Persecution of Muslims during the Ottoman contraction explained

Persecution of Muslims during the Ottoman contraction
Location:Former Ottoman territories
Date:19th and early 20th centuries
Target:Turks and other predominantly Muslim peoples, (Kurds, Albanians, Bosniaks, Circassians, Serb Muslims, Greek Muslims, Muslim Roma, Pomaks)
Type:Genocide,[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] religious persecution, expropriation, mass murder, mass rape,[6] [7] [8] and ethnic cleansing[9]
Fatalities:See for details

During the decline and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Muslim inhabitants (including Turks, Kurds, Albanians, Bosniaks, Circassians, Serb Muslims, Greek Muslims, Muslim Roma, Pomaks)[10] living in Muslim-minority territories previously under Ottoman control often found themselves persecuted after borders were re-drawn. These populations were subject to genocide, expropriation, massacres, religious persecution, mass rape, and ethnic cleansing.[11] [12] [13] [9] [14] [15] [16] [4] [5]

The 19th century saw the rise of nationalism in the Balkans coincide with the decline of Ottoman power, which resulted in the establishment of an independent Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria and Romania. At the same time, the Russian Empire expanded into previously Ottoman-ruled or Ottoman-allied regions of the Caucasus and the Black Sea region. These conflicts such as the Circassian genocide created large numbers of Muslim refugees. Persecutions of Muslims resumed during World War I by the invading Russian troops in the east and during the Turkish War of Independence in the west, east, and south of Anatolia by Greek troops and Armenian fedayis. After the Greco-Turkish War, a population exchange between Greece and Turkey took place, and most Muslims of Greece left. During these times many Muslim refugees, called Muhacir, settled in Turkey.

Background

The Turkish presence and the Islamisation of native peoples in the Balkans

See main article: Spread of Islam and Turkification. For the first time, Ottoman military expeditions shifted from Anatolia to Europe and the Balkans with the occupation of the Gallipoli peninsula in the 1350s.[17] After the region was conquered by the Muslim Ottoman Empire, the Turkish presence grew. Some of the settlers were Yörüks, nomads who quickly became sedentary, and others were from urban classes. They settled in almost all of the towns, but the majority of them settled in the Eastern Balkans. The main areas of settlement were Ludogorie, Dobrudzha, the Thracian plain, the mountains and plains of northern Greece and Eastern Macedonia around the Vardar river.

Between the 15th and 17th centuries, large numbers of native Balkan peoples converted to Islam. Places of mass conversions were in Bosnia, Albania, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Crete, and the Rhodope Mountains.[18] Some of the native population converted to Islam and became Turkish over time, mainly those in Anatolia.[19]

Motives for the persecution

Hall points out that atrocities were committed by all sides during the Balkan conflicts. Deliberate terror was designed to instigate population movements out of particular territories. The aim of targeting the civilian population was to carve ethnically homogeneous countries.[20]

Great Turkish War

Even before the Great Turkish War (1683–1699) Austrians and Venetians supported Christian irregulars and rebellious highlanders of Herzegovina, Montenegro and Albania to raid Muslim Slavs.[21]

The end of the Great Turkish War marked the first time the Ottoman Empire lost large areas of territory to Christians. Most of Hungary, Croatia, Dalmatia, Slavonia, Montenegro, Podolia and the Morea were lost, and the Muslim minorities were killed, enslaved, or expelled. The Ottomans regained the Morea quickly, and Muslims soon became part of the population or were never thoroughly displaced in the first place.

Most of the Christians who lived in the Ottoman Empire were Orthodox and so Russia was particularly interested in them. In 1711 Peter the Great invited Balkan Christians to revolt against Ottoman Muslim rule.[22]

Habsburg Empire

After the Siege of Pécs, local Muslims were forced to convert to Catholicism between 1686 and 1713, or left the region.[23] The city of Hatvan became a haven for Turkish merchants and became a majority-Muslim settlement, but after it fell to the Hungarian troops in 1686, all Turkish settlers were forcibly expelled and their holdings in the city became property of foreign mercenaries that fought in the Liberation of Buda.[24]

About one quarter of all people living in Slavonia in the 16th century were Muslims who mostly lived in towns, with Osijek and Požega being the largest Muslim settlements.[25] Professor Mitja Velikonja explains that Muslims and non-Slavs who lived in Hungary, Croatia (Lika and Kordun) and Dalmatia, had fled to Bosnia-Herzegovina, following the loss of the occupied territories in these regions after the Habsburg-Ottoman war of 1683–1699. Velikonja states that it was considered the first example of cleansing of the Muslim population in the area that "enjoyed the benediction of the Catholic Church". Around 130,000 Muslims from Croatia and Slavonia were driven to Ottoman Bosnia and Herzegovina.[26] [27]

Basically, all Muslims who lived in Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia left or were exiled, killed or enslaved by the Habsburg and Venetian conquests.[28]

Thousands of Serb refugees crossed the Danube and populated the territories of Habsburg Monarchy left by Muslims. Leopold I granted ethno-religious autonomy to them without giving any privileges to the remaining Muslim population who therefore fled to Bosnia, Herzegovina and Serbia spreading anti-Christian sentiment among other Muslims there.[29] The relations between non-Muslim and Muslim population of Ottoman held Balkans became progressively worse.[30]

In the early 18th century, the remaining Muslims of Slavonia moved to Posavina.[31] [32] The Ottoman authorities encouraged hopes of expelled Muslims for a quick return to their homes and settled them in the border regions.[33]

The Muslims were two thirds of the population of Lika. Like the Muslims who lived in the rest of Croatia, they were forced to convert to Catholicism or be expelled.[34] Almost all Ottoman buildings were destroyed in Croatia, after the Ottomans left.[35]

Northern Bosnia

In 1716, Austria occupied northern Bosnia and northern Serbia until 1739, when those lands were ceded back to the Ottoman Empire at the Treaty of Belgrade. During this era, the Austrian Empire outlined its position to the Bosnian Muslim population about living within its administration. Two options were offered by Charles VI: conversion to Christianity, retaining property and remaining on Austrian territory or a departure of the remaining Muslim to other lands.[36]

Montenegro

At the beginning of the 18th century (1709 or 1711), Orthodox Serbs massacred their Muslim neighbors in Montenegro.[37] [38]

National movements

Serbian Revolution

See main article: First Serbian Uprising. After the Dahije, renegade janissaries who defied the Sultan and ruled the Sanjak of Smederevo in tyranny (beginning in 1801), imposing harsh taxes and forced labour, went on to execute leading Serbs throughout the sanjak in 1804, the Serbs rose up against the Dahije. The revolt, known as the First Serbian Uprising, subsequently reached national level after the quick success of the Serbs. The Porte, seeing the Serbs as a threat, ordered their disbandment. The revolutionaries took over Belgrade in 1806 where an armed uprising against a Muslim garrison, including civilians, took place.[39] During the uprising urban centers with sizeable Muslim populations were violently targeted such as Užice and Valjevo, as the Serbian peasantry held a class hatred of the urban Muslim elite.[40] In the end, Serbia became an autonomous country and most of the Muslims were expelled.[41] During the revolts 15,000–20,000 Muslims fled or were expelled.[42] In Belgrade and the rest of Serbia there remained a Muslim population of some 23,000 who were also forcibly expelled after 1862, following a massacre of Serbian civilians by Ottoman soldiers near Kalemegdan.[43] [44] Some Muslim families then migrated and resettled in Bosnia, where their descendants today reside in urban centres such as Šamac, Tuzla, Foča and Sarajevo.[45] [46]

Greek Revolution

See also: Massacre of Tripoli and Navarino massacre.

In 1821, a major Greek revolt broke out in Southern Greece. Insurgents gained control of most of the countryside while the Muslims and Jews sheltered themselves in the fortified towns and castles.[47] Each one of them was besieged and gradually through starvation or surrender most were taken over by the Greeks. In the massacres of April 1821 some 15,000 were killed. The worst massacre happened in Tripolitsa some 8,000 Muslims and Jews died. In response, massive reprisals against Greeks in Constantinople, Smyrna, Cyprus, and elsewhere, took place; thousands were killed and the Ottoman Sultan even considered a policy of total extermination of all Greeks in the Empire. In the end an independent Greece was set up. Most of the Muslims in its area had been killed or expelled during the conflict. British historian William St Clair argues that what he calls "the genocidal process" ended when there were no more Turks to kill in what would become independent Greece.[48]

Bulgarian uprising

See main article: April Uprising. In 1876 a Bulgarian uprising broke out in dozens of villages. The first attacks were made against the local Muslims[49] but in a short time the Ottomans violently suppressed the uprising.

From 1876 until 1989, Muslims from Bulgaria (Turks, Tatars, Pomaks and Muslim Roma) were expelled to Turkey; such as during the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), Balkan Wars (1912–1913), and the 1989 expulsion of Turks from Bulgaria.

Russo-Turkish war

Bulgaria

See main article: Russo-Turkish War (1877–78). The Bulgarian uprising eventually lead to a war between Russia and the Ottomans. Russia invaded the Ottoman Balkans through Dobrudzha and northern Bulgaria, attacking the Muslim population. Russia led a coalition consisting of itself, the Bulgarian Legion, Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, as well as the Guard of Finland. Despite some initial resistance, the Ottoman forces were ultimately heavily defeated and lost ground rapidly. By March 1878, the Ottoman military collapsed and was forced to sue for peace.

As coalition forces advanced, they began to commit large-scale atrocities against the Muslim population in the areas they operated in. As a result, it is estimated that up to 400,000 Muslim civilians were massacred from 1877 to 1878, and up to 500,000–1.5 million were displaced and/or became refugees.[50] [51]

British reports from the period contain information on the massacres. According to these reports, 96 of the 170 houses and schools in the Turkish village of Issova Bâlâ (Upper Isssova) were burned.[52] It is stated that the Muslims of the village of Upper Sofular were massacred, before that, the school and the mosque of the town were burned.[52] [53]

18 Turks were killed and their bodies were burned in the village of Kozluca.[54]

According to Ottoman reports, Muslims were also massacred in the town of Kızanlık, 400 of them were murdered by a group of Russians and Bulgarians. The Cossacks killed around 300 Muslim men after torturing them in various ways. As elsewhere, the Russians first collected the weapons of Muslims. Then they distributed these weapons to the Bulgarians. The Bulgarians then massacred the Muslims with these weapons.[55]

The Russian soldiers, who entered the houses under the pretext of searching in the first days of the occupation, took whatever they found valuable. Especially after the Russian army withdrew, the city was completely left to Cossacks and Bulgarians. They brutally killed the Muslims in the Taşköy and Topraklık villages.[56]

It is worth noting that in several instances, the Russians, under pressure from foreign generals, would not directly carry out massacres themselves, but rather would leave it to the battle-hardened Cossacks and Bulgarian militia.

The towns of Tulça, Ishakça and Mecidiye were occupied by the coalition army in late June. Weapons were distributed to the Bulgarian villagers, who then began to mass murder the Muslims. People were killed, houses, villages were looted and burned. The situation was also no different in Ruscuk and Tırnova.

According to the information given by the British consuls and journalists in the region, the Cossacks surrounded the villages and took the weapons of the locals, then distributed the weapons to the Bulgarians, who then murdered and raped the Muslim-Turkish inhabitants of the area. Those who tried to escape were throw into the fire of the burning villages. Again, neither men, women nor children were spared. In the village of Balvan, for example, 1,900 Muslims were killed in this way. As the Russians entered Eski Zagora on 22 July. They killed 1,100 Muslims in 11 days. British Consul Blunt set off from Edirne on 26 September, visited the Turkish villages in the region and came to Yeni Zağra on 28 September, and then moved to Kızanlık. He wrote that all the villages except a Bulgarian village on his way were burned and emptied. For example, the entire village of Kadirbey, with 400–500 Muslim people, was laid waste to by the Bulgarians. In his report dated 25 July 1877, the British deputy consul Dupuis reported that the Russians and Bulgarians killed the entire Muslim people of Kalofer and Karlova, old people, women and children alike in cold blood.

