Topic: Ethnic Cleansing of Macedonia Posted: 03-Feb-2006 at 16:02
Partition of Macedonia:
In 1912-1913 the Greek troops entered Aegean Macedonia as conquerors, although their history textbooks spoke about "liberation of Macedonia".
These troops undertook a systematic ethnic cleansing of the conquered
territories. In this respect, they preceded the Serbian racists in
their actions in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bulgarian people are hardly
aware of the way the Greek Army "liberated" Macedonia. In that respect,
however, there are international documents testifying that the Greek
troops, on their way into Macedonia, were not considered liberators at
all. In the face of the Bulgarian population there they saw an alien
people, and they behaved as occupiers to it.
On the explicit order of the newly crowned Greek King
Konstantine, the town of Kukush was set on fire. In the villages of the
same district 4725 Bulgarian houses were burnt down (Report of the
Bulgarian Commission, p. 315). The Bulgarian houses were burnt in the
villages of Negovan, Ravna, Bogorod; in the Doyran vilayet 11 villages
were burnt, in Demir Hisar - 5 villages were burnt, in Seres district 5
villages were burnt, and in Gevgely region - 15 villages were burnt,
etc.
According to the final data of the Commission, the Greeks had
set on fire 161 Bulgarian villages with a total of 16,000 houses (see
p. 315 of the above mentioned report). The population was subjected to
all possible violence in order to proclaim itself Greek. All
Regulations of the occupational Greek troops were published in Greek,
Turkish and Jewish. Bulgarian language did not exist. The Bulgarian
population was compelled to sign declarations claiming it was Greek
since ancient times, but called itself ,,Bulgarian" under the
influence of the Bulgarian propaganda. Other declarations claimed that
up till 1903 all were Greeks but since 1903-1906 they were forced by
the Bulgarian commits to claim themselves Bulgarians. Both theses ended
with the same declaration that now the liberating Greek Army had come,
the population wanted to receive the benevolence of ,,our great Orthodox Greek church". The Greek eusons played the role of ,,apostles"
and converted the villagers with the help of the bayonets. As an
example can serve the villages in the region of Kostour: Gabresh,
Drenoveni, Chernovitsa, Turie, Zagoricheni, Dambeni. In the villages of
Breznitsa, Gorno and Doino Nestrame all the village people were put to
prison and then where released after having proclaimed themselves
Greeks (p. 197). The Muhammadans from the village of Cherveny were also
proclaimed Greeks, although they spoke Bulgarian, and not Greek (p.
198).
The Greek Army entered Voden in October 18-31. Ten days later the population was told: "Your tongues will be cut off if you speak Bulgarian."
The property of the villagers was taken away. The churches and the
schools were closed down. The Slavonic inscriptions were erased; the
priests were beaten and expelled. All people of public power in the
villages of Veshtitsa, Tsrmarinovi, Piskopia, and Arsen were arrested.
They were told "if you want to be free, say that you are Greeks" (p. 199).
As soon as the Second Balkan War broke out, over 200
Bulgarians from that region - priests, teachers, eminent figures and
wealthy people - were arrested and sent to Salonica after assaults. In
the beginning of July the whole population was compelled to sign the
following declaration:
"Threatened by the rebels and under the influence of the
Exarchate propaganda, we became Bulgarians. Now we profess the true
faith and proclaim our Hellenic nationality."
The conduct of the Turkish Army on the territory of Aegean
Macedonia was in no way different in its attitude towards the
Bulgarians.
In its comprehensive report comprising 410 pages, the
authoritative international commission established by the Carnegie
Endowment for studying the reasons for conducting the Balkan Wars
presented ample and incontestable evidence for the ethnic cleansing and
assaults done by the Greek Army on the territory of Macedonia which was
,,liberated", by them. Appendix No 51, p. 307 (in the English
issue) presents 28 letters sent by Greek soldiers who did their
military service in the 19th Regiment of the Seventh Greek Division.
These letters were meant to be sent to the soldiers' families but the
post was captured and so these letters became evidence for the
Commission of Inquiry. Below are given some excerpts from such letters:
Here, in Rondu (Brodi) I took as captives five
Bulgarians and a girl from Seres... I killed the girl. And I gouged the
eyes of the Bulgarians while they were still alive.
