Turkey

Turkey or the Ottoman Empire, a great Mohammedan State embracing wide areas in Eastern Europe and Western Asia, besides the province of Tripoli in North Africa, and the tributary States Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia, Bosnia and Herzegovina (under Austria), Cyprus (under Britain), Samos and Egypt (practically controlled by Britain). European Turkey (4,786), which during the last 200 years has been gradually losing territory, now comprises a narrow strip of land between the Adriatic (W.) and the Black Sea (E.), about twice the size of England; is traversed by the Dinaric Alps and Pindus Mountains, which strike southwards into Greece, while offshoots from the Balkans (q.v.) diversify the E.; climate is very variable, and is marked by high winds and extremes of cold and heat; the soil is remarkably fertile and well adapted for the cultivation of cereals, but agricultural enterprise is hampered by excessive taxation; there is abundance of the useful metals; is the only non-Christian State in Europe. Asiatic Turkey (16,000) is bounded N. by the Black Sea, S. by the Arabian Desert and the Mediterranean, E. by Persia and Transcaucasia, and W. by the Archipelago; has an area more than ten times that of Turkey in Europe, is still more mountainous, being traversed by the Taurus, Anti-Taurus, and the Lebanon ranges; is ill watered, and even the valleys of the Euphrates, Tigris, and Jordan are subject to great drought in the summer; embraces Asia Minor (q.v.), Syria (q.v.), Palestine (q.v.), and the coast strips of Arabia along the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf; chief exports are fruits, silk, cotton, wool, opium, &c. The population of the Ottoman Empire is of a most heterogeneous character, embracing Turks, Greeks, Slavs, Albanians, Armenians, Syrians, Arabs, Tartars, &c. The government is a pure despotism, and the Sultan is regarded as the Caliph or head of Islam; military service is compulsory, and the army on a war footing numbers not less than 750,000, but the navy is small; since 1847 there has been considerable improvement in education; the finances have long been mismanaged, and an annual deficit of two millions sterling is now a usual feature of the national budget; the foreign debt is upwards of 160 millions. From the 17th century onwards the once wide empire of the Turks has been gradually dwindling away. The Turks are essentially a warlike race, and commerce and art have not flourished with them. Their literature is generally lacking in virility, and is mostly imitative and devoid of national character.

Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)