AFFAIRS IN TURKEY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCVIII, Issue 11367, 7 September 1897, Page 5

AFFAIRS IN TURKEY.

THE YOUNG TURKISH MOVEMENT. WHOLESALE ARRESTS. [Per Press Association.] CONSTANTINOPLE, Sept. 5. Three hundred Turks have been arrested during the last three days at Constantinople on the ground that they were associated with the Young Turkeyite movement. With reference to the action being taken against the members of the Young Turkish Party the following telegram published by the Daily News on July 17, from its Paris correspondent, is of interest: — "The Turkish Embassy in Paris has informed the members of the Young Turkish, Party living here as refugees that the Sultan has been graciously pleased to promulgate a general amnesty. It extends to Ottoman subjects who have left the country without passport, and to those who issue prints hostile, to the Ottoman Government and to their abettors. Persons coming within the above categories must return to Turkey within a delay of ten days, or they will then forfeit not only the benefits of this annesty, but will lose their Ottoman nationality, and will no longer foe allowed to go back to Constantinople. Every Young Turk knows that this so-called amnesty is, like every act of mercy on Abdul Hamid’s part, a sham, a clumsy trick to net the Liberal Turkish refugees in Europe. It is all the more brazen as the Porte, while amnestying Liberal journalists like Ahmed Elza, apply to the French Government' for their prosecution. The editor of the Mechveret, the organ of the Young Turks in Paris, M. Ahmed Eiza, has just received a suin-. mens to appear before the Correctional Tribunal on a charge of insulting a foreign sovereign, Abdul Hamid. When these proceedings were hinted at all the French Press protested. Even moderate papers like the Temps pointed out that M. Ahmed Eiza had never spoken more severely of the Great Assassin than the most moderate French papers. Half a dozen of the leading journals in Paris repeated all the actionable passages in the Mechveret, and challenged the Turkish Embassy to prosecute them. The challenge was not noticed, and it was even thought the action against the Mechveret would be dropped. Not only the editor is being prosecuted, but also thr.ee of his contributors, including Halil Ganein, Deputy for Syria, and a Christian. Considering what sort of a character the present Sultan bears, these proceedings are a scandal. The French Public Prosecutor, however, has no choice. The trial of the amnestied Turks will he watched with interest. This is the first occasion on which the French Act on lese-majesU towards foreign Sovereigns, carried about a couple of years ago, is to be put into practice.”