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Balkanalysis.com Announces New 2006 Archive Uploads

Balkanalysis.com would like to announce that nine months’ worth of archived articles, many previously unavailable on the website, have now been uploaded to our page at the Central and Eastern European Online Library (CEEOL.com).

The articles in question number more than 50, and cover the months March-December 2006. They will be of interest to researchers of contemporary Balkan history. They complete the current archive of Balkanalysis.com articles, covering the period 2001-2006. These articles specifically include articles on Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo.

Over 220 instititutions from 21 countries currently offer access to articles in the Library. If you would like to access these articles, but your institution is not yet a member of the CEEOL.com program, please have your institution’s acquisitions or reference librarian contact CEEOL.com directly.

Sincerely,

Balkanalysis.com team

2007 Balkan Year in Review: Key Underreported Trends for the Future

The year 2007 was an eventful one in the Balkans, though several major trends remained underreported or were simply ignored. The Western media utilized most of its limited capacity to the political dimensions of the future status of Kosovo, choosing to tell and retell a tired story of good vs. bad (i.e., the West vs. Russia and Serbia), barely scratching the surface of what is if not necessarily the most important, at least the most hyped issue in the region.

Kosovo is however intimately tied to specific events and factors that, on the larger level, indicate an emerging strategic balance of power in the region, one that may not quite be what had been planned by the West, and thus which will likely leave a complicit media scrambling to find explanations for years to come. In this special retrospective report, Balkanalysis.com discusses a few of the major trends that have been identified in 2007 and which will likely help shape the Balkans in 2008.

The first major event has to be the growing power of Russia in the region and the future way in which this power, even if lessened, will be exerted. Less than a decade ago, the chief successor state to the USSR was grasping for economic stability and political respect on the global stage, with the nadir being reached in March 1999, when it proved powerless to stop NATO’s air war on Yugoslavia over Kosovo. This national humiliation was aggravated when the West failed to grant Russia equal partner status in keeping the peace in post-war Kosovo. Russia could only watch helplessly as half of Kosovo’s Serbian Orthodox population was driven out of the province by Albanian ethnic cleansers, with tacit Western approval.

From the ashes of this defeat arose Vladimir Putin, the ex-KGB officer determined to not let the national interest be trampled on again. In fact, Putin’s opportunity was created by the West in its reckless game in 1999. Until the question of changing Kosovo’s political status arose, Russia had not had a point of strategic leverage in the Balkans. For Putin, simply fomenting stubborn diplomatic opposition while an increasingly frantic West tries to appease the independence-minded Albanians has proven a very cost-effective and powerful strategy to contest Western ambitions and reassert his country’s role as a major power.

Nevertheless, the Western media has more often than not chosen to simply condemn these tactics rather than provide objective analysis, thus betraying their own sympathies with Western governments. Although there is little to be learned from boring invective, it would prove embarrassing to the powers that bombed Kosovo in 1999 for journalists to ask whether the intervention itself provided an opportunity for Russia to expand its sphere of influence, and precisely an opportunity that had simply not existed before. True, the US got its enormous military base in the heart of the Balkans with Camp Bondsteel – now more than a liability than anything else – but Russia has made major inroads on Balkan energy acquisitions, as well as buying considerable valuable seaside real estate in Montenegro, that former partner republic with Serbia whose independence, myopic and partisan Western diplomats still today maintain, is yet another well deserved punishment for the Serbs.

Reporting on the changing Russian role in the Balkans becomes even scantier in terms of its relation to the year’s second key trend, and perhaps the most astonishing- the diplomatic triumphs of Greece. A member of both the EU and NATO, Greece is a thoroughly Western country which has however sought to maintain its diverse relationships in nurturing national interests- in the process perhaps becoming guilty of wanting to have its cake and eat it too. While Greece’s major new alliance, with Russia, is more a harmonious convergence of certain interests than a deliberate planned partnership, it has been amply displayed and was singled out in a ‘power audit’ by the new interventionist think-tank, the European Council on Foreign Relations, some of whose members are famous for their roles in the Kosovo war and peace.

Greece’s convergence of interests with Russia owes primarily to two things; wariness over national security, vis-à-vis perennial enemy Turkey, and its ambition to be a regional player in the energy sector. As with the Russian bear’s awakening over Kosovo, Greece determined these interests in the late 1990’s, in response to Turkey’s enhanced position globally. The first Greek concerns were registered with the Clinton administration’s determination to use the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan for the terminus of a new oil pipeline (the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, or BTC pipeline) that would bring Caspian oil to the West and bypass Russia in the process. Under such a scenario, it was only natural that both affronted parties would reach out to one another in the energy sector, as has been the case with both LUKoil’s acquisitions in Hellenic Petroleum and in the major efforts to hammer out a deal on the anticipated Burgas-Alexandroupoli Pipeline bringing Russian oil to the Aegean via Bulgaria.

Greece’s second point of panic, though a far less reported one, came with the deepening alliance in the late 1990’s between Turkey and Israel. This first of all involved the transfer of lobbying know-how from the latter to the former in Washington, and soon developed into full-fledged intelligence cooperation, with one jarring result being the Turkish MIT’s kidnapping of Kurdish guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan, supposedly under Greek protection, in Nairobi. The Israelis had participated in gathering intelligence. It was a major embarrassment for Athens and a wild success for the Turkish government, by which it effectively ended the Kurdish insurrection, at least for a few years. Israeli-Turkish cooperation would strengthen and, with the victory of George W. Bush in 2000, catapult the neoconservatives, closely affiliated to both Israeli and Turkish lobby groups, into power in Washington.

Greece, like Russia a historic ally of Serbia, had also been less than thrilled about the NATO intervention of 1999, and chose not to participate in NATO air strikes; pivotally, however, it also chose not to veto the operation as Serbia had hoped. Alienated and insulted on all sides, Greece began to develop a parallel security infrastructure to that of NATO, turning to Russian expertise, most significantly in the advanced S-300 and TOR M-1 mobile anti-aircraft system which by virtue of its provenance was not supposed to be acquired by a NATO member. Intense interest in Greece’s air defense capacities from the Turks led, in May 2006, to a brief skirmish between Turkish and Greek fighter jets near the island of Karpathos, leading to the accidental death of a Greek pilot.

Aside from the defense sector, Greece’s budding partnership with Russia has also comprised energy diplomacy- the factor that will raise Greece’s political and economic stature as a transit corridor for oil, at a time of fierce competition between European countries desiring such a role. The expected Burgas-Alexandroupoli pipeline, in which Russia’s stake will be larger than either of the two countries through which the pipeline will actually go, is also seen by Athens as a defensive precaution against Turkey: it will hug the militarized eastern border in Evros, a tangible investment deterring any Turkish invasion. This factor was dramatically enhanced with the Greek Cypriot government’s decision, against Turkish protests, to drill for oil off of the island’s coast. Should multinational oil companies be active in Cypriot oil projects, the logic goes, Turkey will have to take a less bellicose stance towards Nicosia and, by extension, Athens.

The larger implications of Greece’s diplomatic success in 2004 in lobbying for Cyprus’ unconditional entry into the EU – that is, with its membership not being contingent on the passage of the ‘Annan Plan’ for unification – have indeed registered this year, with the EU’s second Greek state ready to uphold Athens’ policies within the bloc, particularly on the Kosovo issue, thus relieving Greece of having to take the strongest stance possible against Kosovo independence. So long as Cyprus can be counted on to conduct an identical policy, Greece can desist and so appear more ‘accommodating’ to Western interests- something that also buys it more political capital to expend on issues which are (erroneously, perhaps) equated with the national interest, such as trying to force the Republic of Macedonia to change its constitutional name. Despite increasing world sympathy for the Macedonian side, Greece has continued to prevent major EU powers from recognizing the country’s name, allegedly due to economic threats. At the same time, Greece is happy to let Turkey remain bogged down on its eastern front, embroiled in a war against Kurdish guerrillas that has now unwisely led it into northern Iraq.

That said, the major point of inquiry for journalists in 2008 has got to be the question of finding the source of Greek power. A NATO member that uses Russian military technology, opposes Kosovo independence, and that has threatened to torpedo NATO plans by vetoing Macedonian accession in April, Greece nevertheless continues to have its way with the West. Despite all of these apparent red flags, there has never been a detailed media investigation into precisely how Greece wields its economic and diplomatic clout to extract results that diverge wildly from those of its allies.

This brings us to the third major issue in the Balkans this year, though before considering it we must acknowledge that for the Greeks, success may be coming at a price: the massive summer fires, which blazed along fronts of up to 70km in width and which reached urban Athens, while decimating large stretches of the Peloponnese, can be considered the greatest threat to national security, and we expect that they will be happen again this coming summer.

While some fires occurred due to natural causes amidst parched, hot natural conditions, the majority occurred due to human involvement. Everyone from arsonists to property developers to Kosovo Albanians have been blamed, all with different alleged motives. While the last of these propositions has been derided as conspiracy-theorizing, it is clear that for irredentists with no chance of undertaking military action against much stronger state forces, the only other possibility for pressuring Greek policy is by causing widespread material destruction through fires or other terrorist acts. However, the Western press by and large chose not to look at the situation from this strategic aspect.

The third major underreported issue of the year in the Balkans has been the intrinsic connections and future possibilities of the major international bodies’ self-created problems in the region. The issue of Kosovo, Western governments have continuously maintained, is one that cannot be considered a precedent for any other of the numerous self-determination struggles across the globe- even as the representatives of these independence movements continue to remind that no, in fact Kosovo is being perceived as a precedent for them.

The possibility that Kosovo could be partitioned, anathema to the West as potentially having the capacity to set off a chain reaction in the Balkans, has ironically been given precedent due to the admission of a divided Cyprus into the EU in 2004. In that case, both the UN and EU were unable, or unwilling, to force Greek and Turkish Cypriots to settle their differences and enter as one nation, thus exacerbating the existing political animosities between Greece and Turkey. Whatever the reason for Cyprus entering the EU divided may have been, it is clear now that the whole thing has proven an embarrassment for the credibility of the supranational world bodies.

