Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878)

As it turned out, the reforms were not forthcoming. Khrimian returned to Constantinople and delivered a famous speech in which he likened the peace conference to a big cauldron of Liberty Stew' into which the big nations dipped their 'iron ladles' for real results, while the Armenian delegation had only a 'Paper Ladle'. 'Ah dear Armenian people,' Khrimian said, 'could I have dipped my Paper Ladle in the cauldron it would sog and remain there! Where guns talk and sabers shine, what significance do appeals and petitions have? Given the absence of tangible improvements in the plight of the Armenian community, a number of Armenian intellectuals living in Europe and Russia in the 1880s and 1890s formed political parties and revolutionary societies to secure better conditions for their compatriots in Ottoman Armenia and other parts of the Ottoman Empire.

Civilian casualties

Atrocities and ethnic cleansing

Both sides carried out massacres and an ethnic cleansing policy during the war.

Against Muslims

thumb|Turkish refugees fleeing from [[Veliko Tarnovo|Tarnovo towards Shumen]]

thumb|right|The execution of the [[Bashi-bazouk|Bashi-bazouks in Bulgaria, 1878.]]

In January 1878, advancing coalition forces started committing atrocities against Muslim populations in the region. British reports from that time have detailed information about atrocities and massacres. According to those reports, in the village of İssova Bâlâ, the school and 96 of the 170 houses were burned to the ground. The inhabitants of Yukarı Sofular were slaughtered and 12 of the 130 houses in the village, a mosque, and a school were burned. In Kozluca, 18 Turks were killed. Massacres of Muslim inhabitants occurred in Kazanlak too. In the village of Muflis, 127 Muslim inhabitants were kidnapped by a group of Russian and Bulgarian troops. 20 managed to escape. The rest were killed. 400 people from Muflis were killed according to Ottoman sources. 11 inhabitants were killed in Keçidere. The correspondent of The Daily News describes as an eyewitness the burning of four or five Turkish villages by the Russian troops in response to the Turks firing at the Russians from the villages, instead of behind rocks or trees, which must have appeared to the Russian soldiers as guerrilla attempts by the local Muslim populace upon the Russian contingencies operating against the Ottoman forces embedded in the area. During the conflict a number of Muslim buildings and cultural centres were also destroyed. A large library of old Turkish books was destroyed when a mosque in Turnovo was burned in 1877. Most mosques in Sofia were destroyed, seven of them in one night in December 1878 when "a thunderstorm masked the noise of the explosions arranged by Russian military engineers."

Many villages in the Kars region were pillaged by Russian Army during the war. Between 1878-1881, 82,000 Muslims migrated to the Ottoman Empire from lands ceded to Russia in Caucasus.

Muslim war refugees according to census data and Ottoman official documents

According to Ottoman official records, the total number of refugees from the lands ceded in 1878 to the Principality of Bulgaria, Eastern Rumelia, Serbia, Romania and Austria-Hungary (from Bosnia) from 1876 to 1879 stands at 571,152 people: 276,389 in 1876, 198,000 in 1877, 76,000 in 1878 and 20,763 in 1879. However, it is unclear if the numbers include refugees who emigrated after the suspension of hostilities.

According to the pre-war Ottoman Salname of 1875, the total male Muslim population of the five vilayets to form the future Principality of BulgariaRusçuk, Vidin, Sofia, Tirnova, and Varnastood at 405,450 (total population of 810,900), however, inclusive of Circassian Muhacir and Muslim Romani. The total Muslim population of the Danube Vilayet for the same year, Niš included, stood at 1,055,650. This figure however included the Rhodopian kazas of Ahi Çelebi and Sultanyeri (male Muslim population of 8,197 and 13,336, respectively, or total Muslim population for both of 43,066), which remained part of in the Ottoman Empire.

Thus, as of 1880, the total number of Muslims who lived in the territories ceded by the Ottoman Empire stood at 827,000 people, down from 1,388,844 counted by the pre-war Ottoman census data, representing a net loss of 561,844 Muslims (40.4%). While shockingly high, this figure falls short by more than 200,000 people from Dennis P. Hupchick and Justin McCarthy's estimates of some 260,000 Muslims missing/dead and 500,000 forced to emigrate and is way more off compared to the figure of more than 750,000 Muslim casualties and victims of ethnic cleansing from the Bulgarian lands alone quoted by Douglas Arthur Howard.

The Principality of Bulgaria, Eastern Rumelia and Romania accounted for a negative net balance of 472,792 Muslims (or a net loss of 36.5%).

By comparison, Serbia, the only country in the region, which did indeed engage in ethnic cleansing and forced expulsion of its Muslim population, effectively reduced its Muslim population between 1877 and 1880 from 95,619 to 6,567 people (cf. Expulsion of the Albanians, 1877–1878), i.e., a net loss of 89,052 Muslims, or 93%. Turkish historian Kemal Karpat claims that 250–300,000 people, about 17% of the former Muslim population of Bulgaria, died as a consequence of famine, disease, and massacres, and 1 to 1.5 million people were forced to migrate. Turkish author Nedim İpek gives the same numbers as Karpat. Another source claims 400,000 Turks were massacred and 1,000,000 Turks had to migrate during the war. The perpetrators of those massacres are also disputed, with Justin McCarthy claiming that they were carried out by Russian soldiers, Cossacks as well as Bulgarian volunteers and villagers, though there were few civilian casualties in battle. while James J. Reid claims that Circassians were significantly responsible for the refugee flow, that there were civilian casualties from battle and even that the Ottoman army was responsible for casualties among the Muslim population. The number of Muslim refugees is estimated by R.J. Crampton to be 130,000. Richard C. Frucht estimates that only half (700,000) of the prewar Muslim population remained after the war, 216,000 had died and the rest emigrated. Douglas Arthur Howard estimates that half the 1.5 million Muslims, for the most part Turks, in prewar Bulgaria had disappeared by 1879. 200,000 had died, the rest became permanently refugees in Ottoman territories.

