Turkey

Mesopotamian Theatre.

This is divided by the railway Adana-Mosul into two halves. The northern one, in the possession of Turkey, is inhabitable and with sufficient roads. On the north it is dominated by the Armenian Taurus, standing between the Euphrates and Tigris like a snow-covered wall in face of the im mense plains of Syria and Mesopotamia. The possession of this wall between Bitlis and Kharput ensures the sally-ports from the Anatolian plateau towards Aleppo and Mosul. The southern half of this theatre includes the territory south of the railway, which is part semi-desert, part of desert and mountainous character. The territory between Birejik-Meskene-mouth of the river Kha bur to Jeziret Ibn 'Omar, is of semi-desert character, although yielding good produce. It is inhabited by nomad Arabs and Kurds.

Persian Theatre.

In its northern part it has a first-class route for movement. This is the old road from the Iranian Plateau to the Black Sea, from Tehran, through Tabriz and Bayazid, to Trebizond. The other routes are of secondary im portance and do not lead to important centres; besides, they pass often through waste land. From Tehran to Van there are two roads, the one going through Tabriz-Dilman and the other through Urmia-Bash QaPe. In a general way, this theatre has a relative importance if only for use in connection with operations from the Caucasus to Angora or from Armenia to 'Iraq. (P. DA.) Navy.—The sea power of Turkey had already decayed when the catastrophe of Sinope in 1853 shattered it completely. From time to time since then efforts have been made, generally, before the World War, with British assistance, to build up a navy, and Abd-ul-Aziz created a sizeable fleet of ironclads, built in British and French yards. But his successor, Abd-ul-Hamid, deliberately reduced the fleet to impotency, because he was afraid that it might turn on him as it had on his predecessor.

In 1910 the Turkish fleet consisted of seven armoured ships, of which the biggest were two ships of the "Torgud Reiss" class of io,000 tons, armed with six i i in. guns, originally the bat tleships "Wiesenberg" and "Worth." Except for some small gun boats and destroyers no important additions were made to the fleet before the World War. When they took refuge in the Dardanelles Turkey nominally acquired the German battle cruiser "Goeben" and light cruiser "Breslau," but in fact these ships remained German throughout the war. The "Goeben" was badly damaged and ran ashore in the Straits to save her from sinking. She was afterwards salvaged and is still in existence as the "Sultan Selim." The "Breslau" was mined and sank off Imbros.

Repeated efforts have been made by the Turks to put the "Sultan Selim" into a state of repair, but it is doubtful whether she will ever be an efficient fighting unit again. In any case she is now very obsolete compared with modern ships of her class.

The Turkish Navy of to-day (1928) consists of : 1 battleship, 2 old cruisers, 1 old battleship used as a training ship, 3 destroy ers, 6 torpedo boats and 8 miscellaneous craft.

A programme of new construction has been drawn up and it is proposed to proceed with it when funds are available. (X.) For ethnological purposes it is convenient to group together those parts of the old Ottoman empire usually known as Turkey in Asia, Armenia and Cyprus, the two latter of which formed a kingdom in mediaeval times, and have been long connected.

The racial history of this region is obscure. There are two basal stocks in the population; the oldest is probably a short, long-headed type, akin to the inhabitants of most of the Mediter ranean coastal region, and called from this fact Mediterranean. Von Luschan, on the other hand, was of opinion that the oldest inhabitants of the region were the round-headed people he called Armenoids. He found groups of these people living in endogamous communities and never marrying with the outside world. These little groups were all of a single type, and very round-headed, whereas in the normal population there is a great deal of admix ture and both types are found side by side. He argued, therefore, that these communities represented the broken relics of former aborigines who had been able to preserve their racial type by strict endogamy, while the newcomers had mixed with the aborig ines except in a few cases, and had produced a mixed type. It is true that nowhere in this region is the long-headed type found in any purity, but it seems from a general study of the Armenoid peoples that they are comparatively late comers into the west, and possibly the pure communities on which von Luschan has laid such stress have kept their purity simply by not mixing with the people of the land into which they have come. The earliest graves from this area were opened by Buxton in 1913 (Cyprus). They belong to the middle bronze age, probably the second mil lenium B.C. and already at this period the two types are mixed, or possibly at that time were living side by side. At the end of the bronze age the people practised a curious type of cranial deforma tion, flattening the tops of their heads in childhood, a practice which also appears in Crete and is probably of considerable eth nological significance. Since that time the physical form of the people has not altered materially. The principal groups of this region depend entirely on religious differences, and the practice of a certain type of religion is, or was, in most cases sufficient to determine a man's social status. The Muslims are usually con sidered to be Turks. The Christians, in general terms, are either Greeks or Armenians. There are also certain minor sects, espe cially some Crypto-Christians, who practised openly Muslim, and secretly Christian rites, but large numbers of these have now def initely decided on a single religion. There are also certain heretical sects, such as Bektash and Tadchadsky, but these peoples come under the general heading of Greeks or Turks according to whether they are heretical Christians, as in this case, or Muslims.

The social organization is largely dependent on these religious features. The Turks were at least nominally polygamous, the Christians monogamous, and the Turkish women wore the veil. The villages are governed by an elected headman, and frequently in those villages where there are both Greeks and Turks there is a headman for each religion. (For changes in law and custom under Mustafa Kemal Pasha, see The New Turkey, p. 615 et seq.)