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Darwin´s Enmity Towards the Turks
The most important target British colonialism set itself towards the end of the 19th century was the Ottoman Empire.
At that period the Ottoman state ruled a huge area from Yemen to Bosnia-Herzegovina. But by now it was finding it hard to control this area which it had managed in peace, calm, and stability. Christian minorities were beginning to rise up in the name of independence, and such great military powers as Russia were beginning to threaten the Ottomans.
In the last quarter of the century Britain and France joined the powers which were threatening the Ottomans. Britain particularly set its eyes on the Ottomans´ southern provinces. The Berlin Agreement, signed in 1878, is an expression of the European colonialists´ decision to divide up the Ottoman territories. Five years later, in 1882, Britain occupied Egypt, which was an Ottoman territory. British colonialism set about its plans to later take over the Ottoman territories in the Middle East.
As always, Britain based these colonialist policies on racism. The British government deliberately tried to portray the Turkish nation, the basic element of the Ottomans, and particularly the Ottoman state, as a so-called "backward" people.
British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone openly said that the Turks are examples of mankind´s non-humans, and for the sake of their civilisation, they must be pushed back to the Asian steppes and eliminated from Anatolia.23
These, and words like them, were for decades used by the British government as a propaganda tool directed against the Ottomans. Britain tried to portray the Turkish nation as a backward nation that had to bow its head to more advanced European races.
The so-called "scientific basis" for this propaganda was Charles Darwin!
Darwin´s comments regarding the Turkish nation appeared in the book The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, published in 1888. Darwin proposed that by eliminating the "backward races" natural selection would play a role in the development of civilisation, and later said these exact words about the Turkish nation:
I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilization than you seem inclined to admit. Remember what risk the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is! The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world.24
This nonsense of Darwin´s was a written propaganda tool to give support to Britain´s policy of destroying the Ottoman Empire. And in fact this propaganda tool was an effective one. Darwin´s words to the effect that "The Turkish nation will soon disappear, this is a law of evolution" gave a so-called scientific support to Britain´s propaganda directed at creating enmity towards the Turks.
Britain´s desire to bring about Darwin´s prophecy basically came to life in the First World War. This giant war, which began in 1914, was born of conflicts of interest between Germany and Austria-Hungary on the one side, and the allies Britain, France, and Russia on the other. But one of the most important calculations within this war was the aim of destroying and dividing up the Ottoman Empire.
Britain attacked the Ottoman Empire from two separate directions. The first was the Canal, Palestine, and Iraq fronts, opened with the intention of taking the Ottoman territories in the Middle East. The second was the Gallipoli front, scene of one of the bloodiest battles of the First World War. The Turkish Army at Çanakkale fought heroically and lost 250,000 men to resist the enemy forces mustered by the British. As for the British, they sent more Indian troops and Anzac units recruited from such colonies as Australia and New Zealand to fight the Turks, whom they saw as a "backward race," than their own soldiers.
The echoes of Darwin´s hostility to the Turks continued to ring after the First World War. The European Neo-Nazi groups who treacherously attack the Turks in Europe still draw their inspiration from Darwin´s stupid nonsense about the Turkish nation. Darwin´s words about the Turks are still to be found on the Internet pages of these racist enemies of the Turks. (See the chapter on The Bloody Alliance Between Darwin and Hitler.)
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