786

L'Empire démembré
(Rôle du monde occulte et des gens de la Thora en terre d'Islam)
(Role of the occult world and people of the ground Torah of Islam)

La Franc Maçonnerie en Turquie
Honest Masonry in Turkey
by FLAVIEN BRENIER
Traduction - Translation
Page 2

   The year 1867 had seen the rupture of Mustapha Fazyl with the sultan and the constitution of Young person-Turkey. Abd-ul-Aziz, drawn from his somnolence by this challenge, prevails against those of entreated which it could reach:  their newspapers were removed, a certain number of high-ranking civil servants and young people affiliated to the movement were stopped, seventy other suspects were banished. But, while it accepted the war thus that the most advanced fraction of Turkish Frankly-Masonry declared to him, the sultan continued to be surrounded by FF\less compromised, such as Aali pasha, Fuad pasha and Midhat pasha, whose apparent loyalty did not repurchase the pernicious policy. He had creation to them, with large expenses, of multiple public schools (intended for répandre l' atheism in the most religious empire of the world)^[1], and a series of persecutions against the Christian populations, which ends up their putting at all the weapons with the hand;  it also had to them, thanks to the expensive ones and useless imitations of the Western institutions, the financial ruin of the empire^[2]. After having negociated ten loans in eleven years, Turkey ends, in 1875, with a partial bankruptcy, which the credit ottoman was never concerned. This œuvre from ruin completed under impérialat from Mustapha Fazyl pasha, which (like had envisaged it the Ier article of the statutes of Young person-Turkey, that we reproduce above) had made a tender connect to be able to return to Turkey, and had obtained - in 1871 - the wallet of finances.

   The year 1876 had started under funeral auspices. After Crete, Macedonia and Bulgaria, it was with the tower of Bosnia and Herzégovine to raise itself in front of vexations of the civils servant young person-Turkish. For the Young person-Turks were everywhere, and especially in the ministries, from where they had not moved for ten years (except a reaction of a few months under Mahmoud pasha).  Abd-ul-Aziz, berné, had only flashes of perspicacity. May 12, 1876, a new ministry young person-Turkish was made up, with the FF\Méhémet Ruschdi pasha, like large vizier, Hussein Avni pasha as Minister for the War, Khaïr Ullah like cheïk ul Islam, and Midhat pachacomme minister without portfolio. This last, which had succeeded as chief from there Young person-Turkey Mustapha Fazyl pasha, died the previous year, was determined to finish some with the sultan, whose fluctuations worried Frankly-Masonry.

   In fifteen days, all its provisions were taken to have the chiefs of the garrison and the administrations for a takeover by force. May 27, the sultan noted that it was retained prisonnierdans his apartments, and its ministers, which have occurred, told him the reason of it : it was necessary to abdicate immediately in favour of its nephew, the F\, prince Mourad. Three days during, Abd-ul-Aziz resisted the threats which were made to him. Lastly, the ó May, it was resigned to accept the decree of deposition signed by the cheïk ul Islam, the F\Kaïr Ullah.  One immediately transferred it to the palate from Cape Copoû, and its nephew was proclaimed under the name of Mourad V. Four days later, the deposed sultan was found died in his room, the veins cut and of small scissors ensanglantés close to him. The lawsuit of the FF\Midhat pasha, Hussein Avni pasha and Kaïr Ullah, which were judged five years later, showed that the crime had taken place by their order (Midhat pasha, Hussein Avni pasha and Kaïr Ullah were condemned to died for regicide. Abd-ul-Hamid II, then reigning, commuted their sorrow to that of the deportation with life. They died all three in exile with Taïf (Arabia)).

   At the price of a regicide, Turkish Frankly-Masonry had finally arrived at its ends : the Mourad sultan promised to be between his hands the instrument of the boldest attempts. But an event which human wisdom did not make it possible to provide upset the plans so patiently conceived : hardly proclaimed, Mourad V appeared insane. The long reclusion in the palate of Tchéragan, to which his/her uncle had condemned it, had already affected its ebullient brain ;  the events which gave him the crown completed to put it out of sound common sense. As of the first meetings of the Council which it chaired, the regicides noted with fear that they had raised with the throne a demented person.

