Pan-Turanism

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PAN-TURANISM

T. LOTHROP STODDARD

In practical politics the vital thing is not what men really

are, but what they think they are. This simple truth, so often

overlooked, is actually of tremendous import. It gives the key

to many a riddle otherwise insoluble.

The European war is a striking case in point. That war is

very generally regarded as being one of "race." The idea certainly

lends to the struggle much of its bitterness and uncompromising

fury. And yet, from the genuine racial standpoint,

it is nothing of the kind. Ethnologists have proved conclusively

that, apart from certain palaeolithic survivals and a few historically

recent Asiatic intruders, Europe is inhabited by only

three stocks: (1) the blond, long-headed "Nordic" race, (2)

the brown, round-headed "Alpine" race, (3) the brunet, longheaded

"Mediterranean" race. These races are so dispersed

and intermingled that every European nation is built on at

least two of these stocks, while most are compounded of all three.

Strictly speaking, therefore, the present European war is not a

race-war at all, but a domestic struggle between closely knit

blood-relatives.

Now all this is known to most well-educated Europeans. And

yet it has not made the slightest difference. The reason is that,

in spite of everything. the Europeans believe that they fit into

an entirely different race-category. They think they belong

to the "Teutonic" race, the "Latin" race, the "Slav" race, or

the "Anglo-Saxon" race. The fact that these so-called "races"

simply do not exist but are really historical differentiations,

based on language and culture, which cut sublimely athwart

genuine race-lines,- all that is quite beside the point. Your

European may apprehend this intellectually, but it will have

no effect upon his conduct. In his heart of hearts he will still

believe himself a Latin, a Teuton, an Anglo-Saxon, or a Slav.

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PAN-TURANISM 13

For his blood-race he will not stir: for his thought-race he will

die. For the glory of the dolichocephalic "Nordic" or the

brachicephalic "Alpine" he will not prick his finger or wager a

groat; for the triumph of the "Teuton" or the "Slav" he will

give his last farthing and shed his heart's blood. In other words:

"Not what men really are, but what they think they are!"

Now, why all this? Why, in contemporary Europe, should

thought-race be all-powerful, while blood-race is impotent?

The reason is perfectly clear. Modern Europe's great dynamic

has been nationality. Until quite recent times "nationality"

was a distinctly intensive concept, connoting approximate identity

of culture, language and historic past. It was the logical

product of a still relatively narrow European outlook. Indeed,

it owed its very existence to the disappearance of a still narrower

outlook which had contented itself with the regional, feudal and

dialectic loyalities of the Middle Ages. But the first half of

the nineteenth century saw a still further widening of the European

outlook to a continental or even to a world horizon. At

once the early concept of nationality ceased to satisfy. Nationality

became extensive. It tended to embrace all those of kin-

(Ired speech, culture and historic tradition. Obviously a new

terminology was required. The key-word was presently discovered

"race." Hence we get that whole series of "race"-

phrases "Pan-Germanism," "Pan-Slavism," "Pan-Angleisnm,"

"Pan-Latinism," and the rest. Of course these are not racial

at all. They merely signify nationalism brought up to date.

But the European peoples, with all the fervor of the nationalist

faith that is in them, believe and proclaim them to be racial.

Hence, so far as practical politics is concerned, they are racial

and will so continue while the national dynamic endures.

This new development of nationalism (the "racial" stage as

we may call it) was at first confined to the older centres of

European civilization, but with the spread of western ideas it

presently appeared in the remotest and most unexpected quarters.

Its advent in the Balkans quickly engendered those fanatical

propagandas, "Pan-Hellenism," "Pan-Serbism," etc., which

turned that unhappy region first into a bear garden and latterly

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into a witches' sabbath. Before the close of the last century,

nationalism had patently passed into Asia. The "Young

Turk" and "Young Egyptian" movements, the "Nationalist"

stirrings in Persia and India, and the Chinese revolution, are

unmistakable signs that Asia is in the throes of the first phase of

national self-consciousness.

But of late years numerous symptoms proclaim the fact that

in Asia also the second or "racial" stage of nationalism has begun.

This is strikingly illustrated by the recent course of events

in the Mohammedan world. About a hundred years ago the

Wahabi revolt in Arabia inaugurated that vast politico-religious

movement known as the Mohammedan Revival. By the closing

decades of the nineteenth century it had reached every corner

of Islam, while a simultaneous pressure from aggressive, landhungry

Europe had given it a bitterly anti-European complexion.

