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No. 12 | Vienna, 23 March 1900. | Fourth Year

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Jewish Immigration into Turkey.

By O. Erter.

A friendly report comes from Constantinople. An Irade of the Sultan permits the Jews of Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia to immigrate into Turkey upon the same conditions as the Mussulmans.

This is an act of the Sultan's of great statecraft, which we would duly extol. But it has also a deeply human significance, and in that we may rejoice from the heart.

Let us consider first what is human in the Sultan's resolve, and what may work as a true deliverance. The fate of the Jews in Roumania is lamentable, that of the Jews in Bulgaria not enviable. The Roumanian Jew is a stranger upon the soil on which he is born, even though he can look back upon generations of forefathers who were already settled in Roumania. What this signifies for his condition of life has very often been witnessed with a shudder. He is homeless, and that means to be without protection. His property is unstable, his capacity for gaining a livelihood fettered, his personal security unwarranted. When, as at this very moment once again, the two contending political parties descend into the street to jostle one another with demonstrations and riots, the Jew is not sure of his life, for no law protects him. The Jews in Roumania are among the most unfortunate upon the globe. And in Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia it is not granted them to spin silk either. The political development in Bulgaria is uncertain and turbulent, the financial condition pitiable, the character of the people but little qualified for tolerance.

Now the Sultan's Irade opens to the Jews in Eastern Roumelia and Bulgaria the possibility of finding a refuge in the Turkish Empire. It places their immigration under the same conditions as the immigration of the Mussulmans. In Turkey there is no anti-Semitism. In Turkey the Jews have at all times been granted air and light, at the least for material development. It is not against the Jews, but against the Slavonic Christians, in whose name Europe pressed Turkey so sorely, that the Mussulman has been driven into harsh antagonism. If henceforward the unhappy Jews of Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia are permitted to seek refuge in the Turkish Empire, their lot will be bettered. The Turkish Jews in Salonica, in Constantinople, in Smyrna are good examples, after whom the Jewish immigrants from Bulgaria may strive, and in whom they may win the firm support of kinship of blood. To their industry, to their advance in well-being and in the overcoming of the bare necessities of life, no barrier will be set.

Whether humanity gave the decisive impulse to the Sultan's resolve, upon that we make no reflections. To us it is naturally the thing that predominates. We have felt the misery of the Balkan Jews so heavily that we greet its alleviation as a ray of light which illumines our own path. But we do not fail to perceive that the Sultan's resolve is prompted by great statecraft. Turkey has necessary need of an influx of industrious human material which, without forming a destructive element in the State, is fitted rather to be for it an economic element, an element multiplying its goods. The old Turk is honest, guileless, upright, but he is not mobile and stirring, as trade and traffic require. Turkey too cannot in our age persist in the lethargic seclusion of earlier epochs. The more liberally she facilitates Jewish immigration, the more surely does she strengthen, as against the revolutionary Slavonic and Armenian elements, the foundations of her own existence. The Sultan may count upon the gratitude of the Jewish immigrants.

In order to measure the political import of the act by which the Sultan makes possible the immigration of the Jews from Bulgaria into Turkey upon the same conditions as the Mussulmans, it is useful to consider the momentary situation of