bulgarians horrors:
remembering the turkish atrocities against the bulgarians during the april uprising of 1876
Victoria lanther
Genocide is a topic difficult to explore. The events studied often reflect some of the worst actions committed by humans against other humans; the reaction of the international community in response to these acts have fallen short repeatedly; and debate still emerges concerning who is to blame for events that occurred nearly one hundred years ago. Added to these obstacles comes the question of whether or not these events fall under the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. These questions have caused many events to be forgotten or relegated to crimes with less negative connotation than that of genocide. One of these is the brutal crushing by the Ottoman empire of the 1876 Bulgarian April Uprising in the mountainous regions of the Balkans, during which massacres such as the one in Batak resulted in an estimated 6000 Christian Bulgarians killed. Many questions of vital importance to international politics and justice emerge during the study of this uprising. Do the acts committed by the Ottoman Empire against the Bulgarians constitute grounds for these actions to be considered ethnic cleansing or were they part of a policy of genocide? If this question is added to the debate, it has severe implications for the justicial aspect of these crimes. Does their definition as ethnic cleansing diminish the right of Bulgarian people to receiving justice? And does the time that has passed since the uprising—one hundred and forty years—prevent the application of justice? The study of the acts committed during the Ottoman response to the April Uprising, the reaction of the international committee, and the current understanding of genocide established by the United Nations leads to following answers to these previous questions: the acts were constitutive of ethnic cleansing, and not genocide, but recognition of responsibility should be undertaken by Turkey in order to establish justice following these difficult events.
There is a considerable difference between ethnic cleansing and genocide, albeit sometimes difficult to see. There is much debate surrounding other mass atrocities—such as the Armenian genocide—concerning these differences. The UN genocide convention, as signed by Bulgaria and Turkey, represents a very strict definition that has lead to the exclusion of many of these crimes from being tried under the charge of genocide. Genocide, in this treaty, becomes a series of specific acts against “national, ethnical, racial or religious groups”, committed with intent to destroy “in whole or in part” the group targeted. These acts include murder, causing “bodily or mental harm”, preventing births or removing children, and “inflicting conditions…to bring about its physical destruction”. Ethnic cleansing, on the other hand, covers crimes that are much broader and does not necessarily involve the destruction of the entire group targeted. It is a term that emerged as a result of the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s. Study of the concept in different languages helps clarify the idea; in French, the term is ‘purification ethnique’—literally ethnic purification. Ethnic cleansing can be accomplished through military operations between two ethnic groups in a single territory and has the purpose of making one group more powerful and more demographically dominant in the area. Crimes committed under the guise of ethnic cleansing are varied, including administrative measures, terrorizing measures, non-violent measures, and military measures. This can involve ensuring that only one ethnic group settles certain areas of the territory, the removal from power of political representatives of the targeted group, the media releasing propaganda against the targeted group, large-scale deportation, and summary executions. Certain actions committed as part of ethnic cleansing could fall within the scope of genocide. However, ethnic cleansing does not necessarily involve the destruction of a group, only relates to groups linked together by ethnicity—compared to religion or nation, and intent to destroy does not need to be proven unlike in cases of genocide.