Hence close observers of eastern affairs have descanted

for many years on "Pan-Islamism" and have warned us

of the impending Jihadd or "Holy War" against the European

west. And yet, in 1914, under highly exciting provocation and

extremely favorable circumstances, the Jihadd did not "come

off." Of course we are all familiar with the stock explanations

for its non-appearance, and doubtless these had their weight.

But one reason, though never mentioned, probably had a great

deal more to do with the Holy War fiasco than is generally supposed:

the dissolving effect of the new spirit of Asiatic nationalism

upon Islamic unity. Just as the gospel of nationality which

came to Europe with the Renaissance disrupted the Catholic

unity of the Middle Ages and made crusades impossible, so that

same gospel today seems to be relaxing the bonds of Islamic

solidarity and transforming the true believers into patriots first

and Moslems afterwards.

This tendency is especially evident in the recent relations of

the two chief Mohammedan peoples of the Ottoman empire,

the Turks and the Arabs. Arab and Turk have never gotten

on really well together. Their racial temperaments were too

incompatible for that. Still, in former times their common

Islainic faith and their common contempt and hatred of the

PAN-TURANISM 15

infidel united them against the Christian world, whatever the

state of their domestic relations. But throughout the present

century ominous signs of disruption have been in evidence. In

the two portions of the Arab world most open to western ideas

(Syria and Egypt), Arab nationalist movements appeared years

ago, and the leaven has since been permeating the whole Arab

world. In great part these movements have been specifically

directed against the menace of European domination, but they

are also self-consciously nationalist and as such hostile to the

ruling Turk. Indeed, within the last few years, Arab nationalism

seems to have reached the "racial" stage. Many of its

leaders today dream of a great Arab Empire, embracing not

only the ethnically Arab peninsula homeland, Syria, Mesopotamia

and Egypt, but also all the Arabized races of North Africa

and the Sudan. With such a temper it is not surprising that

the call to the "Holy War" from Turkish Stambul in November,

1914, found the Arab world half-hearted or cold. It also

does much to explain the recent revolt of the Shereef of Mecca

which today threatens Turkish rule throughout Arabia with

complete destruction.

This rapid growth of Arab national consciousness was undoubtedly

stimulated by the hostile reaction of the corresponding development

which had been taking place in the Turkish world.

We all remember the startling growth of "Young Turkey," the

amazing transformation of the Ottomans from old-fashioned

Moslems docilely submissive to the absolute sultan-caliph into

self-conscious patriots eager to replace the theocratic despotism

of Abdul-Hamid by an Ottoman national state with the Turkish

language and culture supreme over and absorbing all the rest.

That is merely the familiar nationalist "first stage." But we

should also note that Turkish nationalism, like Arab nationalism,

has already reached the second or "racial" stage of development.

In fact, its growth has here been truly extraordinary.

It has already passed the bounds of what might strictly be

termed "Pan-Turkism" and has now arrived at the truly momentous

concept known as "Pan-Turanism."

The Ottoman Turks do not stand racially alone in the world.

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Right across northern Europe and Asia, from the Baltic to the

Pacific and from the Mediterranean to the Arctic Ocean, there

stretches a vast band of peoples to whom ethnologists have assigned

the name of "Uralo-Altaic race." but who are more

generally termed "Turanians." This group embraces the most

widely scattered folk-the Ottoman Turks of Constantinople

and Anatolia, the Turcomans of Central Asia and Persia, the

Tartars of South Russia and Transcaucasia, the Magyars of

Hungary, the Finns of Finland and the Baltic provinces, the

aboriginal tribes of Siberia, and even the distant Mongols and

Manchus. Diverse though they are in culture, tradition, and

even physical appearance, these peoples nevertheless possess

certain well-marked traits in common. Their languages are all

similar, and, what is of even more import, their physical and

mental make-up displays undoubted affinities. They are all

noted for great physical vitality combined with unusual toughness

of nerve-fibres. Though somewhat deficient in imagination

and creative artistic sense they are richly endowed with

patience, tenacity and dogged energy. Most of them have displayed

extraordinary military capacity together with a no less

remarkable aptitude for the masterful handling of subject

peoples. The Turanians have certainly been the greatest conquerors

and empire-builders that the world has ever seen.

Attila and his Huns, Arpad and his Magyars, Isperich and his

Bulgars, Alp Arslan and his Seljuks, Ertogrul and his Ottomans,

Genghis Khan and Tamerlane with their "inflexible" Mongol

hordes, Baber in India, even Kubilai Khan and Nurhachu in

far-off Cathay: the type is ever the same. The hoof-print of

the Turanian "man on horseback" is stamped deep all over the

palimpsest of history.

