Destruction of the Thracian Bulgarians in 1913

Ethnic map of the Adrianople Thrace in 1912 according to academician Lyubomir Miletich. The areas with Bulgarian majority coloured in green, Turkish - in red, Greek - in brown.
Balkan Wars boundaries.

"The Destruction of Thracian Bulgarians in 1913" (Bulgarian: "Разорението на тракийските българи през 1913 г.", Razorenieto na trakiiskite balgari prez 1913 g., also translated as "The Devastation"[1] or "The Ruin of the Thracian Bulgarians in 1913"[2]) is a book published by the Bulgarian academic Lyubomir Miletich in 1918, which describes the mass extermination and ethnic cleansing of the Bulgarian population in Eastern Thrace and Eastern Rhodope Mountains (now mainly in Edirne Province, Kırklareli Province and Tekirdağ Province in Turkey and in Evros Prefecture in Greece) during the Second Balkan War and in a short period after it.

Although not explicitly stated in the book, the murdered Thracian Bulgarians are estimated to have been 50,000 - 60,000, which was 20% of the Bulgarian population in Thrace; the rest of the Christian Bulgarians either died or fled.[3][4] The ethnic cleansing targeted 300,000 Bulgarians, who were killed or expelled.[5]

Content

Whеn the military actions between Serbia, Greece, Montenegro and Romania against Bulgaria were in full progress, the Ottoman Empire took advantage of the situation to recover some of its former possessions in Thrace including Adrianople. In the beginning of July 1913 its forces crossed the Bulgarian border on the line Midiya-Enos, settled by the Treaty of London in May 1913. Because the Bulgarian troops had all been allocated to the front with Serbia and Greece, the Ottoman armies suffered no combat casualties and moved northwards and westwards without battles. Thus reoccupied territories were given back to the Ottoman Empire by the Treaty of Constantinople, signed on September 16. Despite that, the mass extermination and etnic cleansing continued in the areas controlled by the Ottomans even after this date. Shortly after the end of the hostilities, the author interviewed hundreds of refugees from these regions, travelled himself in the places where these tragic events happened and systematically depicted in detail the atrocities, made from the Young Turks' regular army, Ottoman paramilitary forces and partly from local Greeks. As a result of this violent process approximately 200,000 Bulgarians were killed or forced to leave their homes and properties forever, seeking salvation in territories, controlled by Bulgarian army and paramilitary formation IMORO. The entire community of the Thracian Bulgarians was wiped out. Their inheritors in contemporary Bulgaria are about 800,000 people.

Population estimates

Alongside the 1911 official Ottoman figures, Lyubomir Miletich made the following estimates of the ethnic composition, using linguistic criteria rather than religious affiliation:

Population estimates of Edirne Vilayet
Group Ottoman 1893[6] Ottoman 1911[7] Miletich estimate[8]
Muslims434,366 795,706
Muslim Turks NA
Muslim Bulgarians (Pomaks) 95,502
Greeks (EOC members) 267,220 395,872
(ethnic) Greeks 200,000-250,000
Bulgarians (BOC members) 102,245171,055
Orthodox Bulgarians 203,224
Armenians 16,64233,650
Catholics 1,02412,783
Other 82744,552
Total 836,041 1,426,632

The Ottoman authorities divided the population by religion, so all Patriarchists were counted as Greeks and the Pomaks as Muslims. The other two sources divided the population by language, so for example 24,970 Bulgarian patriarchists and 1700 Uniates were added by Miletich to the total figure for Orthodox Bulgarians.[8]

Illustrations

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Magdalena Elchinova (2016). Memory, Heritage and Ethnicity: Constructing Identity among the Istanbul-based Orthodox Bulgarians. Ethnologia Europaea. 46. p. 113.
  2. ↑ Valentina Ganeva-Raycheva (2012). Migration, Territories, Heritage: Discourses and Practices in Constructing the Bulgarian-Turkish Border. Migration, Memory, Heritage: Socio-cultural Approaches to the Bulgarian-Turkish Border. IEFSEM-BAS. p. 62.
  3. ↑ Carnegie (1914). Report of the international commission to inquire into the causes and conduct of the Balkan Wars. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
  4. ↑ Resettlement Waves, Historical Memory and Identity Construction: The Case of Thracian Refugees in Bulgaria, pp. 68
  5. ↑ Stark, Laura. "Ethnologia Europaea vol. 46:1".
  6. ↑ Kemal H. Karpat. Ottoman Population Records and the Census of 1881/82-1893 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 9 (1978), 237-274, p. 37
  7. ↑ Teaching Modern Southeast European History. Alternative Educational Materials, p. 26
  8. 1 2 The Destruction of Thracian Bulgarians in 1913, Lybomir Miletich, 1918, pp. 291 and 301
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