The massacres that occurred against the Bulgarians during the April Uprising then cannot be considered under the concept of genocide. The April Uprising, led by the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee (BRCC), followed the failed September Uprising of 1875—the first to be crushed by the Ottoman Turks. It was a series of poorly executed revolts against the Ottomans in a rather centralized region in the Balkans. The Ottomans ordered the Bashi-Bazouks, groups of irregular Turkish Muslim soldiers, to quell the uprising that had aimed to fulfill nationalist dreams of a nation purposely for Bulgarian Christians and revenge against their Turkish rulers. These troops went on to commit multiple massacres in the mountainous region of the Balkans where the uprising was taking place. “All were slaughtered without distinction of age or sex”. One of the well-known massacres from this campaign is the Batak Massacre, a Bulgarian village, during which 6000 of the 8000 villagers were killed. Stories of this massacre made their way to Western nations primarily through tales of reporters in the area during the time. One of them was Januarius MacGahan, who published an article in the Daily News on August 22nd, 1876 concerning what he had seen at Batak. He recounts seeing piles of bones and skulls throughout the entire village, houses destroyed, the corpses strewn through the city more often than not that of innocent women and children. Many times, he describes how there were visible signs that the women had been violated. Rape has been identified as a central crime in ethnic cleansing following the war in Yugoslavia. It becomes a systematic act during these events, as it was in the Batak Massacre and the campaign pursued by the Bashi-Bazouks against the Bulgarians. The purpose of the massacres and the quelling of the revolt under the order of the Ottoman Turks was to prevent the Bulgarians from obtaining their own nation in Ottoman territory, ensuring the purification of the area and preservation of Ottoman Turk power in the region. Along with the Batak Massacre and from information collected by MacGahan, anywhere between thirty-four to sixty villages are believed to have been destroyed by the Bashi-Bazouks and close to 30 000 Bulgarians killed. However, numbers of casualties and properties destroyed vary greatly within the retelling of these events, making the determination of these acts as cases of genocide or ethnic cleansing difficult. Despite this, it becomes clear that the actions committed by the Bashi-Bazouks under the Ottoman Turks—both perpetrators of this ethnic cleansing—against the Bulgarians—the victims—in the Balkans cannot be classified as genocide: there is no evidence of intent to destroy ‘in whole or in part’ this ethnic group. Rather, these events were focused on subduing a nationalist uprising, aimed at gaining a nation for the Bulgarians, within Ottoman territory. The multiple acts of rape, property destruction, and murder committed by military forces were aimed at single ethnic group with the purpose of maintaining Ottoman Turk power and ethnic dominance in the area, without necessarily exterminating the Bulgarians as a group.
One of the difficult questions that emerges becomes how should justice be pursued in this case. The only attempt at justice immediately following the conflict was a conference in Constantinople during which Russia made demands in Bulgarians’ favour; the Ottomans however refused and war ensued consequentially halting all efforts at justice between the war years of 1877 and 1878. Justice ended up coming in the form of the Principality of Bulgaria, created by the Treaty of San Stefano and Treaty of Berlin. The Treaty of Berlin solidified the agreements made during the Treaty of San Stefano following the Russo-Turkish War concerning the promises of a Bulgarian “Principality, with a Christian government and a national militia”. The Treaty of San Stefano outlined the election of the prince for the region and how such elections would take place in areas with mixed ethnicities in order to take account of the desires of all the groups. The Treaty of Berlin removed some of the independence promised to Bulgarians and maintained the principality under the rule of the Ottoman Sultan following European fears of Russian involvement in the area. The Ottomans never outwardly took responsibility for the massacres and these were never dealt with by any treaties. The massacres garnered the attention of the many European and Western powers due to the work of journalists such as Januarius MacGahan. Stories emerged in newspapers around the world but major outrage erupted in Britain following the inflammatory work by MacGahan and Eugene Schuyler, American Consul-General for Turkey who became responsible for a report on the Turkish atrocities against the Bulgarians that was presented to the American Minister of Turkey and the British Parliament. Despite this, the British Parliament and Benjamin Disraeli—British Prime Minister at the time—did not take the matter seriously and refused to respond to the matter. They were called out by figures such as William E. Gladstone in his text Lessons in Massacre or the Conduct of the Turkish Government in and about Bulgaria since May 1876. He highlights that the European powers, Britain especially, let themselves be swayed by reassurances that the Turkish had simply put to rest the disturbance of order by the Bulgarians. The international community believed it was doing the right thing by doing nothing and not intervening in another country’s sovereignty. Several years later following the Balkan Wars, there was a commission put in place by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace which released The Report of the International Commission to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars detailing the various crimes committed by all factions in the area, including crimes committed against Bulgarians. However, no similar actions were taken following the atrocities committed during the suppression the April Uprising. Despite clear indication of atrocities being committed against Bulgarians and public outcry, the international community did not respond to the crisis occurring in the Balkans, predicting its inaction to come concerning matters such as the Armenian genocide and even its slow reaction observed in cases such as the Holocaust or the ethnic cleansing and genocide that occurred in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Justice, following the Bulgarian massacres, was severely lacking.
