Balkan Wars
| Balkan Wars | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 A Bulgarian postcard depicting the Battle of Lule Burgas. | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
| First Balkan War: |
First Balkan War: | ||||||
Second Balkan War: Bulgaria |
Second Balkan War: | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
|
| |||||||
| Strength | |||||||
|
600,000+ |
1,093,800 men | ||||||
 632,000–1,500,000 Ottoman Muslim civilian deaths[1][2] 400,000–813,000 Ottoman Muslim refugees[1][2]  c. 120,000–270,000 Albanian civilians killed[3][4] 60,000–300,000 Albanians deported from Old Serbia[3][5] 200,000 East Thracian Bulgarians killed or expelled[6] | |||||||
The Balkan Wars were a series of wars fought in the Balkan Peninsula in 1912 (First Balkan War) and 1913 (Second Balkan War).[7]
The First Balkan War was fought by Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria (the Balkan League) against the Ottoman Empire. The main objective of the Balkan League was to annex the European territories of the Ottoman Empire, because large numbers of the people of the Balkan League lived under Ottoman rule. The war was a success and the Ottoman Empire lost almost its entire European territories.[8]
The Second Balkan War was fought by Greece, Serbia, the Ottoman Empire and Romania against Bulgaria. Because Bulgaria felt that Greece and Serbia got more lands than they deserved, Bulgaria declared war on Greece and Serbia, which repelled the attacks. The Ottoman Empire and Romania declared war on Bulgaria, because they wanted to gain Bulgarian territories, and by the end of the Second Balkan War Bulgaria had lost almost all its gains from the First Balkan War.
The Balkan Wars resulted in huge casualties. The Bulgarians lost around 65,000 men, the Greeks 9,500, the Montenegrins, 3,000, and the Serbs at least 36,000. The Ottomans lost as many as 125,000 dead. In addition, tens of thousands of civilians died from disease and other causes. After the Treaty of Istanbul in 1913, a population exchange was made by the Ottoman Empire with the Kingdom of Bulgaria, 9714 Muslim's (Turks and Xoraxane Roma) from Haskovo in North Thrace, was expelled to Ottoman Empire, and 9472 Orthodox Christian Bulgarian from Edirne in East Thrace was expelled to Kingdom of Bulgaria.
Related pages
[change | change source]- Balkan Campaigns during World War I
- Balkan Campaigns during World War II
References
[change | change source]- 1 2 McCarthy, Justin. "1912–1913 Balkan Wars, Death and Forced Exile of Ottoman Muslims" (PDF). tc-america.org.
- 1 2 Hupchick, Dennis P., The Balkans: From Constantinople to Communism. p. 321.
- 1 2 Alpion, Gëzim (2021). Mother Teresa: The Saint and Her Nation. Bloomsbury. pp. 11, 19. ISBN 978-9389812466.
- ↑ Ke, Jing. "Change the Hostile Other into Ingroup Partner: On the Albanian-Serb Relations" (PDF). Kosovo Public Policy Center: 83.
120,000–270,000 Albanians were killed and approximately 250,000 Albanians were expelled between 1912 and 1914.
- ↑ Qirezi, Arben (2017). "Settling the self-determination dispute in Kosovo". In Mehmeti, Leandrit I.; Radeljić, Branislav (eds.). Kosovo and Serbia: Contested Options and Shared Consequences. University of Pittsburgh Press. ISBN 978-0822981572.
- ↑ Majstorovic, Darko (2019). "The 1913 Ottoman Military Campaign in Eastern Thrace: A Prelude to Genocide?". Journal of Genocide Research. 21 (1): 25–46. doi:10.1080/14623528.2018.1534979. S2CID 81824984.
- ↑ "Balkan Wars 1912-1913 | International Encyclopedia of the First World War (WW1)". encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net. Retrieved 2021-11-21.
- ↑ "Balkans war: a brief guide". BBC News. 2016-03-18. Retrieved 2021-11-21.
Other websites
[change | change source]
Media related to Balkan Wars at Wikimedia Commons