Since the UN could not force the non-warring Greeks and Turks of Cyprus to come together in 2004, it should be no surprise that the UN is now saying it can’t do anything more to solve the Kosovo conundrum, and will hand it off to the EU to figure out. This is another blow to the credibility of the alleged global peacekeeper, and will be perceived by potential secessionists around the world as evidence that the UN has no ability to curtail their future ambitions.

For its part, the EU has enough of a headache dealing with embarrassments more recent than the Cyprus fiasco. The two countries that made headlines on Jan 1 by joining the bloc, Bulgaria and Romania, did so on condition of implementing further reforms in the future. European diplomats state that by the end of 2006, the whole train of EU enlargement had built up such momentum that it could not be stopped; and, had everything gone according to plan with the Romanians and Bulgarians, the EU might be more confident now of its future enlargement. However, the complacency that has been shown by the new members – disinterested in finishing reforms, safe in knowing that they are finally in the club – is making Brussels much more circumspect about further Balkan enlargement. While the value of Croatia’s tourism industry and its relatively homogenous Christian society could indeed keep it on track for membership, Macedonia, Bosnia, Albania and Serbia could find themselves out in the cold, stymied both by the cancerous presence of Kosovo in the middle and the recent legacy of less-than-honest candidate countries.

For 2008 at least, therefore, events in the Balkans should continue to outstrip the control of supranational institutions, and perhaps at an accelerated pace. While this is not necessarily a recipe for war, it does mean that the demonstrated trends in the region towards the bold and unpredictable unilateralism of the pre-WWII alliance systems will intensify. To paraphrase the friendly Chinese curse, we are indeed living in interesting times.

Finally, another emerging trend in the Balkans to watch during 2008 will be the activities of Islamic extremist groups in the region. Although their activities in 2007 were reported mostly in the local medias, the international press took interest as well when Serbian police in March broke up a Wahhabi training camp in the mountains of Novi Pazar, in the southwest Sandzak region; recently, from the other side of the border, Montenegro’s intelligence chief attested that the fundamentalists inhabited camps in Montenegrin Sandzak, while also masquerading their activities in NGOs and youth groups. Also in 2007 Macedonian special police carried out an action against an Albanian irredentist group near the Kosovo border, killing at least one known Islamic extremist in the process. And failed jihadi plots against the US Embassy in Vienna and Ft. Dix in New Jersey both had clear connections with the Balkans. These are only a few of the stories that emerged this year, indicating activity that we believe will increase in the year ahead. The fact that certain Western countries and Israel are starting to take a closer look at the phenomenon of Islamic extremism in the Balkans provides further indications that it remains one of the major, if more underreported, issues affecting regional security.

News from Balkanalysis.com: Summer Recess, New Books, Essential Articles

Balkanalysis.com would like to inform its readers that the site will be on summer recess through September. Look for new articles and photos to be posted then. Until we’re back, readers may like to check out two new books from Balkanalysis.com director Christopher Deliso, and to peruse the archive- as well as new hand-picked essential background articles presented for you below.

The first new book, The Coming Balkan Caliphate: The Threat of Radical Islam to Europe and the West, published by Praeger Security International, details in depth the sordid story of how Western interventions in the Balkans during the 1990’s directly allowed foreign Islamic terrorist groups to set up shop- and how Western policy since has created a climate in which extremist groups can thrive, boding ill for regional security.

A work of unprecedented depth, The Coming Balkan Caliphate analyzes the situation on a country-by-country basis, and will be useful for general-interest ‘beginners’ to Balkan issues and experienced professionals alike. Relying on five years of field research and dozens of interviews with ranking security officials from several Western and regional countries, The Coming Balkan Caliphate dispels myths and enhances our knowledge of the emerging extremist threat coming from the Balkans.

The second new book, Hidden Macedonia: The Mystic Lakes of Ohrid and Prespa, is a travelogue out now from London’s Haus Publishing, which details the author’s circular journey around Lakes Prespa and Ohrid, through Greece, Albania and the Republic of Macedonia. Along the way, the history, culture and contemporary life of the great Macedonian lakes are intertwined with a little adventure, camaraderie and good food and drink. Hidden Macedonia will appeal to travelers looking forward to visiting the region, or those who are content to imagine the Macedonian lakes from afar.

Finally, here is a list of twelve original and essential articles (in no particular order). All are among those published over the last year, and will enhance readers’ knowledge and help tide you over until we return from summer recess.

Thanks for your understanding and continued reading.

-Balkanalysis.com

The Strategic Significance of Greek Thrace: Current Dynamics and Emerging Factors (Ioannis Michaletos & Christopher Deliso)

Turkey: Why a Coup, Soft or Hard is Unlikely in 2007 (Mehmet Kalyoncu, December 2, 2006)

Estimating Yugoslavia, (David Binder, December 22, 2006)

In Macedonia, New Concerns over Rural Fundamentalism (Christopher Deliso, October 2, 2006)

Bulgaria To Finally Open Secret Files (Jan Buruma, May 15, 2007)

A Brief Travelers’ Guide to Sarajevo’s Local Traditions, (Lidija Jularić, November 17, 2006)

Exclusive: How the US Ordered Increased Activity against Macedonia’s Islamists after the Fort Dix Arrests (Balkanalysis.com, June 22, 2007)

Turkey: Europe’s Emerging Energy Corridor for Central Eurasian, Caucasian and Caspian Oil and Gas (Mehmet Efe Biresselioglu, January 20, 2007)

Varieties of Religious Experience in a Macedonian Village (Christopher Deliso, September 27, 2006)

The Hijacking of a Nation (Sibel Edmonds, November 29, 2006)

Wahhabis in Labunista Antagonize Locals, as New Details Emerge about Italian Arrests, (Balkanalysis.com, January 5, 2007)

Greece, Turkey and Balkan Security: Interview with John M. Nomikos (Balkanalysis.com, December 12, 2006)

Estimating Yugoslavia

By David Binder
That was a strange assembly on the fifth floor of Washington’s Woodrow Wilson Center on Dec. 7: about 70 aging intelligence agents, diplomats, academics and the odd journalist – mostly male – brought together by that now arcane topic: Yugoslavia.
The group was convened by the Government’s National Intelligence Council and the Wilson Center [...]

The EU Has No ‘Plan B’ for the Balkans, or, Welcome to the Reservation

By Christopher Deliso
EU policy towards the West Balkan states has sought to keep the various antagonistic nations and ethnicities from one another’s throats, by promising eventual membership in NATO and the European Union to each country. This was to be the magic solution. The premise was that the collective advantages of membership in these [...]

Balkanalysis.com: the New and Improved Version

We at Balkanalysis.com are proud to welcome our readers to the new and improved version of the website. With a different look, improved functionality, enhanced features and more, we are sure that you will enjoy the site more than ever.

Here’s what’s different:

-Excellent search capabilities; articles are also cross-posted in up to 12 different categories.

-Photo of the week: every week, a beautiful new photo from the Balkans to capture your attention.

-Security & Intelligence Briefs: An exciting new feature that provides readers with vital information on the most important security trends in the region. We anticipate that this will be one of the most popular aspects of the site, and intend to therefore provide unique information not available elsewhere.

-A large and growing collection of interesting and useful Balkan links categorized by country.

Readers should note that since we are just finishing the programming and design, there are bound to be some bugs for the first few days, most notably in terms of symbols and letters that do not appear correctly. We are working on this and all will be fixed within a few days.

We are very happy to hear your feedback regarding the new look of the website. Performing the makeover was a long and arduous effort which could not have been done without the excellent work of Mike Ewens at Betanaught.com Hosting and Design.

Finally we should note that readers can show their appreciation for our efforts to make a better Balkanalysis.com by donating today.

Best wishes from the Balkanalysis.com Team.

For Some Bosnian Muslims in Serbia, Ethno-music is Simply Satanic

An indication of what lies ahead for the Balkans occurred recently in Novi Pazar, when Wahhabi fanatics successfully destroyed a concert held by a renowned Balkan ethno-music orchestra that appeals to people from many countries and ethnicities.
The violence was brazen and highly alarming, according to Belgrade’s B-92 which described the occurrence thus:
“ten [...]

What Mr. Lyon Didn’t Say

By Christopher Deliso
James Lyon’s April 10 article on political developments in Serbia, published in the Baltimore Sun, darkly predicts “serious repercussions” for the Balkan country, in terms of its “relations with the European Union and the United States, Montenegro’s independence referendum, the future status of Kosovo and cooperation with The [...]

An Independent Montenegro?

By David Binder
The United Nations has 191 members. Four of those which have joined since 1991 were constituent republics of the former Yugoslav Federation. So who could be surprised if the world body grows to 200 in the next few years, with some of the newest additions again emerging from the mess [...]

Reflections on Milosevic

By David Binder
No Serbian leader had such renown since the time of Prince Lazar and Tsar Dusan. No Yugoslav except Tito had such international recognition. One must concede that to Slobodan Milosevic and, at the end of his days he appeared to relish that prominence immensely – the sole reminder of his [...]

Massacres and Machinations Continue: 1905 through to the Bitter End

The last in a 10-part series by Carl Savich and Christopher Deliso.

This depressing outlook was shared by other international observers. A couple months after Captain Nandrup’s final report was issued, the atrocities were still occurring. One was cited by Henry Noel Brailsford, the leader of the British aid mission to Macedonia, and a foreign correspondent for The Manchester Guardian and other publications. He had spent time on assignment in the Balkans in the 1890’s. His 1905 book Macedonia: Its Races and Their Future recounts his experiences in Macedonia during the insurgency and the implementation of the reforms. Brailsford described the Ottoman Turkish attack on Kuklish in 1905 thus:

“a typical outrage occurred in February, 1905, at the Bulgarian village of Kuklish, where, according to the report of a Russian gendarmerie captain, 64 houses out of 105 were burned, 38 unarmed peasants killed, including two women and a baby, five persons wounded, and eleven women violated. The whole place was pillaged, and the officers made no attempt to check the savagery of their men. It is worthy of note that the “reformed’ gendarmes who were present behaved exactly like the unregenerate soldiery.” Zervi, Mogila, Konopnitsa, and other Macedonian towns were similarly attacked during the spring and summer of 1905 by the “reformed” gendarmerie.

