Persecution of Muslims during the Ottoman contraction

Greek Revolution

In 1876 a Bulgarian uprising broke out in dozens of villages. The first attacks were made against the local Muslims^[50] but in a short time the Ottomans violently suppressed the uprising.

From 1876 until 1989, Muslims from Bulgaria (

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.^[51][52]

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.^[53] 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.^[53][54]

18 Turks were killed and their bodies were burned in the village of Kozluca.^[55]

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.^[56]

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.^[57]

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.^[57]

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.^[57]

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 July 22. They killed 1,100 Muslims in 11 days. British Consul Blunt set off from Edirne on September 26, visited the Turkish villages in the region and came to Yeni Zağra on September 28, 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 July 25, 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.^[57]

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.^[57]

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.^[57]

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.^[58] In this way, the Bulgarians started to massacre Muslims and Jews, including women and children, in a brutal fashion.^[59] 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.^[60]

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.^[61]

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.^[62]

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.^[63][64][65]

The Russians and Bulgarians who occupied Plovdiv on January 15, 1878, plundered the city completely, raped Muslim women and massacred many.^[66] Meanwhile, the Bulgarians brutally massacred and tortured the Ottoman soldiers they captured, such as by cutting off their noses, arms and ears.^[67]

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.^[57]

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.^[68]

Serbian–Ottoman Wars (1876–78)

On the eve of the outbreak of a second round of

Hostilities between Serbian and Ottoman forces broke out on 15 December 1877, after a Russian request for Serbia to enter the Russo-Turkish war.[85] The Serbian military had two objectives: capturing Niš and breaking the Niš-Sofia Ottoman lines of communication.^[86] 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.^[87] In these regions, the Albanian population depending on the area they resided had fled into nearby mountains, leaving livestock, property and other belongings behind.^[88] Some Albanians returned and submitted to Serbian authorities, while others continued their flight southward toward Ottoman Kosovo.^[89] 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.^[90] A small Albanian population remained the Medveđa area, where their descendants still reside today.^[91] The retreat of these refugees toward Ottoman Kosovo was halted at the Goljak Mountains when an armistice was declared.^[90] The Albanian population was resettled in Lab area and other parts of northern Kosovo alongside the new Ottoman-Serbian border.^[92][93][94] 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.^[92][77][95] 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.^[96] 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.^[84][96][97]

Bosnia

In 1875, a conflict between Muslims and Christians broke out in Bosnia.^{[citation needed]} After the Ottoman Empire signed the treaty at the 1878 Berlin Congress, Bosnia was occupied by Austria-Hungary.^[98] 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.^[98] 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.^[98] Some Bosnian Muslims concerned about their future and well being under the new non-Muslim administration, left Bosnia for the Ottoman Empire.^[98] From 1878 until 1918, between 130,000^[99] and 150,000 Bosnian Muslims departed Bosnia to areas under Ottoman control, some to the Balkans, others to Anatolia, the Levant and Maghreb.^[100] 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.^[101][102]

Circassia

The Russo-Circassian War was the 101-year-long military conflict between Circassia and Russia.^[103] 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;^[104] 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.^[105]

The end of the war saw the Circassian genocide take place^[I] in which Imperial Russia aimed to systematically destroy the Circassian people^{[110][111][112]} where several war crimes were committed by the Russian forces^[113] and up to 1.5 million Circassians were killed or expelled to the Middle East, especially modern-day Turkey.^[103] Russian generals such as Grigory Zass described the Circassians as "subhuman filth", and justified their killing and use in scientific experiments.^[114]

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.

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."^[116]

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.^[117][118] The death toll is estimated to be between 632,000 and 1,500,000 Ottoman Muslim civilians killed.^[117][118]

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.^{[119][120][121]}

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.^[122]

A large number of Pomaks in the Rhodopes were forcibly converted to Orthodoxy but later allowed to reconvert, most of them did.^[123] 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.^{[16][124][117][118]}

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.^{[125][126][127]}

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.^[16]

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.^[16]

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.^[16]

Kurkut

The Catholic priest Gustave Michel, superior of the mission at Kilkis, gave the following information to the correspondent of Le Temps (July 10). 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.^[16]

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.^[16]

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.^[16]

Serres

On November 6, 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.^[16]

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.^[16]

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.^[128]

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.^[129]

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.^[130]

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.^[131]

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.^[132]

Many of the Bulgarian prisoners captured during the war had female ears and fingers decorated with earrings and rings in their pockets.^[133] 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.^{[134][135][136]}

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.^[137]

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.^[138]

World War I and the Turkish War of Independence

Caucasus Campaign

Historian