&nbs p;
&n bsp;
&nbs p;
&n bsp;
of Crates 12th Company
Attn. Corp. M. N. Logiadi - Aestroviki - Epir
We had a small combat near Strouma with refugees from
Kukush and Lahna. Our guns smashed them into pieces on their way (while
they were running away - author's note)
&nbs p;
&n bsp;
&nbs p;
&n bsp;
Anastas Patros
In conclusion, the International Commission claimed:
,,The documents in the possession of the Commission allow
to state that there has been a policy of assimilation of the Bulgarian
population in Southern Macedonia. The methods of assimilation and
physical extinction have been applied systematically and without any
humanness" (p. 186). SOURCE: http://knigite.abv.bg/en/am/clean.html
The final days of the citys of Kukus levelled off by the greeks, its inhabitants ethnically cleansed and exterminated.
You can find these letters and much more on the thnic cleansing of Macedonia in the following book (search it on Amazon):
A Greek author also studies the ethnic cleansing. The study has provoked an extreme nationalistic backlash in Greece:
From Library Journal One rarely encounters a scholarly book as
disturbing as this provocative work, a study of ethnicity in the Greek
province of Macedonia. It is so controversial that Cambridge University
Press, fearing for the safety of its staff in Greece, refused to
publish it. Having spent some time with villagers of the region,
Karakasidou (anthropology, Queens Coll., CUNY) maintains that Macedonia
is not exclusively Greek, as nationalists claim, but is instead a
multiethnic, multicultural region experiencing the political and
religious upheavals engulfing the rest of the Balkans. Karakasidou's
obsession with the truth has brought her death threats, apparently from
outraged Greeks. Her powerfully written book is a resounding statement
of human courage, reminding readers that there is no substitute for
honesty and critical thought. This superb book is highly recommended
for all large social science collections.?John Xanthopoulos, Art Inst.
of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
Deftly combining archival sources with evocative life histories,
Anastasia Karakasidou brings welcome clarity to the contentious debate
over ethnic identities and nationalist ideologies in Greek Macedonia.
Her vivid and detailed account demonstrates that contrary to official
rhetoric, the current people of Greek Macedonia ultimately derive from
profoundly diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Throughout the last
century, a succession of regional and world conflicts, economic
migrations, and shifting state formations has engendered an intricate
pattern of population movements and refugee resettlements across the
region. Unraveling the complex social, political, and economic
processes through which these disparate peoples have become culturally
amalgamated within an overarchingly Greek national identity, this book
provides an important corrective to the Macedonian picture and an
insightful analysis of the often volatile conjunction of ethnicities
and nationalisms in the twentieth century.
"Combining the
thoughtful use of theory with a vivid historical ethnography, this is
an important, courageous, and pioneering work which opens up the whole
issue of nation-building in northern Greece."--Mark Mazower, University
of Sussex SOURCES: http://www.macedoniainfo.com/macedonia/
In 1912-1913 the Greek troops entered Aegean Macedonia as conquerors, although their history textbooks spoke about "liberation of Macedonia". These troops undertook a systematic ethnic cleansing of the conquered territories. In this respect, they preceded the Serbian racists in their actions in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bulgarian people are hardly aware of the way the Greek Army "liberated" Macedonia. In that respect, however, there are international documents testifying that the Greek troops, on their way into Macedonia, were not considered liberators at all. In the face of the Bulgarian population there they saw an alien people, and they behaved as occupiers to it.
On the explicit order of the newly crowned Greek King Konstantine, the town of Kukush was set on fire. In the villages of the same district 4725 Bulgarian houses were burnt down (Report of the Bulgarian Commission, p. 315). The Bulgarian houses were burnt in the villages of Negovan, Ravna, Bogorod; in the Doyran vilayet 11 villages were burnt, in Demir Hisar - 5 villages were burnt, in Seres district 5 villages were burnt, and in Gevgely region - 15 villages were burnt, etc.
