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Home , Balkan Wars, Battle of Kosturino, First Balkan War, Kastoria

1912-1913 Death and Forced Exile of Ottoman Muslims An Annotated Map

Justin McCarthy Professor of History at the University of Louisville BULGARIAN GREEK M 1,220,000 (19%) 1,558,000 (25%) O S E R B I A 8 N T. OTHER C MUSLIM O 6 333,000 (5%) N 3,242,000 (51%) Q MONTE- U E B U L G A R I A S 4 Total Population DEAD NEGRO T 632,000 Muslims Remaining in 2 REMAINING 27% 870,000 Areas Conquered by: 2* S E R B I A N Kosova 38% C O N Q U E S T 124,000 (17%) BULG 4 6 ARIA İşkodra N 4 179,000 (55%) CO 2 4 NQ UE 2 SERBIA / ST 2 566,000 (46%) S T Selanik 813,000 M.NEGRO U E N Q Manastır 35% (independent) O (Some Rounding Error) C K E E R G 2 OTTOMAN Population of Ottoman EMPIRE Yanya before the Wars, by Province Muslim Dead and Refugees in Aftermath of the Balkan Wars MONTE- * (not including an estimated 100,000 dead in Albania) G R E E C E Priština 100,000s (excluding Province) NEGRO Peć 5,000 killed B U L G A R I A Shkodër - Great Mortality 5,000 killed Northern Albania Nearly Melnik-Radoviš Destroyed Edirne 25,000 soldiers Kırklareli most Muslim villages who surrenderedEdirne plundered or destroyed Orman- Refugees return to 1,500 returning killed or deliberately Western , 1913 refugees killed starved to death Debar 2,000 Drama surrendered wounded killed Kosturino 1,200 returning soldiers nearly all killed refugees killed or die of Thrace Region 200,000 killed starvation and disease or died of disease or starvation 2,000 killed Half of 1,500 refugees Istanbul or died of disease from Drama killed Çatalca 80% and starvation of Muslim Villages To Central Wholly ot Partly 7,000 Tekirdağ Provinces Destroyed refugees killed 3,000 killed

Thessaloniki Vlorë

Bursa

To R Northwest ef Provinces ug ee s Balıkesir Re scu ed b y S hip O T T O M A N E M P I R E GREECE

To

Mediterranean t Bulgarian, Greek, o Provinces

To Aegean Montenegrin, and Serbian E Provinces g İzmir

Invasions y

p t

Turkish and Albanian Athens Refugees Aydın

Representative Attacks on Turks and , according to British Consuls 1912-1913 Balkan Wars: Death and Forced Exile of More than 1.5 Million Muslims in Ottoman Europe Death and Forced Exile of Ottoman Muslims in the 1912-1913 Balkan Wars