Russians and Bulgarians not only killed Muslims in the places they occupied, they raped women and young girls and looted their property. They also burned down their houses and destroyed them. For example, when Old Zagora was occupied, the city's shops and houses belonging to Muslims and Jews were first looted, then destroyed. When Plovdiv was occupied, of the 15,000 Muslims that inhabited it previously, only 100 remained.

When Burgas was occupied, the Turkish neighborhood of the city consisted of 400 houses, it was completely destroyed. When Sofia was occupied, there were less than 50 Turkish families left in the city. Turkish houses were systematically annihilated. Tatar Pazarcık was destroyed in the same way.

It is reported that the first step in the atrocities was generally to disarm all Turks and Muslims that were found, and then arm Bulgarian gangs and irregulars who were following the main coalition vanguard.[57] In this way, the Bulgarians started to massacre Muslims and Jews, including women and children, in a brutal fashion.[58] It is also reported that the persecution and brutality of the Bulgarians towards the Muslim population was even many times higher than the expectations of the Russian generals.[59]

Bulgarian peasants were promised the lands, houses and goods owned by the Muslim-Turkish peoples. As a matter of fact, as a result of this, in a very short time, hundreds of thousands of Bulgarians were systematically settled in Turkish houses, evicting their previous owners without mercy. The Russians and Bulgarians also began to relentlessly persecute Muslims and Turks on the religious level. Qu’rans were torn apart, mosques were closed down and demolished, and Muslim dress of both men and women was violated and suppressed.[60]

Muslim and Turkish women and girls were also sexually violated and raped by the Russians and Bulgarians on a large scale, with some being sent to brothels.[61]

In the report sent to the Ottoman Government by the Tırnova memorandum about the murders and destruction committed by the Russians and Bulgarians during the occupation of Rumelia, it is stated that in the years when the war continued, around 4,770 Turks were massacred in the villages around Tırnova, and 2,120 Turkish houses were burned. The Daily Telegraph newspaper also corroborated this information. According to the paper; "We saw about 3,000 bodies around the Yeni Zağra station, they were all Turkish. It was said that dogs and pigs gnawed spoiled corpses...it was a horrible sight..." The Governor of Plovdiv also reports that all Muslims: men, women and children, were shut in the mosque in the Serhadli and surrounding villages by the Bulgarians, and all of them were massacred by having their throats cut.[62] [63] [64]

The Russians and Bulgarians who occupied Plovdiv on 15 January 1878, plundered the city completely, raped Muslim women and massacred many.[65] Meanwhile, the Bulgarians brutally massacred and tortured the Ottoman soldiers they captured, such as by cutting off their noses, arms and ears.[66]

Even after the war was over, it is reported that from 1879 to 1890, in the former Ottoman Rumelia Eyalet, the Bulgarians continued to systematically "destroy" the Turkish people in the region. In these years, local administrations stood idly by as Muslims were assaulted, and as armed Bulgarians, who took advantage of this situation, began to commit rape against Muslim-Turkish women and girls on a massive scale.

Bulgarians gathered Turkish youth and women from their homes at night in many villages, stripped them of their abayas, drank alcohol and sexually violated them. As a matter of fact, many women who could not accept this situation preferred to jump into water wells in order not to be raped.[67]

Serbian–Ottoman Wars (1876–78)

See main article: Serbian–Ottoman Wars (1876–1878).

See also: Expulsion of the Albanians (1877–1878). On the eve of the outbreak of a second round of hostilities between Serbia and the Ottoman Empire in 1877, a notable Muslim population existed in the districts of Niš, Pirot, Vranje, Leskovac, Prokuplje and Kuršumlija.[68] The rural parts of Toplica, Kosanica, Pusta Reka and Jablanica valleys and adjoining semi-mountainous interior was inhabited by compact Muslim Albanian population while Serbs in those areas lived near the river mouths and mountain slopes and both peoples inhabited other regions of the South Morava river basin.[69] The Muslim population of most of the area was composed out of ethnic Gheg Albanians and with Turks located in urban centres. Part of the Turks were of Albanian origin. The Muslims in the cities of Niš and Pirot were Turkish-speaking; Vranje and Leskovac were Turkish- and Albanian-speaking; Prokuplje and Kuršumlija were Albanian-speaking. There was also a minority of Circassian refugees settled by the Ottomans during the 1860s, near the then border around the environs of Niš.[70] Estimates vary on the size of the Muslim population on the eve of the war within these areas ranging from as high as 200,000 to as low as 131,000.[71] [72] [73] Estimates as to the number of the Albanian or Muslim refugees that left the region for the Ottoman Empire due to the war range from 49–130,000, while Serbian claims can be as low as 30,000 Albanian refugees.[74] [75] [76] [77] [78] [79] The departure of the Albanian population from these regions was done in a manner that today would be characterized as ethnic cleansing.[80]

Hostilities between Serbian and Ottoman forces broke out on 15 December 1877, after a Russian request for Serbia to enter the Russo-Turkish war. The Serbian military had two objectives: capturing Niš and breaking the Niš-Sofia Ottoman lines of communication. Serbian forces entered the wider Toplica and Morava valleys capturing urban centres such as Niš, Kuršumlija, Prokuplije, Leskovac, and Vranje and their surrounding rural and mountainous districts. In these regions, the Albanian population depending on the area they resided had fled into nearby mountains, leaving livestock, property and other belongings behind. Some Albanians returned and submitted to Serbian authorities, while others continued their flight southward toward Ottoman Kosovo. Serbian forces also encountered heavy Albanian resistance in certain areas which slowed their advance into these regions resulting in having to take villages one by one that became vacant. A small Albanian population remained the Medveđa area, where their descendants still reside today.[81] The retreat of these refugees toward Ottoman Kosovo was halted at the Goljak Mountains when an armistice was declared. The Albanian population was resettled in Lab area and other parts of northern Kosovo alongside the new Ottoman-Serbian border.[82] [83] Most Albanian refugees were resettled in over 30 large rural settlements in central and southeastern Kosovo and in urban centres that increased their populations substantially.[84] Tensions between Albanian refugees and local Kosovo Albanians arose over resources, as the Ottoman Empire found it difficult to accommodate to their needs and meager conditions. Tensions in the form of revenge attacks also arose by incoming Albanian refugees on local Kosovo Serbs that contributed to the beginnings of the ongoing Serbian-Albanian conflict in coming decades.[85] [86]

Bosnia

In 1875, a conflict between Muslims and Christians broke out in Bosnia. After the Ottoman Empire signed the treaty at the 1878 Berlin Congress, Bosnia was occupied by Austria-Hungary. Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) perceived this as a betrayal by the Ottomans and left on their own, felt that they were defending their homeland and not the wider Empire. From 9 July until 20 October 1878 or for almost three months, Bosnian Muslims resisted Austro-Hungarian forces in nearly sixty military engagements with 5,000 casualties either wounded or killed. Some Bosnian Muslims concerned about their future and well being under the new non-Muslim administration, left Bosnia for the Ottoman Empire.[87] From 1878 until 1918, between 130,000[88] and 150,000 Bosnian Muslims departed Bosnia to areas under Ottoman control, some to the Balkans, others to Anatolia, the Levant and Maghreb.[89] Today, these Bosnian populations in the Arab world have become assimilated although they have retained memories of their origins and some bear the ethnonym Bosniak (rendered in Arabic as Bushnak) as a surname.[90] [91]

Circassia

The Russo-Circassian War was the 101-year-long military conflict between Circassia and Russia.[92] Circassia was de jure part of the Ottoman Empire but de facto independent. The conflict started in 1763, when the Russian Empire attempted to establish hostile forts in Circassian territory and quickly annex Circassia, followed by the Circassian refusal of the annexation;[93] only ending 101 years later when the last resistance army of Circassia was defeated on 21 May 1864, making it exhausting and casualty heavy for the Russian Empire as well as being the single longest war Russia ever waged in history.[94]

The end of the war saw the Circassian genocide take place in which Imperial Russia aimed to systematically destroy the Circassian people[95] [96] [97] where several war crimes were committed by the Russian forces[98] and up to 1.5 million Circassians were killed or expelled to the Middle East, especially modern-day Turkey. Russian generals such as Grigory Zass described the Circassians as "subhuman filth", and justified their killing and use in scientific experiments.[99]

South Caucasus

The area around Kars was ceded to Russia. This resulted in a large number of Muslims leaving and settling in remaining Ottoman lands.Batum and its surrounding area was also ceded to Russia causing many local Georgian Muslims to migrate to the west.[100] Most of them settled around the Anatolian Black Sea coast.

Balkan Wars

See also: Massacres of Albanians in the Balkan Wars. In 1912 Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro declared war on the Ottomans. The Ottomans quickly lost territory. According to Geert-Hinrich Ahrens, "the invading armies and Christian insurgents committed a wide range of atrocities upon the Muslim population."[101]

During this war hundreds of thousands of the Turks and Pomaks fled their villages and became refugees. The total number of refugees is estimated to be between 400,000 and 813,000.[102] [103] The death toll is estimated to be between 632,000 and 1,500,000 Ottoman Muslim civilians killed.

In Kosovo and Albania most of the victims were Albanians while in other areas most of the victims were Turks and Pomaks. Approximately 20,000 to 25,000 Albanians were killed in the Kosovo vilayet during the first two to four months of the campaign, with the total death toll estimated to be 120,000-270,000. The number of Albanians expelled from the territories annexed by Serbia can vary from 60,000 to 300,000.[104] [105] [106]

The intense influx of refugees from the region and the news of the massacres caused a deep shock in the Ottoman mainland. This further increased the hatred of minorities already present in Ottoman society. The situation became a factor that exacerbated the Ottoman genocides in World War I, which took place approximately two years after the end of the First Balkan War.[107]

A large number of Pomaks in the Rhodopes were forcibly converted to Orthodoxy but later allowed to reconvert, most of them did.[108] The Report of the International Commission on the Balkan Wars reported that in many districts the Moslem villages were systematically burned by their Christian neighbors. In Monastir 80% of the Muslim villages were burned by the Serbian and Greek army according to a British report. While in Giannitsa the Muslim quarter was burned alongside many Muslim villages in the Salonica province by the Greek army.

During the war, the Bulgarian army committed numerous atrocities, including mass murder, mass rape, torture, theft, and plundering against Turks and Muslims on a massive scale.[109] [110]

Petrovo

Petrovo was under Ottoman rule until the Balkan Wars when it was captured by Yane Sandanski. During the war many Muslims fled from the region'the only exception were Turks of Petrovo. The reason was because there was an agreement between Christians and Muslims to protect each other. While no Christian was injured or killed during the Ottoman retreat, when Bulgarians captured Petrovo almost all Petrovo Turks were burned in the village cafe. Some women were left alive to be wives of the soldiers, other were went to Kalimantsi to work as maids. The Turkish orphans were given to Bulgarian families, and some of them still know their origin.[111] [112] [113]

Doiran

The Carnegie Report on the Balkan Wars states the following: "The Bulgarian army marched on to Doiran; on its departure looting and slaughter began. I saw an old man of eighty lying in the street with his head split open, and the dead body of a boy of thirteen. About thirty Muslims were killed that day in the streets,--I believe by the Bulgarian bands. On Wednesday evening, an order was issued that no Muslim might leave his house day or night until further notice.