A Macedonian woman stands in the desolation of Djupanishta (photo: Methuen and Company)

On May 23, 1905, the arrest of Romanian or Vlach school inspectors by the Turks and the assault on the Romanian consulate on the orders of the vali of Ioannina provoked a diplomatic crisis. This led to the creation of a separate Vlach nationality or “millet” in Macedonia, with its own official language schools and churches. Ottoman Turkey was divided into millets, or communities based on religious affiliation who were autonomous with their own religious leaders and own laws and customs and language. The Turkish government supported this splintering of groups in Macedonia because it divided the Christian populations even further and pitted the Christians against each other.

Brailsford again gave the following on-the-spot, eyewitness evaluation of the reforms:

“the Mürzsteg programme aimed at something more than the improvement of the Turkish administrative machinery. It has done a very little in this direction, and when it is complete it may do more. Its chief aim, however, was to bring some measure of appeasement, to restore order, to re-establish confidence, to repair devastation, and, in a word, to remove the motives for rebellion. Here it has failed, and the failure is so conspicuous that it has actually aggravated the normal anarchy.

The Macedonians were encouraged to hope; the loss of their hope has deepened their despair and increased their recklessness. The reforms left the Turks supreme in all administrative matters. They used their liberty to resort to all the old devices of repression and provocation. They still seemed to contemplate an eventual war with Bulgaria, and to make a pretext, they tried to drive the Bulgarians to desperate courses. They were for ever mobilising their troops, calling out the reserves, and accumulating armaments. The troops lived on the peasants and drained the exchequer. Mutinies were frequent and discipline was lax. Under the plea of searching for arms they harried the villages and carried on their perquisitions, with the usual accompaniments of rapine and brutality.”

The bottom line, for the British observer, was that life for Macedonian civilians had not been qualitatively improved after two years of reforms:

“as in 1903, the migratory Macedonian labourers who annually visit Constantinople in search of work were confined to their villages and forbidden to travel. A curfew ordinance was enforced, which renders any peasant abroad after sundown liable to be summarily shot. Half the refugees from the Adrianople region have been unable to return, and their lands were occupied by Moslem ’squatters.’”

Austria-Hungary Moves on Kosovo

After objecting to other powers’ actions further south, Austria sought to extend its own sphere of influence northwards in 1906 by sending its officers to the northern cazas of Gnjilane in Kosovo and to the Presevo Valley in southern Serbia. In March 1907, Austria received permission from Hilmi Pasha to send an Austrian officer, Captain Franz Schmidt to Presevo. But the Serbian and Albanian civilian populations opposed the deployment of Schmidt. The Turks sent Shemsi Pasha, the commander of the Turkish 18th division to Kosovska Mitrovica to establish order. On April 18, Schmidt was recalled to Skopje. By the end of the year, however, these two cazas would be attached to the Austrian sector.

Meanwhile, the effect of excluding Kosovo from the reforms was bearing fruit, as the province’s beleaguered Serbian population came under the combined fire of Turkish and Albanian Muslims. Because of the exclusion, the latter could act with impunity. As in Macedonia, a cheta militia movement had sprang up among the Christians to provide some form of self-defense.

However, by summer 1907, tensions had significantly increased and Serbian traveling companies were frequently being waylaid. “The discovery of komitadjis [among the Serbian population] vexed the ethnic Albanians who feared the expansion of chetnik action and the inclusion of Kosovo and Metohia in the reform action,” writes Serbian historian Dusan Batakovic. “Feuding Albanian tribes immediately expressed solidarity… An assembly was held in the large mosque of Prizren; the ethnic Albanians of Ljuma demanded the extermination of Serbs. [Vice-consul] Milan Rakic discovered the demands of the people in Ljuma: “[…] for the assembly to determine the day when all ethnic Albanians would rise in arms and carry out a general massacre of Serbs. The reason stated by the people of Ljuma for the extermination of Serbs was that peace among the ethnic Albanians was impossible as long as there were Serbs in these regions, since the Serbs were always complaining to foreigners, bringing about bidats – reforms – with their complaints, and recently, they had started to infiltrate companies from Serbia.’”

However, the Serbs were not able to attract the same attention to their captivity as had the Macedonians, though this was not through a lack of effort. Rather, all entreaties and official complaints fell on the deaf ears of the Austro-Hungarians, who sought to suppress any potential challenge from Serbia.

Albanian irregulars in the Ottoman Turkish forces helped repress the Christian uprisings (photo: Alfred A. Knopf; copyright unknown)

Today, long after the demise of the Hapsburg dynasty and its grandiose dreams, the failure to include Kosovo in the reform scheme has shown itself to have had a retarding influence on development in the area. Events do not emerge from a vacuum, after all. The problems that the Great Powers did not want to face in 1906 simmered until finally exploding almost a century later. Now, in 2006, the diplomatic descendants of the Great Powers are being overwhelmed by the results of their ancestors’ selective inattention.

Swallowed Up by Larger Events, the Mürzsteg Programme Fizzles Out

By early 1908, it was clear that the reforms programme was not working as had been planned. This resulted in a sea change in, among others, British foreign policy towards Macedonia. In March of that year the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, proposed autonomy for Macedonia as a way to resolve the crisis.

On June 9-10, 1908, two weeks after the Ottomans put down a Greek revolt on the island of Samos, Edward VII and Russian Tsar Nicholas II met “cordially” at Reval/Tallin to discuss plans for installing a mostly European administration in Macedonia under an Ottoman governor to be approved by the Great Powers. Germany and the dissident Ottoman Young Turk movement, the Committee for Unity and Progress (CUP) rejected the proposal.

The Young Turk movement was fed both by pro-Western, pro-reforming inclinations, but paradoxically also by resentment of Western interventionism in Ottoman lands, specifically Crete and Macedonia. While the British and Russians were contemplating the idea of an independent Macedonia, however, the Young Turks were making urgent plans for an armed revolt that would render the sultan powerless to give away the territory. CUP agitators relocated from Paris to Thessaloniki, allied with disillusioned military officers and indigenous propagandists, especially Turks and Albanians.

Any dreams of an independent Macedonia were abruptly vanquished, however, early the next month, when the Young Turk revolution began. The Great Powers had found a way out of the quagmire, without having to do another thing. Not surprisingly, this revolt too emerged from Macedonia, among disaffected soldiers in the Ottoman 3rd Army Corps stationed in Resen, west of Bitola.

On July 3, Young Turk sympathizers in the army under command of Major Ahmed Niyazi decamped from Resen, “leaving behind a demand for the restoration of the constitution. The sultan’s attempt to suppress this uprising failed, and rebellion spread rapidly.”

A forgotten mosque in the once-turbulent southeast of Macedonia attests to the Ottoman occupation (photo: Christopher Deliso)

The reformists issued a proclamation which spelled out their liberalizing goals. Like Nikola Karev five years before, they promised equality and freedom to all citizens, regardless of nationality or religion. The strong sense of an Ottoman identity which the Young Turks called for, however, ran counter to the prevailing trend towards nationalism among the different groups. The rule of theocratic oppression was coming to an end, but a new and even more volatile age was beginning.

From Thessaloniki, CUP President Enver Bey declared the restoration of the 1876 constitution, and “the second and third army corps threatened to march on Constantinople if the sultan refused to obey the proclamation. On the 24th the sultan yielded, and issued an irade, restoring the constitution of 1876, and ordering the election of a chamber of deputies.” A limited purge followed, with some of the “more unpopular” Hamidian officials assassinated, like former spy chief Fehim Pasha. On August 6, 1908, Young Turk sympathizer Kiamil Pasha was appointed grand vizier to the sultan.

The Great Powers tried to accommodate themselves to the new situation. On July 27, they withdrew their peacekeeping force from Crete, the other European “project” at the time. They had failed to resolve the situation there as well. The provisional government of the island, which was autonomous but not yet free, soon swore allegiance to the Greek king and thus raised tensions with the Ottomans, who sought to keep it from uniting with Greece.

The Dual Monarchy Raises the Stakes

The victory of the Young Turks meant the end for all intents and purposes of the status quo that the Great Powers had with such frantic inaction sought to maintain throughout their weak intervention in Macedonia. The new Turkish regime was, after all, calling for much of the same reforms that the Europeans had, and more seriously for the Powers, could they pacify the population and keep the empire united, the Young Turks might pose a renewed threat to European hegemonic ambitions. The potential threat seemed most serious to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

On October 7, 1908, the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph thereby took the step of annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was not a surprise; Russian and other diplomats had been expecting it since the summer. According to Vienna, the Young Turk revolution had made the annexation “necessary.” It was allegedly justified by the fateful 1878 Treaty of Berlin. The Austrians were in fact pushing a reckless “back to the future” strategy. The immediate result was a damaging trade boycott in protest from Constantinople and a dramatic increase of tensions with Serbia, which prepared to defend itself from the ambitious Austrians.

At the same time Bulgaria, liberated in fact but not by law with the Berlin treaty, took the opportunity to declare its own full independence. While the Ottomans protested, they were in no position to take military action and instead decided to sue for compensation in both cases.

Thus on April 6, 1909, the Ottoman parliament approved of the Austrian offer to buy Bosnia for 2,200,000 pounds, as well as to pull out of the sandzak of Novi Pazar. Thirteen days later, the Turks recognized the independence of Bulgaria in exchange for more fiscal compensation. The following month a summer-long revolt against the Turks, the most serious yet, erupted in Albania.

Outgunned and outnumbered, the heroic insurgents nevertheless took on the impossible task of defeating the Ottomans (photo: Methuen and Company)

The political drama unfolding in Constantinople and its side effects left the Great Powers gaping. The fate of sorry Macedonia remained in suspended animation as events began to speed up. The Young Turk revolution, plagued by intrigue, assassinations, leadership shake-ups and counter-revolts, raised fears that the new government would be more volatile than the last and its fire, more random. It was an unsettling thought. Russia, confronted with the Austrian provocation in Bosnia, lost its nerve to stand up for the Serbs, when Germany warned that it would back Austria in any war that would ensue from the disagreement. The Great War was arriving fast, and almost a decade of shared intervention in the Balkans had sped it up.

