The First Intervention: the Vienna Reforms

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Nevertheless, the Turkish overtures were not sufficient to dissuade the Great Powers. From December 1902 to February 1903, they began to intervene directly in Macedonia, where the guerrilla insurgency was raging. Pressure was brought to bear to try and rein in the rampaging Turks, whose brutal crackdown on the insurgency had affected mostly civilians while lessening the credibility and control of the Ottoman authorities- a dangerous trend for the European powers, who were still hoping the status quo could be maintained without much further bloodshed.

The Austro-Hungarian and Russian ambassadors at the Porte, Heinrich Chalice and M.I. Zinoviev (ambassador 1898-1909), took responsibility for formulating the original joint plan for reforms in Macedonia. The plan had six points, the key ones being the reorganization of the gendarmerie by introducing Christians into the police force, and the purge of the administrative staff, which would be provided with an adequate salary.

Under this six-point reform programme, known as the “Vienna Plan,” an Inspector-General supplied by the Western powers was also to be appointed for Macedonia for a three-year term of office. He could only be recalled if Austria-Hungary and Russia assented, and the valis had to adhere strictly to his orders. Funds would be raised in each vilayet, with the provincial collections to be administered by local authorities, who would pay for military and civil services. Farm taxes were to be abolished. The collection of tithes was modified and restructured. And a general amnesty for political prisoners was proclaimed.

Most of these ideas were either envisioned in or inspired by the 1878 Treaty of Berlin. Other reforms were even more severe and humiliating for the Turks. The Inspector-General would have the authority to call in the army without consulting the Turkish government, and the Turkish gendarmerie and police were also to be reorganized under the supervision of foreign or international advisors.

In a further body blow to Turkish pride, the gendarmerie was to include Christians as well as Muslims, in proportion to their relative percentage of the local population. The bekchi or rural guards, often Muslims, were to become Christians where the majority population was Christian, since armed Muslim bekchi units had long terrorized and extorted Christian villages. However, as it turned out the reformers were powerless to enforce these reforms, and almost no Christians joined the Ottoman gendarmerie.

These radical changes were a lot for the Turks to swallow, conceived as they were for a land they considered their own. Yet they tried to make the best of their situation. In March, 1903, the Turkish government hired Captain Karl Ingvar Nandrup (1864-1909) from Norway and Viktor Axel Unander from Sweden to organize and oversee the reorganization of the Turkish gendarmerie forces in Macedonia. At that time Sweden and Norway were in a union under King Oscar II (1829-1907). Nandrup wrote seven reports during his stay in Macedonia, from the early part of 1903 to December 30, 1904. For his part, Unander remained from May 1903 to May 1906. They were given the ranks of Lieutenant Colonel and Major respectively, and were also made inspectors in the Turkish gendarmerie. Nandrup filed regular reports from Skopje to King Oscar II on the conditions in Macedonia, which grew steadily worse.

The increasing power of the Macedonian revolutionaries and the failure of the Vienna Reforms to halt Turkish repression led to a continuing pattern of engagements; in January 1903, the Ottoman railway’s telegraph cable had been destroyed by a bomb, and two others were subsequently detonated on the Salonika-Constantinople railroad line at the Perai station. The amnesty of political prisoners intended for February 1903 backfired, as it only bolstered the ranks of the Macedonian and Bulgarian insurgents. It soon became clear that a general uprising was being planned for the spring of 1903.

In the energized manifesto he delivered following the creation of the first republic in the history of the Balkans, at Krusevo, revolutionary President Nikola Karev declared:

“‘Freedom or Death’ is written on our foreheads and on our blood-stained banner. We have already raised that banner and there is no way back.”

It was a grim prediction. On August 2, 1903, what would become known as the Ilinden uprising began. The Turks had prepared 150,000 troops in the Macedonian vilayets, arranged in 175 battalions, in anticipation of the rebellion. Parts of the Strandzha Mountains in Bulgaria and several Macedonian villages and towns were taken by the rebels, who euphorically proclaimed a republic in the most important one, Krusevo, on August 3. Yet it was to end more like the massacre at Crete’s Arkadi Monastery in 1866 than as some triumphant liberation.

After only 10 days the Turkish forces retook the town, killing over 100 civilians. In a show of unprecedented savagery, they burned 366 houses and 203 stores, with over 700 houses pillaged and looted, according to Nadine Lange-Akhund’s The Macedonian Question Christian women were violated, and their fingers and ears were cut off to retrieve the jewelry. In the aftermath of the revolt, the hills and valleys of Macedonia were bathed in blood. 201 Macedonian villages were burned down by the Turkish forces, 12,400 houses were pillaged, 4,694 people were killed, 70,835 people were left without shelter, and 30,000 refugees fled to Bulgaria. Villagers fleeing to the mountains starved on a diet of grass, and disease took a heavy toll also. The Macedonian fighters had achieved no freedom, but a lot of death.

Karev’s enlightened if ill-fated vision of rule was a departure from that of the Ottomans; he promised that the Macedonians were trying to liberate “mother Macedonia” for all of its peoples, whether Christian or Muslim:

“…we have not raised against the peaceful, diligent and honest Turkish people who, like ourselves, earn their living through sweat full of blood—they are our brothers with whom we have always lived and would like to live again. We have not risen to slaughter and plunder, to set fire and steal—we have had enough of countless derebeyis pillaging and plundering our poor and blood-stained Macedonia. We have not risen to convert to Christianity and disgrace your mothers and sisters, wives and daughters; you should know that your property, your lives, your faith and your honour are as dear to us as our own. Alas, we have taken up arms only to protect our property, our lives, our faith and our honour.”

Karev asked only that those who chose to not participate in the struggle at least not collaborate with the authorities. But fear of Turkish wrath was stronger in most cases than the promises of a relatively powerless revolutionary leader.