Strumica

The Carnegie Commission visited the camp of the Muslim refugees outside Salonica and talked with two groups of them who came from villages near Strumica. The Greeks told them that the Bulgarians would certainly massacre them if they stayed in the town; they urged, and pressed and persuaded. Most left under pressure. A few remained, and many were forced to leave. They heard that other villages had been burnt after they left, and some of them actually saw their villages in flames.

A group of these refugees from the village Yedna-Kuk, near Strumnitsa, gave their experiences during the first war. The Bulgarian bands arrived before the regular army, and ordered the whole male population to assemble in the mosque. They were shut in and robbed of 300 pounds in all. Eighteen of the wealthier villagers were bound and taken to Bossilovo, where they were killed and buried. The villagers were able to remember nine of their names.

Kurkut

The Catholic priest Gustave Michel, superior of the mission at Kilkis, gave the following information to the correspondent of Le Temps (10 July). He could testify to certain massacres perpetrated by the Bulgarian bands at Kurkut. A Bulgarian band led by Donchev shut all the men of the place in the mosque, and gathered the women round it, to oblige them to witness the spectacle. The Bulgarian commandants then threw three bombs at the mosque but it was not blown up; so they then set fire to it, and all who were shut up in it, about 700 men, were burnt alive. Those who attempted to flee were shot down by Bulgarian commandants posted round the mosque, and Pere Michel found human heads, arms, and legs lying about half burned in the streets. At Planitsa, Donchev's band committed even worse atrocities. It first drove all the men to the mosque and burnt them alive; it then gathered the women and burnt them in their turn in the public square. At Rayonovo a number of men and women were massacred; the Bulgarians filled a well with their corpses. At Kukush the Muslims were massacred by the Bulgarian population of the town and their mosque destroyed. All the Turkish soldiers who fled without arms and arrived in groups from Salonica were massacred.

Kilkis

After the occupation of Salonica, disarmed Turkish soldiers in groups of two to three hundred at a time marched through Kukush on their way to their homes. They were captured by the Bulgarian bands and slaughtered, to the number of perhaps 2,000. A commission of thirty to forty Christians was established, which drew up lists of all the Muslim inhabitants throughout the district. Everyone was summoned to the mosque and there informed that he had been rated to pay a certain sum. Whole villages, were made responsible for the total amount; most of the men were imprisoned and were obliged to sell everything they possessed, including their wives' ornaments, to pay the ransom. They were often killed in spite of the payment of the money in full; he, himself, actually saw a Bulgarian commandant cut off two fingers of a man's hand and force him to drink his own blood mixed with raki.

The chief of bands, Donchev, arrived and matters were still worse. He burnt three Turkish villages (345 houses in all) in one day; Raianovo, Planitsa and Kukurtovo. He shut up the men in the mosques and burnt them alive; the women were shut up in barns and sexually violated; children were actually flung against the walls and killed. This the witness did not see, but heard from his Christian neighbors. Only twenty-two Muslim families out of 300 remained in Kukush; the rest fled to Salonica. Twelve small Muslim villages were wiped out in the first war, the men killed and the women taken away.

Serres

On 6 November 1912, the inhabitants of Serres, sent a deputation to meet the Bulgarian army and surrender the town. Next day Zancov, a Bulgarian Chief of bands, appeared in the town with sixteen men, and began to disarm the population. A day later the Bulgarian army entered Serres and received a warm welcome. That evening the Bulgarian soldiers, on the pretext that arms were still hidden in the houses of the Muslims, entered them and began to steal money and other valuables. Next day the Muslim refugees from the district north of Serres were invited to appear at the prefecture; they obeyed the Summons; but on their arrival a trumpet sounded and the Bulgarian soldiers seized their arms and began to massacre these inoffensive people; the massacre lasted three hours and resulted in the death of 600 Muslims. The number of the victims would have been incalculable had it not been for the energetic intervention of the Greek bishop, and of the director of the Orient bank.The Muslims of the town were then arrested in the cafes, houses and streets, and imprisoned, some at the prefecture and others in the mosques; many of the former were slaughtered with bayonets. Bulgarian soldiers in the meantime entered Turkish houses, sexually violated the women and girls and stole everything they could lay their hands on. The Muslims imprisoned in the overcrowded mosques were left without food for two days and nights and then released. For six days rifle shots were heard on all sides; the Muslims were afraid to leave their houses; and of this the Bulgarian soldiers took advantage to pillage their shops. Muslim corpses lay about in the streets and were buried only when they began to putrify. For several days the Bulgarian soldiers destroyed houses and mosques to obtain firewood. The corn and animals of the Muslims were seized by the Bulgarian authorities without any receipt or note of requisition. Complaints made on this subject were ignored. The furniture and antiquities belonging to the schools, mosques and hospitals were taken and sent to Sofia. The Bulgarians subjected several Muslim notables to all sorts of humiliations; they were driven with whips to sweep the streets and stables; and many a blow was given to those who dared to wear a fez. In a word, during the Bulgarian occupation the Muslims were robbed and maltreated both in the streets and at the prefecture, unless they had happened to give board and lodging to some Bulgarian officer. The Bulgarian officers and gendarmes before leaving Serres took everything that was left in the shops of Muslims, Jews and Greeks, and pitilessly burnt a large number of houses, shops, cafes, and mills.It is reported that during the war, when the Bulgarians destroyed the Turkish villages of Davud, Topuklu and Maden, they murdered not only women and the elderly, but even children in the cradle, and in Radovishte, all the Turkish men were massacred.[114]

Kahramanmaraş

On the train route close to the village of Maraş, Turkish corpses with their heads torn to pieces, their backs cut with bayonets, and their faces torn apart were found.[115]

Bulgarian committee members also demonstrated complete brutality in Drama. In addition to stealing the money of someone named Şaban Agha in the 400-household Roksar village, they first cut out his eyes, then cut off his nose and ears, then his arms and legs, and threw his body in the middle of the street. Again, in the same village, they murdered a young teacher, one of the Education officers, by cutting out his eyes and cutting off his ears. They left only 40 people in the said village and killed the rest in an extremely cruel and brutal manner.[116]

According to the information provided by a Russian newspaper, at the beginning of the war, Bulgarian committee members and their members burned 39 men and women alive in a mosque in the village of Debernecik, and slaughtered all the Turks in the village of Karaşova.[117]

Kumanovo–Uskub

Bulgarian committee members constantly attacked the migrating convoys, thus causing the deaths of thousands of innocent Turkish people. In Xanthi, the Bulgarians dismembered the Turks they captured, and between Komanova and Skopje they massacred approximately 3,000 Turks. In Syros, on the grounds that the Turks killed two soldiers in self-defense, the Bulgarian officer looked at his watch and said: "It's half time now, you can do whatever you want to the Turks until the same hour tomorrow," the massacre began and between 1,200 and 1,900 innocent Turkish people were killed throughout the day.[118]

Many of the Bulgarian prisoners captured during the war had female ears and fingers decorated with earrings and rings in their pockets.[119] In the town of Kirmi, which consisted of 25 villages and whose population of around 12,000 was almost entirely Muslim-Turkish, the Bulgarians burned the houses and started to oppress the people. Those who could escape fled, and most of those who could not escape were killed by the Bulgarians. In the Çakal township, which consisted of 15 villages, belongings were looted and the people migrated to Komotini. However, although they were able to return to their homes, after their teachers, imams, headmen and other notables were massacred, those who remained were forced to reintegrate. According to information received from the town of Tutrakan, all Muslim-Turks in Tutrakan were waiting for the day when they will be "martyred" at the hands of the Bulgarians and "make several sacrifices every day." It is also reported that there was no house left in Maksutlar village of Tutrakan that was not plundered or a young Turkish Muslim girl left that was not raped by the Bulgarians.[120] [121] [122]

The Bulgarians treated the Ottoman prisoners they captured during the war no differently than they treated civilians. For example, they brutally massacred 3,000 Ottoman prisoners they captured in Stara Zagora.[123]

Oklanli

It is reported that, in the village of Oklanli (or Lagahanli), the Bulgarian troops locked up Turkish women in houses, raped them over a period of 10 days, then burned them alive.[124]

World War I and the Turkish War of Independence

See main article: World War I and Turkish War of Independence.

Caucasus Campaign

The historian Uğur Ümit Üngör noted that during the Russian invasion of Ottoman lands, "many atrocities were carried out against the local Turks and Kurds by the Russian army and Armenian volunteers."[125] General Vladimir Liakhov gave the order to kill any Turk on sight and to destroy any mosque.[126] [127] According to Boris Shakhovskoi the Armenian nationalists wanted to exterminate the Muslims in the occupied regions.[128] A large part of the local Muslim Turks and Kurds fled west after the Russian invasion of eastern Anatolia in 1914–1918, in Talaat Pasha's Notebook the given number is at 702,905 Turks and Kurds. J. Rummel estimates that 128,000–600,000 Muslim Turks and Kurds were killed by Russian troops and Armenian irregulars; at least 128,000 of them between 1914–1915 according to Turkish statistician Ahmet Emin Yalman.[129] After the formation of the Provisional Government in 1917, some 30,000–40,000 Muslims were killed by irregular Armenian units as retribution.

The Turkish-German historian Taner Akçam in his book A Shameful Act writes of Vehip Pasha's detailed account of the reprisals against Muslims during the retreat of Armenian and Russian forces from Western Armenia in 1917–1918 and sets the figure at 3,000 killed in the Erzincan and the Bayburt areas. Writing also of another eyewitness testimony claiming 3,000 dead in the Erzurum area,[130] and 20,000 dead in Kars in the spring of 1918. Akçam also makes mention of a study of the Vilayet of Erzurum which sets the number of massacred Muslims as 25,000 in the spring of 1918, however, providing the examination of Armenian historian Vahakn Dadrian who claims from the wartime records of the Ottoman Third Army that "altogether some 5,000–5,500 victims are involved." Akçam writes of a Turkish source that describes the number of Muslim deaths during the winter and spring of 1919 in Kars as 6,500, whereas on 22 March 1920, Kâzım Karabekir put the number at 2,000 in certain villages and regions in Kars.[131] Halil Bey in a 1919 letter to Karabekir claimed 24 villages in Iğdır had been razed.[132]

Franco-Turkish War

See main article: Franco-Turkish War. Cilicia was occupied by the British after World War I, who were later replaced by the French. The French Armenian Legion armed returning Armenian refugees of the Armenian genocide to the region and assisting them. Eventually the Turks responded with resistance against the French occupation, battles took place in Marash, Aintab, and Urfa. Most of these cities were destroyed during the process with large civilian suffering. In Marash, 4,500 Turks died.[133] The French left the area together with the Armenians after 1920. The retribution for the Armenian Genocide served as justification for armed Armenians.[134]

Also, during the Franco-Turkish War the Kaç Kaç incident occurred, which refers to the escape of 40,000 Turks from the city of Adana into more mountainous regions because of the Franco-Armenian occupation of 20 July 1920. During the escape, French airplanes bombed the fleeing Turkish population and the Belemedik hospital.

Greco-Turkish War

See main article: Yalova Peninsula massacres, Menemen massacre and Fire of Manisa. After the Greek landing and the following occupation of Western Anatolia during the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922), Turkish resistance activity was answered with terror against the local Muslims. Killings, rapes, and village-burnings took place as the Greek Army advanced.[135] However, as reported in a British intelligence report at the time, in general "the [Turkish] inhabitants of the occupied zone have in most cases accepted the advent of Greek rule without demur and in some cases undoubtedly prefer it to the [Turkish] Nationalist regime, which seems to have been founded on terrorism".

