Salonica Terminus. Fred A. Reed

came too late; the puppet had taken on a life of its own, had slipped its strings, and now acted independently of the puppet-master. Montenegro, the smallest of the allied states, declared war on Turkey. Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece followed suit. Forced to wage war on three fronts, the Ottomans hastily fell back towards Istanbul. The rapidity and completeness of the allied victories astonished their European patrons, and shattered what remained of Turkey’s European dominions.¹⁹

      For Greece, the Balkan campaign was sweet revenge for the humiliating defeat of 1897. The Greek forces bore north, sweeping away the Turkish army or surrounding and isolating its garrisons. Soon the road to Salonica, which lead through the marshy delta of the Vardar, lay open.

      W. H. Crawford Price, a British journalist who could ill-conceal his sympathies for the doughty Hellenes, was an eyewitness to events in the Macedonian capital: “We were cut off from all communication with the outside world, and surrounded by hostile armies. At Yenidje there were Greeks, at Kuprili (Veles) Servians, at Strumnitza and Demi Hissar Bulgarians, while outside the range of the guns at Karaburun lay the Greek fleet, eager to rush in and seize its impotent prey. Provisions were at famine prices; wise housewives had laid in stores of flour; Consulates had made necessary arrangements for sheltering terrified subjects. Greeks were exultant but terrified; Jews downcast and fearful for their worldly possessions; Turks broken-spirited but stoical; Europeans indifferent but anxious.”

      “In the cold, muddied streets men wandered aimlessly hither and thither, discussing the eternal ‘situation’ in entire ignorance of fact or details.”²⁰

      The citizens of Salonica, obsessed with the question of day-to-day survival, paid little heed to the Empire collapsing about them. Turkish refugees fleeing before the invading armies sought shelter in the city. The first arrivals were housed in mosques and schools, but their number soon exceeded available space. It was not until the evening of October 29, 1912, when the German patrol boat “Lorelei” dropped anchor in the port that the Salonicians realized they would be losing their most illustrious guest, deposed Sultan Adbulhamid. Within a few hours the recluse of the Villa Allatini and his retinue had been transferred to the warship, which promptly steamed off toward Istanbul. The last thing the crumbling Young Turk regime could afford was the loss of the erstwhile “Red Sultan,” its prize hostage and nemesis. He died in 1918, a lonely pariah, in the capital on the Bosphorus, a few months before the final defeat which sealed the fate of the Empire.

      Meanwhile, the military situation continued to deteriorate. Greek forces were now within striking distance, and a Bulgarian army was rushing south toward Salonica in a forced march. The garrison could not withstand a siege; the Turks decided to capitulate. On November 8, Hassan Tahsin Pasha, the Ottoman commander, accepted terms which had been handed him the previous day. That evening, the indefatigable Crawford Price proceeded to the Konak, the government house: “I found Nazim Pasha, the Governor General, sitting on a divan with his legs curled up under him, calmly writing his last letter as Vali of Salonica. His nation had lost its reputation; Islam had been driven out from Macedonia, and he had lost his post; but he nevertheless sat there serene and apparently unaffected by the tremendous history in the making around him.”²¹

      Thus, with a whimper, ended 482 years of Turkish rule. The government house they built still stands. Its creaking wood floors no longer echo with the shuffling of Ottoman functionaries’ slippered feet, but every morning supplicants arrive, congregating around sub-ministerial doorways, petitions and letters of recommendation in hand. Fine Persian rugs cover the floor of the Minister’s office, not unlike those the Greeks found when they seized the Konak the following day.

      A new, official victory parade was organized three days later after the occupation authorities had ordered all homes and shops to fly Greek flags. In the interim, the symbol makers had been hard at work. The capture of Salonica was decreed to have taken place on Saint Demetrius’ day, October 26, a date calculated to make the hearts of the Greek citizens beat faster. Had not Salonica’s Byzantine warrior patron, astride his red stallion, intervened miraculously in the past to save the metropolis? But in 1912, the old calendar was still in force in the Orthodox Church. Saint Demetrius’ day had been celebrated two weeks before.

