(With Earl Percy’s Own Photographs)

1699 is generally considered a turning point for the Ottoman Empire. The image of the Ottoman Empire, both in the eyes of the international community and its domestic public, had changed; dominant indicators had been turned upside down, victories, which had seemed like a general rule in the military sphere, had become rare; the feet, if not yet the head, had become a source of threat that directed the head, and the Ottoman administrative mind began to see the solution in reforms inspired by and imposed by the West; the ensuing years would make it clear that these reforms were nothing more than a harbinger of the bells tolling for the Ottomans.

The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, signed after the Russo-Turkish War of 1768-74, and the Treaty of Berlin, signed after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, had granted the Russian Empire the right and title of being the protector of Orthodox Christians in Ottoman territories. This development nurtured and mobilized independence and separatist tendencies among non-Muslim communities in Anatolia as well as in the Balkans, and brought the Orthodox Armenian community, which had until then been viewed as the millet-i sâdıka (loyal nation), as well as the Nestorians, a smaller community in terms of population, to the point of rebellion with the support and encouragement of Russia.

Following the days when the Armenian Uprisings of 1894-96 took place, British politician Earl Percy, like many others, was concerned that the Armenian communities in these uprisings were being provoked within the framework of the Russian policy of carving out pieces of Ottoman territory for annexation or to incorporate them into their own sphere of influence. Largely due to this concern, Percy carried out two long trips across Anatolian lands in 1897 and 1899, following two different routes, for the purpose of on-site observation. After his travels, he shared his observations and related comments with interested parties and the public by writing a travelogue.

This book is a translation of the travelogue in which Percy included his observations during his journey, which began in 1899-1900 and lasted for months, during which he took care to visit places where Armenian and Nestorian communities lived, as well as his thoughts and suggestions regarding these communities. We believe that this study will contribute not only to our understanding of our own irreparable situation before the First World War, but also to Armenian and Nestorian intellectuals realizing how they were misled and placed in a wrong, unjust, and inevitably difficult position by Western powers (especially the Russians) for their own political interests at that time.