Batak massacre
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| Batak massacre | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Combatants | |||||||
| Ottoman Empire | Bulgarian civilians | ||||||
| Casualties | |||||||
| 300 | 2,100 or 5000 | ||||||
The Batak massacre were massacres of Christian civilians throughout Bulgaria in 1876 after the massacre of 300 Turkish villagers by Bulgarians.[2] It was estimated that 5000 out of a population of 7000 had perished at Batak alone, while the Christians slaughtered throughout Bulgaria in that fatal month of may made up a total of 12,000.[3]
[edit] Background
The Christian massacre of 300 Turkish villagers in Batak at the beginning of the Bulgarian uprising produced violent reaction on the part of the local irregular Ottoman troops, who later killed 2,100 innocent Bulgarians.[4][5] In October Mr. Baring had to report again on the proceedings of the Turkish commission. Six weeks had elapsed since it left Constantinople, at "it was a surprising fact that it had no yet decided whether the Batak Massacre was a crime or not."[6] The British commissioner, Mr. Baring, in his report, describes the event "as perhaps the most heinous crime that has stained the history of the present century".[7]
The Turkish government, meanwhile, began to implement another means of repression, by which people of other ethnicities were compulsorily transferred to Bulgaria in order to reduce the Bulgarians to a minority in their own country. The Turks even incited these immigrants to commit murder and plundering. 74/359 When in 1876 the Bulgarians attempted to defend themselves against these plundering and murdering, the Turks instated a number of massacres in which 25,000 people lost their lives (in Batak alone 5,000 of the 7,000 population of the city were massacred 75).[8][9]
[edit] References
- ^ The Historians' History of the World: A Comprehensive Narrative of the Rise and Development of... - Page 247 by Henry Smith Williams
- ^ Reid, James J., 'Batak 1876: a Massacre and its Significance', Journal of Genocide Research
- ^ The Cambridge Modern History - Page 384 by Adolphus William Ward, George Walter Prothero, Ernest Alfred Benians, Stanley Mordaunt Leathes
- ^ Turkey Between East and West: new challenges for a rising regional power - Page 22 by R. Craig Nation, Vojtech Mastny
- ^ Studies on Ottoman Social and Political History: Selected Articles and Essays - Page 500 by Kemal H Karpat
- ^ The Eastern Question from the Treaty of Paris 1856 to the Treaty of Berlin 1878 and to the Second... By George Douglas Campbell Argyll
- ^ The Rise of Nationality in the Balkans - Page 84 by Robert William Seton-Watson
- ^ Sir Edwin Pears, Forty Years in Constantinople, London, 1915, chapter II.
- ^ Turks in Bulgarian - Gladstone's article- Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East, London, 1876