On September 1, 1909, the ambassadors of the Great Powers decided unanimously to recall the Civil Agents from Macedonia and to abrogate the financial commission set up after the naval intervention of December 1904. On the 13^th of the month, the international commission of finance held its final meeting. The Mürzsteg Reform Programme in Macedonia was over.

In a fitting irony, “its members were reappointed to a higher finance board for the whole empire, under the presidency of [Ottoman Finance Minister] Djavid Bey.” Other staff from the French, British, and Italian contingents were also rehired under private contracts to reorganize the gendarmerie in all of Ottoman Turkey. This cynical move showed the utter absurdity of the reforms.

Conclusion: The Failure of the Mürzsteg Plan to Stabilize Macedonia

The Mürzsteg Reforms achieved very little in Macedonia. They were stalling tactics that only made the Balkan powder keg more volatile and explosive. The international intervention only made matters worse, demonstrating the abject and tragic failure of international intervention. The Balkans Wars would follow in 1912-1913 and World War I, the Great War, would follow in 1914.

According to historian Arthur May, the Mürzsteg Reforms “remained a dead letter.” There was no judicial reform in Macedonia. While the Mürzsteg plan granted a measure of local autonomy to Monastir, Skopje, and Salonika, Macedonian Christians continued to be denied even basic civil and human rights in the Turkish courts. Turkey refused to allow international monitors or officials to participate in the judiciary in Macedonia. Turkey was supported in this by foreign chancelleries. Rival comitadji guerrillas continued to infiltrate and to gain control and to seize territory in Macedonia

According to May, “not very much, in a word, was accomplished in bettering the wretched lot of the Macedonians.” In 1907, the British foreign office sought to coerce Turkey to make significant reforms in Macedonia and to break the deadlock. Austria and Russia, however, opposed the new reform initiative, stating that the time was “singularly inopportune for advancing fresh proposals.” Austria considered the possibility of sending in an international force into Macedonia that would exclude Britain but ultimately rejected it. May argued: “Only force, as a matter of fact, could compel the Turk to rectify evils in Macedonia, and that the powers were unwilling to apply.” Pro-Ottoman Germany argued that applying force in Macedonia would result in instability and would encourage insurgencies in the other parts of Ottoman Turkey.

The enactment of the reforms did not bring any positive change to Macedonia. The reforms did not “receive practically any real application.” The only parts of the reforms that were applied were those for the reorganization of the gendarmerie. According to French military attache Dupont in Constantinople, this was done only because the Turks wanted above all to avoid direct Great Power intervention in Macedonia.

The main problem of the reforms, therefore, was that there were no enforcement mechanisms to compel the Turks to act. French representatives recommended that “urgent measures” be taken but Turkish Inspector Hilmi Pasha ignored them. And while the enforcement was feeble in areas covered by the reform plan, it was utterly non-existent in the Albanian-populated areas kept off-limits thanks to the patronage of Vienna. And so at best, the Turks would receive a gentle chiding over atrocities committed in the former areas, while those carried out in the latter areas were not considered.

But by no means do these failings mean that the endemic problems of the region were the fault of the would-be reformers. Turkish cunning created a policy in Macedonia that pitted the different Christian national and ethnic groups against each other. Extending favors and promises to a corrupt Christian leadership, primarily the religious one, at the Porte helped ensure that significant interested parties would support the outdated regime.

Brailsford analyzed this divisive policy as follows:

“with the evident intention of fomenting the feud between Greeks and Bulgarians, Hilmi Pasha has handed over a large number of Bulgarian village churches to the Greek faction. But the worst feature of all is the complicated racial strife, a sort of furtive civil war, which devastates the country. The Turks watch this internecine contest, not merely with tolerance, but with satisfaction. The rayahs are at war among themselves, and the master may fold his arms. But the real responsibility lies with the Government, which connives at the vendetta and seeks to profit by it. The Turks, despite their vast armaments, have proved once more their total incapacity to maintain even an outward semblance of order.”

Brailsford further adduced that the reason for the failure of the Mürzsteg reforms was “largely because it attempted to reform Macedonia without reckoning with the Macedonians.” According to this observer, the reform scheme “was an advertisement to all the world that the Near Eastern Question was open at last. It bore on its surface the marks of transition.”

Many Macedonian villages, like this one near Strumica, look no different than they did 100 years ago (photo: Christopher Deliso)

In a sentence that seems uncannily similar to that facing the Balkans today in Kosovo, the English writer eulogized Mürzsteg as follows:

“no one could imagine it to be final, and no one could suppose that, having recognised the impossibility of Turkish rule, the Powers would ultimately shrink from drawing the logical conclusion. It announced to every race in the Balkans that the end was approaching, and inevitably it accentuated their latent rivalries and hostilities.”

The Mürzsteg Reform Programme failed because it was not so much concerned about the people in Macedonia as it was about advancing the national self-interests and geo-political and geo-strategic agendas of the Great Powers who carried it out. As has remained the case today, the peoples of Macedonia were merely pawns in a greater game.

Moreover, the Great Powers were never able to resolve the inherent contradiction and conflict between international intervention and sovereignty. One precluded the other.

In the end, the international intervention in Macedonia from 1902-1909 was essentially a stalling tactic, a smokescreen, a harmful ruse that revealed the absurdity and futility of all interventions. For history has shown that every intervention addresses the superficial symptoms, and not the inherent causes, of conflict. The Mürzsteg reforms only put off and delayed a final resolution of the conflict, making Macedonia more unstable and volatile, and ensuring that the conflict, when it did come, would be cataclysmic.

Now, one hundred years on, today’s Great Powers seem to think that they have survived the worst of it, and that their innovations in intervention will lead to unending peace and prosperity for the Balkans. But in light of the maxim that those who don’t learn from their historical mistakes are bound to repeat them, it is deeply concerning that the institutional memory regarding intervention in the Balkans seems limited to the last 15 years.

For while no one today talks about or even remembers the tremendous pain, suffering and chaos experienced in the Macedonia of a century ago, many of today’s most vexing unresolved issues lead directly back to the decisions made by Western interventionists at that time. Their descendents would be well served by studying their mistakes, rather than compounding them.

Partial Bibliography

Booth, John. Troubles in the Balkans. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1905.

Brailsford, Henry Noel. Macedonia: Its Races and Their Future. London: Methuen & Co., 1906.

Curtis, William Eleroy. The Turk and His Lost Provinces. Chicago: Fleming Revell Co., 1903.

Fraser, John Foster. Pictures from the Balkans. London: Cassell and Company, 1906.

Lange-Akhund, Nadine. The Macedonian Question, 1893-1908: From Western Sources. NY: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Macartney, Carlile Aylmer. The Habsburg Empire, 1790-1918. NY: Macmillan, 1969.

Mazower, Mark. Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims, and Jews, 1430-1950. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.

May, Arthur J. The Hapsburg Monarchy, 1867-1914. NY: W.W. Norton, 1951.

Sakellariou, M.B., ed. Macedonia. Athens: Ekdotike Athenon S.A., 1983.

Shea, John. Macedonia and Greece: The Struggle to Define a New Balkan Nation. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1997.

Sonnichsen, Albert. Confessions of a Macedonian Bandit: A Californian in the Balkan Wars. NY: Duffield & Co., 1909.

Intrigue, Diplomacy and Rivalry: Macedonia Divided by the Great Powers

Part eight in a 10-part series by Carl Savich and Christopher Deliso.

On February 1, 1904, Italian Lieutenant General Emilio Degiorgis arrived in Constantinople as the head of the military commission charged with reforming or reorganizing the Turkish gendarmerie. Enrico Albera and Major Rodolfo Ridolfi were also part of the Italian mission. Ridolfi directed the Salonika school for chiefs of station. The first meeting of the military commission took place on February 8, 1904.

Each Great Power sent a military delegate, referred to as “military deputies.” Six military attaches from the embassies also were part of the commission. Two more attaches were added to the commission, one for Degiorgis and another for the Russian officer on the commission, making a total of 15. The military commission met on a daily basis from February 8-April 9, 1904. Brigadier General Osman Nizami Pasha and Colonel Zia Bey of the Turkish General Staff also attended the meetings, which were conducted in French.

Mürzsteg and its “Opportunities” for the Great Powers

Each of the six European Great Powers used the reforms to strengthen its own position in Macedonia, ideally at the expense of the others. They were all jockeying for dominance, something which could be manifested in terms of various diplomatic or trade outcomes and zones of strategic control.

Germany sent a military deputy to Macedonia but did not commit itself to a larger presence, wishing to preserve its relations with Turkey. Austria-Hungary and Russia, who had sponsored the reforms, were the most active but the latter, preoccupied with an emerging conflict in the Far East with Japan, was unable or unwilling to maintain the crucial balancing role it had sought. This left Austria-Hungary as the dominant player in Macedonia, and the one most determined to implement the Mürzsteg reforms.

The Dual Monarchy sought to advance its interests in the Balkans. Its objective was to exclude the Macedonian districts which had Albanian populations from the purview of the Mürzsteg reforms, and it also sought to prevent Monastir from being assigned to its rival, Italy. Both powers had designs on the Adriatic coastline, and especially the Albanian Adriatic ports.

For its part, Britain wanted to reduce Austrian influence in the Balkans. To counter the Austrian and Russian bloc, Britain sought to form a bloc with France and Italy. Britain opposed the “encroachment” of Austria and Russia into “European Turkey” as Macedonia was sometimes called. Britain also opposed an Italian presence on the Adriatic coast and, in the larger picture, in Tripolitania (western Libya), because it wanted above all to safeguard the Mediterranean sea lanes to India.

