The News International, Pakistan
Feb 7 2010
Grey Wolf – Mustafa Kemal Pasha
Sunday, February 07, 2010
A banker by profession, Salim Ansar has a passion for history and
historic books. His personal library already boasts a treasure trove
of over 7,000 rare and unique books. Every week, we shall take a leaf
from one such book and treat you to a little taste of history.
BOOK NAME: Grey Wolf – Mustafa Kemal Pasha
AUTHOR: H. C. Armstrong
PUBLISHER: Arthur Barker Ltd – London
DATE OF PUBLICATION: 1936
The following excerpt has been taken from Page: 241 – 242
`In the thirteenth century after Christ there came the Great L
Drought. From the Wall of China throughout all Central Asia the land
was cracked and parched for want of rain, and the tribes were on the
move searching for new pastures for their flocks. Among them were the
Osmanli Turks, whose chief, Sulyman Shah, carried on his banner the
head of the Grey Wolf.
`They were cruel and primitive, these Osmanli Turks, animal-strong
with slit eyes in flat Mongol faces. They were as brutal and
relentless as the grey wolves which hunted over the wide steppes of
the fierce countries of Central Asia. Yet they were disciplined, by
the dangers and risks of their nomad life, to rigid obedience under
their leaders.
`For centuries they had pitched their black horse-hair tents in the
Plains of Sungaria on the edge of the Gobi Desert. Forced by lack of
water and grass, Sulyman Shah led out his people and made westward.
Finding the Hordes of Tartars to his north and pressing in behind him,
he turned south, and so came, through Armenia into Asia Minor, into
Modern History.
Sulyman died and Ertoghrul reigned in his stead, and after him came
Emir Othman and Sultan Orchans, and from father to son ten generations
of sultans followed each other. Often brutal and vicious, often unjust
and bestial, they were rulers, leaders men, and generals.
`They found in front of them a world of dying empires, the decayed
Seljuk, the worn-out Arab Empire of Baghdad and of the Caliphs, and
the corrupted Byzantine. These they smashed and conquered.
`Within three hundred years of the death of Sulyman Shah, his tenth
descendant. Sultan Sulyman the Magnificent, the Law Giver, ruled with
justice and strength an immense empire which stretched from Albania on
the Adriatic coast to the Persian frontier, from Egypt to the
Caucasus. Hungary and the Crimea were his vassals. The sovereigns of
Europe came with presents asking his help in their quarrels. His
armies stood across the road to the East. His fleet sailed supreme in
all the Mediterranean. North Africa acknowledged his suzerainty.
Constantinople was his. He made one great bid for World domination. In
1580 he hammered on the gates of Vienna and seized Christendom by the
throat.
`He failed, and after him came corruption. His heir was Selim the Sot.
It was said that the royal blood changed and that Selim was a bastard
by an Armenian servant. After him, with but one exception, came
twenty-seven sultans each more degenerate than the last. The palace
harem, the pimps and eunuchs took control. Without leaders the Turks
went the way of all flesh. The steel fibre went out of them. Their
energy, hardiness and vitality disappeared. They became corrupt in
blood and morals. Their subject people revolted against them. Greece,
Serbia, Bulgaria declared their independence.
`Within three hundred years of the greatness of Sulyman the
Magnificent the Ottoman Empire lay bankrupt, decrepit and rotting.
`Convinced that it must break up, the Christian Powers pressed in
eager to grab and annex where they dared. Russia seized the Crimea and
the Caucasus, and laid claims to Constantinople and the road through
the Dardanelles into the Mediterranean. France laid hands on Syria and
Tunis. England occupied Egypt and Cyprus. The new and expanding
Germany championed the Sultan, Abdul Hamid, against the rest of
Europe, planning to annex as soon as the other rivals had been beaten
off. All the nations claimed special rights and economic privileges.
`As greedy for their meal as vultures, the Christian Powers sat
waiting for the end. Afraid of each other, preparing for the
stupendous catastrophe of the World War, they watched each other
jealously. No one Power dared rush in. And so the dying Ottoman Empire
lived on, while the Red Sultan, Abdul Hamid, from his palace on the
Bosphorus, cunningly played the nations one against the other.
`In 1877 Russia decided to make an end of all this, declared war and
advanced to within ten miles of Constantinople. Led by Disraeli at the
Congress of Berlin, the rest of Europe warned her back: the integrity
of the Ottoman Empire must be maintained.
`Four years later there was born in the town of Salonika at the head
of the Aegean Sea, of a Turk called Ali Riza and of Zubeida his wife,
a boy whom they named Mustafa.’
EXTRACT
`Mustafa Kemal had his hands almost on the absolute power at which he
aimed. In every town and village the People’s Party, his political
weapon, was getting a hold. The army was under his direct orders. His
grip was on all the machinery of state. But his real fight was still
ahead.
`To his friends he had always made it clear that he would root out
religion from Turkey. When he talked of religion, he became eloquent
and violent. Religion was for him the cold, clogging lava that held
down below its crust the naming soul of the nation. He would tear that
crust aside and release the volcanic energy of the people. It was a
poison that had rotted the body politic. He would purge the State of
that poison. Until religion was gone, he could not make of Turkey a
vigorous modern nation.
“For five hundred years these rules and theories of an Arab sheik,’
he said, `and the interpretations of generations of lazy,
good-for-nothing priests have decided the civil and the criminal law
of Turkey.’
“They had decided the form of the constitution, the details of the
lives of each Turk, his food, his hours of rising and sleeping, the
shape of his clothes, the routine of the midwife who produced his
children, what he learnt in his schools, his customs, his thoughts,
even his most intimate habits.
“Islam, this theology of an immoral Arab, is a dead thing.’ Possibly
it might have suited tribes of nomads in the desert. It was no good
for a modern progressive State.
“God’s revelation!’ There was no God. That was one of the chains by
which the priests and bad rulers bound the people down.
“A ruler who needs religion to help him rule is a weakling. No
weakling should rule.’
`And the priests! How he hated them. The lazy, unproductive priests
who ate up the sustenance of the people. He would chase them out of
their mosques and monasteries to work like men.
`Religion! He would tear religion from Turkey as one might tear the
throttling ivy away to save a young tree.
`These were his views, held with the passion and hatred of the
revolutionary. How far he could carry them out he was doubtful.
`The Turks, villagers and townsmen alike, still clung to their
religion. Religious and conservative, they disliked all change. If
roused by the priests, they became fanatical. Religion was the woof
and warp of the texture of their lives. To tear it out was to destroy
the whole fabric. If their religion was touched, would they quietly
acquiesce or would they resist?
`Mustafa Kemal was not sure. He must move with caution. When a
journalist asked him if the new Republic would have a religion, he
avoided a definite reply. In his outline of the policy of his People’s
Party he made no mention of religion. He made no public pronouncement
on the subject. He had decided that he must bide his time, hoping to
wean the people from their old allegiance.
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