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.
12
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
14 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW
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.
16 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW
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.
18 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW
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.