War. The shock of defeat produced a craving for regeneration; the final
loss of Europe turned the minds of the Osmanlis to the possibilities of
Asia, and they were struck by the action of several prominent Russian
subjects of Turco-Tatar nationality, who, out of racial sympathy, had
given their services to the Ottoman Government in this time of
adversity. As Tekin Alp expresses it:

"The Turks realised that, in order to live, they must become essentially
Turkish, become a nation, be themselves.... The Turkish nation turned
aside its gaze from the lost territory and looked instead upon Turania,
the ideal country of the future."

Two years later this "New Orientation" had so mastered the Ottoman
Government that it drew them into the European War.

There are many aims within the new Turkish horizon. Some of them are
negative and non-political, some practical and extremely aggressive.
Ziya Bey's adherents first took in hand the purification of the Turkish
language. A Turkish poet had endeavoured before to dispense with the 95
per cent. (?) of the vocabulary that was borrowed from Persian and
Arabic, and "his poetry had to be published in small provincial papers
because the important newspapers of the towns would not accept it." The
established writers in the traditional style made a hard fight, but
Tekin Alp claims that the _Yeni Lisan_ (New Language) "is to-day in
possession of an absolute and unlimited authority." Borrowed rhythms
have been banned as well as borrowed words, and there is even an
agitation to replace the Arabic script by a new Turkish alphabet--an
imitation of the Albanian movement which was opposed so fiercely by the
Turks themselves before the Balkan War. In 1913 the Government stepped
in with the foundation of a "Turkish Academy" (_Turk Bilgi Derneyi_),