According to the final data of the Commission, the Greeks had set on fire 161 Bulgarian villages with a total of 16,000 houses (see p. 315 of the above mentioned report). The population was subjected to all possible violence in order to proclaim itself Greek. All Regulations of the occupational Greek troops were published in Greek, Turkish and Jewish. Bulgarian language did not exist. The Bulgarian population was compelled to sign declarations claiming it was Greek since ancient times, but called itself ,,Bulgarian" under the influence of the Bulgarian propaganda. Other declarations claimed that up till 1903 all were Greeks but since 1903-1906 they were forced by the Bulgarian commits to claim themselves Bulgarians. Both theses ended with the same declaration that now the liberating Greek Army had come, the population wanted to receive the benevolence of ,,our great Orthodox Greek church". The Greek eusons played the role of ,,apostles" and converted the villagers with the help of the bayonets. As an example can serve the villages in the region of Kostour: Gabresh, Drenoveni, Chernovitsa, Turie, Zagoricheni, Dambeni. In the villages of Breznitsa, Gorno and Doino Nestrame all the village people were put to prison and then where released after having proclaimed themselves Greeks (p. 197). The Muhammadans from the village of Cherveny were also proclaimed Greeks, although they spoke Bulgarian, and not Greek (p. 198).
The Greek Army entered Voden in October 18-31. Ten days later the population was told: "Your tongues will be cut off if you speak Bulgarian." The property of the villagers was taken away. The churches and the schools were closed down. The Slavonic inscriptions were erased; the priests were beaten and expelled. All people of public power in the villages of Veshtitsa, Tsrmarinovi, Piskopia, and Arsen were arrested. They were told "if you want to be free, say that you are Greeks" (p. 199).
As soon as the Second Balkan War broke out, over 200 Bulgarians from that region - priests, teachers, eminent figures and wealthy people - were arrested and sent to Salonica after assaults. In the beginning of July the whole population was compelled to sign the following declaration:
"Threatened by the rebels and under the influence of the Exarchate propaganda, we became Bulgarians. Now we profess the true faith and proclaim our Hellenic nationality."
The conduct of the Turkish Army on the territory of Aegean Macedonia was in no way different in its attitude towards the Bulgarians.
In its comprehensive report comprising 410 pages, the authoritative international commission established by the Carnegie Endowment for studying the reasons for conducting the Balkan Wars presented ample and incontestable evidence for the ethnic cleansing and assaults done by the Greek Army on the territory of Macedonia which was ,,liberated", by them. Appendix No 51, p. 307 (in the English issue) presents 28 letters sent by Greek soldiers who did their military service in the 19th Regiment of the Seventh Greek Division. These letters were meant to be sent to the soldiers' families but the post was captured and so these letters became evidence for the Commission of Inquiry. Below are given some excerpts from such letters:
Letter No3
Attn. Mr. Sotir Papanidou
distr. Itinou, Trikala Reka
Nesto, 12 July 1913
Here, in Rondu (Brodi) I took as captives five Bulgarians and a girl from Seres... I killed the girl. And I gouged the eyes of the Bulgarians while they were still alive.
Sincerely yours, Kosta
Letter No5
The Bulgarian border, 11 July 1913
Dear brother Mitso,... we put to fire every Bulgarian village from Seres to the border...
Jonnah Hristo Tsigaridis
Letter No9
Attn. Mr. Zaharia Kalivanis
Erfos - Milinotamos - Crates
Weput to fire every Bulgarian village we occupied, and we killed all Bulgarians we met.
S. Z. Kalivanis
Letter No11
The Bulgarian border, 12 July 1913
Even the cats could not escape wherever we passed. We put to fire every Bulgarian village on our way.
Your loving brother: corp. George
Letter No13
Mr. Demetrius Tsigarida
Hipati Fitiotis
I was given 16 captives to take to the division. And I bought there only two of them. I killed the rest in the darkness.
Niko Theofilados
Letter No15
Attn. Georgi Karka
1st Dept. Sanitary Corps
9th Division
Argiroastro - Epir, 12 July 1913
Dear brother Georgi,
On the King's orders, we put to fire every Bulgarian village. We rape every Bulgarian woman we meet.
Regards, Nikos Zarvas
Letter No16
14 July 1913
Mr. Arisidi Tanasia Kampiati,
Municipality of Antama,
Trikala, Thessalia
... We put the villages to fire and we kill the Bulgarians - women and children.