   The situation, however, required a sultan who appeared with his people :  the war threatened of all shares. Then, like nowadays, the triumph of Young person-Turkey had given the signal of the quarry to all the covetousnesses gathered around the empire. In Bosnia, in Herzégovine, in Macedonia, in Bulgaria, in Crete, the insurrection made rage. July 3, Montenegro and Serbia had declared the war ; Romania and Russia prepared has to do as much of it. The noise of the madness of Mourad V being spread among the over-excited people, the ministers understood that a successor had to be given him.

   It was to be normally the elder one of his/her brothers, Abd-ul-Hamid, then old of thirty four trente years (34), and whose character was known little, so much the attention had concentrated on his/her Mourad brother during the reign of their uncle.  But the dictatorship exerted by Young person-Turkey was temporarily so absolute that it had not hesitated, if it could have had a presentiment of some danger in this choice, to violate the order of succession and to crown the second brother of Mourad, Méhémet-Réchad (today reigning under the name of  Mahomet V). Abd-ul-Hamid could avoid this possibility by expressing sharpest sympathy to the assassins of its uncle and their policy. It gained their confidence so well, and especially that of Midhat pasha, that the ministry solved to return as soon as possible unfortunate Mourad to its gilded prison. August 31, after three months of reign, the sultan contradicts was deposited and his/her brother seized the power under the name of Abd-ul-Hamid II.

   To be able quite dubious and of difficult exercise ! In the medium of his ministers freemasons, the new sovereign took the embarrassed form of a layman mislaid in a Cabin ; he could be there in safety only on the condition of strictly imitating the attitudes of his entourage and saying amen to all his wills.  Thus a few days after its advent it submissively signed several decrees which announced, in the administration of the empire, of the reforms being almost republican. The sultan, this khalife (vicar) of Allah, charged by him with controlling Believing them, became an invested monarch of his load "by the will of the people". And the exercise of this load was limited by the terms of a Constitution promised for the end of the year. In a word, the situation of Abd-ul-Hamid, with a ministry tyrannical and always ready with the regicide, with the interior disorders and the war at the borders, resembled enough that where had been Louis XVI in 1790.  But if Louis XVI carried out the type of this "always good" man, whose Machiavel said that the loss was ensured the medium of the perversity of the world, he was far from being thus from Abd-ul-Hamid. The conspirators of Young person-Turkey had found in him them main of policy and dissimulation.
   One realized some with the crackings which were not long in being made hear in the ministry.  Abd-ul-Hamid had care to publicly approve all radical excesses of Midhat pasha ; but at the same time it woke up concerns of the least advanced members of Young person-Turkey, and in particular of the large vizier Ruschdi pasha.  This last, not wanting to let its country slip to the Republic, protested against the Constitution purely, demagogic written by Midhat pasha. Put in minority in the ministry, it was withdrawn, and the sultan was the first to congratulate Midhat pasha on this fall, which crossed into two Turkish Frankly-Masonry.

   December 19, 1875, Midhat pasha was a large vizier ;  December 23, its Constitution was put into force;  in the current of January meets the national Assembly, which was going to become the main thing capacity of the empire. But already this precipitated organization was threatened of death.  The powers, which did not have for the regicides young person-Turkish the regards formerly testified to the sultan Abd-ul-Aziz, had summoned Midhat pasha to subject to an international conference the question of the statute of the Christians of the East. Supported on the national Assembly, and hypnotized by the memory of 1793 and Convention, Midhat pasha refused. On what, Russia declared the war.

