Anarchy in Macedonia (NY Times, 1901)

[TrueMacedonian]

[Daskalot]

I have some info on Stambuloff, which goes hand in hand with this article
I will go thru my books.

[TrueMacedonian]

I have some info on Stambuloff, which goes hand in hand with this article
I will go thru my books.

I can't wait to see what 'hand' you'll have in this topic lol

[Daskalot]

Here are the hands of Stambuloff


Source: A Concise History of Bulgaria Second Edition, page 109.

[Soldier of Macedon]

What I find interesting in the article is the fact that the Kurds are viewed in the same light as Albanians where it concerns their treatment of the local Macedonian and Armenian populations. The Kurds appear to be the Bashibozoks of Anatolia and played a similar role as what the Albanians did in the Balkans.

Both the Kurds and Albanians had it 'better' than the Armenians and Macedonians based on their common religion with the Turkish overlords.

[Onur]

What I find interesting in the article is the fact that the Kurds are viewed in the same light as Albanians where it concerns their treatment of the local Macedonian and Armenian populations. The Kurds appear to be the Bashibozoks of Anatolia and played a similar role as what the Albanians did in the Balkans.

Thats true.

After 1870, Ottoman Empire went bankrupt and especially after the Russian-Turkish war of 1877, they couldn't pay the monthly salary of the officers, soldiers or any security forces. Then British and French distrained on central bank of Ottoman Empire and took control of all the budget on behalf of the previous debts. Because of this, most of security forces quit their jobs and this leaded to some kind of anarchy both in Balkans and Anatolia.

Firstly, Albanians came with an idea to be a security force in Balkans. They didn't demand any money for that but they asked to have all the leftover weapons and equipments of former Turkish security forces and Ottoman government accepted their proposal.

Then 10-15 years after that, Kurds came up with same proposal. Albanian forces was named as "Bashibozuk", meaning "disorderly, irregular mobs" and Kurdish ones name as "Hamidiye alaylari". Both Albanians and Kurds had same goal; Gaining the authority in that particular territory and eventually take full control of that territory after Ottoman Empire totally disappears.

Actually Kurdish people had reasons to do that unlike Albanians because Armenians was trying to create Armenian kingdom and this projected kingdom was covering all the areas where the Kurds lives. Ofc Armenians was also doing massacres upon the Kurds because as you can guess, Kurds had no place in their projected state. That was pretty much the primal reason of why Kurds helped Turkish people during those years because if Armenians would be successful on creating Armenian kingdom, there wouldn't be any Kurdish people as well as the Turks in southeastern Anatolia today.