After becoming king of Italy in 1900, Victor Emmanuel III pursued a more aggressive policy towards the Balkans. He married Princess Helen of Montenegro and sought to exert greater Italian influence on the Adriatic coast, Albania, and in parts of Macedonia. Since the Italians opposed an Austrian presence in Salonika, another source of conflict and tension thus emerged between the Italian and Austrian members of the commission.

General Degiorgis proved hostile to Austrian initiatives and proposals. The lack of consensus and divisions between the powers only helped the Turkish government in scuttling or diminishing the effectiveness of the reforms. France supported the Austrian and Russian position because it wanted to maintain the status quo in Macedonia. The Ilinden Uprising of the previous August had a galvanizing effect, however, and all of the powers began to realize a lot more was at stake than an oppressed bunch of Christian peasants.

However, the crucial factor was that, all good intentions aside, in 1904 no European power was willing to risk war with Ottoman Turkey by intervening militarily to help the Christian populations of Macedonia. It was not because they would have been defeated by the crumbling Ottoman Empire. Rather, it was because the balance of power among themselves was too finely calibrated to risk upsetting. Balkan military intervention could realistically lead to an all-out, continent-wide war.

This indeed eventually came to pass, after one of the powers – Austria-Hungary – grew too confident in the influence it had gained in the region, partially as a result of the Mürzsteg meddling and especially after the 1908 annexation of Bosnia. But this hubris would be decisively rewarded in 1918, in the aftermath of the Great War, when the glorious empire of the Hapsburgs was dismantled once and for all.

Nevertheless, 14 years earlier it had seemed to the imperialists that fortune indeed favored the bold. The immediate victims of Austro-Hungarian ambitions were the peoples of Macedonia.

Carving Up Macedonia: Strategic Objectives of Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire

On February 13, 1904, talks were initiated on the division of the three Macedonian vilayets into five sectors. Colonel Wladimir von Giesl, the Austro-Hungarian military attache and future ambassador to Serbia, requested the Skopje sector, which was attached to Kosovo. The Russian military attache, General Kalnine, requested Salonika. As the most interested parties, Austria-Hungary and Russia naturally sought, and felt themselves entitled to, the most strategic positions in Macedonia: the Skopje-Salonika north-south axis, a vital corridor hugging the River Vardar which connected Central Europe with the Aegean Sea.

The Kosovo vilayet was vital to the Austrian geopolitical strategy in the Balkans. It was an area that abutted the sandzak of Novi Pazar, which Austria had administered and occupied since the 1878 Treaty of Berlin. Moreover, Skopje was important because this territorial unit was one where there was a Serbian majority that had to be kept down if Austro-Hungarian ambitions were to be achieved.

Austria wanted to prevent Serbian expansion and infiltration south into the major urban and transit center along an east-west axis, Kumanovo and Skopje. Whoever controlled these territories not only would enjoy the economic, communicative and other benefits of urban life, but also would control the major route eastwards to Sofia, Bulgaria and to Tetovo in western Macedonia. Skopje was the central location where the east-west and north-south axes met – in modern parlance, they are European Corridor 8 and Corridor 10 respectively – and thus of central importance for any aspiring military power.

But the ambitions of the Hapsburgs were greater still. Their colonial occupation of the Novi Pazar sandzak was undertaken in order to prevent Serbia from connecting with Montenegro and thus winning an outlet to the Adriatic Sea. Austria-Hungary could thereby prevent the emergence of a strong and unified Serbia that would be capable of endangering its drive for power in the Balkans.

The results of the Austro-Hungarian deal-making also meant that foreign officers were to be effectively excluded from the sandzaks of Pec and Pristina in Kosovo, which had a mixed population of Serbians and Albanians. Russia allowed Austrian forces to occupy the southern part of the Kosovo vilayet, in Skopje. But Wladimir von Giesl, the Austrian military attache, was able to exclude the Albanian-populated areas from international scrutiny- thus ensuring that the killing of Christians would go on unchecked and that Austria-Hungary would remain on good terms with its Albanian lackeys. They ensured that there would only be international control in the areas inhabited by “the Bulgarians,” as they referred to the Slavic population in Macedonia.

The French commander Dupont wrote that the Dual Monarchy was guided by an ulterior motive to occupy the Skopje region. He too suspected that the Austrians sought merely to increase their influence and to advance their interests in the region. Skopje was far away from the main hotbeds of unrest where encounters with the Ottomans, and the subsequent imperative to hold them accountable for atrocities, would by necessity occur more frequently. By comparison, Skopje was a relatively “easy” mission. And it coincided perfectly with Hapsburgian imperialist goals.

During the Austro-Hungarian inspection tours, the French military attache accused, their agents were merely trying to establish contacts with the Albanian leaders. According to the French, the Austrians were spying and reconnoitering the area.

Skopje, or Üsküb in Turkish, capital of the Kosovo vilayet (photo: Herbert Vivian)

The Austrians did not plan to occupy the Kosovo vilayet, but they did strengthen their position in Skopje to prevent Serbian claims on Kosovo. The Austrian-Hungarian mission chief, Lt. Colonel Johann Graf von Salis-Seewis, born in Karlovac in Croatia-Slavonia, “showed a careful attention to the Serbs, and deplored their openly malevolent attitude with regard to the Austrian mission.” He blamed this attitude on “Serbian propaganda.”

Austria-Hungary attempted to “use” the Albanian leaders to preclude Italian involvement and to “oppose the ambitions of Belgrade.” With this policy, Vienna showed its preference for chaos and instability in these areas, because such a state would allegedly justify the Austrian presence. Maintaining instability also worked to obstruct Serbian and Italian designs on the region. From 1904-1908, the Albanian districts between Prizren and Pec, areas contiguous to the Austrian and Italian zones, were thus incited to a state of constant revolt and turmoil; and they were deliberately excluded from the reforms.

The mission of the international officers was complex and ambiguous and hampered by a lack of communications. It also proved unpredictable, even for the powerful Austrians. There were instances when the gendarmes were attacked. At the Kumanovo station, it was reported by the Austrian officer that it was “unstable” because “Albanian gangs” spread terror in the region.

On July 26, 1904, Colonel Ferdinand Richter was the victim of a murder attempt by an Albanian gendarme, Hassan Emin, who shot up his apartment in Kumanovo. The officers established a network of gendarmerie stations, expanding on the karakols, for greater security. The gendarmes also made agreements with mokhtars, the chiefs of villages. A gendarme school was established in Salonika in 1904, where 3,000 gendarmes would be educated during the years 1904-1908, when the reform program ended.

Zones of Exemption

All in all, the Austro-Hungarian machinations meant that the following Ottoman sandzaks would be excluded from Mürzsteg Programme oversight: Koritza (except the caza of Kastoria), the sandzak of Elbasan, the western part of the caza of Ochrid, the districts of Debar and Prizren, the southwest sector of the sandzak of Pec, and the sandzaks of Tachlidja and Senitza of Novi Pazar.

Great Britain and Italy wanted further clarification as to why the Albanian districts were to be excluded from the reform plan’s purview. They were informed that Article 3 of the Mürzsteg program, which envisioned a division of the vilayets along homogenous national and ethnic lines, mandated it.

Ever vigilant, Vienna also sought to prevent Monastir from being assigned to Italy. It suggested that Russia control the Monastir sector, but Russia declined to take this, one of the most turbulent areas in revolution-era Macedonia. So at its meeting of April 5, 1904, the commission parceled out Macedonia in five sectors as such: Austria-Hungary would control Skopje; Italy would control Monastir; Russia would control Salonika; France would control Serres; and Britain would control Drama, in the east. But Austria-Hungary was able to place a restriction on the Italian sector, stipulating that General Degiorgis and his contingent should not reside in the same sector. Austria also was able to successfully exclude the Albanian districts from the purview of the reforms.

Tensions and Questions of Authority

Another question soon presented itself. What kind of authority should the Italian, General Degiorgis, have over the Turkish gendarmerie? The commission decided that he should have effective control and direct command. Abdul Hamid, however, rejected this decision. He nominated General Mustafa Pasha to command the gendarmerie in the vilayets. The commission backed down. Degiorgis would act only as an inspector, consultant, providing surveillance, but not making any decision himself. It was another sign of weakness from the allegedly mighty Great Powers.

This failure handicapped the Western mission from the beginning. And power plays between the Great Powers ensured that there would be no common front in negotiating with the Turks. For example, General Degiorgis requested the power to transmit orders to the Ottoman officers and to denounce those who do not obey, to remove officers from the gendarmerie who were unfit or who had displayed bad behavior, and a written consent for the use of the officers and NCOs for a two year term.

However, the Turkish government rejected these proposals as a violation of sovereignty. When Russia and Austria-Hungary argued that the effective implementation of article 2 required this power, Germany intervened on behalf of Turkey. Adolf Frieherr Marschall von Bieberstein, the German ambassador to Constantinople from 1897-1912, met with Tewfik Pasha, the Foreign Minister of Ottoman Turkey, to prevent the Mürzsteg Reforms from coming into force.

Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria co-sponsored the Mürzsteg Reforms, and fatefully annexed Bosnia in 1908 (photo: public domain)

The German position was that the general’s request exceeded the authority granted by Article 2. Interestingly, the Germans also argued that the requirements and interests of Islam should be taken into account: it would be blasphemous that a Christian should command a Muslim.

A second demand was made. Some 60 foreign officers were requested for the mission, whose “executive power” was defined; the power to “denounce” gendarmes was defined as “removing” them. The Turkish government accepted 25 officers for each sector, with additional officers brought in as needed. The military attaches considered 5 officers per sector as insufficient. Giesl wanted to increase the amount of Austrian officers in the vilayet of Kosovo. The Italian general accused Austria-Hungary of seeking to advance its own interests and influence in the region at the expense of the reforms. It was not an auspicious start to a joint action that allegedly reflected the best of Europe’s humanitarian impulses.

Partial Bibliography

Booth, John. Troubles in the Balkans. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1905.

Brailsford, Henry Noel. Macedonia: Its Races and Their Future. London: Methuen & Co., 1906.

Curtis, William Eleroy. The Turk and His Lost Provinces. Chicago: Fleming Revell Co., 1903.

