During the Balkan War, Serbia, Montenegro, Greece and Bulgaria succeeded in conquering the European territories of the Ottoman Empire, which was left with only Çatalca and the Gallipoli peninsula. However the Balkan states were not satisfied. There was no preliminary agreement made with regard to the post-war partition of the former Ottoman territories and the London Conference had simply recognized the status quo. The biggest disappointment was experienced in Sofia. Bulgaria felt that its territorial rewards from the war, particularly in Macedonia, were insufficient and laid claim to the city of Salonica. Meanwhile, neither Greece nor Serbia were ready to give up their claims on Macedonia, whereas Romania, which had not taken part in the war, was looking for an opportunity to capitalize on the disagreements between Balkan states and gain advantages in Dobrudja.

Realizing that the situation was again escalating in the Balkans, Russian Tsar Nikola II attempted to intervene, however it was too late. Bulgarians wanted to acquire all of Bulgarian Macedonia, which would mean a Bulgarian domination of the Balkans, while Serbians and Greeks hoped to take larger portions of Macedonia and prevent Bulgarian hegemony. On 30 June 1913, Bulgarian Tsar Ferdinand ordered his troops to attack Serbian and Greek positions. The Second Balkan War had begun.

The Bulgarian strategy was to defeat the Serbs and Greeks as soon as possible, before Russia or Turkey intervened, and then to move north, towards Romania. However, this did not happen as fast as they wanted. Tsar Ferdinand dismissed General Savov and replaced him with General Dimitriev as the new commander-in-chief. There was now a political turmoil in Sofia. The government did not want war, but the Tsar did. The army did not know what to do, because they were receiving conflicting orders. To make it worse for Bulgarians, Romania declared war on Bulgaria on 10 July. Having to fight in three different fronts, the Bulgarian army was split and within only three weeks it was a complete disaster for them.

Liberation of Edirne

Meanwhile, this conflict among the victors of the first war was a great opportunity for the Ottoman Empire to recover at least some of the lost territories. Grand Vizier Mahmut Şevket Paşa was assassinated on 11 June and succeeded by the conservative Sait Halim Paşa, who had a Unionist line. The CUP was now totally in power in Istanbul and they needed a military victory to crown their rise. On 6 July, the Sublime Porte decided for the army to march towards the Enos-Midia line, which was crossed on 12 July by an army of around 200,000 troops.

On 22 July, the Ottoman army entered Edirne without firing a single shot. The first contingent to enter the city was commanded by Enver Bey, who famously said: “We are here and we will stay here.”1 The liberation of Edirne was a great morale boost, not only for the Ottoman army, but also for the entire country. Meanwhile, the Great Powers immediately protested the liberation of Edirne on the grounds that it was against the provisions of the London Treaty. However, the mood was so high in Istanbul, that neither these protests nor Russian threats to send a fleet to Istanbul and to invade Eastern Anatolia did have any effect. Meanwhile, Romanian troops had occupied Southern Dobrudja and they were marching through Northern Bulgaria with the objective of threatening Sofia.

After a series of diplomatic attempts between the Great Powers and the Balkan states, the Second Balkan War ended with the Treaty of Bucharest signed on 12 August 1913. Romania profited most in proportion to her losses and received from Bulgaria the entire Southern Dobrudja region, s well as Silistria and Turtucaia south of the Danube. Bulgaria had failed to gain Macedonia and with only a small outlet to the Aegean around the minor port of Dedeağaç (modern-day Alexandroupoli), it had to abandon its project of Balkan hegemony. Greece kept Salonica and was also assigned the port of Kavala and the territory eastward.

An interesting outcome of the Second Balkan War was the establishment of the Provisional Government of Western Thrace on 31 August 1913. The state was created by a Turkish and Pomak (Muslim Bulgarian) rebellion led by Kuşçubaşı Eşref Bey against withdrawing occupying Bulgarian forces in that area. This short-lived republic was founded with Gümülcine (modern-day Komotini) as its capital and it had established its own state bureaucracy and army. However, with the Treaty of Istanbul, the republic was dissolved and its territory was left to Bulgaria.

The Ottoman Empire signed three peace treaties with the Balkan states. The first was the Treaty of Istanbul signed with Bulgaria on 29 September 1913, according to which the Enos-Midia line was preserved, but was made to curve northward from the Black Sea and westward across the River Maritza in such a way that the Ottoman Empire obtained not only Edirne, but also Kırk Kilise and Didymoteicho. The Treaty of Istanbul also gave the Muslim population remaining inside the borders of Bulgaria the right to immigrate to Ottoman territories within four years, whereas those who choose to stay would be provided with freedom of worship. This treaty was followed by the Treaty of Athens signed on 14 November 1913, which left Ioannina, Crete and Salonica to Greece, but left the question of the Aegean islands unsolved. Another treaty was signed with Serbia in Istanbul on 14 March 1914. Since the Ottoman Empire had no shared frontier with Serbia, this treaty only arranged the status of the Muslim population in Serbia.

Conclusion

During the Balkan Wars, the Ottoman army suffered around 250,000 casualties, including those killed in action, wounded and lost. Having lost 83 percent of its European territories, which were of great economic significance, and 69 percent of its population living in European territories, the Ottoman Empire was no more ‘European’.2 On the other hand, Bulgaria enlarged its territories by 29 percent, Greece by 68 percent, Montenegro by 62 percent and Romania by 5 percent.3

The biggest loser of the Balkan Wars was the civilian population. They were forced to migrate, they had to flee the invading armies and bands, they lost their lives and property. The methods employed by Russia in the Turco-Russian War of 1878 to cleanse the Balkan Peninsula from its Muslim population, was this time used by Bulgarian, Serbian and Greek bands. While regular armies were fighting each other at the front, the Muslim population was killed or forced to leave their homes in towns and villages.

It was not the only the Muslim population that suffered. During the Second Balkan Wars the belligerents inflicted the same cruelty on each other’s Christian peoples. It was Istanbul, which received the highest number of refugees during the first war, and in the second war it was Bulgaria.

The main reason behind the behavior towards the civilians was the “ideology of exclusionary nationalism” that dominated Balkans in the early 20th century. After the war, the same ideology influenced the Ottoman Empire as well. CUP leaders blamed the non-Muslim population for the defeat in the Balkans and the ideology of Ottomanism was replaced by Turkism, championed, among others, by Enver Bey. As the war was sliding into a major catastrophe, the leaders of the Ottoman Empire had set their new target as defending the region between Edirne and Aleppo, roughly corresponding to modern-day Turkey.4