Obshchestva po centralnoy Asiya, 1893–1895 (St Petersburg, 1897, &c.); V. I. Roborovsky, Trudy Tibetskoi Ekspeditsiy, 1889–1890; K. Bogdanovich, Geologicheskiya Isledovaniya v. Vostochnom Turkestane and Trudy Tibetskoy Ekspeditsiy, 1889–1890 (St Petersburg, 1891–1892); V. A. Obruchev, Centralnaya Asiya, Severniy Kitai i Nan-schan, 1892–1894 (2 vols., St Petersburg, 1899–1901); A. N. Kuropatkin, Kashgaria (Eng. trans., London, 1883); and P. W. Church, Chinese Turkestan with Caravan and Rifle (London, 1901). For the archaeological discoveries, see the books of Sven Hedin already quoted; M. A. Stein, The Sand-buried Cities of Khotan (London, 1903), and Geographical Journal (London, July and Sept., 1909); and D. A. Klements and W. Radlov, Nachrichten über die von der k. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu St Petersburg im Jahre 1898 ausgerüsteten Expedition (St Petersburg, 1899). Consult also books cited under Tian-shan, Lop-nor, Gobi and Kuen-lun.
(J. T. Be.; P. A. K.)
TURKESTAN, or Hazret, a town of Russian Turkestan, in
the province of Syr-darya, on the railway from Orenburg to
Tashkent, from which it lies 165 m. to the N.N.W. Pop. (1897),
11,592. It lies on the right bank of the Syr-darya river, 20 m.
from it, at an altitude of 833 ft. It has a very old mosque of the
saint Hazret-Yassavi, which attracts many pilgrims. It is an
important dépôt for hides, wool and other produce of
cattle-breeding. The town was captured by the Russians in 1864.
TURKEY. The Turkish or Ottoman Empire comprises Turkey
in Europe, Turkey in Asia, and the vilayets of Tripoli and Barca,
or Bengazi, in North Africa; and in addition to those provinces
under immediate Turkish rule, it embraces also certain tributary
states and certain others under foreign administration. Turkey
in Europe, occupying the central portion of the Balkan Peninsula,
lies between 38° 46′ and 42° 50′ N. and 19° 20′ and 29° 10′ E.
It is bounded on the N.W. by Montenegro and Bosnia, on the
N. by Servia and Bulgaria, on the E. by the Black Sea and the
Bosporus, on the S. by the Sea of Marmora, the Dardanelles,
the Aegean Sea and Greece, and on the W. by the Ionian and
Adriatic Seas. Turkey in Asia, fronting Turkey in Europe to
the south-east, and lying between 28° and 41° N. and 25° and 48° E.,
is bounded on the N. by the Black Sea, on the N.W. by the
Bosporus, the Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles, on the W.
by the Aegean Sea, on the E. by Persia and Transcaucasia, and
on the S. by Arabia and the Mediterranean. So far as
geographical description is concerned, the separate articles on
Asia Minor,
Albania,
Armenia, and other areas mentioned
below—constituting the Turkish Empire—may
be consulted. (For maps
of Asiatic Turkey, see Arabia;
Armenia; Asia Minor;
Palestine; Syria.)
The possessions of the sultan in Europe now consist of a strip of territory stretching continuously across the Balkan Peninsula from the Bosporus to the Adriatic (29° 10′ to 19° 20′ E.), and lying in the east mainly between 40° and 42° and in the west between 39° and 43° N. It corresponded roughly to ancient Thrace, Macedonia with Chalcidice, Epirus and a large part of Illyria, constituting the present administrative divisions of Stambul (Constantinople, including a small strip of the opposite Asiatic coast), Edirne (Adrianople), Salonica with Kossovo (Macedonia), Iannina (parts of Epirus and Thessaly), Shkodra (Scutari or upper Albania). To these must be added the Turkish islands in the Aegean usually reckoned to Europe, that is, Thasos, Samothrace, Imbros and, in the extreme south, Crete or Candia. In December 1898, however, Crete was granted practical independence, under the protection of Great Britain, France, Italy and Russia (see Crete), and the suzerainty of the sultan is purely nominal.
