Wasti, S. T. "The 1912-13 Balkan Wars and the Siege of Edirne"

1912–13 BALKAN WARS 71The subsequent recovery of Edirne on 22 July 1913 was a smoothoperation 86 conducted by the Ottomans who had never accepted the fall ofthis historic city of mosques and monuments. 87 In the list of officers 88 takingpart in the overall military operation, many illustrious names of futureTurkish commanders may be found, including Lt. Col. Enver, 89 Lt.Col.Mustafa Kemal 90 and Lt.Col. Fahreddin. 91 Simultaneously, the area aroundKırkkilise (now Kırklareli) was recovered by forces under Fethi Okyar. 92 ATurco–Bulgarian treaty signed on 29 September 1913 in Istanbul restoredEdirne and Eastern Thrace to the Ottomans. All the Balkan neighbours slowlybegan to patch up their differences. Nine months later, however, the shotsfired at Archduke Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo signalled the start of yetanother cataclysm.NOTES1. A Turkish word meaning a mountain range containing wooded passes.2. H.C. Armstrong, Grey Wolf (An Intimate Study of a Dictator) (London: Arthur Barker, 1935)in which the following is stated on p.52: ‘All the four Christian states, suddenly, and for theonly time in their history, attacked Turkey’.3. S. Kocabaş, Balkan Harbi–Son Haçlı Seferi [The Balkan War–The Last Crusade] (Kayseri:Vatan Yayınları, 2001).4. R.C. Hall, The Balkan Wars 1912–1913 – The Prelude to the First World War (London:Routledge, 2000). This sentiment is also expressed by Talat Pasha, one of the CUP‘triumvirate’ and later Grand Vizier, in Talat Paşa‘nın Anıları [Memoirs of Talat Pasha](Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1994), p.24, wherein he states:Without considering that the majority element in a large part of Albania and Macedoniawas Turkish, the 1913 London conference wielded the scalpel like a deadly surgeonand freely cut up the map of the Balkans. This operation not only did not yield thedesired results, but caused the sickness to spread to other parts. Thus all of Europe wasaffected by an incurable illness. The Balkan War gave birth to the World War.5. W. Miller, The Ottoman Empire and its Successors, 1801–1927 (London: Frank Cass, 1966)has an extensive and excellent bibliography, pp.568–93. See also the works cited at the endof R.C. Hall (note 4). Turkish sources on the Balkan Wars are treated fully in a relativelyrecent copiously annotated and documented work: M. Naim Turfan, Rise of the Young Turks(London: I.B. Tauris, 2000), ch.3 and 4.6. Italy’s quest for ‘a place in the sun’ has been set down by Bosworth:Despite Libya’s lack of natural appeal. . ., Italy had long enunciated her special interestin the area. She did so initially on the beggars-can’t-be choosers principle that, after theestablishment of the French protectorate in Tunis (1881) and the rejection of Britishovertures about Egypt (1882), there was no other ‘vacant’ territory left.See R.J.B. Bosworth, ‘Italy and the End of the Ottoman Empire’ in Marian Kent (ed.), TheGreat Powers and the End of the Ottoman Empire (London: Frank Cass, 1996), p.57.7. Trablusgarp, now the Republic of Libya.8. W. Miller, The Ottoman Empire and its Successors, 1801–1927 (London: Frank Cass, 1966),p.501.9. B. Lewis, The Middle East – A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years (New York: Simon andSchuster, 1995), p.107.