British military personnel observed that the Greek Army near Uşak was warmly welcomed by the Muslim population for "being freed from the license and oppression of the [Turkish] Nationalist troops"; there were "occasional cases of misconduct" by the Greek troops against the Muslim population, and the perpetrators were prosecuted by the Greek authorities, while the "worst miscreants" were "a handful of Armenians recruited by the Greek army", who were then sent back to Constantinople.[136]

During the Greek occupation, Greek troops and local Greeks, Armenian and Circassian groups committed the Yalova Peninsula Massacres in early 1921 against the local Muslim population.[137] These resulted, according to some sources, in the deaths of around 300 of the local Muslim populace, as well about 27 villages.[138] [139]

The precise number of casualties is not exactly known. Statements gathered by Ottoman official reveal a relatively low number of casualties: based on the Ottoman enquiry to which 177 survivors responded, only 35 were reported as killed, wounded or beaten or missing. This is also in accordance with Toynbee's accounts that one to two murders were enough to drive out the population.[140] Another source estimates that barely 1,500 Muslims out of 7,000 survived in the environment of Yalova.[141]

The Greeks advanced all the way to Central Anatolia. After the Turkish attack in 1922 the Greeks retreated and Norman M. Naimark notes that "the Greek retreat was even more devastating for the local population than the occupation". During the retreat, towns and villages were burned as part of a scorched earth policy, accompanied with massacres and rapes. During this war, a part of Western Anatolia was destroyed, large towns such as Manisa, Salihli together with many villages being burned.[142] 3,000 houses in Alaşehir.[143] The Inter-Allied commission, consisting of British, French, American and Italian officers found that "there is a systematic plan of destruction of Turkish villages and extinction of the Muslim population." According to Marjorie Housepian, 4,000 Muslims were executed in Izmir under Greek occupation.[144]

During the war, in East Thrace, which was ceded to Greece with the Treaty of Sèvres, around 90,000 Turkish villagers fled to Bulgaria and Istanbul from the Greeks.[145]

After the war, peace talks between Greece and Turkey started with the Lausanne Conference of 1922–1923. At the Conference, the chief negotiator of the Turkish delegation, Ismet Pasha, gave an estimate of 1.5 million Anatolian Turks that had been exiled or died in the area of Greek occupation. Of these, McCarthy estimates that 860,000 fled and 640,000 died; with many, if not most of those who died, being refugees as well. The comparison of census figures shows that 1,246,068 Anatolian Muslims had become refugees or had died. Furthermore, Ismet Pasha shared statistics showing the destruction of 141,874 buildings, and the slaughter or theft of 3,291,335 farm animals in the area of Greek occupation.[146]

The peace that followed the Greco–Turkish War resulted in a population exchange between Greece and Turkey. As a result, the Muslim population of Greece with the exception of Western Thrace, and partially, the Muslim Cham Albanians,[147] was relocated to Turkey.[148]

Total number of casualties

The forced mass displacement of Muslims out of the Balkans during the era of territorial contraction of the Ottoman Empire has become a topic of recent scholarly interest only in the 21st century.[149]

Death toll

According to historian Justin McCarthy, between 1821 and 1922, from the beginning of the Greek War of Independence to the end of the Ottoman Empire, five million Muslims were driven from their lands and another five and a half million died, some of them killed in wars and others perishing as refugees from starvation or disease.[150] However, McCarthy's work has faced harsh criticism by many scholars, who have characterized his views as indefensibly biased towards Turkey[151] and defending Turkish atrocities against Armenians, as well as engaging in genocide denial.[152] [153] [154] Roger Owen estimates that during the last decade of the Ottoman Empire (1912–1922) when the Balkan Wars, the First World War and the War of Independence took place, nearly 2 million Muslims, civilian and military, died in the area of modern Turkey.[155] The historian Mark Biondich estimates that from 1878 to 1912 up to two million Muslims left the Balkans either voluntarily or involuntarily, and Muslims casualties in the Balkans in 1912 and 1923 within the context of those killed and expelled exceeded some three million.[156]

Settlement of refugees

The Ottoman authorities and charities provided some help to the immigrants and sometimes settled them in certain locations. In Turkey most of the Balkan refugees settled in Western Turkey and Thrace. The Caucasians, in addition to these areas also settled in Central Anatolia and around the Black Sea coast. Eastern Anatolia was not largely settled with the exception of some Circassian and Karapapak villages. There were also completely new villages founded by refugees, for example in uninhabited forested areas. Many people of the 1924 exchange were settled in former Greek villages along the Aegean coast. Outside of Turkey, Circassians were settled along the Hedjaz Railway and some Cretan Muslims at Syria's coast.

Academic debate

According to Michael Mann McCarthy is often viewed as a scholar on the Turkish side of the debate over Balkan Muslim death figures.[157] Mann however states that even if those figures were reduced "by as much as 50 percent, they still would horrify". In the discussion about the Armenian Genocide, McCarthy denies the genocide and is considered as the leading pro-Turkish scholar.[158] [159]

Scholarly critics of McCarthy acknowledge that his research on Muslim civilian casualties and refugee numbers (19th and early 20th centuries) has brought forth a valuable perspective, previously neglected in the Christian West, that millions of Muslims and Jews also suffered and died during those years.[160] [161] Donald W. Bleacher, though acknowledging that McCarthy is pro-Turkish nonetheless has called his scholarly study Death and Exile on Muslim civilian casualties and refugee numbers "a necessary corrective" challenging the West's model of all victims being Christians and all perpetrators as being Muslims.

Destruction of Muslim heritage

Muslim heritage was extensively targeted during the persecutions. During their long rule the Ottomans had built numerous mosques, madrasas, caravanserais, bath-houses and other types of building. According to current research, around 20,000 buildings of all sizes have been documented in official Ottoman registers. However very little survives of this Ottoman heritage in most Balkan countries.[162] Most of the Ottoman era mosques of the Balkans have been destroyed; the ones still standing often had their minarets destroyed. Before the Habsburg conquest, Osijek had 8–10 mosques, none of which remain today.[163] During the Balkan wars there were cases of desecration, destruction of mosques and Muslim cemeteries. Of the 166 madrasas in the Ottoman Balkans in the 17th century, only eight remain and five of them are near Edirne. It is estimated that 95–98% were destroyed. The same is also valid for other types of buildings, such as markethalls, caravanserais and baths. From a chain of caravanserais across the Balkans only one is preserved while there are vague ruins of four others. There were in the area of Negroponte in 1521: 34 large and small mosques, six hamams, ten schools, and 6 dervish convents. Today only the ruin of one hamam remains.

Destruction of Ottoman mosques.[164]
Town During Ottoman rule Still standing
403
60 3
Belgrade>100 1
>100 1
Ruse36 1
Sremska Mitrovica[165] 17 0
Osijek[166] 7 0
Požega[167] 14–15 0

Commemoration

Impact on Europe

According to Mark Levene, the Victorian public in the 1870s paid much more attention to the massacres and expulsions of Christians than to massacres and expulsions of Muslims, even if they were on a greater scale. He further suggests that such massacres were even favoured by some circles. He also argues that the dominant powers, by supporting "nation-statism" at the Congress of Berlin, legitimized "the primary instrument of Balkan nation-building": ethnic cleansing.[168]