   It was an event of an incalculable range. Since years that they had occupied the avenues of the capacity, for eight month that they were completely installed there, the Young person-Turks had not done anything to improve the military situation. As of the first moment, the distress appeared general and everyone was unanimous to make some fall down the responsibility on the ministry maconnic and Midhat pasha. Abd-ul-Hamid understood that the moment had just ceased fading. As well, the gravity of the circumstances turned all the glances towards the sultan and abruptly returned to his function all its moral authority. While proclaiming the holy war against the Russians, the sovereign thus hastened to strike his ministry a decisive blow:  February 3, 1877, Midhat pasha abruptly was relieved and exiled in the island of Mitylène. The fact passed almost unperceived in the medium of the warlike swing-low.
   Abd-ul-Hamid had care, however, not to give up immediately its attitude of constitutional monarch. While it deployed its well-known capacity for work to put Turkey on the foot of war, it left the Constitution in force and the joined together national Assembly - quite certain that the people ottoman, whose attention very whole was fixed on the war, would not attach null importance to chatterings of the Parliament. It is what arrived, indeed, and the heroic resistance opposed to the Russians and to the Roumanians by Osman pasha was, during months, the single concern of Turkey.  When fortune became bad and that the Russian army, crossing Balkans, threatened Constantinople, the national anguish would have dissipated, at the Turks, any desire of representative mode, if they had ever had of it.  Nobody paid even attention to the decision taken by Abd-ul-Hamid, February 18, 1878, to dissolve the Parliament. This one closed its doors without incident. The sultan, moreover, did not remove the Constitution which it had signed fourteen months earlier : he restricted himself to suspend the effects for an unspecified time of them.  This suspension was to last thirty years...

   We do not have to recall here the reign of Abd-ul-Hamid, on which we entirely do not share the current opinion^[3]. Undoubtedly this reign was hideous by certain sides, because of the blood which ran in the massacres of inoffensive populations like the Armenians, massacres which the sultan tolerated, if it did not encourage them;  but, by other sides, and while being placed from the purely Turkish and Moslem point of view, it did not miss size. Abd-ul-Hamid was, indeed, the true creator of the movement panislamic ; patiently, during thirty years, it wrapped the two hundred million Moslems, of Niger in China, of a network of missionnaires of the Koran, and made them accept its religious supremacy ; at the same time, by its diplomacy unceasingly in awakening, by its happy war against Greece in 1897, it raised prestige of Turkey. As for its interior policy with respect to the liberals Turkish, whom it subjected to a steady operation denouncement and of arbitrary, it is necessary, to judge it healthily, to remember the assassination of the sultan Abd-ul-Aziz and the anguishes which crossed Abd-ul-Hamid itself the shortly after its advent. At this point in time was formed its character dark and being wary, which made the amazement of all those which approached it.

   As well one thinks, the shortly after the Russo-Turkish war and of the dissolution of the Parliament, Young person-Turkey passed through a frightening crisis. As we indicated it previously (Midhat pasha, Hussein Avni pasha and Kaïr Ullah was condemned to died for regicide. Abd-ul-Hamid II, then reigning, commuted their sorrow to that of the deportation with life.  They died all three in exile with Taïf (Arabia)), Abd-ul-Hamid made stop and judge the ministers regicides. At the same time, the characters most compromised in the movement young person-Turkish were thrown in prison or were reduced to expatrier.  But, if it showed a great rigour against a party known by its plots, the sultan appears to have suspected the maconnic origins of this party.  Indeed, at any time, the maconnic Cabins existing in Turkey were not worried or were subjected to an unspecified monitoring.

   For more safety, those, moreover, had been attached to foreign obediences, so as to spare it self, if necessary, a diplomatic protection. Thus in Salonique, on four existing Cabins, two, the Cabins Macedonia Risorta and Labor and Lux, were affiliated with the Great East of Italy;  one, the Veritas cabin, adhered to the great East of France, and the last, the cabin Persevering, concerned the Great Spanish East. The cabins of Constantinople and the principal cities of the empire imitated this example.  It was not fortuitously that these affiliations had been tied.  One of the principal chiefs of current Young person-Turkey, Refik Bey, declared with a writer of Time, in an interview published on August 20, 1908, that the Cabins affiliated to the Great East of Italy had obtained from this last the promise to utilize immediately, where necessary, the Italian embassy in Constantinople.

Ouzbékistan - Samarkand

   It is under cover of this diplomatic protection that the second attack of Young person-Turkey was organized by the Cabins. Refik Bey, in the interview that we quote, recognizes readily that it was, this time still, within the Turkish Cabins that the movement occurred "We meet there as mason", says it, "because indeed a great number among us are freemasons ;  but, actually, we met there to organize us. Moreover, we chose most of our comrades in these Cabins, which were used for our Committee like screen, because of the care with which they made their investigations into the individuals" what Refik does not say, it is that this preparation of a second movement lasted more than twenty years.

