Mass violence against civilians during the Balkan Wars

Abstract

On 17 October 1912, Serbia, Montenegro, Greece and Bulgaria declared war on the Ottoman Empire. Out-powered, demoralized, unprepared and poorly equipped, the Ottoman army fought fourteen battles and lost them all, except for one. After the cessation of hostilities, the Empire was heavily truncated for good. The lands wrested from the Ottomans became the object of bitter contestation between Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria. Each of these nations formulated their own nationalist claims on the newly ‘available’ territory. Although there were clear distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, as the skirmishes unfolded into total warfare none of the armies respected this distinction and defenceless civilians were assaulted too: Muslims under Bulgarian and Greek rule, and Christians under Ottoman rule. Victims and contemporary journalists accused the Balkan armies in particular of systematic maltreatment of civilian populations, but atrocities were committed by all sides in the conflict. Bulgarian, Serbian, Greek and Ottoman forces committed mutual acts of violence including large-scale destruction and arson of villages, beatings and torture, forced conversions and indiscriminate mass killing of enemy non-combatants. This chapter will discuss these atrocities and their consequences, in order to address the overarching question: how did civilians experience the mass violence committed against them during the Balkan Wars? This chapter aims to answer this question by discussing the impact of the Balkan Wars on Ottoman Muslims. It will examine the persecution and expulsion of Ottoman Muslims in the Balkans by Serbian, Greek and Bulgarian forces, and sketch their ordeal as they were expelled to the rump Ottoman state. The chapter will examine how their experiences as refugees influenced them and Ottoman political culture. In November 1912, the Bulgarian advance pushed the Ottoman army back to the trenches of Catalca, 30 kilometres west of Istanbul. There, the onslaught was stopped and the imperial capital remained uncaptured. Warfare continued as two other important Ottoman cities were captured: the old imperial capital of Edirne [Adrianople] was besieged and taken by the Bulgarian army, and on 9 November 1912 the Ottoman garrison surrendered the cradle of the Young Turks, Salonica, to the Greek army.