Memorials

See also

Sources

Notes and References

  1. McCarthy, Justin Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821–1922, Darwin Press Incorporated, 1996,, Chapter one, The land to be lost, p. 1
  2. Adam Jones. (2010).Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction page 65 & 152. "Incorporating a global-comparative perspective on the genocide of the last half-millenium has enabled important advances in the understanding of events central to the genocide studies field – such as the process of Ottoman imperial dissolution, reciprocal genocidal killing (during the "Unweaving" in the Balkans)...The human toll of this "Great Unweaving," from Greece's independence war in the early nineteenth century to the final Balkan wars of 1912–1913, was enormous. Hundreds of thousands of Ottoman Muslims were massacred in the secessionist drive.."
  3. Book: 23 June 2021. 24 June 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210624211541/https://books.google.de/books?id=lwSynQEACAAJ&dq=Balkanlarda+T%C3%BCrk+Soykirimi&hl=tr&sa=X&redir_esc=y. 2012. tr. İleri Yayınları. Turkish genocide in the Balkans. 978-605-5452-41-4 . live.
  4. Book: Tatum, Dale C. . Genocide at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century: Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Darfur . 2010 . Palgrave Macmillan . 113 . 978-0-230-62189-3 . In October 1912, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Greece launched an attack to dismember the decaying Ottoman Empire. This war was notable for its brutality. Acts of genocide and mayhem were committed during the war. Civilians were massacred and people's lips and noses were severed. Thus, the relationship between Serbs and Kosovar Albanians began to spiral downward. From this battle, the Serbs gained control of Kosovo, their 'mythic land' of origin..
  5. Book: Csaplár-Degovics, Krisztián . Die Internationale Kontrollkommission Albaniens und die albanischen Machtzentren (1913–1914): Beitrag zur Geschichte der Staatsbildung Albaniens . de . 41 . One of the unexpected experiences of the Balkan Wars 1912-1913 was that the members of the Balkan League committed genocides and other kinds of mass violence against other Nationalities and the Muslim population of the peninsula. Among other things the Albanian state-building project of the Great Powers aimed to prevent further genocide and other acts of violence against the Albanian population and other refugees from Macedonia and to put an end to the anarchy of the country..
  6. Web site: Carnegie Report, Macedonian Muslims during the Balkan Wars, 1912 .
  7. Book: This information is given under the title "Official Documents of Bulgarian Brutality and Atrocities". See Ikdam, nu. 5922, 13 Ramazan 1331/3 August 1329 (16 August 1913), p. 3. . 15 October 2017.
  8. Book: Sorrows of Turkish-Islams Bulgarian Atrocities, Sad. and Additional Information Written by H. Adnan Önelçin, İstanbul 1986, p. 27 ff The book also describes the atrocities committed in Niğbolu, Plovdiv, Varna, Dobruja and many other Muslim-Turkish villages and towns, and the atrocities are described as "Hz. It is shown as a "savagery within a most pathetic and distressing brutality that has not been seen in the world since the age of Adam." . 15 October 2017.
  9. Mojzes . Paul . Ethnic cleansing in the Balkans: Why did it happen and could it happen again? . Cicero Foundation Great Debate Paper . The Cicero Foundation . 13 . 4 . 2013.
  10. Web site: Pekesen . Berna . 7 March 2012 . Berger . Lutz . Landes . Lisa . Expulsion and Emigration of the Muslims from the Balkans . 9 September 2022 . . . Reid . Christopher.
  11. McCarthy, Justin Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821–1922, Darwin Press Incorporated, 1996,, Chapter one, The land to be lost, p. 1
  12. Adam Jones. (2010).Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction page 65 & 152. "Incorporating a global-comparative perspective on the genocide of the last half-millenium has enabled important advances in the understanding of events central to the genocide studies field – such as the process of Ottoman imperial dissolution, reciprocal genocidal killing (during the "Unweaving" in the Balkans)...The human toll of this "Great Unweaving," from Greece's independence war in the early nineteenth century to the final Balkan wars of 1912–1913, was enormous. Hundreds of thousands of Ottoman Muslims were massacred in the secessionist drive.."
  13. Book: Biondich, Mark . 17 February 2011 . The Balkans: Revolution, War, and Political Violence Since 1878 . en . Oxford University Press.
  14. Book: Gibney . Matthew J. . Hansen . Randall . 2005 . Immigration and Asylum: from 1900 to the present . Santa Barbara, California . ABC-CLIO . 978-1-57607-796-2.
  15. Book: Howard, Douglas A. . 2001 . The history of Turkey . Westport, Conn. . Greenwood Press . 978-0-313-30708-9.
  16. Book: 23 June 2021. 24 June 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210624211541/https://books.google.de/books?id=lwSynQEACAAJ&dq=Balkanlarda+T%C3%BCrk+Soykirimi . 2012 . tr . İleri Yayınları . Turkish genocide in the Balkans . 978-605-5452-41-4 . live.
  17. Norman Itzkowitz, Ottoman Empire and Islamic Tradition. University of Chicago Press, 2008,, p. 12
  18. Conversion to Islam in the Balkans: Kisve Bahas ̧petitions and Ottoman Social Life, 1670–1730, Anton Minkov, BRILL, 2004, .
  19. The Geography of the Middle East, Stephen Hemsley Longrigg, James P. Jankowski, Transaction Publishers, 2009,, p. 113.
  20. Hall, Richard C. (2002), The Balkan Wars, 1912–1913: prelude to the First World War, Routledge, pp. 136–137
  21. Book: Malik, Maleiha. ANTI-MUSLIM PREJUDICE – MALIK: Past and Present. 13 September 2013. Routledge. 978-1-317-98898-4. 35. Christian irregulars in the Austrian or Venetian service, and insurgent highlanders of Herzegovina, Montenegro and Albania meanwhile threw off 'the Turkish yoke' by marauding, mostly against the Muslim Slavs..
  22. Book: Mitzen, Jennifer. Power in Concert: The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Global Governance. 10 September 2013. University of Chicago Press. 978-0-226-06025-5. 147. Peter the Great called on Balkan subjects to revolt in 1711; Catherine the Great encouraged a Greek rebellion in 1770.
  23. Book: Gattermann, Claus Heinrich . Die Baranya in den Jahren 1686 bis 1713: Kontinuität und Wandel in einem ungarischen Komitat nach dem Abzug der Türken . 2005 . Universitätsverlag Göttingen . 978-3-938616-32-1 . de.
  24. Book: Borovszky, Samu . Magyarország vármegyéi és városai: HEVES MEGYE: Hatvan: A fölszabadítás.. Magyar Monografia Társaság . hu.
  25. Book: Nielsen. Jørgen. Jørgen S. Nielsen. Akgönül. Samim. Alibašić. Ahmet. Egdunas Racius. Yearbook of Muslims in Europe. 19 September 2013. BRILL. 978-90-04-25586-9. 165. According to reliable estimates, during the 16th century around one fourth of the population in Slavonia,..., were Muslims, living mostly in towns..
  26. Book: Wilson, Peter. German Armies: War and German Society, 1648–1806. 1 November 2002. Routledge. 978-1-135-37053-4. 85. By 1699 130,000 Slavonian and Croatian Muslims had been driven to Ottoman Bosnia by the advancing imperialists..
  27. Book: Velikonja, Mitja. Religious Separation and Political Intolerance in Bosnia-Herzegovina. registration. 5 February 2003. Texas A&M University Press. 978-1-58544-226-3. 67. ...Many Muslims—Slavs and non-Slavs—fled to Bosnia-Herzegovina following the loss of the occupied territories in Hungary, Croatia, Dalmatia, Slavonia, and Lika after the Habsburg-Ottoman war of 1683–1699. It was the first example in this area of cleansing the Muslim population that also "enjoyed the benediction of the Catholic Church"..
  28. Book: Nielsen. Jørgen. Jørgen S. Nielsen. Akgönül. Samim. Alibašić. Ahmet. Egdunas Racius. Yearbook of Muslims in Europe. 19 September 2013. BRILL. 978-90-04-25586-9. 166. Ottoman rule in Croatia was terminated after the Habsburg and Venetian conquest at the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century. All Muslim population left these areas or was expelled, killed or enslaved..
  29. Book: Malik, Maleiha. ANTI-MUSLIM PREJUDICE – MALIK: Past and Present. 13 September 2013. Routledge. 978-1-317-98898-4. 35. Leopold I...not consider extending any privileges to the Muslims. They therefore fled to Bosnia, Herzegovina, Serbia and further southeast, fanning anti-Christian sentiments among their coreligionists..
  30. Book: Bosworth, Clifford Edmund. Clifford Edmund Bosworth. Historic Cities of the Islamic World. 1 January 2007. BRILL. 978-90-04-15388-2. 466. ... a period during which relations between the Muslim and non-Muslim populations of the region deteriorated sharply.
  31. Book: Velikonja, Mitja. Religious Separation and Political Intolerance in Bosnia-Herzegovina. registration. 5 February 2003. Texas A&M University Press. 978-1-58544-226-3. 80 . The entire Slavonian Muslim population fled south into Bosnia after the Treaty of Karlovac in 1699..
  32. Book: 2011. Ingrao. Charles. Samardžić. Nikola. Pešalj. Jovan. The Peace of Passarowitz, 1718. West Lafayette. Purdue University Press. 124. Many more Muslim families that had lived in Slavonia moved to Posavina after 1699 and during the first two decades of the eighteenth. 978-1-55753-594-8.
  33. Book: 2011. Ingrao. Charles. Samardžić. Nikola. Pešalj. Jovan. The Peace of Passarowitz, 1718. West Lafayette. Purdue University Press. 125. 978-1-55753-594-8.
  34. Book: Velikonja, Mitja. Religious Separation and Political Intolerance in Bosnia-Herzegovina. registration. 5 February 2003. Texas A&M University Press. 978-1-58544-226-3. 81. As in all other reconquered territories, the Muslims (who for example comprised two-thirds of the population in Lika) in Croatia were either converted to Catholicism or banished..
  35. Book: Mohorovičić, Andro. Architecture in Croatia: Architecture and Town Planning. 1994. Croatian Academy of Science and Arts. 978-953-0-31657-7. 114. With the Turks gone, almost all the Turkish buildings on Croatian area were destroyed..
  36. al-Arnaut, Muhamed Mufaku (1994). "Islam and Muslims in Bosnia 1878–1918: Two Hijras and Two Fatwās". Journal of Islamic Studies. 5. (2): 245–246.

    "This being the case, the Muslim Bosnians could no longer imagine any existence for Muslims outside the devlet unless they lived outside the pale of the din, it cannot be denied that the attitude of neighbouring countries had influenced this state of mind. For after two centuries of stability and supremacy dār ar-Islām was no longer immune from attack. Muslims now faced a new, unexpected, inconceivable situation. The triumph of their Christian enemies meant that, in order to survive, the Muslims had to choose either to Christianize and remain inside the Christian state or to emigrate southwards in order to remain Muslims within the Muslim state. Thus we notice that Austria in particular, when changing from the defensive to the offensive, was concentrating on Bosnia, but without its Muslims. in the war of 1737–9 we find Emperor Charles VI, in the edict addressed to the Muslim Bosnians dated June 1737, outlining two options for them: 'whoever of them wishes to adopt Christianity, may be free to stay and retain his property, while those who do not may emigrate to wherever they want' They fared no better in the 1788–91 war, although Emperor Joseph I issued a proclamation in which he promised to respect Muslim rights and institutions. However, despite these pledges, the Muslims quickly disappeared from the areas ceded by the Ottoman Empire."