n Spring of 1912, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Muslim population. In 1877-78, 34% of the Turks the victors. Turkish prisoners of war were killed. IMontenegro agreed to invade the Ottoman had been forced from Bulgaria and another 17% For example, killed 500 to 600 at Stara Empire and to drive the Ottomans from Europe. had died. Mortality in regions conquered by Serbia Zagora alone. The problem for the conquerors was that their and had been even greater. In 1912, peoples were a distinct minority in Ottoman European Muslims could expect the same By holding Edirne against Bulgarian and Europe. 51% of the population was Muslim— treatment. Therefore, Ottoman forces remained in Serbian troops for more than four months, mainly Albanians in the West, Turks in the East. the West, and were defeated. Ottoman soldiers contributed to the Bulgarian Although the census recorded inhabitants only by failure to take Istanbul, but they paid a heavy price their religion, the nature of the population was Defeat for their dedication to duty. When Edirne finally obvious: 25% were Greek Orthodox, a number that The began on October 8, surrendered the defenders were imprisoned and included . 19% were Bulgarian Orthodox, 1912. Outnumbered two to one, the Ottomans were starved to death. which included . quickly defeated. Only three fortified cities held As agents of the old order and possible out: Yanya (Ioánnina), Üsküdar (Shkodër), and The conquerors knew that Muslim leaders of resistance, Ottoman officials and local Edirne. All of these fell by April of 1913. The majorities would always be a threat to minority leaders were targeted for assassination: British Ottomans managed to repel the Bulgarians at the consul Lamb wrote, “Throughout the districts of rule. The solution was to be eviction and death of Çatalca Line, saving Istanbul. All else in Ottoman Kilkish, Doiran, and Ghevgheli nearly all the the Muslims. Europe was lost. leading Mussulmans have been put to death in one The Ottoman Defense On June 16, 1913 the Allies fell out over the form or another, their property pillaged or Ottoman Europe was nearly impossible to of conquered territory. The Ottomans took destroyed and their farms and dwelling-houses defend. The borders were long and could not be advantage of the resulting conflict to retake Edirne burned. Their women have been subjected to held against four enemies who could strike from and Eastern Thrace (today’s European ). indignity, and often worse.” Other districts were anywhere. Militarily, the intelligent plan for the same. Ottoman forces would have been to withdraw from Soldiers and Officials the West, concentrate in the East, defeat one An estimated 125,000 Ottoman soldiers Muslim Civilians enemy, perhaps the Bulgarians, then turn to fight were killed in the wars or died of disease and The speed of the Allied conquest magnified others. This the Ottoman Army could not do, starvation. Most of these deaths were the direct the suffering of Turks and Albanians. Muslims because it would have meant abandoning the result of war. Many, however, were murdered by might remain in their villages awaiting the outcomes of battles. After the Ottoman defeat, the Many villagers had never left, fearful of the villages in Northern and Albania. villages would be attacked by guerilla bands, and journey or not willing to abandon their homes. laid waste to Northern Albania, they would flee. Attacked again on the road, some There was no safety in most villages. British leaving little standing. might reach the relative safety of a port such as Consul Grieg at Manastır wrote, “The war has Salonica or Kavalla to take ship to a port in caused great distress in the Monastir district. It is In every region, villagers were robbed of the . Once the conquerors took the ports, believed that about 80% of the villages inhabited farm animals and seed upon which their lives however, the peril renewed. Refugees were exclusively by Moslems, and of the Moslem depended. They had no food, and none was relatively safe from outright attack in Salonica, quarters of villages with a mixed population, have provided them by the conquerors, so they starved. which had European consuls, but not safe from been sacked and partially or wholly destroyed, or European observers reported cases of murder, starvation and disease as they waited for both, throughout the kazas of Monastir, Kirchevo, destruction, and starvation from all of Ottoman transportation from their homelands. 30,000 , Serfidjé, Hailar, Kozhani, , Europe. The Serres region is an example: Muslim refugees waited there in Match, 1913. In Kavalla, , Naselitch, and . Considerable villagers had fled to the city of Serres in the less open to foreign influence, thousands were distress is reported amongst both Christians and thousands. When fighting ended, the new massacred. Moslems in the Gorcha and Dibra districts. authorities told them they could safely return to Subsequent enquiry will probably show that the their villages. On arriving, they found that their Most Muslims could not flee, at least not irregular troops attached to the contending armies villages had been destroyed. They gathered in the flee successfully. Armies blocked the way. It was and parties of marauders from neighbouring towns such as Petrich, where 200 were killed by impossible to travel overland to Istanbul and Christian villages were mainly responsible for the Bulgarians. 1,200 more were massacred at Orman onwards while the Ottomans and Bulgarians work of destruction.” Çiftlik, a further 150 at Gjurgjevo. The 364 who fought at Çatalca. They often could not reach survived in Petrich were ordered to gather in the ports. Consul Lamb reported, “Of some 1500 As Grieg reported, Christians also suffered, town barracks; 260 were killed there with Mussulmans who endeavoured to escape to particularly when the Allies fell out and fought bayonets. What happened to the surviving 100 is Cavalla [from Drama] barely half are believed to each other, destroying enemies’ homes and forcing unknown. They presumably joined the exodus to have reached the latter place. For 8 or 10 days them to flee and die. Grieg also noted, however, the remaining Ottoman lands. afterwards the road is stated to have been quite “No place has been heard of where Christian thickly strewn with unburied corpses.” Many set villagers are in any danger of starvation.” At wars’ end, survivors who had not been out on the roads, only to be forced to return as they able to escape earlier from Ottoman Europe fled to were attacked or as armies and guerilla troops The situation was the same in every region. Eastern Thrace and Anatolia, taking what blocked their passage. Consuls reported that Bulgarians had destroyed remained of their belongings. Their land, houses, “practically all the Moslem villages” in the areas businesses and most farm animals were lost. No they occupied in Thrace. Serbs destroyed Muslim compensation was ever paid

*The calculations of mortality are explained in Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile, Princeton, New Jersey: Darwin, 1995, pp. 135 – 177. Deaths can only be estimated by subtracting survivors from the original population. Because Balkan countries and Turkey did not take censuses until the 1920s, it is necessary to count the populations at The Human Cost those dates in order to find the number of deaths. This had No one counted what must have been the Immediately after the Balkan wars, 414,000 little effect on the count of the deaths, but it did include great number of the deaths in Albania. There was settled in what remained to the , Muslim refugees from the in the period up to the no post-war Albanian census to compare the as shown on the map. 399,000 more came by date of the censuses. number of survivors to the pre-war population. 1926.* All but a small number settled in Eastern Outside of Albania, 2.3 million Muslims had lived Thrace and Western and Central Anatolia. in the conquered regions of Ottoman Europe 632,000, 27% of the Muslims of Ottoman Europe, before the Wars. By 1926, only 870,000 remained had died, the worst civilian mortality in any in their homelands. modern European war.