Anastas Patros
Letter No23
Anastas Patros
Independent Regiment
of Crates 12th Company
Attn. Corp. M. N. Logiadi - Aestroviki - Epir
We had a small combat near Strouma with refugees from Kukush and Lahna. Our guns smashed them into pieces on their way (while they were running away - author's note)
Anastas Patros
In conclusion, the International Commission claimed:
,,The documents in the possession of the Commission allow to state that there has been a policy of assimilation of the Bulgarian population in Southern Macedonia. The methods of assimilation and physical extinction have been applied systematically and without any humanness" (p. 186).
The final days of the citys of Kukus levelled off by the greeks, its inhabitants ethnically cleansed and exterminated.
You can find these letters and much more on the thnic cleansing of Macedonia in the following book (search it on Amazon):
A Greek author also studies the ethnic cleansing. The study has provoked an extreme nationalistic backlash in Greece:
From Library Journal One rarely encounters a scholarly book as disturbing as this provocative work, a study of ethnicity in the Greek province of Macedonia. It is so controversial that Cambridge University Press, fearing for the safety of its staff in Greece, refused to publish it. Having spent some time with villagers of the region, Karakasidou (anthropology, Queens Coll., CUNY) maintains that Macedonia is not exclusively Greek, as nationalists claim, but is instead a multiethnic, multicultural region experiencing the political and religious upheavals engulfing the rest of the Balkans. Karakasidou's obsession with the truth has brought her death threats, apparently from outraged Greeks. Her powerfully written book is a resounding statement of human courage, reminding readers that there is no substitute for honesty and critical thought. This superb book is highly recommended for all large social science collections.?John Xanthopoulos, Art Inst. of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
Deftly combining archival sources with evocative life histories, Anastasia Karakasidou brings welcome clarity to the contentious debate over ethnic identities and nationalist ideologies in Greek Macedonia. Her vivid and detailed account demonstrates that contrary to official rhetoric, the current people of Greek Macedonia ultimately derive from profoundly diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Throughout the last century, a succession of regional and world conflicts, economic migrations, and shifting state formations has engendered an intricate pattern of population movements and refugee resettlements across the region. Unraveling the complex social, political, and economic processes through which these disparate peoples have become culturally amalgamated within an overarchingly Greek national identity, this book provides an important corrective to the Macedonian picture and an insightful analysis of the often volatile conjunction of ethnicities and nationalisms in the twentieth century.
"Combining the thoughtful use of theory with a vivid historical ethnography, this is an important, courageous, and pioneering work which opens up the whole issue of nation-building in northern Greece."--Mark Mazower, University of Sussex
Your opening up a fire under your ass. Macedonia was a region, not a country. Thrace was split up, you do not see "Thracians" saying their "country" was split. You conquered Kurdistan and are still trying to ethnically cleanse the area.
Thrace was split up, you do not see "Thracians" saying their "country" was split. You conquered Kurdistan and are still trying to ethnically cleanse the area.
I am a Bulgarian citizen, and I have no association with Kurdistan, let alone its ... as you put it ... "conquering".
Thrace was split up, you do not see "Thracians" saying their "country" was split. You conquered Kurdistan and are still trying to ethnically cleanse the area.
I am a Bulgarian citizen, and I have no association with Kurdistan, let alone its ... as you put it ... "conquering".
And you yet have not backed Bulgaria in any such topic, but only turkey. Look at your log in name! You are a turk, and from your posts, clearly pro turkish. Oh I see, you are only pro turkish to some degree, and if any critisism comes up about turkey, you can hide behind that bulgarian flag..
Around 900.000 Turks were either forced to immigrate or massacred by the Greek forces and Bulgarians until WWI, especially after the Balkan wars to create ethnically heterogenious Christian nation states there. Cities like Salonika, Yenishehir (in Greece), Gumulcine, Iskee (Kimotini-Xanthi- still Turkish cities), Varna, Kostence, Deliorman, Krcaali were Turkish cities by majority just like most of Bosnia and parts of Macedonia. These cities are where ethnic cleansing mainly occured. Balkans were clearly Turkified after 500 years of Turkish rule and the iskan policy of the Ottoman Empire that Turks from Anatolia were settled to the urban regions. Balkans were more Turkish than even some Anatolian regions such as the region around Izmir and Trabzon before that ethnic cleansing. But unfortunately today, no European historian cares about this fact, but they mainly concentrate about the Armenian issue.
