| Destruction of Thracian Bulgarians | |
|---|---|
| Part oflate Ottoman genocides and theSecond Balkan War | |
 Ethnic map of Adrianople Thrace in 1912 according to the academic Lyubomir Miletich. The areas with a Bulgarian majority are coloured green, Turkish red, and Greek brown. | |
| Location | Thrace |
| Date | 1913 |
| Target | Thracian Bulgarians |
Attack type | Genocide,ethnic cleansing,arson |
| Deaths | 50,000–60,000[1] |
| Perpetrators | Ottoman Empire, Greek irregulars |
TheDestruction of the Thracian Bulgarians in 1913 (Bulgarian:Разорението на тракийските българи през 1913 г.,Razorenieto na trakiyskite balgari prez 1913 g., also translated as "The Devastation"[2] or "The Ruin of the Thracian Bulgarians in 1913"[3]) was themass extermination andethnic cleansing of theBulgarian population inEastern Thrace (now mainly inEdirne Province,Kırklareli Province andTekirdağ Province in Turkey and EasternRhodope Mountains inEvros Prefecture in Greece) during theSecond Balkan War and in a short period after it. On the other hand,Bulgarian Turks,Pomaks andMuslim Roma fromNorthern Thrace in Bulgaria, were expelled and settled in the wholeEastern Thrace in 1913.[4] The events were documented in a book of the same name published by the Bulgarian academicLyubomir Miletich in 1918.
When the military actions betweenSerbia,Greece,Montenegro andRomania againstBulgaria were in full progress, theOttoman Empire took advantage of the situation to recover some of its former possessions inThrace includingAdrianople.[citation needed] In the beginning of July 1913 its forces crossed the Bulgarian border on the lineMidiya-Enos, settled by theTreaty of London in May 1913.[5] Because the Bulgarian troops had all been allocated to the front with Serbia and Greece, the Ottoman armies suffered no combat casualties and moved northwards and westwards without battles. Thus reoccupied territories were given back to the Ottoman Empire by theTreaty of Constantinople, signed on September 16.[citation needed] Despite that, the mass extermination and ethnic cleansing continued in the areas controlled by the Ottomans even after this date.[citation needed]
Shortly after the end of the hostilities, the author interviewed hundreds of refugees from these regions, travelled himself in the places where these tragic events happened and systematically depicted in detail the atrocities, committed by theYoung Turks' regular army, Ottoman paramilitary forces and partly by localGreeks.[citation needed] As a result of this violent process, approximately 200,000 Bulgarians were killed or forced to leave their homes and properties forever, seeking salvation in territories, controlled by Bulgarian army and paramilitary formationInternal Macedonian Adrianople Revolutionary Organization. Ottoman military campaign lasted for a mere 3 weeks from 20 July 1913 to 10 August 1913. According to Carnegie Commission 15,960 Bulgarians were "either killed, burned in the houses or scattered among the mountains" and several thousands more were massacred in Western Thrace within this period.[6]
There were alsoBulgarians in Anatolia concentrated aroundMarmara region.[citation needed] A number of them during this period after the exchange agreements between the Kingdom of Bulgaria and Ottoman Empire after the Second Balkan War left while there were still 6,587 Bulgarians inMarmara region. The deportation of Thracian Bulgarians was signified with the exchange treaty where 46,764 Eastern Thracian Orthodox Christian Bulgarians and 48,570 Muslims (Turks,Pomaks, andMuslim Roma) from Northern Thrace were exchanged.[6] After the exchange,in 1914 there still remained 14,908 Bulgarians belonging to theBulgarian Exarchate in Ottoman Empire, 2,502 in Edirne, includingthe area that was ceded to Bulgaria in 1915, 3,339 in Constantinople and its environs and 338 inÇatalca.[7] Their descendants in contemporaryBulgaria are about 800,000 people.[citation needed]
Alongside the 1911 official Ottoman figures, Lyubomir Miletich made the following estimates of the ethnic composition, using linguistic criteria rather than religious affiliation:
| Population estimates of Edirne Vilayet | |||||||
| Group | Ottoman 1893[8] | Ottoman 1911[9] | Miletich estimate[10] | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Muslims | 434,366 | 795,706 | |||||
| Muslim Turks | NA | ||||||
| Muslim Bulgarians (Pomaks) | 95,502 | ||||||
| Greeks (EOC members) | 267,220 | 395,872 | |||||
| (ethnic) Greeks | 200,000–250,000 | ||||||
| Bulgarians (BOC members) | 102,245 | 171,055 | |||||
| Orthodox Bulgarians | 203,224 | ||||||
| Armenians | 16,642 | 33,650 | |||||
| Catholics | 1,024 | 12,783 | |||||
| Other | 827 | 44,552 | |||||
| Total | 836,041 | 1,426,632 | |||||
The Ottoman authorities divided the population by religion, so all Patriarchists were counted as Greeks and the Pomaks as Muslims. The other two sources divided the population by language, so for example 24,970 Bulgarian patriarchists and 1700 Uniates were added by Miletich to the total figure for Orthodox Bulgarians.[10]
