yeds. and Tunguses, all in Siberia; 6,000,000 Manchus, Mongols
and Turks, all until recently under Chinese rule; 8.200,000 Turks
in Asiatic Russia; 3,500,000 in Persia and Afghanistan; and
8,000,000 Osmanli Turks in Asia Minor. The Turks in Russia
are usually called Tatars, and those elsewhere outside the Turk-
ish Empire, Turco-Tatars. Their language is the most charac-
teristic feature of the Turanians. As contrasted with the highly
inflexional Indo-European and Semitic linguistic families on the
one hand, and the monosyllabic Chinese on the other, the Tura-
nian languages are typical examples of the agglutinative form of
speech. Here unchangeable roots are combined with suffixes by
means of what is called progressive vowel harmony, in such a way
that the vowels of the endings are assimilated to that of the root.
Thus the infinitive element mak, which appears in Osmanli Turk-
ish yaz-mak, " to write," becomes mek in sev-mek, " to love."
The Mongolians best represent the Turanian physical type. They have broad faces, small, slanting eyes, high cheek-bones, broad, flat noses, thick lips and low foreheads: their complexion is yellowish brown, their hair straight, and their beards scanty. The various branches of the Turanians have intermingled to a considerable extent, but it was only on their western con- fines that they mixed much with aliens, expecially Slavs. Thus many Finnish tribes have been absorbed by the surrounding Russians: the Magyars and the Osmanli Turks, though they have retained their Turanian speech, have lost most of their physical Turanian characteristics; while the Volga Bulgars have no trace of their original Turanian language and physique left, their name alone having survived among the Bulgarians of to-day.
The primitive religion of the Turanians is called Shamanism because its distinctive feature is the agency of the Shaman, a wizard priest, whose services are required to influence the super- natural powers. Witchcraft predominates in this religion, it be- ing the function of the Shaman to master all that in nature is hostile to man, to curb the elements, to conjure spirits, to pro- duce health or disease, fortune or misfortune. The Shamanist operates mainly against demons, but he also believes in higher gods, whom he calls to his aid by means of prayer and sacrifice. Ancestor worship is, moreover, a characteristic feature of Sha- manism. An important instrument in the rites of the Shaman is the drum, by means of which he can summon spirits, and compel them to give active assistance. Shamanism is still found in all the Asiatic branches of the Turanian family. But it is only gen- eral among the Tunguses, all the tribes of whom (except the Man- chus) are devoted to their old faith. The Samoyeds, too, are still largely Shamanists. Among the Mongols, the Buryats on Lake Baikal are the only tribe in which Shamanism prevails. Among the Turks, the old religion survives only in the tribes that remained behind in the Altai range. From the rest of the Turkish peoples it has been extirpated by Islam, though single tribes of Turkish nomads show clear traces of their original beliefs. On the other hand, the Magyars and the Finns adopted Christi- anity many centuries ago.
The very primitive stage of civilization which the Turanians had attained when they first appear in history, has remained on much the same level, with the few exceptions caused by Euro- pean contact, down to the present day. As the cultivable soil of the ancient world had already been occupied by the Chinese, the Aryans and the Semites, the Turanians, when driven by the ex- pansion of population to migrate from their ancient homes in the Altai mountains, were compelled to wander in barren steppes in order to maintain themselves. Their civilization thus acquired the stamp of nomadism, in which the isolation of small communi- ties caused by their mode of life prevented the patriarchal system of government from advancing to any higher stage of political organization. The struggle for existence naturally brought them constantly into predatory conflict with their settled and more prosperous neighbours, while boundary disputes tended to per- petual internal strife. The unsettled habits thus produced have, since the adoption of Islam by the Turkish branch, made that branch for many centuries the main cause of unrest in the history of the world, because the directing force of fanaticism has been added to their unorganized restlessness.
The above account of the various branches of the Turanians will supply the material on the basis of which the prospects of Pan-Turanianism may be judged. The movement in its wider aspect having in the years preceding the war been the product of the German-educated Intelligentsia of Constantinople, was, after Turkey joined the Central Powers, much used in support of the alliance between Turkey and Hungary on the strength of racial kinship, and as a lure for the Tatars of the Russian Empire. In the summer of 1918, Halil Pasha, an uncle of Enver Pasha, had an interview, reported in a Berlin journal in 1920, with a Ger- man commanding officer in Anatolia, to whom he expounded the aims of the Pan-Turanian movement. Placing the national policy in the foreground, he said it was necessary to unite all Turk- ish-speaking peoples. The beginning must be made with the conquest of Turkestan, the cradle of the Turkish Empire. The next step would be to establish a connexion with the Siberian Yakuts, the farthest outpost of the Turkish Turanians in the north-east of Asia. After that, the Tatars of the Caucasus were to be included. This nationally exclusive Turkish Empire must, he continued, as a Mahommedan supreme power, have a great attraction for the Turks of Afghanistan and Persia. The incor- poration of Azerbaijan, the richest Persian province, might thus be hoped for in the near future. When, on the conclusion of the war, Constantinople had been occupied by the Entente Powers, Halil Pasha was thrown into prison there by them, but, manag- ing to escape, he continued his activities in favour of a Pan-Turk- ish Empire. Enver Pasha had previously been emphasizing the Pan-Islamic policy and been using Arabs as Turcophil propa- gandists in the Caucasus. The general plan of this double pro- cedure was by fusing the religious movement of Pan-Islamism with the racial movement of Pan-Turanianism to establish a great Turkish Empire, with Constantinople as the centre of both.
Pan-Turanianism, from the point of view of practical politi- cians, does not go beyond the ideal of a Turkish Empire compris- ing all the divisions of the Turkish race, the numbers of which do not really exceed about 26,000,000. As the Ottoman Empire contains no more than 10,000,000 Turks within its present limits, the Irredentism of the Pan-Turanian movement embraces a pop- ulation of 16,000,000. Before the war, 12,000,000 of these were under Russian and 4,000,000 under Chinese, Persian and Afghan rule. At that period Russia could scarcely be regarded as a very promising field for Pan-Turanian propaganda; for generally speaking the Russian Mahommedans had been loyal, conserva- tive, and somewhat narrow in their political outlook. Had Rus- sia emerged intact from the conflict, her Turkish territory could have been wrested from her only at the price of another war, which the Ottoman Empire would hardly have been willing to face. But the whole situation has been transformed by the Russian Revolution and the consequent break-up of Russia. The Irreden- tist ambitions of Pan-Turanianism have now been brought ap- preciably nearer the possibility of realization. A warmer sympa- thy has been developed among the Russian Mahommedans with the Mahommedans abroad. Russian Turkestan and the two Khanates of Khiva and Bukhara have asserted their indepen- dence; the Tatars of the Caucasus have become republics. These new conditions might render the voluntary incorporation of all these outside Turkish populations in the Ottoman Empire not unlikely. For the important unifying elements of general identity of language, religion, and civilization, besides contiguity of terri- tory, are all present. The speech of the Turkish branch of the Turanians has changed so comparatively little that all the divi- sions may be said to speak one single language, Turkish, differing only to the extent of dialects. Islam is the religion of all the divi- sions of the Turkish branch, which, though it only adopted this religion, has been its main protagonist. The Turkish-speaking peoples, again, have a common civilization which, based on their primitive nomadism, has as its superstructure the ethics and the culture of the Koran. Finally, with the exception of the Yakuts in the north-east of Siberia, the Turkish peoples are practically in continuous geographical contact from Thrace eastward to the frontier of Mongolia and northward into south-eastern Russia. The connexion of eastern Asia Minor, by way of the Caucasus,