The question then becomes how justice or if justice can be accomplished now; examples taken following the multiple genocides and cases of ethnic cleansing that have followed that of the Bulgarians demonstrate that this might be a little difficult. The conflict occurred one hundred and forty years ago, meaning no survivors can be found to testify in a trial. Additionally, even if these atrocities were to fall under the concept of genocide, the charge cannot be applied retroactively, albeit the term can. Returning to the problem of a lack of survivors, no efforts for transitional justice can be enacted, as there is nobody to tell their story and bear witness to the trauma impacted on the Bulgarian people. And once again, even if there were survivors, a study by Karen Brounéus brought to light the fact that truth telling in cases of transitional justice—such as the Gacaca courts in Rwanda--might not be as helpful and healing as desired. Despite all this, it is important to remember that these atrocities still play an important role in Bulgarian history and it is still an influential story for the Bulgarian nationalist movement. Therefore, obtaining some form of justice for these violent massacres is still necessary; the method might however be difficult. The only action truly possible so late after the crimes were committed would be restorative justice, focused more on healing the social ties than retributive justice as there is no longer anyone to try for these crimes. Since the beginning of the conflict, the Turkish government has refused to admit guilt to these crimes; as portrayed by Gladstone, they simply argued that the Bulgarians had disturbed the peace and they had simply returned it. Once complaints about the massacres started arising from the European powers, the Ottoman Turks tried to turn the matter into one of numbers, arguing that the Bulgarians and the reporters were exaggerating the numbers of Bulgarians killed while many of their own were being targeted by the supposed victims. Supporters of the Ottoman Empire even tried blaming the massacres on the fact that the empire had never been well organized militarily and that confusion was rampant in the area preceding the following wars—the Russo-Turkish war, the Balkan wars, and even World War I. Ironically enough, the massacres were not accomplished in a disturbed state on the brink of war; rather, they eventually led to these wars, as the Russo-Turkish war was started primarily due to Turkish actions against the Christian minorities in the area. Even if these crimes were not committed under a policy of genocide, they still represent crimes against humanity and justice is necessary. The only hope at justice following these atrocities would be the admission of guilt on Turkey’s behalf, in order to allow Bulgarians to feel as if their history has rightfully been told and that their suffering has been heard. Questions of numbers no longer become important—the crimes were committed and excuses for why they happened are prolonging the harm caused to the Bulgarian people. Questions of justice in cases of ethnic cleansing and genocide become difficult; they become questions of who to try, what to try them with, and how these charges will impact politics. The victims, very much like the Bulgarians in this case, are forgotten and their suffering never really ends, which is why admission of responsibility might be the only way to put a stop to it.
The atrocities committed by the Ottoman Turks and Bashi-Bazouks as a response to the Bulgarian April Uprising of 1876 were numerous. They involved the destruction of villages, persecution of a specific ethnic group, and systematic rape—all actions that fall under the definition of ethnic cleansing. While the massacres might not be considered genocidal as no intent to destroy the ethnic group can be proven, the Bulgarian people still deserve justice, even after more than one hundred years have passed since these crimes were committed. The international community once again displayed flagrant inaction despite being aware of the atrocities and should now come forward to help put this story to rest. The last hope at justice for the Bulgarian people would be an admission of responsibility from the Turkish government, much like the Armenians are demanding, in order for Bulgarians to feel as if they history is not being falsely attacked or ignored. Genocide and ethnic cleansing are topics difficult to explore; one is no less important than the other, and justice should be primordial in these cases and any that come to arise.
There is a considerable difference between ethnic cleansing and genocide, albeit sometimes difficult to see. There is much debate surrounding other mass atrocities—such as the Armenian genocide—concerning these differences. The UN genocide convention, as signed by Bulgaria and Turkey, represents a very strict definition that has lead to the exclusion of many of these crimes from being tried under the charge of genocide. Genocide, in this treaty, becomes a series of specific acts against “national, ethnical, racial or religious groups”, committed with intent to destroy “in whole or in part” the group targeted. These acts include murder, causing “bodily or mental harm”, preventing births or removing children, and “inflicting conditions…to bring about its physical destruction”. Ethnic cleansing, on the other hand, covers crimes that are much broader and does not necessarily involve the destruction of the entire group targeted. It is a term that emerged as a result of the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s. Study of the concept in different languages helps clarify the idea; in French, the term is ‘purification ethnique’—literally ethnic purification. Ethnic cleansing can be accomplished through military operations between two ethnic groups in a single territory and has the purpose of making one group more powerful and more demographically dominant in the area. Crimes committed under the guise of ethnic cleansing are varied, including administrative measures, terrorizing measures, non-violent measures, and military measures. This can involve ensuring that only one ethnic group settles certain areas of the territory, the removal from power of political representatives of the targeted group, the media releasing propaganda against the targeted group, large-scale deportation, and summary executions. Certain actions committed as part of ethnic cleansing could fall within the scope of genocide. However, ethnic cleansing does not necessarily involve the destruction of a group, only relates to groups linked together by ethnicity—compared to religion or nation, and intent to destroy does not need to be proven unlike in cases of genocide.
