian crusaders in the West and among the Orthodox faithful of Holy Russia. Assertions that rebels as well as militia had committed atrocities went unheeded.
Governments could not check mounting popular anger against ‘the Turk’, however much the great financial institutions might deplore the reopening of the Eastern Question at
such a time.
²⁷