   It is in 1887 that a certain number of freemasons of Constantinople solved to reconstitute Young person-Turkey. Their chief was a professor at the medical school of Constantinople, the F\IbrahimTemo Bey, native of Albania. He called upon some personal friends, freemasons like him, Doctor Cherafeddine Bey, Abdullah Djevdet Bey, Issac Sukouti Bey and Ilmet Bey. Ten of other members enlarged the Committee, which took the name of "Committee Union and Progress", and which met in the old property of F-. Midhat pasha, in the suburbs of Constantinople. Soon, the Committee made an invaluable recruit, that of Mourad Bey, professor of universal history to the faculty of Constantinople, the man of this time which had the most action on the political formation of the intellectual youth of Turkey.  The Committee radiated then on the various cities where Frankly-Masonry had Cabins and took in these last the subjects most suitable for a conspiracy.  At the same time, Doctor Ibrahim Temo Bey, yielding the presidency to Mourad Bey, left for the foreigner, where, taking again the role of Simon Deutsch in 1867, it created relations in Young person-Turkey in various countries. About 1900, the movement organizes hamidienne, was become again very powerful.

   At this point in time occurred in its centre a rather curious evolution, which will be well included/understood only those which turned their spirit towards the combinations subtle and unforeseen that the government of the secret societies comprises. The "Committee Union and primitive Progress ", which met in the villa Midhat pasha, in Constaminople, had remained the head, unknown factor, but passively obeyed, of Young person-Turkey. It happened that the police investigations contraîgnirent the majority of the members of the Committee to seek a refuge abroad ; but Ibrahim Temo Bey being fixed in Romania, Chérafeddine-Bey in Egypt, Issac Sukouti Bey in Italy, others on various points of Europe, the action of the Committee, for lack of a principal center, was paralysed. With the place of the directing grouping which dissociated thus, it promptly appeared two different, of unequal importance. One was the group of the Young person-Turks taken refuge in Paris, whose body Mécheveret, directed by Ahmed Riza Bey, drew especially the attention. The other was the new " Committee Union and Progress ", which had in its centre only some individualities coming from old, and whose seat was Salonique, Jewish city to two thirds and principal center maconnic of the East. This new committee was identified almost with the staff of the four Cabins of Salonique, Macédonia Risorta, Labor and Lux, Veritas and Persévérant.

   It is this duality of direction which made it possible to the Young person-Turks to complete their conspiracy. The police force hamidienne, indeed, narrowly supervised the taken refuge revolutionists with Pans and the entourage of Mécheveret ; but it was extremely distant to fear something of the freemasons of Salonique. Those could thus all with their ease work to be created in the administration and the army complicities necessary. One will see that they succeeded there fully. But, first of all, we should announce an interesting characteristic:  the decisive influence taken by the Jewish element in the new " Committee Union and Progress ".

   Salonique, we pointed out it, is a Jewish city;  it is to say that the Jews are in majority among the members of the four local Cabins, in which recruited the " Committee Union and Progress ". But, in addition to the orthodoxe Jews, one found there also many representatives of a sect islamo-Jewish, the "mâmins", about which the origin is curious : in XVIIe century lived in Turkey a Jew of the name of Chabbethaï, which went down from a driven out Jewish family of Spain. It was surrounded by a great veneration by its co-religionists, as well because of his talmudic science as because of this fact that one supposed his family resulting from king David. One Chabbethaï day proclaimed that he was the Messiah and counted, in little time, a significant number of partisans. The astonishment was large when one saw this Messiah converting publicly with Islamism and involving with him in his conversion the majority of his disciples.

   Chabbethaï had converted with the religion of Mahomet to only found in the centre ; of this one a sect of most curious : that of the " mâmins ", also called "donmehs". Moslem seemingly, this sect is actually Jewish, and but Jews there are hardly admitted;  its members have the obligation to marry only between them.  It seems that it proposed for goal^[4] to penetrate the Islam of the Jewish thought and the philosophical and social principles that the Jews endeavour to make triumph in all the countries^[5].