Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 6th November 1909 — No.18
Facts and Opinions
The Growth of Turkey
The article on young Turkey and its military strength, extracted in our columns this week from the Indian Daily News, is one of great interest.
Behind the deprecation of Turkish Chauvinism and Militarism we hear the first note of European alarm at the rise of a second Asiatic Power able to strike as well as to defend its honour and integrity against European aggression.
The fact that it is the army in Turkey which stands for free institutions, is the greatest guarantee that could be given of the permanence of the new Turkey, for it assures a time of internal quiet while the country goes through the delicate and dangerous process of readjusting its whole machinery and ways of public thought and action from the habits of an irresponsible autocratic administration to those which suit free institutions and democratic ideas.
No doubt, the support of the army veils a Dictatorship.
But that is an inevitable stage in a great and sudden transition of this kind, and suits Asiatic countries, however perilous it may have been in other times to European countries when men could not be trusted not to misuse power for their own purposes to the detriment of their country.
In Europe the present high standard of public spirit, duty and honour was the slow creation of free institutions.
To Asiatics, not yet corrupted, as many of us in India have been, by the worst part of European individualism and an 
unnatural education divorced from morality and patriotism, a high standard of public spirit, duty and honour comes with the first awakenings of a freer life; for the Asiatic discipline has always been largely one of self-effacement, the subordination of the individual to a community and the scrupulous adhesion to principle at the cost of personal predilection and happiness.
As in Turkey now, so in Japan, it was a few strong men who, winning control of the country by the strength of great ideas backed by the sword, right supported by might, held the land safe and quiet while they revolutionised the ideas and institutions of the whole nation, forged a strength by sea and land no enemy could despise and secured from the gratitude of their race for their wisdom, selflessness and high nobility of purpose that implicit following which at first they compelled by force.
The complaint that the young Turks ignore the necessity of civil reorganisation, commerce and education is a complaint without wisdom, if not without knowledge.
The circumstances of Turkey demand that the first attention of her statesmen should be given to military and naval efficiency.
The Revolution plucked her from the verge of an abyss of disintegration.
The desperate diplomacy and cunning of Sultan Abdul Hamid had stayed her long on that verge, but she was beginning to slip slowly over when the stronger hand of Mahmud Shevket Pasha seized her and drew her back.
Even so, the deposition of the cunning and skilful diplomatist of Yildiz Palace might have been the signal for a general spoliation of Turkey.
Austria began a rush for the Balkans, Greece tried to hurry a crisis in Crete.
The shaking of the Turkish sword in the face of the Greek and the rapid and efficient reorganisation of army and navy against Europe were both vitally necessary to the safety of the Empire.
They were the calculated steps not of Chauvinism but of a defensive statesmanship.