The ethnic cleansing of Turks from Bulgaria:
Although Bulgaria declared official independence from Ottoman suzerainty in 1908, the country effectively enjoyed independent freedom of action after its acquisition of autonomous status at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. This success was the result of a botched national uprising in 1876, which was repressed so violently by Ottoman irregular forces that European outrage over stories of Christians being butchered permitted Russia to undertake a war against the Ottoman Empire expressly for creating a Bulgarian national state. Religious antagonisms ran at fever pitch throughout those events. The Bulgarian rebels achieved little beyond staging patriotic rallies in the few villages that they held and massacring their Muslim neighbors. The so-called Bulgarian Horrors inflicted on the rebels in putting down their uprising were perpetrated by irregular forces (ba{bozuks) mostly recruited from Muslim villagers in the rebellious regions, many of whom lost relatives and friends at the Christian rebels hands or had heard their own horror stories of such events. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, Russian troops conducted a policy of anti-Muslim genocide in Bulgarian-inhabited Balkan territories and Bulgarians, both military volunteers and civilians, frequently acted as their accomplices. By the time that the fighting stopped in March 1878, some 260,000 of those Muslims who had inhabited the lands that ultimately came to comprise modern Bulgaria (i.e., Bulgaria Proper [lands north of the Balkan Mountains but including the Sofia region to their south] and Eastern Rumeli lands south of the Balkan Mountains, including the Plovdiv and Sliven regions]) were killed or had died of maltreatment. Another 500,000 were driven out, becoming refugees in Ottoman Thracian and Anatolian territories. In all, some 17 percent of the fifteen million Muslims who lived in the Bulgarian lands prior to the rebellion and war were dead and 34 percent were expelled permanently.
The Berlin Treaty creating an autonomous Bulgarian Principality included provisions protecting the life and property of the new states Muslim citizens, as did the states highly liberal-democratic constitution written under Russian auspices. Despite those legal constraints, however, local Bulgarian authorities and Bulgarian villagers, animated by inflamed religious ethnonational emotions (combined with land greed), continued to attack and uproot Muslim villagers with the tacit approval of the state government. Such actions reached their culmination in the heightened national feelings surrounding the union of Eastern Rumeli with Bulgaria Proper in 1885, after which concerns over international recognition put a damper on overt anti-Muslim activities. Thereafter, the governing nationalists found ways within the law to subtly reduce the political and social positions of the Muslim minority and to pressure them into emigrating so that their lands and businesses could be expropriated for fellow Christian, Slavic-speaking Bulgarians and the state made more reflective of the ethnonational nation-state ideal.
Land laws were passed placing vacant land into government hands (with monetary compensation paid to the absentee owners, thus providing an incentive for buying off Muslim owners), which then was sold cheaply to desirous peasants (who invariably were Christian Slavic Bulgarians). Courtroom decisions involving cases pitting Christian Bulgarians against Muslims nearly always were decided in favor of the former. Mountains of red tape helped render permanent the illegal expropriation of Muslim properties by Bulgarians during the turmoil of 1877 through 1885, while the Bulgarian-controlled government increasingly encroached on the operations of the Muslims own institutions (especially education, local community councils, and religious courts) in the name of increasing centralized administrative efficiency. A reversion to more blatant anti-Muslim actions accompanied the Bulgarians heightened nationalist fervor during the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, when military operations brought into the state further Thracian territory with a predominantly Turkish-speaking population. Some Muslims were forced to change their Islamic Turco-Arabic names for Christian Slavic ones. By the end of the Balkan Wars, the Muslims presence in Bulgaria's total population had been reduced from the 26 percent that they held in 1878 to 14 percent (with Turkish speakers comprising 10.8 percent of the total population) because of near constant emigration. Higher birth rates among Muslims relative to those among Christian Slavic Bulgarians kept the minority's share of the total population fairly constant at around 13 percent (and at approximately 10 percent for Turkish speakers) into the 1980s.300
Bulgaria's Muslim minority was comprised of various ethniccomponents. The largest was the Turkish speakers, who generally constituted between 75 and 89 percent of the Muslim minority during any given census year between 1887 and 1992.301 They were concentrated in the eastern, northeastern, and southern regions of the state. Pomaks (or Bulgarian-speaking Muslims), who mainly inhabited the central and western Rhodope region in southern Bulgaria, represented the second largest component of the Muslim minority, ranging from 12.8 percent (in 1920, the first year in which Muslim ethnic identity was included in the census) to 14.7 percent in 1992.302 The remaining Muslims were divided among Gypsies (found scattered throughout the state), Tatars (living mostly in Bulgarian Dobrudzha), and Albanians (found in a smattering of urban centers).