Fraser, John Foster. Pictures from the Balkans. London: Cassell and Company, 1906.

Lange-Akhund, Nadine. The Macedonian Question, 1893-1908: From Western Sources. NY: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Macartney, Carlile Aylmer. The Habsburg Empire, 1790-1918. NY: Macmillan, 1969.

Mazower, Mark. Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims, and Jews, 1430-1950. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.

May, Arthur J. The Hapsburg Monarchy, 1867-1914. NY: W.W. Norton, 1951.

Sakellariou, M.B., ed. Macedonia. Athens: Ekdotike Athenon S.A., 1983.

Shea, John. Macedonia and Greece: The Struggle to Define a New Balkan Nation. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1997.

Sonnichsen, Albert. Confessions of a Macedonian Bandit: A Californian in the Balkan Wars. NY: Duffield & Co., 1909.

Grumbling and Unease: the Mürzsteg Reforms Implemented

Part seven in a 10-part series by Carl Savich and Christopher Deliso.

From January to April 1904, the Great Powers set up the international administrative apparatus dictated by the Mürzsteg Plan in Macedonia. In January, Calice and Zinoviev discussed the terms and conditions for the implementation of the reforms with Abdul Hamid in Constantinople. Hamid accepted the nine articles but reserved the right to agree on the practical details of the implementation. His major concern was over articles 1 and 2, because he felt they harmed the sovereignty and prestige of his dwindling empire.

The sultan was able to win the crucial right that Turkish officials be allowed to accompany the Civil Agents on their inspections- thus overseeing the overseers. Tacit intimidation could thus be enforced by the Turkish officials, ensuring that fearful villagers would put on a brave face for the foreigners. The reorganization plan was put under the command of an Italian general, Emilio Degiorgis, who himself was under the command of Sultan Abdul Hamid. The reforms would be overseen by the two Civil Agents, the Italian general, and the chiefs of the military missions from the Great Powers. Skepticism and Concerns

The Austro-Hungarian Civil Agent appointed was Heinrich Müller von Roghoj, who had earlier been assigned to Bosnia and who spoke Turkish, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian and Russian. The Russian Civil Agent was N. Demerik, who had earlier been the consul to Beirut and Monastir. The Civil Agents arrived in Salonika on January 21, 1904.

Austrian Civil Agent Müller von Roghoj observed that the Muslims showed open hostility and resentment, while the Christians hoped and expected to see results from the reforms. Louis Steeg, French consul in Salonika, noted the skepticism of the Christian population. The Austrian Civil Agent lamented that his field of activity did not go beyond “a demarcation line” established by the Turkish government. At first, Demerik and Müller von Roghoj were restricted to Salonika. Their mandate was limited, and they could not intervene in “the field.”

Heinrich Freiherr von Calice, the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador to Ottoman Turkey at Constantinople from 1880-1906, was surprised by the Ottoman Turkish decree. He perceived it to be a “fait accompli.” Chalice did not believe that the self-imposed Turkish reforms would bring meaningful changes. The ambassador noted, correctly, that they would likely be ineffectual because the valis did not have any real power and lacked funds to carry out the reforms. In fact, the diplomats representing the Great Powers saw the Turkish reforms merely as delaying tactics meant to preclude any sterner solutions enforced by the Great Powers themselves.

For his part, the French ambassador dismissed the Mürzsteg Plan, stating that “these reforms are only an illusion.” He lamented that “the new reforms consist in the multiplication of an expensive and mindless machinery; it seems that one wanted to organize not progress, but resistance.”

Ambassador Steeg’s reaction was to write a report which described another, more dynamic programme that could serve as the basis for future diplomatic reforms in Macedonia. He proposed that the valis serve a fixed term of five years, that they be given authority to act, that each vilayet have its own budget, and that foreign inspectors from countries such as Belgium and Denmark be brought in to supervise the implementation of the reforms. He also proposed the creation of a gendarmerie that would be trained by foreign instructors and receive an adequate salary. Under Article 18 of the decree, the inspector general was allowed a contingent of civil and military officials to assist him. Under Article 18, a commission was to be set up to verify and oversee the implementation of the reforms.

Of the Great Powers, only Germany rejected the reforms. Turkey was an ally and client state with which it had long held close military and diplomatic ties, and German military technology and instructors had a major role in attempts to revitalize the Ottomans’ fighting force. Yet all the other Great Powers accepted the reforms as an effective international humanitarian and diplomatic intervention in Macedonia. Turkey hesitantly accepted the program- in fact, it had little other choice due to the diplomatic pressure that was being imposed from without.

However, the announced reforms were not greeted with a great deal of enthusiasm by other Balkan countries. Serbia criticized the new initiative, because it did not provide any guarantees that the reforms would actually be applied. And Bulgaria criticized the “moderation” or perceived laxity of the requirements that the Ottomans had to fulfill. Both held that nowhere near enough had been promised to safeguard the livelihoods of their nationals living in Macedonia.

Reforms without Substance, Violence without End

Modern viewers of the past 15 years in the Balkans can point to any number of cases, the most flagrant being Kosovo, where a wide gulf exists between the vaunted standards of Western interventionists and their dismal application in reality. The situation was no different a century ago.

Nevertheless, as has been the case in modern Balkan experience, the intervening forces tried to put a rosy spin on things; what was championed was “the spirit of Mürzsteg,” an excessively optimistic picture of the reforms. Agenor Goluchowski, the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister, saw Mürzsteg as advancing two objectives. First, the February or Vienna reform plan accepted by Turkey had to be enforced by the two Civil Agents sent by Austria-Hungary and Russia. Second, he saw the goal as humanitarian intervention “to come in aid of the Christian populations which suffered so much from the war and devastations.”

The Mürzsteg Programme was thus heralded as a peacekeeping mission to restore stability and order in Macedonia, and to give the Macedonian people a greater say in their future by establishing greater local autonomy. Goluchowski saw the intervention as one that would benefit the population, because the Great Powers would be a benevolent, neutral force separating the Turkish forces and the revolutionary committees. That was the plan, anyway.

What in fact happened was a worsening of the cycle of violence between the Turks and the revolutionaries. Soon it became clear that the key problem with the reforms was that there was no outside supervision or monitoring. The Turks and their co-religionists were free to continue their atrocities against the Christians. The situation thus actually continued to deteriorate further following the reforms.

Turkish troops inspect the ruins of an Orthodox church in Macedonia, 1903 (photo: Methuen and Company)

And the discrimination extended well down the chain of command. Albanian Muslim beys in the Kosovo vilayet rejected the concessions granted to the Orthodox Christians, particularly to the hated Serbian population. These Albanian officials, known as the “dire beys” or “lords of the valleys,” refused to allow Christians into the gendarmerie. Instead, they launched raids and attacks on the already persecuted subject population.

The flaws of the reforms were that the measures proposed were under-funded or not funded at all. The officials, policemen, and soldiers were not regularly salaried. This created an incentive to maintain the status quo. No general amnesty was offered to the insurgents. Article 5 of the program established a commission to review and evaluate amnesty claims, but the uncertainty precluded refugees from returning to face jeopardy. Finally, the British government wanted a Christian governor to supervise the reforms instead of a Turkish subject in the service of the Turkish government. This presented a conflict of interest that made the implementation of the reforms unworkable.

Reception of the Foreigners

The arrival of the international officers was greeted favorably by Macedonia’s Slavic populations. They saw the officers “as protection against the arbitrariness of the Ottoman administration.” The Greeks however were more hostile, having their own different and irredentist interests. The French military attache reported that in the vilayet of Kosovo, “the arrival of Austro-Hungarian officers in the vilayet had irritated the Serbians, and Bulgarians and the Turkish or Albanian Moslems.”

In Skopje, the Muslims of the “well-to-do classes” were hostile to the Austrian officers, offended at the liberties granted to Christians in a city where the official religion was Islam. They saw the increase in rights to Christians as an insult and a humiliation for Islam. Christians were the rayah, or herd, in Muslim society. One of the Western officers wisecracked that “they consider us more or less like a plague from God. As for the Turkish authorities, they hate us, but respect us.” Captain Leon Falconetti noted that the Turks maintain “a conspiracy of silence.”

Members of the Italian military mission to Mürzsteg-era Macedonia (photo: carabinieri.it)

It was abundantly clear that the Great Powers were determined to use the conflict in Macedonia to advance their own national interests, while neglecting the human and civil rights of the Christian population. Decision-making was hampered by the fact that negotiations, debates, and discussions would be needed before the divergent interests and goals of the six Great Powers could be reconciled. This resulted in compromises and half-measures that led to delays and indecision.

And so as the Programme, fatally compromised from the start wore on, the relations between the interventionists and both the Turkish and Christian populations worsened- though this did not prevent all sides from trying to curry favor with the outsiders.

Partial Bibliography

Booth, John. Troubles in the Balkans. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1905.

Brailsford, Henry Noel. Macedonia: Its Races and Their Future. London: Methuen & Co., 1906.

Curtis, William Eleroy. The Turk and His Lost Provinces. Chicago: Fleming Revell Co., 1903.

Fraser, John Foster. Pictures from the Balkans. London: Cassell and Company, 1906.

Lange-Akhund, Nadine. The Macedonian Question, 1893-1908: From Western Sources. NY: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Macartney, Carlile Aylmer. The Habsburg Empire, 1790-1918. NY: Macmillan, 1969.

Mazower, Mark. Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims, and Jews, 1430-1950. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.

May, Arthur J. The Hapsburg Monarchy, 1867-1914. NY: W.W. Norton, 1951.

Sakellariou, M.B., ed. Macedonia. Athens: Ekdotike Athenon S.A., 1983.

Shea, John. Macedonia and Greece: The Struggle to Define a New Balkan Nation. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1997.

Sonnichsen, Albert. Confessions of a Macedonian Bandit: A Californian in the Balkan Wars. NY: Duffield & Co., 1909.

The Eastern Question: An Independent Macedonia or the Status Quo?