In this connection, it is important to note that Justin McCarthy, who is the author of the estimates above and has been cited by both Hupchik and Howard, is an Armenian genocide denialist who has been criticised severely by many of his colleagues for whitewashing Ottoman history. Moreover, McCarthy is a member of, and has received grants from, the Institute of Turkish Studies. Throughout his career, he has been accused, among other things, of being "an apologist for the Turkish state", of having "an indefensible bias toward the Turkish official position", of selectively using sources and of always ascribing intent to non-Ottoman troops while making excuses for Ottoman ones for similar events.

Against Albanians

Against Bulgarians

thumb|Bones of massacred Bulgarians at [[Stara Zagora (ethnic cleansing by the Ottoman Empire)]]

The most notable massacre of Bulgarian civilians during the Russo-Turkish War took place during the Battle of Stara Zagora in July 1877, when Gurko's forces had to retreat back to the Shipka Pass. In the aftermath of the battle, Suleiman Pasha's forces burned down and plundered the city of Stara Zagora and subjected its population to indiscriminate slaughter.

At the time, Stara Zagora was not only one of the biggest Bulgarian cities, but it also accommodated some 20,000 refugees from nearby villages, seeking shelter from Ottoman reprisals. The number of massacred Christian civilians in the course of the battle is estimated at between 14,000–14,500, which would make it the biggest war crime in modern-era Bulgaria. In addition to the massacre carried out by the Suleiman's regular forces, Circassian bashi-bazouks engaged in numerous acts of looting, plunder and killing, among other things, The Terror in Karlovo, the Kalofer massacre, the Kavarna massacre etc. etc.

thumb|The [[Batak massacre carried out by Ottoman Irregular Troops in Bulgaria in 1876]]

Moreover, Suleiman Pasha's forces also established an entire system of police and judicial terror across the entire valley of the Maritsa, where any Bulgarian who had ever in any way assisted the Russians was hanged. However, even villages that had not assisted the Russians were destroyed and their inhabitants massacred. As a result, as many as 100,000 civilian Bulgarians fled north to the Russian occupied territories. Later on in the campaign, the Ottoman forces planned to burn the town of Sofia after Gurko had managed to overcome their resistance in the passes of Western part of the Balkan Mountains.

Only the refusal of the Italian Consul Vito Positano, the French Vice Consul Leandre le Gay and the Austro–Hungarian Vice Consul to leave Sofia prevented that from happening. After the Ottoman retreat, Positano even organized armed detachments to protect the population from marauders (deserters from the regular Ottoman Army and Bashi-bazouks). Circassians in the Ottoman forces also raped and murdered Bulgarians during the 1877 Russo-Turkish War.

According to Bulgarian historians, 30,000 Bulgarian civilians were killed during the war, with two-thirds of the killings being committed in the Stara Zagora area.

Against Circassians

Russians raped Circassian girls during the 1877 Russo-Turkish War from the Circassian refugees who were settled in the Ottoman Balkans. After the signing of the Treaty of San Stefano, the 10,000-strong Circassian minority in Dobruja was expelled.

Lasting effects

International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement

thumb|right|The [[Red Cross and the Red Crescent emblems]]

This war caused a division in the emblems of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement which continues to this day. Both Russia and the Ottoman Empire had signed the First Geneva Convention (1864), which made the Red Cross, a colour reversal of the flag of neutral Switzerland, the sole emblem of protection for military medical personnel and facilities. However, during this war the cross instead reminded the Ottomans of the Crusades; so they elected to replace the cross with the Red Crescent instead. This ultimately became the symbol of the Movement's national societies in most Muslim countries, and was ratified as an emblem of protection by later Geneva Conventions in 1929 and again in 1949 (the current version).

Iran, which neighbored both the Russian Empire and Ottoman Empire, considered them to be rivals, and probably considered the Red Crescent in particular to be an Ottoman symbol; except for the Red Crescent being centred and without a star, it is a colour reversal of the Ottoman flag (and the modern Turkish flag). This appears to have led to their national society in the Movement being initially known as the Red Lion and Sun Society, using a red version of the Lion and Sun, a traditional Iranian symbol. After the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Iran switched to the Red Crescent, but the Geneva Conventions continue to recognize the Red Lion and Sun as an emblem of protection.

In popular culture

The Armenian novella Jalaleddin, published in 1878 by the novelist Raffi, describes the Kurdish massacres of Armenians in the eastern Ottoman Empire at the time of the Russo-Turkish war. The novella follows the journey of a young man through the mountains of Anatolia. The historical descriptions in the novella correspond with information from British sources at the time.

The novel The Doll (Polish title: Lalka), written in 1887–1889 by Bolesław Prus, describes consequences of the Russo-Turkish war for merchants living in Russia and partitioned Poland. The main protagonist helped his Russian friend, a multi-millionaire, and made a fortune supplying the Russian Army in 1877–1878. The novel describes trading during political instability, and its ambiguous results for Russian and Polish societies.

The 1912 silent film Independența României depicted the war in Romania.

Russian writer Boris Akunin uses the war as the setting for the novel The Turkish Gambit (1998).

Notes

References

Bibliography

External links

.
.
.
.
.
Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878). Historical photos.

Video links

130 years Liberation of Pleven (Plevna)