Around 900.000 Turks were either forced to immigrate or massacred by the Greek forces and Bulgarians until WWI, especially after the Balkan wars to create ethnically heterogenious Christian nation states there. Cities like Salonika, Yenishehir (in Greece), Gumulcine, Iskee (Kimotini-Xanthi- still Turkish cities), Varna, Kostence, Deliorman, Krcaali were Turkish cities by majority just like most of Bosnia and parts of Macedonia. These cities are where ethnic cleansing mainly occured. Balkans were clearly Turkified after 500 years of Turkish rule and the iskan policy of the Ottoman Empire that Turks from Anatolia were settled to the urban regions. Balkans were more Turkish than even some Anatolian regions such as the region around Izmir and Trabzon before that ethnic cleansing. But unfortunately today, no European historian cares about this fact, but they mainly concentrate about the Armenian issue.
The ethnic cleansing of Turks from Bulgaria:
Although Bulgaria declared official independence from Ottoman suzerainty in 1908, the country effectively enjoyed independent freedom of action after its acquisition of autonomous status at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. This success was the result of a botched national uprising in 1876, which was repressed so violently by Ottoman irregular forces that European outrage over stories of Christians being butchered permitted Russia to undertake a war against the Ottoman Empire expressly for creating a Bulgarian national state. Religious antagonisms ran at fever pitch throughout those events. The Bulgarian rebels achieved little beyond staging patriotic rallies in the few villages that they held and massacring their Muslim neighbors. The so-called Bulgarian Horrors inflicted on the rebels in putting down their uprising were perpetrated by irregular forces (ba{bozuks) mostly recruited from Muslim villagers in the rebellious regions, many of whom lost relatives and friends at the Christian rebels hands or had heard their own horror stories of such events. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, Russian troops conducted a policy of anti-Muslim genocide in Bulgarian-inhabited Balkan territories and Bulgarians, both military volunteers and civilians, frequently acted as their accomplices. By the time that the fighting stopped in March 1878, some 260,000 of those Muslims who had inhabited the lands that ultimately came to comprise modern Bulgaria (i.e., Bulgaria Proper [lands north of the Balkan Mountains but including the Sofia region to their south] and Eastern Rumeli lands south of the Balkan Mountains, including the Plovdiv and Sliven regions]) were killed or had died of maltreatment. Another 500,000 were driven out, becoming refugees in Ottoman Thracian and Anatolian territories. In all, some 17 percent of the fifteen million Muslims who lived in the Bulgarian lands prior to the rebellion and war were dead and 34 percent were expelled permanently.
The Berlin Treaty creating an autonomous Bulgarian Principality included provisions protecting the life and property of the new states Muslim citizens, as did the states highly liberal-democratic constitution written under Russian auspices. Despite those legal constraints, however, local Bulgarian authorities and Bulgarian villagers, animated by inflamed religious ethnonational emotions (combined with land greed), continued to attack and uproot Muslim villagers with the tacit approval of the state government. Such actions reached their culmination in the heightened national feelings surrounding the union of Eastern Rumeli with Bulgaria Proper in 1885, after which concerns over international recognition put a damper on overt anti-Muslim activities. Thereafter, the governing nationalists found ways within the law to subtly reduce the political and social positions of the Muslim minority and to pressure them into emigrating so that their lands and businesses could be expropriated for fellow Christian, Slavic-speaking Bulgarians and the state made more reflective of the ethnonational nation-state ideal.