The massacres that occurred against the Bulgarians during the April Uprising then cannot be considered under the concept of genocide. The April Uprising, led by the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee (BRCC), followed the failed September Uprising of 1875—the first to be crushed by the Ottoman Turks. It was a series of poorly executed revolts against the Ottomans in a rather centralized region in the Balkans. The Ottomans ordered the Bashi-Bazouks, groups of irregular Turkish Muslim soldiers, to quell the uprising that had aimed to fulfill nationalist dreams of a nation purposely for Bulgarian Christians and revenge against their Turkish rulers. These troops went on to commit multiple massacres in the mountainous region of the Balkans where the uprising was taking place. “All were slaughtered without distinction of age or sex”. One of the well-known massacres from this campaign is the Batak Massacre, a Bulgarian village, during which 6000 of the 8000 villagers were killed. Stories of this massacre made their way to Western nations primarily through tales of reporters in the area during the time. One of them was Januarius MacGahan, who published an article in the Daily News on August 22nd, 1876 concerning what he had seen at Batak. He recounts seeing piles of bones and skulls throughout the entire village, houses destroyed, the corpses strewn through the city more often than not that of innocent women and children. Many times, he describes how there were visible signs that the women had been violated. Rape has been identified as a central crime in ethnic cleansing following the war in Yugoslavia. It becomes a systematic act during these events, as it was in the Batak Massacre and the campaign pursued by the Bashi-Bazouks against the Bulgarians. The purpose of the massacres and the quelling of the revolt under the order of the Ottoman Turks was to prevent the Bulgarians from obtaining their own nation in Ottoman territory, ensuring the purification of the area and preservation of Ottoman Turk power in the region. Along with the Batak Massacre and from information collected by MacGahan, anywhere between thirty-four to sixty villages are believed to have been destroyed by the Bashi-Bazouks and close to 30 000 Bulgarians killed. However, numbers of casualties and properties destroyed vary greatly within the retelling of these events, making the determination of these acts as cases of genocide or ethnic cleansing difficult. Despite this, it becomes clear that the actions committed by the Bashi-Bazouks under the Ottoman Turks—both perpetrators of this ethnic cleansing—against the Bulgarians—the victims—in the Balkans cannot be classified as genocide: there is no evidence of intent to destroy ‘in whole or in part’ this ethnic group. Rather, these events were focused on subduing a nationalist uprising, aimed at gaining a nation for the Bulgarians, within Ottoman territory. The multiple acts of rape, property destruction, and murder committed by military forces were aimed at single ethnic group with the purpose of maintaining Ottoman Turk power and ethnic dominance in the area, without necessarily exterminating the Bulgarians as a group.
One of the difficult questions that emerges becomes how should justice be pursued in this case. The only attempt at justice immediately following the conflict was a conference in Constantinople during which Russia made demands in Bulgarians’ favour; the Ottomans however refused and war ensued consequentially halting all efforts at justice between the war years of 1877 and 1878. Justice ended up coming in the form of the Principality of Bulgaria, created by the Treaty of San Stefano and Treaty of Berlin. The Treaty of Berlin solidified the agreements made during the Treaty of San Stefano following the Russo-Turkish War concerning the promises of a Bulgarian “Principality, with a Christian government and a national militia”. The Treaty of San Stefano outlined the election of the prince for the region and how such elections would take place in areas with mixed ethnicities in order to take account of the desires of all the groups. The Treaty of Berlin removed some of the independence promised to Bulgarians and maintained the principality under the rule of the Ottoman Sultan following European fears of Russian involvement in the area. The Ottomans never outwardly took responsibility for the massacres and these were never dealt with by any treaties. The massacres garnered the attention of the many European and Western powers due to the work of journalists such as Januarius MacGahan. Stories emerged in newspapers around the world but major outrage erupted in Britain following the inflammatory work by MacGahan and Eugene Schuyler, American Consul-General for Turkey who became responsible for a report on the Turkish atrocities against the Bulgarians that was presented to the American Minister of Turkey and the British Parliament. Despite this, the British Parliament and Benjamin Disraeli—British Prime Minister at the time—did not take the matter seriously and refused to respond to the matter. They were called out by figures such as William E. Gladstone in his text Lessons in Massacre or the Conduct of the Turkish Government in and about Bulgaria since May 1876. He highlights that the European powers, Britain especially, let themselves be swayed by reassurances that the Turkish had simply put to rest the disturbance of order by the Bulgarians. The international community believed it was doing the right thing by doing nothing and not intervening in another country’s sovereignty. Several years later following the Balkan Wars, there was a commission put in place by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace which released The Report of the International Commission to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars detailing the various crimes committed by all factions in the area, including crimes committed against Bulgarians. However, no similar actions were taken following the atrocities committed during the suppression the April Uprising. Despite clear indication of atrocities being committed against Bulgarians and public outcry, the international community did not respond to the crisis occurring in the Balkans, predicting its inaction to come concerning matters such as the Armenian genocide and even its slow reaction observed in cases such as the Holocaust or the ethnic cleansing and genocide that occurred in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Justice, following the Bulgarian massacres, was severely lacking.
