PERSONALITIES

Southland Times, Issue 20615, 13 October 1928, Page 13 (Supplement)

PERSONALITIES

A NEW Tl KK

(By

AEdite.)

Kemal Pasha’s daring and drive are no more apparent than in the changes he has wrought in Turkey since he raised himself to leadership. The overthrow of the Sublime Porte was no more dangerous than the order wiping out the fez and putting the ancient Turk into bowlers, soft-felts and straw hats, or the decree doing away with polygamy. It is impossible for anyone outside of Turkey to understand the grandeur of the revolution, and the swift incorporation of Western methods in a country where all change used to be obstructed by a cheerful passive resistance. The Turk shuffling along in an ill-fitting sac suit and in an old-fashioned bowler hat pulled down hard upon his cars, is the significant figure of change, even if he does look like the stage caricature of the Jew of New York’s ghetto. That tremendous overturn is the basis of Turkey’s new appeal to the world and all her government agents are charged with the task of removing the impression that ’the Old Turkey lingers at all.

Thas is- why a modern Turk like Ahmed Mouhtar Bey, the new' Ambassador to the United States, was eager to say by way of preface to an interviewer in Washington

“It should be known that we in no way represent the Ottoman Empire, the old Turkey of the Sultans. We are not even connected in any way, except perhaps, broadly speaking, through the general progress of ideas, with the Young Turk movement. None of the leaders of that party survive. One by one they have died in foreign countries. The National Assembly at Angora has broken with the past; we confidently feel our slate is clean.”

The eagerness to break with the past has been shown by the new Government, although some of the methods employed at Angora have not supported that view entirely. Of course, the New Turks have a legacy from the Young Turks, with whom Mouhtar Bey was connected. Eight years ago the Allies were quite eager to lay their hands on Mouhtar Bey, then a deputy to the Turkish Parliament. He was in Constantinople when the Allies occupied the old capital but, being warned, apparently, that the British were about to seize and intern at Malta any prominent Turks w'ho were favourably disposed to the Nationalist movement developing in Turkey, Mouhtar Bey “left” Constantinople. He succeeded in leaving Constantinople to join the Nationalist forces at Angora. How or when he went is not disclosed beyond that it was in 1919. “It would have been stupid to let one’s self be taken,” is all the Ambassador will say.

Mouhtar Bey Is a scholar as well as a diplomat. He has acted as a member of the Faculty of several of Constantinople’s high schools and also held a professorship of administrative law. “Because of the contrast it offers to education as you find it in Turkey to-day,” he said recently, “early routine in a little school in the Dardanelles is of interest. We were all placed together in one large room. The hodja stood before us holding a long wand, with which he prodded any inattentive scholar. With our little red fezzes clapped tight on our heads we swayed back and forth as we knelt on the rugs, repeating

the Koran in Arabic in a sing-song voice. We understood only Turkish and did not comprehend a word that we were saying, but that was not considered necessary. All that was important was that we should know the Koran by heart. Our studies would be soon interrupted; we would be set to work scraping lint and making sponges. I was then 6or 7. Those were the days of the Turco-Russian War.”

As legal counsellor to the Sublime Porte, it was Mouhtar Bey’s task to reconcile the logic of the East with that of the West, to adjust and to interpret delicate questions of law which rose in the application of treaties between the Porte and foreign countries. Within a few years he was promoted to be aide and official mouthpiece to the Grand Vizier in negotiations and relations with foreign countries.

In 1905 Mouhtar Bey became Consul General at Budapest. Political questions in the Dual Monarchy were dealt with entirely from Vienna at that time, leaving him free to follow—what of necessity was his official task—rhe encouragement of intellectual and cultural relations between Turkey and Hungary. A group of young men of that day, centred in Budapest, each representing the particular genius of his own country, met to discuss, to read and to debate.

Mouhtar Bey was next appointed Minister of Turkey at Athens, but the outbreak of the Balkan War soon put an end to his mission. In 1914, at the close of this war, Turkey, defeated, sent him as First Delegate to the Turco-Greek Mixed Commission which convened at Smyrna in order to conclude a convention on the exchange of populations. The deliberations of thus commission, called into being by the victorious Greeks, formed the basis for the later exchange of populations.

During the last stages of the World War the Ukraine, with its wealth of wheat fields, held a position of great importance for the belligerents. Mouhtar Bey was sent as diplomatic representative to that Government. General Skoropadsky was then the Hetman, or lifetime ruler of the State, for the Ukraine was allowed to keep its autonomous character after being joined to Russia. Presently Petlura—later assassinated in Paris—at the head of a Bolshevist party in opposition to Skoropadsky was storming the gates of Kiev.

At a critical turn in the battle for the possession of Kiev Mouhtar Bey conceived it imperative to cross the city to the embassy of a foreign power on a mission in behalf of a colleague. Petlura was on the outskirts of the city and his vanguard had entered the gates. At the same time Tsarist were being driven rapidly through the streets of the city in fleets of cars, from which they fired.

Mouhtar Bey’s driver leapt from the box and fled. The Ambassador and his attendant, seeking what shelter they could, threw themselves to the ground to escape flying bullets. His objective finally reached and his mission successfully completed, Mouhtar Bey was able to return to his legation to the performance of his next duty, that of making a gracious speech of welcome to Petlura, the new ruler of the Ukraine.

Leaving the Ukjftine, he served in the Turkish Parliament at Constantinople, associating himself early in 1920 with the Nationalist forces at Angora. The Grand National Assembly, convened in 1920, was faced with the problem of quelling the small but persistent uprisings of its own people who remained loyal to the old regime of the Sultans and at the same time of organizing to carry on a war with an enemy who received outside aid. Everything internally had to be recast. From the big problems of religion and education

down to the smallest derail of everyday life, there was nothing which did not need to be formed anew. According to Mouhtar Bey there is nothing to fear from the new wine of Western civilization which was being poured into old bottles. “No; the soil is prepared,” he says. “For years there has been a penetration of Western ways and methods along practical lines; for more years than is realized an

intellectual revivification has been in proi gress. There is nothing sudden. Everywhere the people have been prepared.” The confident statement is typical of the new ; regime, but the preparation of the soil, one is I inclined to think, is of far less importance t | than the vigour with which the New Turk i leaders, of whom Mouhtar Bey is one, have i set about uprooting everything to leave the . j old-fashioned ideas nothing to cling to, to i leave the Old Turks no rallying point.