Diplomatic and Journalistic Comments on the Agreement between the Ottoman Empire and the Principality of Bulgaria in 1904 Valentin KITANOV Assoc. Prof. Ph.D., South-West University “Neofit Rilski” Department of History, Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria. E-mail:
[email protected] Geliş Tarihi: 04.01.2019 Kabul Tarihi: 07.06.2019 ABSTRACT KITANOV, Valentin, Diplomatic and Journalistic Comments on the Agreement between the Ottoman Empire and the Principality of Bulgaria in 1904, CTAD, Year 15, Issue 30 (Fall 2019), pp. 85-108. Bulgarian-Ottoman relations from the end of the XIX-th and the beginning of the XX-th century played an important part in the process of transformation of the European Ottoman heritage into the modern state and political system of the Balkans. The Agreement between the two states from 1904 is a significant page in the history of those relations. The agreement entered into between the Ottoman Empire and the Principality of Bulgaria solved a number of problems at a moment crucial for the development of the Macedonian Question. The agreement was welcomed by the official diplomacy and was interpreted as a step forward to affirming the peace in the European Southeast. In the predominant part of political, diplomatic and journalists’ comments, the emphasis is on the outcomes of the agreement for the Bulgarian state. As far as European opinion-making circles were concerned, through that agreement Bulgaria turned into a guarantor - state for conducting the Murzsteg Reforms. That led the country to a higher-reputation level compared to its neighbour-states Greece and Serbia in terms of the Macedonian Question.