The Great Powers Finally React
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The reaction to these bloody events among the Great Powers was to impress upon the Ottoman Turkish government the urgency for reformative action. The Great Powers were convinced that this was necessary in order to force the implementation of a reform program that would protect the Christian civilian population.
Sir Nicholas Robert O’Conor (1843-1908), the British ambassador to Turkey in Constantinople from 1898 to 1908, proposed in November 1902 that the Great Powers take the lead in police, financial, and judicial administration in the three Macedonian vilayets of the Ottoman Empire. Sir O’Conor proposed that the signatory powers to the 1878 Treaty of Berlin (Russia, Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Great Britain, and Italy) assume responsibility and control in Macedonia.
In Constantinople, Sir O’Conor personally relayed to Abdul Hamid the necessity of implementing significant and meaningful reforms in Macedonia. The British assessed the situation in Macedonia as “worrisome and grave.” In an ominous prediction, the French ambassador to Russia warned that the Great Powers had to act in order to forestall “the unrest to come” in Macedonia.
The proposal was alarming for the Turks, who rightly regarded it as a further check on their already weakened control of Macedonia. On November 30, therefore, Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid promulgated an irade or decree for reform in the three vilayets of Macedonia, in order to preempt the European proposals and potential international intervention. The decree consisted of 18 articles, divided into four chapters. Abdul Hamid decreed that the administration, instruction, public works, and the judiciary in Macedonia were to remain under Turkish control. He appointed an Inspector General with the rank of vizier, Hussein Hilmi Pasha (1855-1923), to implement the reforms and to remove and discipline any incompetent Turkish officials as well as the valis, or governors of the vilayets.
Born on the Greek island of Mytilini, Hilmi Pasha was at the time governor in far-off Yemen. He was appointed Inspector General of “the Roumelian provinces,” meaning Macedonia and Thrace, serving from 1902 to 1908. After this, he went on to become the Turkish Minister of the Interior in 1908-1909, in the latter year becoming Grand Vizier. It was on Hilmi Pasha’s shoulders that fell the task of implementing the proposed reforms in Macedonia, to bring stability, and to reconcile the Orthodox Christian populations to the resumption of Turkish rule.