  37. Book: Black, Jeremy. Jeremy Black (historian). European Warfare in a Global Context, 1660–1815. 12 February 2007. Routledge. 978-1-134-15922-2. 192. The Muslim population of Montenegro was massacred by the Serbs..
  38. Book: Király. Béla K.. Béla K. Király. Rothenberg. Gunther Erich. War and Society in East Central Europe: East Central European Society and War in the Pre-Revolutionary Eighteenth Century. 1982. Brooklyn College Press : distributed by Columbia University Press. 978-0-930888-19-0. 279. Even the precise date of the bloody affair is not certain, but most historians have accepted 1709 as the year of the assault..
  39. Book: Minahan, James. One Europe, Many Nations. 2000. Greenwood Publishing Group. 978-0-313-30984-7. 615.
  40. Stefanović, Djordje (2005). "Seeing the Albanians through Serbian eyes: The Inventors of the Tradition of Intolerance and their Critics, 1804–1939." European History Quarterly. 35. (3): 466. "Extant class hatred of the Serbian peasants towards urban Muslim merchants and land owners was clearly a major motivator for mass violence. Nenadović describes the take-over of Valjevo by the rebels: At that time... there were twenty-four mosques and it was said that there were nearly three thousand Turkish and some two hundred Christian houses.... Any house that had not burnt, the Serbs tore to bits and took their windows and doors and everything else that could be removed."
  41. Book: Pekesen, Berna. Expulsion and Emigration of the Muslims from the Balkans. 2012. Leibniz Institute of European History.
  42. Book: Pinson, Mark. The Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina: Their Historic Development from the Middle Ages to the Dissolution of Yugoslavia. 1996. Harvard CMES. 978-0-932885-12-8. 73.
  43. Palairet, Michael R (2003). The Balkan economies c. 1800–1914: evolution without development. Cambridge University Press. p. 28-29. " As the characteristically high urbanization of Ottoman Europe reflected institutional structure rather than economic complexity, the dissolution of Ottoman institutions by the successor states could cause rapid deurbanization. This process occurred in its most striking form in Serbia. In the eighteenth century, Ottoman Serbia was highly urbanized, but during the wars and the revolutionary upheaval of 1789–1815, the Serbian towns experienced a precipitous decline. In 1777, there were reportedly some 6,000 houses in Belgrade," from which a population of 30,000 – 55,000 may be estimated. By about 1800, the town had shrunk to around 3,000 houses with 25,000 inhabitants, and in 1834 the number of houses had fallen further to 769. Late-eighteenth-century Užice had 2,900 Muslim houses; this indicates a population of around 20,000, for when the last 3,834 Muslims were driven from the town in 1862, they vacated 550 houses. Tihomir Dordević put the population of Užice in the late eighteenth century still higher, at 12,000 houses with about 60,000 inhabitants. By 1860, when Užice's population was 4,100, but still overwhelmingly Muslim, the effects of the town's decline were all too visible, the bazaars 'rotting and ruinous', and 'whole streets which stood here before the Servian revolution... turned into orchards'. In 1863, after the expulsions, there remained in the town a population of some 2,490. Valjevo in the 1770s was also a substantial place with 3,000 Muslim and 200 Christian houses. At least 5 other towns had 200 – 500 houses each. Given the low population density of Ottoman Serbia, a remarkably high proportion of its inhabitants were town dwellers. Belgrade pašaluk in the late eighteenth century had 376,000 Serbian and 40,000 – 50,000 Turkish inhabitants. On this basis, the two largest towns alone would have accounted for 11–27 per cent of the population of the pašaluk. The urban proportion could have been higher still, for a number of smaller towns dwindled into villages on the departure of the Ottomans.
  44. Book: Grandits, Hannes. Conflicting Loyalties in the Balkans: The Great Powers, the Ottoman Empire and Nation-Building. 2011. I.B.Tauris. 978-1-84885-477-2. 208.
  45. Zulfikarpašić, Adil (1998). The Bosniak. Hurst. pp. 23–24: "In accordance with this principle Serbia had been cleansed of Muslims, and even of those Serbs who had converted to Islam and who lived around Užice and Valjevo. In negotiations between Turkey and Serbia they had been declared Turks and forced to move, and so they had resettled in Bosnia. There are still hundreds of families in Tuzla, Šamac, Sarajevo and Foča who are descendants of these immigrants from Užice – Serbian speaking Muslims. This was all a repeat of what had happened a few centuries before in Slavonia and Lika. The region of Lika, for example, was 65 per cent Muslim land until it fell into Austrian hands, when the Muslims were given the choice between expulsion and conversion."
  46. Book: Fredborg, Arvid. Serber och kroater i historien. 2012. Atlantis. 978-91-7353-562-5. 54.
  47. Book: Lieberman, Benjamin. Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of Modern Europe. 2013. Rowman & Littlefield. 978-1-4422-3038-5. 4, 6, 31, 34, 155–156.
  48. Book: William. St. Clair. That Greece Might Still be Free: The Philhellenes in the War of Independence. 1972 . 12 . Open Book Publishers . 978-1-906924-00-3.
  49. Jelavich, Barbara (1999), History of the Balkans: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Vol. 1, Cambridge University Press, p. 347
  50. Book: The Middle East, Abstracts and Index. Northumberland Press. 1999. p. 493. 1999.. 4 February 1999 .
  51. Book: Karpat, Kemal. Ottoman Population. pp. 72–75..
  52. Book: British documents on foreign affairs—reports and papers from the Foreign Office confidential print . David . Gillard . Kenneth . Bourne . Donald Cameron . Watt . Great Britain. Foreign Office . 1984 . University Publications of America . 978-0-89093-602-3.
  53. Book: David . Gillard . Kenneth . Bourne . Donald Cameron . Watt . Great Britain. Foreign Office . British documents on foreign affairs—reports and papers from the Foreign Office confidential print . 152 . 1984 . University Publications of America . 978-0-89093-602-3.
  54. Book: British documents on foreign affairs—reports and papers from the Foreign Office confidential print . 163 . 1984 . University Publications of America . 978-0-89093-602-3.
  55. Book: Russian Atrocities in Asia and Europe . 1877 . Istanbul . A. H. Boyajian . 51.
  56. Web site: Turan . Omer . TURKISH MIGRATION FROM BULGARIA IN THE 1877–78 OTTOMAN-RUSSIAN WAR . Bursa Research Center .
  57. Book: "Nedim İpek, a.g.e., p. 15 v. d.". 15 October 2017 .
  58. Book: "Nedim İpek, a.g.e., p. 16; L. Bernhard, Les Atrocites Russes en Bulgarie et en Armenie Pendant la Guerre de 1877, Berlin 1878, p. 29"..
  59. Book: "Nedim İpek, a.g.e., p. 17"..
  60. Book: "Bilal Şimşir, Turkish Migrations from Rumelia"..
  61. Book: "Nedim İpek, a.g.e., p. 21. See also in this regard. İlker Alp, Bulgarian Mezâlimi, p. 22 v. d"..
  62. Book: "Atrocites Russes en Asie et en Roumelie Pendant Les Mois Juin-Juillet et Août 1877"..
  63. Book: "Zeynep Kerman, June–July and August 1877"..
  64. Book: "The Mezâlim Made by the Russians in Asia and Rumelia, Turkish World Research Foundation, Istanbul 1987, p. 228-56"..
  65. Book: "Nedim İpek, a.g.e., p. 27"..
  66. Book: "Zeynep Kerman, a.g.e., p. 14"..
  67. Book: "Nedim İpek, a.g.e., p. 133 v. d."..
  68. Jagodić . Miloš . 1998 . The Emigration of Muslims from the New Serbian Regions 1877/1878 . Balkanologie . II . 2 . para. 4, 9, 32–42, 45–61.
  69. Luković, Miloš (2011). "Development of the Modern Serbian state and abolishment of Ottoman Agrarian relations in the 19th century" " Český lid. 98. (3): 298. "During the second war (December 1877 – January 1878) the Muslim population fled towns (Vranya (Vranje), Leskovac, Ürgüp (Prokuplje), Niş (Niš), Şehirköy (Pirot), etc.) as well as rural settlements where they comprised ethnically compact communities (certain parts of Toplica, Jablanica, Pusta Reka, Masurica and other regions in the South Morava River basin). At the end of the war these Muslim refugees ended up in the region of Kosovo and Metohija, in the territory of the Ottoman Empire, following the demarcation of the new border with the Principality of Serbia. [38] [38] On Muslim refugees (muhaciri) from the regions of southeast Serbia, who relocated in Macedonia and Kosovo, see Trifunovski 1978, Radovanovič 2000."
  70. Book: Popovic, Alexandre. The Cherkess on Yugoslav Territory (A Supplement to the article "Cherkess" in the Encyclopaedia of Islam). 1991. Central Asian Survey. 68, 73.
  71. McCarthy, Justin (2000). "Muslims in Ottoman Europe: Population from 1800–1912". Nationalities Papers. 28. (1): 35.
  72. Book: Malcolm, Noel. Kosovo: A short history. 1998. Macmillan. 978-0-8108-7483-1. 228.
  73. Sabit Uka (2004). Dëbimi i Shqiptarëve nga Sanxhaku i Nishit dhe vendosja e tyre në Kosovë:(1877/1878-1912)[The expulsion of the Albanians from Sanjak of Nish and their resettlement in Kosovo: (1877/1878-1912)]. Verana. pp. 26–29.
  74. Pllana, Emin (1985). "Les raisons de la manière de l'exode des refugies albanais du territoire du sandjak de Nish a Kosove (1878–1878) [The reasons for the manner of the exodus of Albanian refugees from the territory of the Sanjak of Nish to Kosovo (1878–1878)] ". Studia Albanica. 1: 189–190.
  75. Rizaj, Skënder (1981). "Nënte Dokumente angleze mbi Lidhjen Shqiptare të Prizrenit (1878–1880) [Nine English documents about the League of Prizren (1878–1880)]". Gjurmine Albanologjike (Seria e Shkencave Historike). 10: 198.
  76. Şimşir, Bilal N, (1968). Rumeli'den Türk göçleri. Emigrations turques des Balkans [Turkish emigrations from the Balkans]. Vol I. Belgeler-Documents. p. 737.
  77. Book: Bataković, Dušan. The Kosovo Chronicles. 1992. Plato.
  78. Book: Elsie, Robert. Historical Dictionary of Kosovo. 2010. Scarecrow Press. 978-0-333-66612-8. XXXII.
  79. Stefanović, Djordje (2005). "Seeing the Albanians through Serbian eyes: The Inventors of the Tradition of Intolerance and their Critics, 1804–1939." European History Quarterly. 35. (3): 470.
  80. Müller, Dietmar (2009). "Orientalism and Nation: Jews and Muslims as Alterity in Southeastern Europe in the Age of Nation-States, 1878–1941." East Central Europe. 36. (1): 70. "For Serbia the war of 1878, where the Serbians fought side by side with Russian and Romanian troops against the Ottoman Empire, and the Berlin Congress were of central importance, as in the Romanian case. The beginning of a new quality of the Serbian-Albanian history of conflict was marked by the expulsion of Albanian Muslims from Niš Sandžak which was part and parcel of the fighting (Clewing 2000 : 45ff.; Jagodić 1998 ; Pllana 1985). Driving out the Albanians from the annexed territory, now called "New Serbia," was a result of collaboration between regular troops and guerrilla forces, and it was done in a manner which can be characterized as ethnic cleansing, since the victims were not only the combatants, but also virtually any civilian regardless of their attitude towards the Serbians (Müller 2005b). The majority of the refugees settled in neighboring Kosovo where they shed their bitter feelings on the local Serbs and ousted some of them from merchant positions, thereby enlarging the area of Serbian-Albanian conflict and intensifying it."
  81. Book: Turović, Dobrosav. Gornja Jablanica, Kroz istoriju. 2002. Beograd Zavičajno udruženje. 87–89.
  82. Sabit Uka (2004). Dëbimi i Shqiptarëve nga Sanxhaku i Nishit dhe vendosja e tyre në Kosovë:(1877/1878-1912)[The expulsion of the Albanians from Sanjak of Nish and their resettlement in Kosovo: (1877/1878-1912)]. Verana. pp. 194–286.
  83. Osmani, Jusuf (2000). Kolonizimi Serb i Kosovës [Serbian colonization of Kosovo]. Era. pp. 48–50.
  84. Osmani. Kolonizimi Serb. 2000. p. 43-64.
  85. Frantz, Eva Anne (2009). "Violence and its Impact on Loyalty and Identity Formation in Late Ottoman Kosovo: Muslims and Christians in a Period of Reform and Transformation." Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. 29. (4) : 460–461. "In consequence of the Russian-Ottoman war, a violent expulsion of nearly the entire Muslim, predominantly Albanian-speaking, population was carried out in the sanjak of Niš and Toplica during the winter of 1877–1878 by the Serbian troops. This was one major factor encouraging further violence, but also contributing greatly to the formation of the League of Prizren. The league was created in an opposing reaction to the Treaty of San Stefano and the Congress of Berlin and is generally regarded as the beginning of the Albanian national movement. The displaced persons (Alb. muhaxhirë, Turk. muhacir, Serb. muhadžir) took refuge predominantly in the eastern parts of Kosovo. The Austro-Hungarian consul Jelinek reported in April 1878.... The account shows that these displaced persons (muhaxhirë) were highly hostile to the local Slav population. But also the Albanian peasant population did not welcome the refugees, since they constituted a factor of economic rivalry. As a consequence of these expulsions, the interreligious and interethnic relations worsened. Violent acts of Muslims against Christians, in the first place against Orthodox but also against Catholics, accelerated. This can he explained by the fears of the Muslim population in Kosovo that were stimulated by expulsions of large Muslim population groups in other parts of the Balkans in consequence of the wars in the nineteenth century in which the Ottoman Empire was defeated and new Balkan states were founded. The latter pursued a policy of ethnic homogenisation expelling large Muslim population groups."
