u/radicalqrcwi

Although Turkey has secured it’s position in the Balkan region by force during the First Balkan War, in which the Balkan League faced total defeat, the Orthodox states weren’t at all satisfied with that. The fragile order established after the war was obviously not designed to live forever — not with both Ottoman authority and nationalistic Balkan states existing at the same time.

It was predicted by many that the Great War will be the catalyst for the powder keg to explode, but these many were not right — Constantinople remained neutral during all of the war and the Entente nor the Central Powers did not want to change that by betting all on states, army of whom were greatly damaged 1 year ago. Furthermore, the Balkan States were caught in a civil unrest never seen before with ultranationalist ideologies gaining great prominence and monarchs forced to either be overthrown or concede to them.

The day on which guns roared in the peninsula was 21st of May, 1919. The Second Balkan League, consisting of the Union of Yugoslavia, Kingdom of Bulgaria and the State of Hellas all simultaneously attacked the Empire during it’s political crisis at the time. The League has made great progress occupying Epirus, most of Kosovo, Novi Pazar, making gains in Thrace, occupying half of the city of Thessaloniki. It seemed like the crescent has begun to wane in the European continent.

Turkey scrambled to mobilize its resources in Europe, relying greatly at the local Muslim population which was essentially being genocided by the League and at the Albanians, who were ready to defend the state because of the Albanian vilayet created in 1911. The Porte engaged in positional warfare along defendable mountainous regions, and the Balkan League was simultaneously engaged in two fronts — Albanian and Thracian-Salonikan. The front begun to turn to Empire’s favor in mid-23, and the war was over when the last participant, the Yugoslav Union, agreed to a peace agreement after the Fall of Belgrade. Serbia and Bulgaria were turned to vassal principalities, and the Eastern Rumelia was fully reestablished. Yugoslav Union was disbanded and most of Bosnia, excluding predominantly Catholic regions, were regained by Turks.

The war, however, completely discredited the post-Abdul Hamit liberalized government under the FaCP. The government was then seized in an election by the Faith and the Right Path Faction (Îmân ve Istikâmet Fırkası, İmakamef) which was dominated by conservatives and ulema, carrying the legacy of Abdul Hamit, presided by Şeyhulislam Mustafa Sabri Efendi. Under İmakamef, the state viewed its Orthodox Balkan subjects as unreliable and unloyal, convinced that during any new conflict they will all turn on Sultan.

So, realizing that repression cannot suffice for effective control, and ethnic cleansing was too immoral for the administration (although they turned a black eye on Albanian militias during the war forcefully driving out Serbs from Albanian vilayet), the state announced Rumelia Civilification Program. What it was is essentially a settler colonial policy, suggesting that anyone Muslim from Anatolia, Arabia, Syria, Iraq or Kurdistan gets 40 hectares of “state land” (most of which was confiscated from those accused of “cooperating with the invaders” during the war) in proximity to population centers and in fertile land. Later the program was expanded to include small Christian “heretical” sects from Russia like dukhobors, subbotniks, molokans and old-believers. Even more later it was expanded to more popular sects like Mennonites, basically everyone non-Orthodox and non-Catholic who was persecuted by the Soviets. Although it brought economic success because the newcomers were skilled in agriculture and such, it did break the traditional membrane of Rumelian society, effectively being a social experiment.

The program was expanded more during the Second World War, during of which Germans invaded Ottoman-held lands and were only stopped mid-Thrace. Sephardic population of Saloniki faced brutal policy of annihilation and still did not recover fully. Porte joined the Allied forces, briefly losing Libya to Italy as well. Even though Germans were defeated and all Turkish lands were returned, the principalities (barring Montenegro) were disbanded in favor of Socialist-led governments imposed by USSR, which was the empire’s main rival during all of the latter half of the 20th century.

Pic. 1: the ethnoreligious map in 1955.

Pic. 2: an octolingual sign near Thessaloniki.

Source: John English, "The History of Balkan Peninsula in XX Century”.