Glorious or sinister according to the point of view, Turan's is

certainly a wondrous past. Of course one may query whether

these diverse peoples really do form one genuine race. But, as

we have already seen, that makes no practical difference. Possessed

of kindred tongues and temperaments and dowered with

such a wealth of soul-stirring tradition, it would suffice for them

to think themselves racially one to form a nationalist dynamic

of truly appalling potency.

PAN-TURANISM 17

Until about a generation ago, it is true, no signs of such a

movement were visible. Not only were distant stocks like Magyars

and Finns quite unaware of any common Turanian bond,

but even obvious kindred like Turks and Turcomans regarded

one another with almost complete indifference. It was the

labors of western ethnologists that first cleared away the mists

which enshrouded Turan. Particularly was this true of the

Hungarian ethnological school. The Magyars, though deeply

permeated by western culture, have never forgotten their

Asiatic origin and have always felt rather lonely in the midst

of Aryan Europe. This feeling was naturally intensified by the

nationalist waves which swept over Europe during the nineteenth

century, emphasizing as these did ethnic differences and

sharpening existing lines of cleavage between the peoples.

Accordingly the Magyars instinctively turned to seek out their

long lost kindred, and the researches of Hungarian scholars,

particularly those of the great orientalist Arminius Vambery,

presently disclosed the unexpected vastness of the Turanian

world.

This soon acquired a much more than local significance. The

works of Vambery and his colleague spread far and wide through

Turan and were there devoured by receptive minds already

stirring to the obscure breath of a new time. The normality

of the Turanian movement is shown by its simultaneous appearance

at such widely sundered points as Turkish Constantinople

and the Tartar centers along the Russian Volga. Indeed, if anything,

the leaven began its working on the Volga sooner than on

the Bosporus. This Tartar revival, though almost unknown to

the west, is one of the most extraordinary phenomena in all

nationalist history. These Russian Tartars, once lords of the

land, though long since fallen from their high estate, have never

vanished in the Slav ocean. Although many of them have been

four hundred years under Muscovite rule they have stubbornly

maintained their religious, racial and cultural identity. Clustered

thickly along the Volga, especially at Kazan and Astrakhan,

retaining much of the Crimea, and forming a considerable

minority in Transcaucasia, the Tartars constitute distinct

enclaves in the Slav empire, widely scattered but indomitable.

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The first stirrings of national self-consciousness among the

Russian Tartars appeared as far back as 1895, and from then on

the movement grew with astonishing rapidity. The removal of

governmental restrictions at the time of the Russian revolution

of 1904 was followed by a regular literary florescence. Streams

of books and pamphlets, numerous newspapers and a solid periodical

press, all attested the vigor and fecundity of the Tartar revival.

The high economic level of the Russian Tartars assured

the material sinews of war. The Tartar oil millionaires of Baku

here played a conspicuous rble, freely opening their capacious

purses for the good of the cause. The Russian Tartars also

showed distinct political ability and soon gained the confidence

of their Turcoman cousins in Russian Central Asia. The first

Duma showed a large Mohammedan group so enterprising in

spirit and so skillfully led that Russian public opinion became

genuinely uneasy and Tartar influence in Russian parliamentary

life was thereafter diminished by summary curtailments of

Mohammedan representation.

Although the Mohammedans of Transcaucasia have displayed

unmistakable signs of fanaticism, the Tartars of European

Russia, scattered enclaves as they are amid the vast bulk of

Muscovite Slavism, carefully refrain from any overt exhibition

of separatism or disloyalty. Nevertheless, many earnest spirits

have gone forth to seek a freer and more fruitful field of labor in

Turkish Stambul where the Russian Tartars have played a great

part in the Pan-Turanian development within the Ottoman

Empire. In fact, it was a Volga Tartar, Yusuf Bey Akchura

Oglu, who was the real founder of the first Pan-Turanian circle

at Constantinople.

Up to the Young-Turk revolution of 1908, Pan-Turanism

was somewhat under a cloud at Stambul. Abdul-Hamid had an

instinctive aversion to all national movements. He pinned his

faith on Pan-Islamism, and furthermore was much under Arab

influence. Accordingly, the Pan-Turanians, while not actually

persecuted, were decidedly out of favor. With the advent of

Young-Turk nationalism to power, however, all was changed.

The Ottomnanizing leaders of the Committee of Union and

PAN-TURANISM 19

Progress listened eagerly to Pan-Turanian preaching, and it is

safe to say that all the chief men among the Young Turks have

been for years affiliated with the Pan-Turanians. The present

Pan-Turanian leader is the able publicist Ahmed Bey Agayeff;

also, be it noted, a Russian Tartar. His well-edited organ,

Turk Yurdu (Turkish Home), penetrates to every corner of the

Turco-Tartar world and exercises great influence on the development

of its public opinion.

