A History of Protestant missions in the near East

176 History of Protestant Missions in the Near East
ment. No missionary school for Muhammadan youths would
be tolerated " (Stock, " History," Vol. Ill, p. 114). Under
such circumstances mission work was an impossibility. The
Church Missionary Society abandoned its station in Constantinople
in 1877, and has never since reopened it.
An event which occurred in connection with this mission in
1879 caused a great commotion in Europe. Dr. Koelle was
secretly translating the Book of Common Prayer into Turkish,
with the help of Ahmed Tewfik, one of the respected Turkish
ulema. Suddenly both were thrown into prison by the police.
A naval demonstration, accompanied by a stern ultimatum
from the English Premier Lord Beaconsfield, was required to
effect the alteration of the sentence of death on Ahmed Tewfik
to banishment to Scio. Tewfik escaped later to London,
where his baptism in 1881 caused a great sensation. But he
did not turn out well ;
in fact he seems later to have returned
to Islam.
Forty years elapsed before another deliberate attempt
was made to begin a mission among the Turks in Turkey.
Dr. " Lepsius' German Orient Mission " began work in.
Turkey and Persia in 1900. The plan of the mission is to
make Khoi in Persia, Diarbekr and Urfa in Asiatic Turkey,
and Philippopolis in European Turkey, centres from which to
Muhammadans. Urfa and Diarbekr
carry on work among
are to be centres of medical work. Khoi, with its industrial
work, is to serve as the starting-point of a mission among the
Moslem Kurds. In Philippopolis, where a printing-press has
been set up, literary work is to be the chief form of activity.
But all this is still in the initial stage.
7. The New Era in Turkey
Up to the 24th of July, 1908, there seemed to be no prospect
of any great change in the situation of Protestant missions
in Turkey as we have described it. Mission work was
hindered on every hand by the unremitting opposition of the
government and its officials. No new school could be opened,
no new book printed, without a petty strife against malevo-