Asiatic Turkey.—The mainstay of the Ottoman dynasty is the Asiatic portion of the empire, where the Mahommedan religion is absolutely predominant, and where the naturally vigorous and robust Turki race forms in Asia Minor a compact mass of many millions, far outnumbering any other single ethnical element and probably equalling all taken collectively. Here also, with the unimportant exception of the islands of Samos and Cyprus and the somewhat privileged district of Lebanon, all the Turkish possessions constitute vilayets directly controlled by the Porte. They comprise the geographically distinct regions of the Anatolian plateau (Asia Minor), the Armenian and Kurdish highlands, the Mesopotamian lowlands, the hilly and partly mountainous territory of Syria and Palestine and the coast lands of west and north-east Arabia. Asiatic Turkey is conterminous on the east with Russia and Persia; in the south-west it encloses on the west, north and north-east the independent part of Arabia. Towards Egypt the frontier is a line drawn from Akaba at the head of the Gulf of Akaba north-westwards to the little port of El Arish on the Mediterranean. Elsewhere Asiatic Turkey enjoys the advantage of a sea frontage, being washed in the north-west and west by the Euxine, Aegean and Mediterranean, in the south-west by the Red Sea, and in the south-east by the Persian Gulf.
Turkey’s Arabian possessions comprise, besides El-Hasa on the Persian Gulf, the low-lying, hot and insalubrious Tehama and the south-western highlands (vilayets of Hejaz and Yemen) stretching continuously along the east side of the Red Sea, and including the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
African Territories.—Turkey in Africa has gradually been reduced to Tripoli and Barca. Egypt, though nominally under Turkish suzerainty, has formed a practically independent principality since 1841, and has been de facto under British protection since 1881.
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Population.—The total population of the Turkish Empire in 1910, including Egypt and other regions nominally under the sultan’s suzerainty, was 36,323,539, averaging 25 to the square mile; in the provinces directly under Turkish government, 25,926,000.
The following towns have over 50,000 inhabitants each: Constantinople, 1,150,000; Smyrna, 250,000; Bagdad, 145,000; Damascus, 145,000; Aleppo, 122,000; Beirut, 118,000; Adrianople, 81,000; Brusa, 76,000; Jerusalem, 56,000; Caesarea Mazaca (Kaisarieh), 72,000; Kerbela, 65,000; Monastir, 53,000; Mosul, 61,000; Mecca, 60,000; Horns, 60,000; Sana, 58,000; Urfa, 55,000; and Marash, 52,000.
Race and Religion.—Exact statistics are not available as
regards either race or religion. The Osmanlis or Turks (q.v.) are supposed to number some 10 millions, of whom 112 million belong to Turkey in Europe. Of the Semitic races the Arabs—over whom, however, the Turkish rule is little more than nominal—number some 7 millions, and in addition to about 300,000 Jews there is a large number of Syrians. Of the Aryan races the Slavs—Serbs, Bulgarians, Pomaks and Cossacks—and the Greeks predominate, the other representatives being chiefly Albanians and Kurds. The proportion borne to one another by the different religions, as estimated in 1910, is: 50% Mussulman, 41% Orthodox, 6% Catholic, 3% all others (Jews, Druses, Nestorians, &c.). In the European provinces about two-thirds of the population are Christian and one-third Mahommedan. Full and fairly accurate statistics are available for a considerable portion of Asiatic Turkey. Out of a population of 13,241,000 (1896) in Armenia, Kurdistan and Asia Minor, 10,030,000 were returned as Mahommedans, 1,144,000 as Armenians, 1,818,000 as other Christians, and 249,000 as Jews. There are also about 300,000 Druses and about 200,000 Gipsies. The non-Mussulman population is divided into millets, or religious communities, which are allowed the free exercise of their religion and the control of their own monasteries, schools and hospitals. The communities now recognized are the Latin (or Catholic), Greek (or Orthodox), Armenian Catholic, Armenian Gregorians, Syrian, and United Chaldee, Maronite, Protestant and Jewish. The table on the following pagebelow, for which the writer is indebted to the kindness of Carolidi Effendi, formerly professor of history in the university of Athens, and in 1910 deputy for Smyrna in the Turkish parliament, shows the various races of the Ottoman Empire, the regions which they inhabit, and the religions which they profess.
Administration.—Until the revolution of 1908, with a very short interval at the beginning of the reign (1876) of the deposed sultan Abd-ul-Hamid, the government of Turkey had been essentially a theocratic absolute monarchy. It was subject to the direct personal control of the sultan, who was himself a temporal autocrat, which he now is not, and the most generally recognized caliph, that is, “successor,” of the Prophet, and consequently the spiritual head of by far the greater portion of the Moslem world—as he still is. Owing principally to the fact that the system of the caliph Omar came to be treated as an immutable dogma which was clearly not intended by its originator, and to the peculiar relations which developed therefrom between the Mussulman Turkish conquerors and the peoples (principally Christian) which fell under their sway, no such thing as an Ottoman nation has ever been created. It has been a juxtaposition of separate and generally hostile peoples in territories bound under one rule by the military sway of a dominant race. Various endeavours have been made since the time of Selim III. (1789–1807), who initiated them, to break down the barriers to the formation of a homogeneous nation. The most earnest and
