The Balkan War, also called the First Balkan War, was a military conflict between the Ottoman Empire, on the one hand, and the united Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro, on the other, that lasted from September 26 (October 9 in the new style) 1912 to 17 (30 ) May 1913.
The Allied victory ended five centuries of Ottoman rule in the Balkan Peninsula. The empire lost all its possessions on the peninsula, except for a narrow strip of territory along the northern coast of the Sea of Marmara. The rest of Thrace, together with Eastern Macedonia, falls under Bulgarian rule. Serbia conquered Kosovo, Northwestern Macedonia and other areas, Greece – Epirus, a number of islands in the Aegean Sea and Southwestern Macedonia with Thessaloniki, and soon after the London Peace Treaty, an independent Albanian state was established. Disputes over the partition of Macedonia lead to a rift in the Balkan Union and to the Second Balkan War, which broke out just a month after the end of the First.
The preconditions for the First Balkan War, formulated in the Carnegie survey, are:
the military-political weakening of the Ottoman Empire;
the oppression of Christians in her European provinces;
the failure of the struggle of the population of Macedonia and Odrin for autonomy;
the contradictions between the major European states (the so-called “Great Powers”), which fail to impose regime reforms in both areas;
the alliance between the Balkan Christian states in their quest for national unification and territorial expansion at the expense of the Ottoman Empire.
The Treaty of Berlin of July 1, 1878, which confirmed the restoration of the Bulgarian state and granted independence to Serbia and Montenegro, left a significant part of the Balkan Peninsula in Ottoman territory. These lands became the object of confrontation between the Balkan states. The treaty (arts. 23 and 62) obliged the Ottoman government (the “High Gate”) to grant self-government to its European vilayets and equality to its subjects, regardless of religion. The project for reforms in Macedonia and the other Balkan possessions of the Ottoman Empire, drawn up in 1880 by a European commission, remained unimplemented. With the suspension of the constitution of 1876, the authoritarian regime of Sultan Abdul Hamid II was established in the empire, which allowed only limited concessions for non-Turkish nationalities in church organization and school work.
After the first unsuccessful attempts (the Kresna-Razlozh uprising of 1878-1879 and the Chetnik action of 1895), in 1899 an armed struggle for autonomy began in Macedonia and Odrin, led by the Internal Macedonian-Odrina Revolutionary Organization (VMORO) and the Supreme Macedonian-Edrina Committee (VMOK). This struggle escalated in 1902-1903 with the Gornojumai and Ilinden-Preobrazhen uprisings. The uprisings ended in the defeat of the revolutionaries, but prompted the Great Powers to impose on the High Gate reforms in the administration of the Macedonian vilayets. The purpose of the so-called Mürzsteg reform program was to preserve the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, by removing some of the causes of Christian discontent and thereby reducing the public attitude to armed struggle. The program failed due to Austria-Hungary’s disagreement with the idea of Macedonian autonomy put forward by Great Britain and Russia in June 1908. By this time, the agreement between the Great Powers, the product of which was the Treaty of Berlin, had already passed. By 1907, two warring military-political blocs were formed in Europe: the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy) and the Entente (Russia, Great Britain and France). Eager to attract new allies, the Entente encouraged the unification of the Balkan states into a defensive alliance.
In July 1908, the Young Turk Revolution broke out in the Ottoman Empire. The Young Turks came to power with the restoration of the constitution and a promise of universal equality in the empire. From the second half of 1909, however, the new government pursued a policy of “Ottomanization” – obliterating the institutions and self-consciousness of national minorities through administrative, police and economic pressure and turning all the inhabitants of the empire into Ottomans. A reaction to this was the re-establishment of the VMORO (disbanded immediately after the Young Turk Revolution) and the Chetnik movement, as well as a series of Albanian uprisings that began in 1909 and became increasingly large-scale until the eve of the Balkan War. The massacres in Shtip (November 21, 1911) and in Kochani (August 1, 1912) are cited as the reason for the Balkan War.
The First Balkan War caused great damage to the inhabitants of the areas through which the troops passed. A number of villages (Turkish, Greek, Bulgarian-Mohammedan and Bulgarian-Christian) were devastated in Thrace and the Rhodopes. 50,000 Turks flee from Lozengrad District. Tens of thousands of Bulgarians are forced to seek protection in the areas occupied by their compatriots. The Muslim population in Macedonia was subjected to repression by the local Christians and by the allied troops, which led to thousands of refugee waves to the big cities (Skopje, Bitola and Thessaloniki) and to Asia Minor. The devastation, disruption of trade and repression of the civilian population by both warring parties led to a mass famine in the winter and spring of 1913, which covered Odrinsko, parts of the Rhodopes and the Gyumurjina region. Epidemics of cholera and dysentery claimed the lives of many inhabitants of Eastern Thrace and Bulgaria in the autumn of 1912, and after the Second Balkan War they were spread by refugees throughout the peninsula.
The winners pursued a policy of national and religious assimilation in the newly acquired territories. Under the leadership of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, in January-February 1913, thousands of Pomaks from the Rhodope Mountains (including from the old borders of the Kingdom of Bulgaria) and from the regions of Mesta and Struma were forcibly baptized. Albanians in Kosovo and Macedonia who oppose Serbian and Montenegrin troops are subjected to mass massacres. In Vardar Macedonia, since the autumn of 1912, the Serbian occupation authorities put pressure on the local Bulgarians to declare themselves Serbs. The administration established by VMORO in Ohrid, Veles and other cities was disbanded, many members of the revolutionary organization were arrested or killed. Exarch priests and Bulgarian teachers were also persecuted, replaced by Serbian ones. Bulgarian schools are closed, and Serbian squads carry out violent disarmament of village militias, accompanied by beatings and murders. The Greeks in Southwestern Macedonia have a similar policy towards the local Bulgarians.
Montage for the First Balkan war Main page in Wikipedia (Avidius (talk)) created this work entirely by myself.) en:Image:5t Dunavska pri Karagach dere.jpg (The Battle of Lule-Burgas) (removed as non-free) Image:Ulazak srpske vojske u Mitrovicu.jpg (Serbian forces entering Mitrovitsa) Image:King George I of Greece and Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria at Thessaloniki.jpg (King George I of Greece visits the Bulgarian Tsar Ferdinand in the headquarters of the Bulgarian army in the city of Thessaloniki) Image:Ottoman troops Battle of Kumanovo.jpg (A photograph of the Ottoman soldiers, taken during the Battle Of Kumanovo in 1912) Image:Battle Elli.jpg (Naval Battle of Elli.jpg)
Discussion about this post