The question then becomes how justice or if justice can be accomplished now; examples taken following the multiple genocides and cases of ethnic cleansing that have followed that of the Bulgarians demonstrate that this might be a little difficult. The conflict occurred one hundred and forty years ago, meaning no survivors can be found to testify in a trial. Additionally, even if these atrocities were to fall under the concept of genocide, the charge cannot be applied retroactively, albeit the term can. Returning to the problem of a lack of survivors, no efforts for transitional justice can be enacted, as there is nobody to tell their story and bear witness to the trauma impacted on the Bulgarian people. And once again, even if there were survivors, a study by Karen Brounéus brought to light the fact that truth telling in cases of transitional justice—such as the Gacaca courts in Rwanda--might not be as helpful and healing as desired. Despite all this, it is important to remember that these atrocities still play an important role in Bulgarian history and it is still an influential story for the Bulgarian nationalist movement. Therefore, obtaining some form of justice for these violent massacres is still necessary; the method might however be difficult. The only action truly possible so late after the crimes were committed would be restorative justice, focused more on healing the social ties than retributive justice as there is no longer anyone to try for these crimes. Since the beginning of the conflict, the Turkish government has refused to admit guilt to these crimes; as portrayed by Gladstone, they simply argued that the Bulgarians had disturbed the peace and they had simply returned it. Once complaints about the massacres started arising from the European powers, the Ottoman Turks tried to turn the matter into one of numbers, arguing that the Bulgarians and the reporters were exaggerating the numbers of Bulgarians killed while many of their own were being targeted by the supposed victims. Supporters of the Ottoman Empire even tried blaming the massacres on the fact that the empire had never been well organized militarily and that confusion was rampant in the area preceding the following wars—the Russo-Turkish war, the Balkan wars, and even World War I. Ironically enough, the massacres were not accomplished in a disturbed state on the brink of war; rather, they eventually led to these wars, as the Russo-Turkish war was started primarily due to Turkish actions against the Christian minorities in the area. Even if these crimes were not committed under a policy of genocide, they still represent crimes against humanity and justice is necessary. The only hope at justice following these atrocities would be the admission of guilt on Turkey’s behalf, in order to allow Bulgarians to feel as if their history has rightfully been told and that their suffering has been heard. Questions of numbers no longer become important—the crimes were committed and excuses for why they happened are prolonging the harm caused to the Bulgarian people. Questions of justice in cases of ethnic cleansing and genocide become difficult; they become questions of who to try, what to try them with, and how these charges will impact politics. The victims, very much like the Bulgarians in this case, are forgotten and their suffering never really ends, which is why admission of responsibility might be the only way to put a stop to it.
The atrocities committed by the Ottoman Turks and Bashi-Bazouks as a response to the Bulgarian April Uprising of 1876 were numerous. They involved the destruction of villages, persecution of a specific ethnic group, and systematic rape—all actions that fall under the definition of ethnic cleansing. While the massacres might not be considered genocidal as no intent to destroy the ethnic group can be proven, the Bulgarian people still deserve justice, even after more than one hundred years have passed since these crimes were committed. The international community once again displayed flagrant inaction despite being aware of the atrocities and should now come forward to help put this story to rest. The last hope at justice for the Bulgarian people would be an admission of responsibility from the Turkish government, much like the Armenians are demanding, in order for Bulgarians to feel as if they history is not being falsely attacked or ignored. Genocide and ethnic cleansing are topics difficult to explore; one is no less important than the other, and justice should be primordial in these cases and any that come to arise.