TURKEY'S OUTLOOK IN ASIA.

Manawatu Times, Volume LXV, Issue 1875, 20 March 1913, Page 2

TURKEY'S OUTLOOK IN ASIA.

London, February 4. "If Turkey insists on being yet more decisively crushed, and antagonises the Powers which have given her good and friendly advice, she will discover that while a process of amputation has relieved her of her European problems, the question of Asia has suddenly become acute," says the Nation. "Since llrst the war began, the more conservative currents in diplomacy have striven to avoid that complication. But it presses with increasing urgency. CLAIMS OF THE POWERS.

'The German Ambassador, though he used the language of friendship for Turkey, has very emphatically staked out a claim in Anatolia and uttered the 'Noli me tangere,' which warns the rest of the world that Asia Minor is for Germany a 'place in the sun.' In France, the finamcial group which 'studies' colonial problems with a rather naive attempt to imitate the procedure of a learned ssociety, lias revived the traditional French claim to Syria. Russia long ago claimed the Armenian provinces as in some sense her political sphere of interests, and she has been able to reserve them hitherto by frustrating every proposal to build railways in them or | through them. "We suppose that if any formal petition of Asiatic Turkey into zones of interest or influence were to take I place, Mesopotamia and Arabia would fall to this country. No Liberal can desire such an extension of European Imperialism as this, and all who care to preserve what chances remain for an Oriental renaiscence would strain every nerve to avoid this international disaster. HOPELESSNESS OF ARMENIA. * "But even on a purely disinterested view, the case is not absolutely clear. A solution for Armenia is possible if a reforming and civilised government can be encouraged to undertake the reorganisation of the whole Empire. If that is impossible, if the choice lies only between the stagnation of the Old Turks and the disreputable violence of the Young, then, even from the standpoint of humanity, .there is much to be said for partition. Our consent to it would involve our denouncing the Cyprus convention, and such an act would have large possibilities. We might give Cyprus as a dower to the new Greece on her union with Crete, and so ease the problem of partitioning Macedonia by making it possible for her to moderate her claims there and in Albania. In return for our assent to a Russian protectorate over the Armenians, we might require her withdrawal from Persia. :

"The peculiar hopelessness of the Armenians," says the Nation, "is due to the fact that as a race they are hardly anywhere in a majority in the land they inhabit. If a selfgoverning Armenia were to be created with a democratic constitution, Turks and Kurds would outvote the Christian minority But

anything from a decade to a generation is likely to pass before a spontaneous movement for genuine provincial Home Rule is likely ceed. ' r objects,

"There are, if we try to be precise, two main objects which we desire to obtain for the scattered Christian minorities in Turkey. Each raises a distinct problem, and neither requires territorial autonomy for its attainment. These objects are (1) elementary security for life, property and honor, and (2) the free development of its communal existence in all that concerns its church, its schools, its charities, and its language. The first essential for the attainment of security is clearly the reform and effective use of the gendarmerie.'' As Yon Moltke said long ago, ,a Turkey withdrawn into Asia might be an incomparably strong and more homogeneous Power than the Turkey which has spent the last century in the long agonyj of losing-her European provinces.