Although leaders like Ahmed Bey Agayeff have long seen the

entire Turanian world from Finland to Manchuria as a potential

whole, their practical efforts were until very recently confined

to the closely related Turco-Tartar segment; that is, to the Ottomans

of Turkey, the Tartars of Russia, and the Turcomans of

Central Asia and Persia. Since all these people were also Mohammedans,

it follows that this propaganda had a religious as

well as racial complexion, trending indeed in many respects

towards Pan-Islamnism. In fact, even disregarding the religious

factor, we may say that, though Pan-Turanian in theory, the

movement was at that time in practice little more than "Pan-

Turkism."

It was the second Balkan war of 1913 which really precipitated

full-fledged Pan-Turanism. That war brought a new recruit

into the Turanian camp-Bulgaria. The Bulgarians have

until yesterday been classed as Slavs. They are in reality of

mixed origin. The primitive Bulgars were a Turanian tribe

who, away back in the Dark Ages, conquered the unorganized

Slavic hordes, recently migrated south of the Danube, and settled

down as masters. Unlike their cousins the Magyars, these old

Bulgarians were absorbed by their more numerous subjects,

losing their speech and racial identity. But, like most Turanian

stocks, the blood was a potent one, for they left behind them far

more than their name. The resulting amalgam was stamped

with marked Turanian physical and mental characteristics which

set the new Bulgarians quite apart in the category of "Slav"

peoples. This fact came out strongly after the Russo-Turkish

war of 1877. Russia; having freed the Bulgars from the Turkish

yoke, expected them to become a mere Pan-Slav outpost, the

20 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW

docile exponent of Russia's Balkan will. Russia was soon bitterly

undeceived. From the very hour of their liberation the

Bulgarians displayed an intense and aggressive particularism,

and showed themselves emphatically Bulgars first and Slavs a

long way afterwards. When sharply reminded of their "duty"

to Pan-Slavism, the Bulgarians answered tartly that they did

not care a fig for Pan-Slavism except in so far as Pan-Slavism

coincided with Bulgarian national interest. Thereupon Russia,

deeply incensed, transferred her favor to the Serbs, a people

with a strong Slav consciousness and hence amenable to Russia's

Pan-Slav policy. But this merely widened the breach with

the Bulgars, who now turned away from their former protector

and sought support from Russia's Balkan rival. Austria-Hungary.

The ulcerating humiliations of the second Balkan war

at the hands of the hated Serbs with Russia's undisguised approval

snapped the last links with the historic past and threw

the Bulgars full into the arms of the Teutonic Powers and their

Turkish ally. The manner of Bulgaria's entrance into the present

war was thus practically a foregone conclusion.

But this chapter of European politics had in it much more than

mere political significance. "Call us Huns, Turks, Tartars, but

not Slavs!" exclaimed a Bulgarian leader immediately after the

signing of the disastrous Treaty of Bucharest. The subsequent

course of events proves that this trenchant phrase was a true

reflection of Bulgarian public opinion. A few months later came

the reconciliation with the hereditary Turkish enemy. This was

not the abnormal volte face which might at first sight appear.

Even before the Balkan wars many Young-Turks had favorably

distinguished the Bulgars from the other Balkan peoples, while

Pan-Turanian publicists had hailed this folk as " Slavized Turanians."

The nightmare of Bucharest now brought the Bulgarians

into a similar frame of mind. What happened was, in fact,

merely a shifting of balance in the national psychology. Hitherto,

latent Turanian tendencies had been submerged or inhibited

by a dominant Slav consciousness. Now the scales

swung the other way, and emphasis began to be laid on Turanism.

It is apparently not too much to say that since their entrance

PAN-TURANISM 21

into the European war the Bulgars have formally renounced

Slavism and have embraced the Turanian ethnic gospel.

This fraternization with their southern neighbors was powerfully

aided by the influence of another Turanian people to the

north. The Magyars, as we have seen, had long been conscious

of their kinship with the Turks. The evil memories of Ottoman

conquest had quite died away, and throughout the nineteenth

century Magyar opinion was increasingly Turcophil.

After the suppression of the Hungarian revolution in 1849 it

was to Turkey that Louis Kossuth and the other Hungarian

leaders fled, and the warm welcome and resolute protection there

accorded them greatly strengthened the ties of sympathy between

the two peoples. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877

Hungary was violently pro-Turkish, and a magnificent sword of

honor then presented by the Magyars to the Sultan aroused

comment throughout Europe. The labors of Magyar publicists

and statesmen have had a great deal to do with the present

Turco-Bulgar intimacy.