Land laws were passed placing vacant land into government hands (with monetary compensation paid to the absentee owners, thus providing an incentive for buying off Muslim owners), which then was sold cheaply to desirous peasants (who invariably were Christian Slavic Bulgarians). Courtroom decisions involving cases pitting Christian Bulgarians against Muslims nearly always were decided in favor of the former. Mountains of red tape helped render permanent the illegal expropriation of Muslim properties by Bulgarians during the turmoil of 1877 through 1885, while the Bulgarian-controlled government increasingly encroached on the operations of the Muslims own institutions (especially education, local community councils, and religious courts) in the name of increasing centralized administrative efficiency. A reversion to more blatant anti-Muslim actions accompanied the Bulgarians heightened nationalist fervor during the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, when military operations brought into the state further Thracian territory with a predominantly Turkish-speaking population. Some Muslims were forced to change their Islamic Turco-Arabic names for Christian Slavic ones. By the end of the Balkan Wars, the Muslims presence in Bulgaria's total population had been reduced from the 26 percent that they held in 1878 to 14 percent (with Turkish speakers comprising 10.8 percent of the total population) because of near constant emigration. Higher birth rates among Muslims relative to those among Christian Slavic Bulgarians kept the minority's share of the total population fairly constant at around 13 percent (and at approximately 10 percent for Turkish speakers) into the 1980s.300
Bulgaria's Muslim minority was comprised of various ethniccomponents. The largest was the Turkish speakers, who generally constituted between 75 and 89 percent of the Muslim minority during any given census year between 1887 and 1992.301 They were concentrated in the eastern, northeastern, and southern regions of the state. Pomaks (or Bulgarian-speaking Muslims), who mainly inhabited the central and western Rhodope region in southern Bulgaria, represented the second largest component of the Muslim minority, ranging from 12.8 percent (in 1920, the first year in which Muslim ethnic identity was included in the census) to 14.7 percent in 1992.302 The remaining Muslims were divided among Gypsies (found scattered throughout the state), Tatars (living mostly in Bulgarian Dobrudzha), and Albanians (found in a smattering of urban centers).
You know this topic is going to be closed down, right?
Thats why there are still so many Turks living in Bulgaria? Turks still have a presence in Greek thrace. But were is there any minority presence in turkey? Accept for the millions of kurds?
And you yet have not backed Bulgaria in any such topic, but only turkey. Look at your log in name! You are a turk, and from your posts, clearly pro turkish. Oh I see, you are only pro turkish to some degree, and if any critisism comes up about turkey, you can hide behind that bulgarian flag..
I am here to express my opinion not to back any country. Yes I am a turk and in Bulgaria I am free to call myself a Turk, unlike in some other countries may I note.
You know this topic is going to be closed down, right?
Yes, can we please keep on topic. The topic of this thread is the ethnic cleansing of slavs in Macedonia.
If you want to discuss the situation with the muslims in the Balkans after the Balkan wars, or the situation of the kurds, or the christian minorities in Turkey, please open another thread, I would be glad to contribute.
Thats why there are still so many Turks living in Bulgaria? Turks still have a presence in Greek thrace. But were is there any minority presence in turkey? Accept for the millions of kurds?
As I said if you want to discuss kurds open another thread.
And you yet have not backed Bulgaria in any such topic, but only turkey. Look at your log in name! You are a turk, and from your posts, clearly pro turkish. Oh I see, you are only pro turkish to some degree, and if any critisism comes up about turkey, you can hide behind that bulgarian flag..
I am here to express my opinion not to back any country. Yes I am a turk and in Bulgaria I am free to call myself a Turk, unlike some other countries may I note.
Opinion of what? You did not even type any of that, thats all copied and pasted!
Some of it is copied from Macedonian and Bulgarian sources yes.
I do not see why does it needs to get banned?
PS. It would be helpful not to quote the whole preceding article in your replies. Just the parts that you are specifically replying to would be enough. Thanks.
Thats why there are still so many Turks living in Bulgaria? Turks still have a presence in Greek thrace. But were is there any minority presence in turkey? Accept for the millions of kurds?
The topic is about the ethnic cleansing of Turks from Rumeli. The Turks, sorry, Muslims of Western Thrace aren't that well behaved at all.
Thats why there are still so many Turks living in Bulgaria? Turks still have a presence in Greek thrace. But were is there any minority presence in turkey? Accept for the millions of kurds?