Part two in a 10-part series by Carl Savich and Christopher Deliso.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire was well into its twilight years. Once an unstoppable juggernaut that had expanded to the gates of Vienna and taken leading roles in arts, sciences and culture, the empire had been bruised and battered during a series of punishing wars that saw its Balkan territories steadily reduced during the 19^th century. But the thorniest and most intractable struggle of all, one which drag down not only the Turks but their Balkan neighbors as well, was the ideological and military battle for Macedonia.

In 1902, the Ottoman state was confronted with an ongoing guerrilla insurgency in Macedonia, while a new insurrection was being planned for the following year. The long-subjugated Christian populations were rising up against an oppressor whose power was waning, something which alarmed the Great Powers. They sought variously, inconsistently and in the end fruitlessly to assert or abrogate the status quo. Austria-Hungary and Russia, both seeking to restore stability and the status quo, took a diplomatic joint leadership position and sought to intervene in the conflict. Both of these Great Powers made it clear to the Turks that administrative reforms were urgently needed in the face of the growing humanitarian crisis.

At the same time, the neighboring Balkan states were warned “to keep their turbulent elements in check in order not to lay themselves open to the suspicion of wanting to create complications” in Macedonia, wrote English reporter H.N. Brailsford. The nations of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Romania, all of which had their own unpleasant memories of Ottoman rule, also had rival and competing claims to Macedonia. Each had sent comitadji guerrilla groups into the region.

Of what exactly did these groups consist? Just over 30 years later, Balkan sojourner Rebecca West met one such former guerrilla, an encounter which gave her the opportunity to describe the character of the comitadji. Her depiction is both witty and telling:

“the comitadji who waged guerrilla warfare against the Turks in Macedonia before the war covered a wide range of character. Some were highly disciplined, courageous, and ascetic men, often from good families in the freed Slav countries, who harried the Turkish troops, particularly those sent to punish Christian villages, and who held unofficial courts to correct the collapse of the legal system in the Turkish provinces. Others were fanatics who were happy in massacring the Turks but even happier when they were purging the movement of suspected traitors. Others were robust nationalists, to whom the proceedings seemed a natural way of spirited living. Others were black-guards who were in the business because they enjoyed murder and banditry.

All intermediate shades of character were fully represented. This made it difficult for the Western student to form a clear opinion about Near Eastern politics; it also made it difficult, very difficult, for a Macedonian peasant who saw a band of armed men approaching his village.”

The comitadji guerrilla raids provoked brutal reprisals by the Turkish military forces, which included the widespread murder of civilians and the burning and destruction of numerous villages and towns in Macedonia. The humanitarian disaster and crisis were worsening, perpetuated by an ongoing insurgency that, while undertaken by a diverse range of groups whose purpose was often opaque, took on broadly nationalist contours as the war continued.

Under Ottoman occupation, Macedonian churches like this one in Ohrid were turned into mosques (photo: Methuen and Company)

Repression, Unease and the Call for Intervention

The brutal Turkish counter-measures against the Macedonian insurgents created a widespread popular perception in Europe that something had to be done to stop the “murders and rapine” in Macedonia, as a contemporary observer put it. While the British government proposed administrative and judicial reform in Macedonia, the traditionally cautious imperial power was however committed to maintaining the status quo- i.e., Turkey’s continued rule in the Balkans. British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour, in a speech before the House of Commons on September 14, 1903, stated that “the balance of criminality lies not with the Turks, but with the rebels.”

There was notable dissonance between the Great Powers, which all sought to protect their own interests in the region. Britain eventually came around to the idea of a sovereign Macedonia under a Christian governor, but Russia and Austria-Hungary opposed this plan. Germany opposed any restrictions on Turkish sovereignty.

For his part, US President Theodore Roosevelt discussed the Macedonian crisis and suppression of the insurgency in his December 6, 1904 State of the Union message before Congress. “In Turkey,” he said, “our difficulties arise less from the way in which our citizens are sometimes treated than from the indignation inevitably excited in seeing such fearful misrule as has been witnessed both in Armenia and Macedonia.” Nevertheless, the United States did not get directly involved with the turbulence in the Balkans.

A key role in the Great Power negotiations was played by the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Vladimir Lamsdorff, who went to Vienna to discuss the plan with his Austrian counterpart. The count also visited Belgrade on December 26, 1902, and four days later reached Sofia. The outcome of this shuttle diplomacy was announced in February 1903 as “the Viennese Plan” or Vienna Reform Scheme. The Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid was forced to accept this unpleasant new check on his sovereignty in the Balkans- a sign of how desperate were the fortunes of the once mighty Turkish empire.

The Vienna Plan was the direct precursor to the Mürzsteg reforms, which established zones of responsibility for each of the Great Powers. These states charged themselves with overseeing the implementation of reform and keeping a lookout for any abuses of human rights by the Turkish authorities. However, the mission was fragmented and had no “muscle,’ meaning that the observers were unable to intervene directly to stop the bloodshed.

The Austro-Hungarian and Russian plan included recommendations from Britain as well. But these measures were perceived as merely cosmetic and superficial; it was already a case of too little too late in a wild land on the brink of independence and flirting with chaos. Ultimately, the Vienna Plan and its successor, the Mürzsteg Programme of reforms, would fail.

By 1908, when the Great Powers had lost all confidence in the Macedonian reforms and when Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia, it was clear that a major, region-wide war was in the offing. The former failure led to the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, and the latter provocation to World War I. Given the enormity of these events, it is remarkable that very few pay attention to the role of Western intervention and rivalries in the Macedonia crisis of the first decade of the twentieth century.

The Ottoman Administration and Police Structures

Before getting into the narrative of events surrounding the reform schemes in our next installment of this series, it is necessary to get acquainted with some terms relating to the administrative organization of the Ottoman Empire, and the regions they covered.

The Turkish Balkan possessions were divided according to a precise administrative system, which however generally does not conform to the present borders of today’s Balkan states. The largest unit was the province or vilayet. The governor of the province was known as a vali, and he had the rank of a pasha- equivalent to a military general. Above the vali, overseeing multiple provinces, was the beylerbey, second only to the vizier. Each vilayet was subdivided into two or three sandzaks or districts, the governors of which were termed mutessarifs, who also had the rank of pasha. The caza was a department, governed by a caimakam or prefect, who had the rank of a bey, equivalent to a military colonel. The nahiye was a group of villages, governed by a moudir or sub-prefect.

In all, there were six vilayets in European Turkey. There were the two Albanian ones in the west, Jannina (Epirus) and Scutari. The three vilayets in the center were largely Macedonian- Salonika, Monastir (Bitola), and Kosovo, with the capital being in Skopje, or Üsküb in Turkish. Subdividing the Macedonian vilayets, the territory consisted of 12 sandzaks and 71 cazas- 26 in Salonika, 22 in Monastir, and 23 in Kosovo.

To the east, in Thrace, was the vilayet of Adrianople (Edirne). The Ottoman capital, Constantinople, formed a vilayet in itself. The Mürzsteg Reforms were meant to apply only to the three Macedonian vilayets of Salonika, Monastir and Kosovo.

The police entrusted with providing law and order in Macedonia, the Ottoman gendarmerie, fell under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of War. The gendarmes were made up of males between 25 to 45 years of age, who served for two years. They were organized into regiments, battalions, and companies. Each vilayet was assigned a gendarme regiment, while each sandzak had a battalion, and each caza had a company. They functioned as a rural police under the command of the vali.

Ottoman Turkish infantry troops arrive in Macedonia (photo: Alfred A. Knopf; copyright unknown)

These groups patrolled the rural areas to maintain public safety and order, acted as sentries, security guards at banks and post offices, delivered court orders and executed arrest warrants. They were organized in gendarme forts called karakols, or station houses. The officer corps was described wittily by Austrian military attache Gustav Hubka as a “privileged extortionist mob and scourge of brigands.”

Partial Bibliography

Booth, John. Troubles in the Balkans. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1905.

Brailsford, Henry Noel. Macedonia: Its Races and Their Future. London: Methuen & Co., 1906.

Curtis, William Eleroy. The Turk and His Lost Provinces. Chicago: Fleming Revell Co., 1903.

Fraser, John Foster. Pictures from the Balkans. London: Cassell and Company, 1906.

Lange-Akhund, Nadine. The Macedonian Question, 1893-1908: From Western Sources. NY: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Macartney, Carlile Aylmer. The Habsburg Empire, 1790-1918. NY: Macmillan, 1969.

Mazower, Mark. Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims, and Jews, 1430-1950. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.

May, Arthur J. The Hapsburg Monarchy, 1867-1914. NY: W.W. Norton, 1951.

Sakellariou, M.B., ed. Macedonia. Athens: Ekdotike Athenon S.A., 1983.

Shea, John. Macedonia and Greece: The Struggle to Define a New Balkan Nation. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1997.

Sonnichsen, Albert. Confessions of a Macedonian Bandit: A Californian in the Balkan Wars. NY: Duffield & Co., 1909.

Prologue to the Past: Mürzsteg’s Recurring Intervention

Part one in a 10-part series by Carl Savich and Christopher Deliso.

Right now, it is March of 2006, and Austria is midway through a six-month honorary presidency of the European Union. Among its key stated goals are the “stabilization” and “integration” of the West Balkans into the EU. Kosovo, presently divided up into pieces controlled by today’s Great Powers, is being administered by an international body, UNMIK, following claims of atrocities and human rights violations in 1999 caused the West to intervene on behalf of the Albanians there.

Yet while no one speaks of it today, there was a UNMIK before UNMIK- way before. It existed 100 years ago today, and was located not in Kosovo but in neighboring Macedonia. It was known as the Mürzsteg Reform Programme, and it too was sparked by allegations of massacres, and criticisms about the misrule of the Ottoman Empire, then the sovereign power in Macedonia.

Incidentally, Austria (as one half of the Dual Monarchy, it was much more powerful than it is today) had a crucial role in setting it up. The original Balkan peacekeeping mission ended in disaster, and was followed by cataclysmic war that changed the world. Today’s interventionists have more modest aspirations for the UNMIK and its legacy. But give them time.