      The occupiers took rapid action to change the face of Old Salonica. The process of Hellenization was relentless, thoroughgoing and even violent. Its first victims were, of course, the Turks. The city was quickly stripped of the primary symbol of its former identity. Virtually all of Salonica’s 60 minarets were destroyed during the first five years of the Greek occupation, explains Petropoulos. The Greek military waged its own kulturkampf. Aided by Prime Minister Venizelos’ much-loathed Cretan gendarmes, it obliterated signs in French and Spanish. Mosques were transformed into churches, as shown in post-cards of the day, guarded by armed Greek soldiers to discourage the Muslim faithful from attending to their religious duties. One minaret was left standing, at the Hortac Effendi mosque, the late-Roman circular structure known as the Rotonda. The municipal authorities attempted to destroy it too, on the pretext of imminent collapse, Petropoulos relates. “But minarets have a bad habit of not falling, even in the most powerful earthquakes. They’re built to sway, not break.”

      For Salonica, the crucial question was that of Bulgaria’s claim to the city. A few hours after the Greek forces had marched into the city along the coast road from the west, a Bulgarian army detachment had entered from the north. They immediately seized the former mosque of Saint Sofia, now reverted to an Orthodox cathedral, set up their military headquarters just across the street, and organized their own victory parade, complete with brass band.

      “The Greeks found themselves preoccupied,” wrote Crawford Price, “with the serious complications presented by the disconcerting behavior of the Bulgarians. They had become the unwilling hosts of ten instead of two battalions of allied troops; several public buildings and one of the largest mosques had been commandeered by the Bulgars; General Theodoroff had hastened to inform the King and the whole world that the Bulgarians had conquered the town. Moreover, Sandanski’s ‘komitadjis’ had entered the citadel.”²²

      The victorious allies—armed, trained and abetted by their Great Power sponsors—had all but succeeded in ousting the Turks from Europe. Now dissension grew in their ranks as among robbers arguing over the division of the spoils. To complicate matters further, the Great Powers were insisting that an autonomous Albanian state be created from the wreckage of European Turkey, which meant that the Serbs would have to give over to the new state some territory they had conquered. To turmoil was added opaque complexity.

      In an atmosphere of claim and counter claim, Greece and Serbia concluded a secret alliance against their erstwhile ally Bulgaria. At this point the Bulgarians made yet another of the fatal blunders which have plagued the country’s foreign policy. In late June, 1913, they attacked the Greek and Serbian lines in Macedonia. The move was intended as a political demonstration the aim of which was to provoke Russian mediation. But the Serbians and the Greeks replied to the Bulgarian “demonstration” with an energetic counter-demonstration of their own: they declared war. Once again Balkan peasants were handed rifles, given a fistful of bread and onions, and sent off to fertilize the Sacred Soil of the Nation with their blood, torn flesh and crushed bones. As they may yet do again if the secret Balkan deals we can assume are being made today are acted upon.

      In Salonica, the Greeks swung into action immediately. The Bulgarian army had established small garrisons in half a dozen quarters of the town, and around each the Greeks had placed strong detachments of troops, thus rendering escape impossible, writes Crawford Price. “Against the principal Bulgarian stronghold . . . the Greeks showered bullets from the houses opposite, while from quick-firing guns posted on top of the famous White Tower, a murderous leaden hail swept up the street at given intervals.²³

      The Second Balkan War was short, intense and bloody. And though it was militarily decisive, it created an even greater political impasse than the one which had caused it. Surrounded, under attack from all sides, Bulgaria could offer no serious resistance to the coalition of Greek, Serbian, Rumanian and Ottoman forces. On August 10 peace was signed by the Balkan states at Bucharest. Greece was awarded Salonica. Bulgaria not only lost the city, but its territorial gains in Macedonia as well. Greater Bulgaria overnight became an irredentist’s folly.