Today is 111 years since Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and Montenegro – the Balkan Alliance – declared war on the Islamic Turkish imperial Ottoman Empire and decolonised most of Europe.
80 years after the establishment of the small Kingdom of Greece, which was formed even whilst millions of Greeks lived outside of Greece’s borders and under Ottoman occupation, the First Balkan War would be a major triumph as Macedonia, Epirus and many Aegean Islands would be liberated from the Muslim Turks and back under indigenous Greek rule.
The war was a comprehensive and unmitigated disaster for the Ottomans, who lost 83% of their European territories and 69% of their European population. Greece, whose population was then 2,666,000, was considered the weakest of the three main allies (Serbia & Bulgaria) since it fielded the smallest army and had suffered a defeat against the Ottomans 16 years earlier in the Greco-Turkish War of 1897.
A British consular dispatch in 1910 expressed the common perception of the Greek army’s abilities: “if there is war we shall probably see that the only thing Greek officers can do besides talking is to run away”. However, Greece was the only Balkan country with a navy, vital to preventing Ottoman reinforcements from being rapidly transferred by ship from Asia to Europe.
As the Greek ambassador to Bulgaria said, “Greece can provide 600,000 men for the war effort. 200,000 men in the field, and the fleet will be able to stop 400,000 men being landed by Turkey between Salonica and Gallipoli.”
Foreign observers estimated Greece would mobilise a force of approximately 50,000 men, but the Greek army fielded 125,000, with another 140,000 in the National Guard and reserves. In the end, Greece ended up being the most important ally as it fielded an army more than double the size than expected, kept the Ottoman navy at bay as island after island was liberated, prevented hundreds of thousands of Turks from reaching Europe, and even beat the Bulgarians in the race for Thessaloniki.
After the war Greece nearly doubled in territorial holdings, gained the cities of Thessaloniki, Kavala and Ioannina, and cleared the near entirety of the Aegean Sea of Turkish rule, thus cementing Greece as the dominant naval power the persists to this day.
(This article has been compiled from the tweet thread posted by @oulosP on October 08, 2023, with minor edits to improve readability and conform to HinduPost style guide)