The political potentialities of the rapprochement between these

three contiguous peoples are truly extraordinary. Should this

rapprochement prove lasting we shall witness the erection of a

solid block, stretching from the middle Danube to Mesopotamia,

bound together by that most solid of bonds, racial self-consciousness.

And there is no inherent reason why it should not be

lasting. The group has a common deadly enemy-Russia,

whose triumph would doom all of its members to virtual subjugation.

Should the present plans for a great Central European

Zollverein mature, the tie of self-preservation will be powerfully

supplemented by that of economic interdependence. And

then, what a revolution in traditional ideas and old political

preconceptions. Imagine the effects of Bulgarians ceasing to

think of themselves as Slavs, Magyars as Western Europeans,

Turks as primarily True Believers; but instead, all three considering

themselves fellow-Turanians.

To Russia especially the prospect is full of ill-omen. The

Volga region and the Crimea are, as we have seen, dotted with

Tartar enclaves, nearly 5,000,000 strong. In Transcaucasia are

22 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW

2,000,000 more. In Russian Central Asia (not to mention Chinese

Turkestan), stands a compact block of 7,000,000 fanatical

Turcomans. All these peoples are today consciously stirring to

the leaven of Pan-Turanism. But Russia contains many other

Turanian elements-the Finns of Finland and the Baltic provinces,

the unassimilated Finnish tribes of the Russian North,

the natives of Siberia, and in the Far East the Mongols and the

Manchus. Indeed, the Russian people itself is largely an ethnic

compost sprung from the union of Slav colonists with indigenous

Finnish peoples. In fact, from a certain point of view, the whole

Russian Empire may be conceived as a Slav alluvium laid with

varying thickness over a Turanian sub-soil. Granting for the

sake of argument that the Finnish and Mongol elements will

never awaken to a Turanian race-consciousness, the presence

in both European and Asiatic Russia of so many Turco-Tartar

" Turania irredenta" may yet raise new political and ethnic problems

which will tax Russian statesmanship to the full.

Pan-Turanian thinkers have assuredly evolved a body of doctrine

which should appeal powerfully to Turanian psychology.

Their hopes for the race-future are certainly grandiose enough.

Emphasizing as they do the great virility and nerve-force everywhere

patent in Turanian stocks, these men see in Turan the

dominant race of the morrow. Zealous students of western evolutionisnm

and ethnology, they have evolved their own special

theory of race grandeur and decadence. According to Pan-

Turanian teaching, the historic peoples of Southern Asia-Persians,

Egyptians and Hindus-are hopelessly degenerate. As

for the Europeans, they have recently passed their apogee, and,

exhausted by the consuming fires of modern industrialism, are

already entering upon their decline. It is the Turanians, with

their inherent virility and steady nerves unspoiled by the wearand-

tear of western civilization, who must be the great dynamic

of the future. Some Pan-Turanian thinkers go so far as to proclaim

that it is the sacred mission of their race to revitalize a

whole senescent, worn-out world by the saving infusion of

regenerative Turanian blood.

PAN-TURANISM 23

Now most westerners will probably see in all this merely

the wild figments of a disordered imagination. And, of course,

Pan-Turanism may vanish like the mirage of the desert, leaving

not a wrack behind. But, considered soberly and dispassionately

in the light of historic precedent, dare any one assert dogmatically

that it will thus end? Before Mohammed the countless

tribes of Arabia, notoriously the "Jackals of the East,"

had vegetated from time immemorial in anarchic obscurity.

Kindled by Islam's Promethean spark, they swept like a roaring

forest fire over half the earth. There are men still living

who saw in youth a Germany so rent by particularistic strife

that they would have deemed a madman him who should then

have foretold the mighty Germany of 1914, stung to action by the

most grandiose vision of power and glory since Imperial Rome.

Others may object that, whatever Pan-Turanism's latent possibilities,

they are wholly dependent upon the outcome of the

present war. But is even this a certainty? For some movements

the ringing of disaster's hammer upon the anvil of humiliation

is the very thing needed to forge them into tempered steel.

It was the Napoleonic despotism which engendered modern

Germany. It was the Austrian "whitecoat" who fashioned

modern Italy. It is the present war which is apparently welding

into being a genuine "British Empire."

Turan's destiny is today close-veiled from the eyes of men.

But so tremendous are its latent potencies that they well deserve

our close consideration. One thing is sure: even a partial realization

of those grandiose dreams would shake the fabric of the

present world.