The topic is about the ethnic cleansing of Turks from Rumeli. The Turks, sorry, Muslims of Western Thrace aren't that well behaved at all.
Oh, they behind fine. There not planning on moving, and unlike other governments, greek government does not plan to move them (directly or indirectly)
Well I originally intended the topic to be the ethnic cleansing of slavs from Macedonia only, but we can extend it to all the non-greeks of Macedonia inlcuding Turks. Yet, it must be noted that the ethnic cleansing of the Turkish people is not nerely as dramatic as that of the slavic people since turks were a small minority in the region.
The turkish presence in Macedonia (Ataturk is actually a Macedonian Turk, born in Salonique)was most visible in Salonique/Selanik/Solun/Thesaloniki but after the greek invasion of the city the whole muslim population was eradicated.
When Selanik fell, during the First Balkan War, all of its muslim inhabitants have been cleansed, mosques burned and destroyed and the muslim quaters of the city sacked. Look at a picture of the city in 1900 (under ottoman control) and in 1930 (under greek control) and you will see one crucial difference - the disappearance of all minaretes. Selanik, or Thesaloniki according to greeks and Solun according to Slavs, has been ethnically cleansed of its muslim inhabitants. Only those that managed to catch the last life saving train to Istanbul survived the greek invasion.
Here are some old images of the city:
As you can see, minarettes dominated the skiline of the city, along with its many churches. Selanik used to be a very metropolitan city before the greek invasion. Greeks, Turks, Bulgarians lives mostly peacefully and in coexistence.
Today the only trace of the turkish community is this mosque:
Well I originally intended the topic to be the ethnic cleansing of slavs from Macedonia only, but we can extend it to all the non-greeks of Macedonia inlcuding Turks.
You need to pick a topic and stop switching subjects. You tell me its about "ethnic cleansing in Macedonia", but perhaps I need to Make a topic of ethnic cleansing of Cyprus, Ethnic cleansing of Eastern anatolia, ethnic cleansing of western turkey, ethnic cleansing of istanbul. WIll you join me in these discussions as well? Should I copy and paste some more junk as you did?
THe region was hottly contested between Serbia and Bulgaria, and while there were some disagreement between the two countries to which nation the slavic population belonged, it is undoubtedly clear that the majority of the population had slavic origins.
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Posted: 03-Feb-2006 at 18:37
True they had, after 1919 when we had no other choise.There was greek population along the black sea coast and in Plovdiv, but their numbers were much lesser than the bulgarians in Aegean macedonia and thrace
The maps it provides are authentic and from several independent source. Virtually all of them agree with the above map.
Yes, there was an "agreed population" exchange. Bulgaria lost the Second Balkan War and most of the condition on the population exchange were dictated by Greece. After the second balkan war bulgaria was virutally inundated with refugees from Macedonia, which fell to the greeks, and Eastern Thrace, which was taken by Turkey.
The case of Macedonia during the Balkan Wars is a very sensitive issue. The core of the problem is the heterogeneous composition of the population throughout the region of Macedonia (Greeks, Bulgarians, Turks, Slavs). After the defeat of the Turks, the region was going to be divided between Greeks, Serbs and Bulgarians. Since they were not able to agree on who is getting what in a peacefull way, they had to do it by war; and we all know that war is not a pleasant thing. If you look at the issue from one side only, then you are going to be biased and miss the entire picture. Of course the Greek population saw the Greek troops as liberators. What did you expect?
bg_turk, I see you are very fond of using the term "ethnic cleansing" commited by the Greek Army, even though you know about the population exchanges. Why don't you try and check what happened in Smyrna in 1922? Then you may see what an ethnic cleansing really is...
As I see that you are finally going to discuss the whole issue of
ethinc cleansings in the Balcans and Anatolia in the early 20th
century, which is no doubt a very interesting (and painful) subject, it
may be interesting to post this map of the ethic composition of that
region in 1923, according to an independent British source:
It's curious to see that the Smyrna region appers mostly Turk but
Cyprus 100% Greek. It's also curious to see the many Pontic Greeks and
Kosova already largely Albanian.
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Ethnic Cleansing of Macedonia
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