The Boatmen of Thessaloníki (Bulgarian: Гемиджиите, Macedonian: Гемиџии) or the Assassins of Salonica, were an anarchistic group active in the Ottoman Empire in the years around 1900. They all were graduates from the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki, and launched a campaign of terror bombing, the so called "Thessaloniki bombings of 1903". Their aim was to attract the attention of the Great Powers to Ottoman oppression in Macedonia and Eastern Thrace.
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The Bulgarian anarchist movement grew in the 1890s, and the territory of Principality of Bulgaria became a staging-point for anarchist activities against the Ottomans, particularly in support of Macedonian and Thracian liberation movements. The Boatmen of Thessaloníki were a descendant of a founded in 1895 in Plovdiv "Macedonian Secret Revolutionary Committee", which was developed later in Geneve in a secret, anarchistic, brotherhood called "Geneve group". Its activists were the students Michail Gerdjikov, Petar Mandjukov and Slavi Merdjanov. They were influenced from the anarcho-nationalism, which emerged in Europe, following the French Revolution, going back at least to Mikhail Bakunin and his involvement with the Pan-Slavic movement. Bulgarian anarchists in the so-called “Geneva group” of students played key roles in the anti-Ottoman struggles.
Later Merdjanov moved to the Bulgarian school in Salonika, where he worked as teacher and sparked some of the graduates with this ideas. The first meetings of the group took part in 1898 with the purpose of forming a revolutionary terrorist group with the purpose of changing international public opinion in the matter of the freedom of Macedonia and Adrianople Thrace through urging the social conscience of the oppressed. The group is found in published works with several names: "The boatmen of Thessaloniki", the "Crew",[1] or the "Gemitzides", form of the Turkish word for "boatman". At their start, they had a different name, the "Troublemakers", gürültücü.[2] The name "boatmen" was due to "leaving behind the everyday life and the limits of law and sail with a boat in the free and wild seas of lawlessness."[3]
At first the anarchists started to make plans for bomb attack in Istanbul. In the summer of 1899, under the leadership of Slavi Merdjanov the group planned the assassination of the Sultan. Merdzjanov, Petar Sokolov and their friend, the anarchist Petar Mandjukov, approached Boris Sarafov, the leader of Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee, and asked him for funds to finance large-scale terrorist activities in the main towns of European Turkey. He promised to provide money, and the three left for Istanbul, where after much discussion, they decided to assassinate the Sultan. In December of the same year Merdjanov was connected from the secretary of Bulgarian Exarchate Dimitar Lyapov with local Armenian revolutionaries. Here they established that even with the help of the Armenians it was impossible to do it. Quite early on, they decided that the effect of the explosion would be greater if there were parallel actions in other towns, and they consulted with Jordan Popjordanov, a member of a small terrorist group in Salonika, who agreed to blow up the Salonika branch of the Ottoman Bank. He enlisted the aid of a number of close friends. Salonika terrorists were very young men, mostly from Veles, pupils in the Bulgarian High School. The Salonika terrorist group called itself "the Gemidzhi". So they planned to blow up the central offices of the Ottoman Bank in Salonika and Istanbul.
During 1900 Merdjanov arrived again in Istanbul to discuss with the Armenians the blowing and afterward the terrorists started to work, digging a tunnels on both places. On 18 September 1900 the Ottoman police apprehended a member of a group, who was carrying the explosives and later the whole group was arrested, including Merdjanov, Sokolov and Pavel Shatev. The core was hastily disbanded for security and only Pingov stayed in Thessaloníki for preparing future activity. In 1901 the prisoners were deported το Bulgaria, after pressure from the Bulgarian government. Merdzjanov and Sokolov went to Sofia and began to think up new ideas, one of which was to hold up the Orient Express on Turkish territory near Adrianople, and to gain possession of the mail in order to finance future actions. In pursuit of this plan, they went to the Adrianople area in July 1901, with a cheta consisting of ten men, equipped with the help of Pavel Genadiev, the Supreme Macedonian Committee's representative in Plovdiv. The cheta managed to place a large quantity of dynamite on the railway line, but something went wrong, and the train passed undamaged. After this failure, they kidnapped the son of a rich Turkish landowner, but they were soon discovered and surrounded by large Turkish forces. In a battle which lasted several hours, most of the chetnitsi were killed or seriously wounded. Sokolov was among the dead, and Merdzjanov was captured alive, together with a Bulgarian from Lozengrad, and two Armenians. The captives were taken to Adrianople, where, in November 1901, all four were publicly hanged. The Gemidzhii were ready for action again in 1902, but the seizure in Dedeagach (present day Alexandroupoli, in Greece) of dynamite, arranged by Supreme Macedonian Committee's leader Boris Sarafov, forced the group to abandon planned attacks in Adrianople, and to restrict its activity. Afterwards the members of the group went to Thessaloniki and continued to plan their new bombings.
So on the 28 April 1903, member of the group, Pavel Shatev, used dynamite to blow up the French ship “Guadalquivir” which was leaving the Thessaloniki harbour. The bomber left the ship together with the other passengers, but was caught later by the Turkish police at the Skopie train station. The same night, other group bombers: Dimitar Mechev, Iliya Trachkov, and Milan Arsov, struck the railway between Thessaloniki and Istanbul, causing damage to the locomotive and some of the cars of a passing train without wounding any passengers. The commencing signal for the large raid in Thessaloniki was given by Kostadin Kirkov who used explosives to shut off the electricity and water supply systems of the city. Jordan Popjordanov (Orceto) blew up the building of an Ottoman Bank office, under which the "gemidzhii" had previously dug a tunnel. Milan Arsov threw bombs in the "Alhabra" Café. The same night, Kostadin Kirkov, Iliya Bogdanov and Vladimir Pingov detonated bombs in different parts of the city. Dimitar Mechev and Iliya Truchkov failed to blast the reservoir of a gas-producing plant. They ware later killed in their quarters during a shoot-out with army and gendarmerie forces, against which Mechev and Trachkov used more than 60 bombs. Jordan Popjordanov was killed on April 17. On April 18, Kostadin Kirkov was also killed while trying to blow up a postal office. Right before being caught, Cvetko Traikov, whose mission was to kill the local governor, killed himself by setting off a bomb and then sitting on it.
In the wake of the attacks, martial law was declared in the city. As a response the Turkish Army and "bashibozouks" massacred many innocent Bulgarian citizens in Thessaloniki, and later in Bitola. Pavel Shatev, Marko Boshnakov, Georgi Bogdanov and Milan Arsov ware arrested and sentenced by a court martial to a penal colony in Fezzan. Also a members of the Central Committee of IMORO, including Ivan Garvanov, D. Mirchev, and J. Kondov were incarcerated. In Libya Boshnakov died from malaria on the 14th of February, 1908 and Arsov from exhaustion the 8th of June the same year. On the 30th of July 1908, because of the movement of the Young Turks, amnesty was given and the two remaining "Boatmen", after they cut the heads of their comrades leave and arrive in Thessaloníki at the 18th of October, where they give the heads to the parents of the deceased.
The members of the boatmen were as follows:[4]
There is monument erected in the centre of Skopje, Macedonia in 2010, in honour of Гемиџии (Boatmen of Thessaloníki). The Municipality of Veles also constructed a monument by a recently built iron bridge. The anthem of Veles, "Bolen mi lezi Mile Pop – Jordanov", speaks of them.[5]