Balkan Wars (1912–1913)

BALKAN WARS (1912–1913)

Warfare among the states of the Balkan Peninsula that affected the balance-of-power politics in Europe and contributed to the outbreak of World War I.

In the first Balkan War (October 1912–March 1913), the Ottoman Empire fought against the Balkan League composed of Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Montenegro. The second Balkan War (June–July 1913) pitted the former allies against each other and also involved Romania.

The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 in the Ottoman Empire precipitated changes in the Balkan status quo. Bulgaria declared independence, and Austria annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina, reducing Ottoman control in Europe to Thrace, Macedonia, and Albania. Fear of Austro-Hungarian expansion and the vulnerability of the Ottoman Empire, at war with Italy over Libya since 1911, prompted the formation of the Balkan League with Russia's blessing. The Christian Balkan states temporarily reconciled conflicting geopolitical ambitions and irredentist disputes over ethnically mixed Macedonia. They hoped for a more advantageous repartitioning of the region at the expense of the Ottoman state.

Montenegro opened hostilities against the empire over border disputes. At the same time, Bulgaria and Serbia, which had launched in March 1912 the series of alliances that led to the Balkan League, mobilized their armies. The Ottoman government hastily concluded peace with Italy and declared war against the Balkan allies on 17 October 1912. The Ottomans suffered defeats in both Macedonia and Thrace, as Albania declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire in November. On 16 December 1913, upon a ceasefire agreement and appeals from Anglophile Ottoman Grand Vizier Kamil Paşa, ambassadors convened at the London Conference. The Ottomans surrendered Macedonia and Western Thrace but refused to yield Edirne, which was besieged by Bulgaria. Failure to agree on revised borders led to a Bulgarian offensive in February 1913. This action forced the Ottomans to surrender the European territories to the west of the Enez–Midye Line, a situation formalized at the London Conference of 30 May.

Disagreement about the repartitioning of Macedonia revived old rivalries. Bulgaria, dissatisfied with its allotment, surprised former allies Serbia and Greece with an attack on 29 June. This led to an anti-Bulgarian realignment that also included Romania, which feared losing territory to its southern neighbor. The Ottomans exploited the disarray to recover Edirne from the Bulgarians in July. The Treaty of Bucharest of 10 August 1913, between Bulgaria and its former allies, was followed by the Istanbul Treaty between Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire (29 September 1913), which left Edirne in Ottoman hands. The Ottomans concluded separate treaties with Greece (in Athens on 14 November) and Serbia (in Istanbul on 14 March 1914). Greece obtained the Aegean islands, except the Dodecanese, which went to Italy. The Muslims of ceded territories were given a choice of immigrating into the empire. The borders that emerged at the end of these treaties have changed remarkably little despite the shocks of World War I and later events.

In the Balkan wars, the Ottomans lost more than 80 percent of their European territory inhabited by 4 million people. The new demographic and geopolitical realities triggered domestic political and ideological change in the Ottoman Empire. On 23 January 1913, the Committee for Union and Progress implemented a coup against Kamil Paşa, ostensibly because he lost Edirne. At the end of the wars, with the Ottoman relinquishment of predominantly Christian territories, the empire was largely reduced to its Muslim-dominated Asian lands. This fact was reflected in the ideological reorientation toward a distinctly Islamic Ottomanism and in the proliferation of Turkish cultural activity.

see also committee for union and progress; edirne.

Bibliography

Király, Béla K., and Djordjevic, Dimitrije, eds. East Central European Society and the Balkan Wars. Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs; Highland Lakes, NJ: Atlantic Research and Publications, 1987; distributed by Columbia University Press.

Stavrianos, L. S. The Balkans, 1815–1914. New York: Holt Rinehart, 1963.

Hasan Kayali