  86. Stefanović. Seeing the Albanians. 2005. p. 470. "The 'cleansing' of Toplica and Kosanica would have long-term negative effects on Serbian-Albanian relations. The Albanians expelled from these regions moved over the new border to Kosovo, where the Ottoman authorities forced the Serb population out of the border region and settled the refugees there. Janjićije Popović, a Kosovo Serb community leader in the period prior to the Balkan Wars, noted that after the 1876–8 wars, the hatred of the Turks and Albanians towards the Serbs 'tripled'. A number of Albanian refugees from Toplica region, radicalized by their experience, engaged in retaliatory violence against the Serbian minority in Kosovo. In 1900 Živojin Perić, a Belgrade Professor of Law, noted that in retrospect, 'this unbearable situation probably would not have occurred had the Serbian government allowed Albanians to stay in Serbia'. He also argued that conciliatory treatment towards Albanians in Serbia could have helped the Serbian government to gain the sympathies of Albanians of the Ottoman Empire. Thus, while both humanitarian concerns and Serbian political interests would have dictated conciliation and moderation, the Serbian government, motivated by exclusive nationalist and anti-Muslim sentiments, chose expulsion. The 1878 cleansing was a turning point because it was the first gross and large-scale injustice committed by Serbian forces against the Albanians. From that point onward, both ethnic groups had recent experiences of massive victimization that could be used to justify 'revenge' attacks. Furthermore, Muslim Albanians had every reason to resist the incorporation into the Serbian state."
  87. al-Arnaut, Muhamed Mufaku (1994). "Islam and Muslims in Bosnia 1878–1918: Two Hijras and Two Fatwās". Journal of Islamic Studies. 5. (2): 246–247. "As for Bosnia, the treaty signed at the congress of Berlin in 1878 stunned the Muslims of that country who did not believe that the Ottoman Empire would forsake them so easily, and did not docilely resign themselves to the new Austro-Hungarian rule. They set up a government for their own defence and fiercely resisted the Austro-Hungarian forces for about three months (29 July-20 October 1878), a period which witnessed nearly sixty military clashes and resulted in 5000 casualties either killed or wounded." It may be noted that this stiff resistance was carried out almost exclusively by the Muslims, who were in this instance defending the homeland or vatan (Bosnia) and not the devlet (the Ottoman Empire) which forsook them. The Ottoman government had indeed seen in this resistance an opportunity to improve its own position and scored several points in its favour at the Istanbul Convention of 21 April 1879. For example, it was emphasized that the fact of occupation constituted no infringement of the' sovereign rights of the sultan over Bosnia, that the Muslims had the right to maintain their ties with Istanbul, that the name of the sultan could be mentioned in the Friday prayer sermon and on similar occasions, and that the Ottoman flag could be raised on the mosques." But this new situation created such a nightmare that some elderly men preferred to confine themselves to their homes rather than see 'infidels' in the streets. The Muslims, who had not yet recovered from the 1878 shock, were taken aback by the new military service law of 1881 which applied to Muslim youths also. This increased dissatisfaction with the new situation and speeded up hijra to the Ottoman Empire."
  88. Book: Kaser, Karl. The Balkans and the Near East: Introduction to a Shared History. 2011. LIT Verlag Münster. 978-3-643-50190-5. 336.
  89. al-Arnaut. Islam and Muslims in Bosnia 1878–1918. 1994. p. 243. "As regards Bosnia, we have a hijra that deserves close attention, namely that which took place during the time of Ausrro-Hungarian rule (1878–1918) and evicted about 150,000 Muslims from Bosnia.[5] There are considerable differences in the estimates of the numbers of Bosnians emigrating to the Ottoman Empire during the period of Austro-Hungarian rule (1878–1915). The official statistics of the Austro-Hungarian administration admit that 61,000 Muslims emigrated, while Bogičević gives 150,000, Smlatić gives 160,000, and Imamović's estimate ranges between 150,000 and 180,000. Newspaper estimates rise to 300,000 and popular accounts put a figure as high as 700,000. Official statistics no doubt reduced the number of emigrants to make them equal the number of settlers who stayed in Bosnia (63,376). If we look at Ottoman data, we will find a wide gap between them and the Austro-Hungarian data. The Istanbul High Commissioners Office for Facilitating Refugee Settlement told Hiviz Bjelevac, the Bosnian writer, that during 1900–05 alone 73,000 Muslims left Bosnia, while Austro-Hungarian statistics give the much smaller number of 13,150. From all that has been said above, a figure like 150,000 will probably be more realistic. See Jovan Cvijić, 'o iseljavanju bosanskih muhamdanaca', Srpski književni glasnik XXIV, hr. 12, Beograd 16, VI, 1910, 966; Gaston Gravier, Emigracija Muslimana is BiH', Pregled, br. 7–8, Sarajevo 15. 1. 1911, 475; Vojslav Bogicević, Emigracija muslimana Bosnei Hercegovine u Tursku u doba austro-ugarske vladavine 1878–1918', Historijski zbornik 1–4, Zagreb 1958, 175–88; Mustafa Imamović, Pravni poloj i unutrašnjo-polički razvitak BiH od 1878–1914 (Sarajevo, 1976), 108–33; Dževat Juzbalić, Neke napomene o problemtici etničkog i društvenog razviska u Bosne i Hercegovine u periodu austro-ugarake uprave', Prilozi br. 11–12 (Sarajevo, 1976), 305; Iljaz Hadžibegovi, 'Iseljavanje iz Bosne i Hercegovine za vrijeme austro-ugarske uprave (1878 do 1918)', in Iseljaništvo naroda i narodnosti Jugoslavije (Zagreb, 1978), 246–7; Sulejman Smlatić, 'Iselavanje jugoslovenskih Muslinana u Tursku i njihovo prilagodjavanje novoj sredini', ibid. 253–3; Mustafa lmamović, 'Pregled istorije genocida nad Muslimanima u jugoslovenskim zemljama', Glasnik SIZ, hr. 6 (Sarajevo 1991), 683–5."
  90. Grossman, David (2011). Rural Arab Demography and Early Jewish Settlement in Palestine: Distribution and Population Density during the Late Ottoman and Early Mandate Periods. Transaction Publishers. p. 70.
  91. Web site: Ibrahim al-Marashi. The Arab Bosnians?: The Middle East and the Security of the Balkans. 4. 31 May 2015.
  92. Book: King, Charles. The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the Caucasus. 2008. Oxford University Press. 978-0-19-517775-6. New York City. registration.
  93. Henze 1992
  94. Book: King, Charles. The Ghost of Freedom.
  95. .
  96. L.V.Burykina. Pereselenskoye dvizhenie na severo-zapagni Kavakaz. Reference in King.
  97. .
  98. Book: Richmond, Walter. The Circassian Genocide. 9 April 2013. Rutgers University Press. 978-0-8135-6069-4.
  99. Web site: 2 September 2013 . Velyaminov, Zass ve insan kafası biriktirme hobisi . 26 September 2020 . Jıneps Gazetesi . tr.
  100. Book: Incorporated, Facts On File. Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Africa and the Middle East. 2009. Infobase Publishing. 978-1-4381-2676-0. 244.
  101. Book: Ahrens, Geert-Hinrich. Diplomacy on the Edge: Containment of Ethnic Conflict and the Minorities Working Group of the Conferences on Yugoslavia. 2007. Woodrow Wilson Center Press. 978-0-8018-8557-0. 291.
  102. Book: McCarthy, Justin. "1912–1913 Balkan Wars, Death and Forced Exile of Ottoman Muslims" (PDF). tc-america.org..
  103. Book: Hupchick, Dennis P., The Balkans: From Constantinople to Communism. p. 321.. 978-0-312-29913-2 . Hupchick . D. . 11 January 2002 . Springer .
  104. Book: Novakovic, Kosta. "Colonisation and Serbianisation of Kosova". The Institute of History, Prishtina. Archived from the original on December 25, 2013.. https://web.archive.org/web/20131225040933/http://www.kosova.com/arkivi1997/expuls/dok5.htm . 25 December 2013 .
  105. Rifati, Fitim. Kryengritjet shqiptare në Kosovë si alternativë çlirimi nga sundimi serbo-malazez (1913–1914) (PDF). Journal of Balkan Studies. p. 84. According to Serbian Social Democrat politician Kosta Novakovic, from October 1912 to the end of 1913, the Serbo-Montenegrin regime exterminated more than 120,000 Albanians of all ages, and forcibly expelled more than 50,000 Albanians to the Ottoman Empire and Albania.". Journal of Balkan Studies . 31 January 2021 . 1 . 1 . 67–91 . 10.51331/A004 .
  106. Book: Alpion, Gëzim . Mother Teresa: The Saint and Her Nation. . 11, 19 . During the Balkan wars, in total '120,000 Albanians were exterminated', hundreds of villages' were shelled by artillery and 'a large number of them were burned down' across Kosova and Macedonia. The figures do not include people killed in present-day Albania and the devastated houses, villages and towns that Serbian and Montenegrin soldiers left behind when they were eventually forced to retreat.' . 978-93-89812-46-6 . 30 December 2021 . Bloomsbury.
  107. Kieser, Hans-Lukas; Öktem, Kerem; Reinkowski, Maurus (2015). World War I and the end of the Ottomans from the Balkan Wars to the Armenian genocide (1st ed.). London. .
  108. Book: Neuburger, Mary. The Orient Within: Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Nationhood in Modern Bulgaria. 2004. Cornell University Press. 978-0-8014-4132-5. 42.
  109. https://ecommons.cornell.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/3aae0a39-46e9-404d-9140-12be0e1c845f/content Carnegie Report, Macedonian Muslims during the Balkan Wars, 1912
  110. http://ieg-ego.eu/en/threads/europe-on-the-road/forced-ethnic-migration/berna-pekesen-expulsion-and-emigration-of-the-muslims-from-the-balkans Pekesen, Berna (2012). "Expulsion and Emigration of the Muslims from the Balkans". European History Online.
  111. Book: Papaioannou, Stefan . BALKAN WARS BETWEEN THE LINES: VIOLENCE AND CIVILIANS IN MACEDONIA, 1912-1918 . 2012.
  112. Hacısalihoğlu . Mehmet . 2012 . Yane Sandanski as a political leader in Macedonia in the era of the Young Turks . Open Edition Journals. 40 . 10.4000/ceb.1192 .
  113. Web site: MacDermott . Mercia . FOR FREEDOM AND PERFECTION. The Life of Yané Sandansky. . 1988 . London.
  114. https://www.altayli.net/bulgar-mezalimi.html Ahmet Halaçoğlu, ibid. 15 October 2017. p. 32.
  115. https://www.altayli.net/bulgar-mezalimi.html BA, BEO, nu. 306726, 314867, (29 July 1913). 15 October 2017
  116. https://www.altayli.net/bulgar-mezalimi.html BA, BEO, nu. 309586, 27 (10 December 1912). 15 October 2017
  117. https://www.altayli.net/bulgar-mezalimi.html Tüccar-zâde İbrahim Hilmi, Türkiye Uyan, İstanbul, p. 19. 15 October 2017
  118. https://www.altayli.net/bulgar-mezalimi.html This information was given by the consuls of neutral states in Thessaloniki. See Ahmet Halaçoğlu, ibid., p. 33. For the massacre in Syros, see also. Tüccar-zâde İbrahim Hilmi, Türkiye Uyan, p. 22, 62. 15 October 2017.
  119. https://www.altayli.net/bulgar-mezalimi.html Ahmet Halaçoğlu, ibid., p. 33. 15 October 2017.
  120. https://www.altayli.net/bulgar-mezalimi.html This information is given under the title "Official Documents of Bulgarian Brutality and Atrocities". See Ikdam, nu. 5922, 13 Ramazan 1331/3 August 1329 (16 August 1913), p. 3. 15 October 2017.
  121. https://www.altayli.net/bulgar-mezalimi.html There were 2420 households in the 15 villages in question and a total population of 12,600. See Ikdam, same place. 15 October 2017.
  122. https://www.altayli.net/bulgar-mezalimi.html Sorrows of Turkish-Islams Bulgarian Atrocities, Sad. and Additional Information Written by H. Adnan Önelçin, İstanbul 1986, p. 27 ff The book also describes the atrocities committed in Niğbolu, Plovdiv, Varna, Dobruja and many other Muslim-Turkish villages and towns, and the atrocities are described as "Hz. It is shown as a "savagery within a most pathetic and distressing brutality that has not been seen in the world since the age of Adam."
  123. BA, BEO, nu. 315493 (306726, 315267), (20 August 1913).
  124. Book: McCarthy, Justin. 1996. Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922. p. 91.
  125. Book: Horne, John . War in Peace . Oxford University Press . 2013 . 9780199686056 . 173–177.
  126. Book: Bartov, Omer . Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg ... . Indiana University Press . 2013 . 978-0253006318 . 350.
  127. Book: Suny, Ronald . "They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else": A History of the Armenian ... . Princeton University Press . 2015 . 9780691175966 . 232.