In the following chapters, we will take another look at this curious, neglected and vital episode in Macedonia’s past- one that is ineluctably bound up with developments today and which should be seen as a warning and admonition regarding the dangers and unforeseen consequences of intervention. This first chapter summarizes, in broad strokes, the narrative that we will embark upon in more detail in the following ones.

Atrocities and the Call for Intervention

As the twentieth century dawned on Europe, Macedonia was under the control of a country whose retribution grew more vicious in direct proportion to the weakening of that state’s power. The Ottoman Empire was crumbling, and various factions and brigand bands sought to drive the Turks out of the contested region. The result was massive bloodshed and a violent crackdown on Macedonia’s Christian populations which, while it has been totally forgotten, more than matched the barbarity of the recent wars in the Balkans.

The Armenians in the far east of the empire, who were also rebelling, were not the only ones whose plight captivated Westerners. The cry for intervention in Macedonia grew louder with each failed uprising and each successful Turkish reprisal against already impoverished Christian villagers.

Muslim bashi-bazouk militias sought to intimidate the Macedonian populace with “examples” like this one in 1907 (photo: Methuen and Company)

The Vienna and Mürzsteg Plans, in Theory and Practice

Fuelled by popular sentiment, but even more so by colonial self-interest, the Great Powers began in late 1902 to formulate a plan for reforms which the Ottomans would be compelled to accept. The first one, known as the Vienna Plan, proved ineffectual and in early October 1903, following the disastrous Ilinden Uprising of August and resulting political intrigue in Europe’s capitals, that Austro-Hungarian and Russian diplomats finally met in Vienna and Mürzsteg to hammer out a real Macedonian reform program.

The program was jointly announced, and was named after its place of agreement- according to British historian Arthur May, “a dismal hunting lodge in Styria” in central Austria. The Mürzsteg agreement asserted that there would be no changes of borders- just as did the similarly ill-fated UN Resolution 1244 that ended the Kosovo War 96 years later.

Both reform plans basically envisioned a Macedonia still ruled by the Ottoman Empire, but which would be a kinder and gentler place to live for its inhabitants. They called for improving the economic and security status of the oppressed Christian populations and for incorporating more of them into state service. Propositions like insurgent amnesties and tax breaks for returning refugees were also made. But those who expected that the reforms would help preserve a very fragile status quo would soon be disappointed.

As in Kosovo today, the interventionist governments sought to put a positive spin on the situation, despite the rapidly deteriorating situation on the ground. In practice, the reforms proved hard to carry out. The international observers in the gendarmes had a delicate role that was almost impossible to perform: they were tasked with reporting on abuses of the Turkish officials, while at the same time remaining dependent upon them for their safety and well-being. They could not execute their mandate effectively because they had only an advisory role and a limited mandate. Their goals under Mürzsteg were to reorganize the gendarmerie and to bring order, safety, and stability. They could only counsel. They could not command.

There were also the inevitable power struggles between the representatives of the Great Powers, which diluted the strength of the mission and ruined its ability to function. Commanding Italian General Emilio Degiorgis sought to maintain “impartiality” in his mandate, but biases were often revealed. The Austrians favored the Albanians, while the Russians favored the Serbs. Germany supported the Ottoman Turkish government. The British shifted during the seven-year interventionist experiment from a position of supporting Ottoman sovereignty to one of a free Macedonia. Throughout, their collective biases and hidden agendas would be a hindrance to the effective implementation of the reforms.

From 1904-1908, the joint military commission continued to meet twice a year, and sent their reports to the Austrian and Russian embassies, who in turn passed them on to the Turkish government. But a low-intensity guerrilla war continued to rage throughout the duration of the Western intervention, and the self-appointed guardians of the moral order remained powerless to stop it.

Indeed, while the Christian population had at first held out high expectations for the reform program, it later felt disappointed, betrayed and even deceived. It became clear that the Great Powers were acting to advance their own interests in Macedonia, and not to achieve any meaningful reform or to help the Christian population.

The 48 officers dispatched to the Macedonian region did however give the Christian population a minor sense of security. The police reforms did improve the quality of the gendarmerie. The actual Western officers in the field carried out their mission in good faith, in spite of its ambiguous and complex character of their mandate. However, they continued to meet with obstruction from the Turkish officials.

The Turkish officials continued to oppose the reforms through obstructionism and delay, through passive resistance and through general inertia. The Sultan, Abdul Hamid, refused to accelerate the pace of the reforms and did everything to discourage their implementation. At first, he believed he could wait out the reforms by employing stalling and delaying tactics. Turkish officials sought to intimidate and pressure Christians from making complaints and from voicing their grievances to the officers. Turkish officials showed bad faith at every turn.

There were, however, exceptions. Some of the best cooperation came from Ottoman officials who were not natives of the Balkans and who could thus act more impartially. The vali of Kosovo, Mahmoud Chevket Pasha, was a native of Baghdad; he actively supported the reforms, as did the commander of the Skopje zone, Osman Fewzi Pasha, a Tartar.

The problem with the reforms was that 48 international officers were an inadequate number to monitor the huge area of the three Macedonian vilayets. The Turkish government kept the number of the reorganized gendarmerie intentionally low to minimize their impact and effectiveness.

The introduction of Christians in the gendarmerie, one of the stipulated reforms, was generally not successful. They were undisciplined and unpopular in both Muslim and Christian areas. They were seen as traitors and lackeys by the Christians, and were despised by Muslims who detested the thought of letting Christians controlling them. They were said to be lacking in “moral value” and “political conviction.” In 1907, the fifth year of the reform programme, they made up only 10 percent of the gendarmerie. Christians also were issued gun licenses infrequently, while Muslims were well-armed and carried firearms openly. The reforms did not prevent abuses against Christians or ensure their safety. The abuses of the gendarmes were, however, lessened due to the reforms.

The Failure of the Reform Programme

By September of 1909, the Mürzsteg Reform Plan was officially dead. Its tepid results meant that it would only be a matter of time before the lackluster intervention — and the status quo it propped up — would be overtaken by events. Among these the most important were the Young Turk revolution of July 1908, and the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia three months later.

The Great Powers, which had gone into Macedonia with the stated hope of making benevolent rulers of the Turks, instead abetted the bloodshed and followed their interests. Yet their interpretation of their own best interests was antiquated; it was based on obsolete conceptions of the world and the relation of states with one another.

At this feverish time of transition, however, each of the Great Powers followed its own interventionist and colonialist intuition on a quixotic quest deep into the Balkans. None of the states would come out of it unscathed, even if the full brunt of the blowback only arrived five years after the end of the Mürzsteg Programme, with the onset of the Great War.

The hills of southern Macedonia are peaceful now, but in the dark days of one century ago they were enveloped in blood (photo: Christopher Deliso)

Partial Bibliography

Booth, John. Troubles in the Balkans. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1905.

Brailsford, Henry Noel. Macedonia: Its Races and Their Future. London: Methuen & Co., 1906.

Curtis, William Eleroy. The Turk and His Lost Provinces. Chicago: Fleming Revell Co.

Fraser, John Foster. Pictures from the Balkans. London: Cassell and Company, 1906.

Lange-Akhund, Nadine. The Macedonian Question, 1893-1908: From Western Sources. NY: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Macartney, Carlile Aylmer. The Habsburg Empire, 1790-1918. NY: Macmillan, 1969.

Mazower, Mark. Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims, and Jews, 1430-1950. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.

May, Arthur J. The Hapsburg Monarchy, 1867-1914. NY: W.W. Norton, 1951.

Sakellariou, M.B., ed. Macedonia. Athens: Ekdotike Athenon S.A., 1983.

Shea, John. Macedonia and Greece: The Struggle to Define a New Balkan Nation. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1997.

Sonnichsen, Albert. Confessions of a Macedonian Bandit: A Californian in the Balkan Wars. NY: Duffield & Co., 1909.

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Balkanalysis.com: A Look Back on 2005 and News for the Future

As 2006 dawns, let’s take a moment to look back on the year 2005 and note some salient details about this website’s performance.

First of all, 2005 saw 129 new articles published on Balkanalysis.com- in addition to several hundred others added to our back archive on the Central and Eastern European Online Library (CEEOL), which resulted in greatly increased attention from large institutions, research libraries and other purchasers of these vital texts. Second, and equally importantly, we published works from around 10 new writers, thus providing our audience with an expanded range of opinions, insights and points of view from writers hailing from several different Balkan (and outside) states.

And, as usual, our international readership continued to be diverse yet specific. Readers continue to come from institutions including research libraries, universities, think-tanks, financial institutions, embassies and NGOs, as well as the military and other security-oriented bodies, along with a fair share of Balkan-interest laymen and diaspora folks.

An unfortunate byproduct of this growing interest was noted near the end of the year, when we successfully defended ourselves from crass plagiarism by the mass media in the court of moral authority. Another two similar case were swiftly resolved in our favor but not reported.

Finally, we also saw improved success with affiliate programs such as Google Ads, Ebay and Amazon, which provide readers with specifically tailored information and items pertaining to the Balkans and adjacent areas.

Now, what does all this tell us about the future?

First of all, we will continue providing regular analysis of major trends in the Balkans, as well as controversial exposes, exclusive interviews and coverage of events on the local level that cannot be found elsewhere. And we will continue to replenish the archive on CEEOL, where some of the content will continue to include articles not found on our website’s archive.

Second of all, we will continue to provide opportunities for new writers, something which will benefit everyone and present a more cosmpolitan viewpoint representing a wider range of voices. Prospective writers, as well as book reviewers, should read the About Us section for details.

Finally, in regards to naughty publishers who decide to bend the rules by not citing or even plagiarizing our texts when they use them, we will, as W. so eloquently said, “smoke them out of their holes”- whatever that means.

Above all we would like to thank our loyal readers for their continued support and interest. Note that we enjoy hearing from you, whether or not you have something nice to say. All feedback is helpful to us as we try to serve you better.

But don’t forget that supporting us by passing on the word about the website, patronizing our advertisers, or even donating is very much appreciated.

With best wishes for 2006,

Christopher Deliso, Director

Balkanalysis.com