BATTLE IN ARABIA.

Auckland Star, Volume XLII, Issue 149, 24 June 1911, Page 5

BATTLE IN ARABIA.

THOUSAND TROOPS KILLED.

SURPRISED BY REBELS.. WHOLE FORCE WIPED OUT. (By Cable.—Press Association.—Copyright.)

.(Received 8.30 a.m..)]

CONSTANTINOPLE, June 23. Advices from Yemen, in South-western Arabia, where the natives have been in revolt against Turkey for a couple of years, bring details of a dreadful reverse which befel the Turkish army operating there.

An, overwhelming foody of Arabs surprised a strong force of Turkish troops near Gezan and cut them to pieces. ' :

According to a Reuter telegram received here the number of Turks killed was 1000, while 500 were wounded.

The Turks also lost six guns and 2000 rifles.

For many months casual hostilities have been in progress along the frontiers of Yemen. The two leaders of the insurgent Arabs are Seyyid Yahya and Sheikh Idris. Early in 1910 Sheikh Idris had reduced the Turkish authority in the interior of the two provinces of Yemen and Aair to a mere shadow. - He had actually surrounded the Turkish force sent to subdue him, and he held at shut up, impotent and shamed, within a small town into which no comnrunicafions whatever could be sent by the Turks. The latter then made a false move. Heavily pressed as they were in other parts of their empire, they thought it would be beet to come to terms with these tiresome Arabian neighbours, lest a worse thing should happen to them. Accordingly, Sheikh Idris was admitted to a position of authority in Asir which was described as practically a joint-governorship of the province. For the moment a> cessation of hostilities was indeed- secured, but only at a ruinous cost. The concession was regarded merely as an admission of. weakness —as indeed it was—and at once tens of thousands of Arabs were encouraged to join the revolution who had hitherto kept aloof from motives of prudence. The two ringleaders again went on the warpath, and the thirty-one battalions of Turkish troops—they are probably greatly under strength—"that were dispatched to the scene to crush out the. rebellion axe proving entirely insufficient. The Arabs have the desert to retire upon, and every village ia for them a refuge and an arsenal. Moreover, the wells -will be wholesome for them only. They are ten times as numerous as their Turkish opponents, and, thanks to continual gnn-running into Muscat, are probably armed as well as, or better than, their enemies.

But the real significance of all this lies much deeper. The weakness of Turkish authority in this outlying region of the empire may involve a great.deal more thau a mere loss of territory and prestige. Mecca itself, which, to the Mohammedan is more than Jerusalem is to the Christian, or Bwlda-gaya to the is but a few miles from the' frontier of Asir," where ' the insurgents seem .< to hare carries all before them; There is not the slightest question that if they are successful in .Yemen, and Asir they will continue their victorious march, and, ia co-operation with the forces of reform, will drive the unfaithful stewards of Islam out of Mecca itself. Now upon the occupation and protection of Mecca rests the , sole claim of the Sultan to 'be Khalif; that is, the loss by him of Mecca implies ihe loss also of his right' to command the temporal obedience of Mohammedans. At a stroke the hegemony so carefully 'built up by Abdul Harnid vanishes. Turkey becomes a secular province of Islam, and the new guardians of the holy places take ' its place. Indeed, they at once acquire no inconsiderable claim to ihe obedience and war-services of the devout among the Turks themselves. This is a possibility which cannot be faced •without the gravest alarm. It would almost -certainly mean the contraction of the Turkish Empire to its possessions in Europe, Asia Minor, , Armenia, and Upper Mesopotamia.