  128. Book: Reynolds, Michael A. . Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian ... . Cambridge University Press . 2011 . 9781139494120 . 158.
  129. Book: J. Rummel, Rudolph . Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900 . LIT Verlag Münster . 1998 . 9783825840105 . 82, 83.
  130. Book: Hasanli . Jamil . Foreign Policy of the Republic of Azerbaijan: The Difficult Road to Western Integration, 1918-1920 . 16 December 2015 . Routledge . 978-1-317-36616-4 . London . 292 . The report presented to Harbord within that meeting reflected that Armenians killed 3,000 Turkish civilians in Erzurum on March 11–12, 1918. The governor general of Erzurum, Zakir Efendi, showed General Harbord the places of the slaughter of Muslims by Armenians and the mass graves..
  131. Book: Akçam, Taner . A shameful act : the Armenian genocide and the question of Turkish responsibility . 2007 . Constable . 978-1-84529-552-3 . London . 156824798.
  132. Book: Hovannisian, Richard G. . The Republic of Armenia . 1971–1996 . University of California Press . 0-520-01805-2 . 2 . Berkeley . 106 . 238471.
  133. Book: Kerr, Stanley Elphinstone . The Lions of Marash . SUNY Press . 1973 . 9781438408828 . 195.
  134. Book: Levene, Mark . Devastation . Oxford University Press . 2013 . 9780191505546 . 217, 218.
  135. Book: Steven Béla Várdy . T. Hunt Tooley . Ágnes Huszár Várdy . Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe . 2003. Social Science Monographs . 978-0-88033-995-7 . 190.
  136. Book: Morris . Benny . Ze'evi . Dror . The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey's Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894–1924 . 2019 . . 978-0-674-91645-6 . 401 . en.
  137. Book: Toynbee, Arnold Joseph. The Western Question in Greece and Turkey:A Study in the Contact of Civilizations. 1970. H. Fertig, originally: University of California. 'The members of the Commission consider that, in the part of the kazas of Yalova and Guemlek occupied by the Greek army, there is a systematic plan of destruction of Turkish villages and extinction of the Moslem population. This plan is being carried out by Greek and Armenian bands, which appear to operate under Greek instructions and sometimes even with the assistance of detachments of regular troops. 283–284. 978-0-86527-209-5 . The full version can be found here (Online reports of Arnold Toynbee)
  138. Hofmann. Tessa. Yalova/Nicomedia 1920/1921. Massacres and Inter- Ethnic Conflict in a Failing State. The Displacement, Extinction and Genocide of the Pontic Greeks. 1916–1923. 2016. 8. The British journalist and historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee, who was war correspondent for the "Manchester Guardian" on the Yalova Peninsula from April until 3 July 1921, suggests a total of 300 Muslim victims..
  139. Web site: Arşiv Belgelerine Göre Balkanlar'da ve Anadolu'da Yunan Mezâlimi 2 . https://web.archive.org/web/20131202233856/http://www.scribd.com/doc/46207420/Ar%C5%9Fiv-Belgelerine-Gore-Balkanlar%E2%80%99da-ve-Anadolu%E2%80%99da-Yunan-Mezalimi-2 . dead . 2 December 2013 . Scribd.com . 3 January 2011 . 7 September 2013.
  140. Book: Gingeras, Ryan. Sorrowful Shores:Violence, Ethnicity, and the End of the Ottoman Empire 1912–1923. 2009. Oxford University Press. 978-0-19-160979-4. 28. In total only thirty-five were reported to have been killed, wounded, beaten, or missing. This is in line with the observations of Arnold Toynbee, who declared that one to two murders were sufficient to drive away the population of a village..
  141. Book: McNeill, William H.. Arnold J. Toynbee: A Life. Oxford University Press. 1989. 978-0-19-992339-7. To protect their flanks from harassment, Greek military authorities then encouraged irregular bands of armed men to attack and destroy Turkish populations of the region they proposed to abandon. By the time the Red Crescent vessel arrived at Yalova from Constantinople in the last week of May, fourteen out of sixteen villages in that town's immediate hinterland had been destroyed, and there were only 1500 survivors from the 7000 Moslems who had been living in these communities..
  142. Book: Chenoweth, Erica. Rethinking Violence: States and Non-state Actors in Conflict. 2010. MIT Press. 978-0-262-01420-5. 48, 49.
  143. Mango, Atatürk, p. 343.
  144. Housepian, Marjorie. "The Smyrna Affair". New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1966, p. 153
  145. Güzel. Mehmet Şükrü. 2014. Bir Savaş Suçu Olarak Doğu Trakya'da Yunanistan Tarafından Türklere Yapılan Etnik Temizlik Harekâtı 1920 -1922. Akademik Bakış. Cilt 8 Sayı 15 Kış 2014. More than 30,000 Turkish villagers took refuge in Bulgaria to save their lives. Also around 60,000 Turkish villagers escaped to İstanbul to save their lives..
  146. Book: McCarthy, Justin. Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821–1922. Darwin Press Incorporated. 1996. 0-87850-094-4. 295–297, 303–304. Of all the estimates of the number of Muslim refugees, the figures offered by İsmet Pașa (İnönü) at the Lausanne Peace Conference seem most accurate. He estimated that 1.5 million Anatolian Turks had been exiled or had died in the area of Greek occupation. This estimate may appear high, but it fits well with estimates made by contemporary European observers. Moreover, İsmet Pașa's figures on refugees were presented to the Conference accompanied by detailed statistics of destruction in the occupied region, and these statistics make the estimate seem probable. İsmet Pașa, quoting from a census made after the war, demonstrated that 160,739 buildings had been destroyed in the occupied region. The destroyed homes alone would account for many hundreds of thousands of refugees, and not all the homes of refugees were destroyed. European accounts of refugee numbers were necessarily fragmented, but when compiled they support İsmet Pașa's estimate. The British agent at Aydin, Blair Fish, reported 177,000 Turkish refugees in Aydin Vilâyeti by 30 September 1919, only four months after the Greek landing. The Italian High Commissioner at Istanbul accepted an Ottoman estimate that there were 457,000 refugees by September of 1920, and this figure did not include the new refugees in the fall and winter of 1920 to 1921. Dr. Nansen stated that 75,000 Turks had come to the Istanbul area alone since November of 1920. Such figures make İsmet Pașa's estimate all the more credible. Since approximately 640,000 Muslims died in the region of occupation during the war, one can estimate that approximately 860,000 were refugees who survived the war. Of course many, if not most, of those who died were refugees, as well. If one estimates that half the Muslims who died were refugees, it would be roughly accurate to say that 1.2 million Anatolian Muslim refugees fled from the Greeks, and about one-third died..
  147. Book: Mai. Nicola. Schwandner-Sievers. Stephanie. King. Russell. The New Albanian Migration. 31 March 2009. 2005. Sussex Academic Press. 87. Sussex, UK. 978-1-903900-78-9.
  148. Book: Hirschon. Renée. Crossing the Aegean : an appraisal of the 1923 compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey. 2003. Berghahn Books. New York, NY [u.a.]. 978-1-57181-767-9. 1. publ..
  149. Tošić. Jelena. City of the 'calm': Vernacular mobility and genealogies of urbanity in a southeast European borderland. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies. 15. 3. 391–408. 2015. 10.1080/14683857.2015.1091182. pp. 394-395. "Like the Ulqinak, the Podgoriçani thus personify the mass forced displacement of the Muslim population from the Balkans and the 'unmixing of peoples' (see e.g. Brubaker 1996, 153) at the time of the retreat of the Ottoman Empire, which has only recently sparked renewed scholarly interest" (e.g. Blumi 2013; Chatty 2013).
  150. McCarthy, Justin Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821–1922, Darwin Press Incorporated, 1996,, Chapter one, The land to be lost, p. 1
  151. Book: Kieser, Hans-Lukas . World War I and the end of the Ottomans : from the Balkan wars to the Armenian genocide . 2015 . Kerem Öktem, Maurus Reinkowski . 978-0-85772-744-2 . London . 1–26 . 944309903.
  152. [Yair Auron|Auron, Yair]
  153. [Israel W. Charny|Charny, Israel W.]
  154. [Richard G. Hovannisian|Hovannisian, Richard G.]
  155. Book: Owen, Roger. A History of Middle East Economies in the Twentieth Century. 1998. Harvard University Press. 978-0-674-39830-6. 11.
  156. Book: Biondich, Mark . The Balkans: Revolution, War, and Political Violence Since 1878 . Oxford University Press . 2011 . 978-0-19-929905-8 . 93. "In the period between 1878 and 1912, as many as two million Muslims emigrated voluntarily or involuntarily from the Balkans. When one adds those who were killed or expelled between 1912 and 1923, the number of Muslim casualties from the Balkan far exceeds three million. By 1923 fewer than one million remained in the Balkans."
  157. Mann, Michael (2005). The dark side of democracy: explaining ethnic cleansing. Cambridge University Press. p. 113. . "In the Balkans all statistics of death remain contested. Most of the following figures derive from McCarthy (1995: 1, 91, 161–4, 339), who is often viewed as a scholar on the Turkish side of the debate. Yet even if we reduced his figures by as much as 50 percent, they would still horrify. He estimates that between 1811 and 1912, somewhere around 5 1/2 million Muslims were driven out of Europe and million more were killed or died of disease or starvation while fleeing. Cleansing resulted from Serbian and Greek independence in the 1820s and 1830s, from Bulgarian independence in 1877, and from the Balkan wars culminating in 1912."
  158. Door Michael M. Gunter. Armenian History and the Question of Genocide. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, p. 127
  159. Door Natasha May Azarian. The Seeds of Memory: Narrative Renditions of the Armenian Genocide Across. ProQuest, 2007, p. 14: "...the leading Pro-Turkish academic"
  160. Bloxham. The Great Game of Genocide, p. 210. "Some of McCarthy's work considers the great population changes of the period, including extensive examination of the expulsion of Muslims from the new Balkan states and the overall demographic catastrophes of 1912–23... McCarthy's work has something to offer in drawing attention to the oft-unheeded history of Muslim suffering and embattlement that shaped the mindset of the perpetrators of 1915. It also shows that vicious ethnic nationalism was by no means the sole preserve of the CUP and its successors."
  161. Beachler, Donald W. (2011). The genocide debate: politicians, academics, and victims. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 123. . "Justin McCarthy has, along with other historians, provided a necessary corrective to much of the history produced by scholars of the Armenian genocide in the United States. McCarthy demonstrates that not all of the ethnic cleansing and ethnic killing in the Ottoman Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries followed the model often posited in the West, whereby all the victims were Christian and all the perpetrators were Muslim. McCarthy has shown that there were mass killings of Muslims and deportations of millions of Muslims from the Balkans and the Caucasus over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. McCarthy, who is labeled (correctly in this author's estimation) as being pro- Turkish by some writers and is a denier of the Armenian genocide, has estimated that about 5.5 million Muslims were killed in the hundred years from 1821–1922. Several million more refugees poured out of the Balkans and Russian conquered areas, forming a large refugee (muhajir) community in Istanbul and Anatolia."
  162. Book: Meskell, Lynn. Archaeology Under Fire: Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. 2001. Routledge. 978-1-134-64390-5. 121, 122.
  163. Book: Mojzes, Paul. Balkan Genocides: Holocaust and Ethnic Cleansing in the Twentieth Century. 2011. Rowman & Littlefield. 978-1-4422-0663-2. 22.
  164. Book: Kiel, Machiel. Studies on the Ottoman Architecture of the Balkans. 1990. University of Michigan. 978-0-86078-276-6. XI, X, XIV, XV.
  165. Book: Prica, Radomir. Sremska Mitrovica. 1969. Skupština opštine; Muzej Srema. ...наводно са 17 џамија....
  166. Book: Lang. Antun. Kupinski. Ivan. Slavonija 70 [i.e. sedanideset].. 1970. Ekonomski institut. 65. U njemu je živjelo pretežno muslimansko stanovništvo za koje je podignuto sedam džamija, te je grad dobio orijentalno obilježje..
  167. scrinia slavonica 12 (2012), 21–26. 21. Nedim Zahirović "U gradu Požegi postojalo je osamdesetih godina 16. stoljeća 10–11 islamskih bogomolja, a 1666. godine 14–15"
  168. Levene, Mark (2005), "Genocide in the Age of the Nation State" pp. 225–226
  169. http://www.igdir.gov.tr/default_B0.aspx?content=256 Iğdır "Soykırım" Anıt-Müzesi
  170. Web site: Georgian Diaspora – Calendar.

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