Provisional Government of Western Thrace
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| Garbi Trakya Hükûmet-i Müstakilesi غربی تراقیا حكومت مستقلهسی |
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| Provisional, later Independent | ||||
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| Capital | Gümülcine | |||
| Government | Republic | |||
| President | Hoca Salih Efendi | |||
| History | ||||
| - Established | August 31, 1913 | |||
| - Disestablished | October 25, 1913 | |||
| ¹ Renamed from "Provisional Government of Western Thrace" and some researchers used term of "Republic of Gumuljina" and the "Turkish Republic of Western Thrace". | ||||
The Provisional Government of Western Thrace[1][2][3] (Ottoman Turkish: غربی تراقیا حكومت موقتهسی - Garbi Trakya Hükûmet-i Muvakkatesi), later renamed to Independent Government of Western Thrace[1][4] (Ottoman Turkish: غربی تراقیا حكومت مستقلهسی - Garbi Trakya Hükûmet-i Müstakilesi), was a small, short-lived unrecognized republic established in Western Thrace from August 31 to October 25, 1913. It encompassed the area surrounded by the rivers Maritsa (Evros) in the east, Mesta (Nestos) in the west, the Rhodope Mountains in the north and the Aegean Sea in the south. Its total territory was c. 8.600 km².
The territory was created during the Second Balkan War by a joint rebellion of Turks and Pomaks against the withdrawing Bulgarian forces who had recently annexed the region. It survived for 3 months, between two Balkan treaties; between the May 1913 Treaty of London and the August 1913 Treaty of Bucharest that ended the Second Balkan War.
It was founded as a provisional state, in order to be annexed by Ottoman Empire again. However, Greek forces occupied major cities (Porto Lagos, Komotini and Alexandroupolis) and handed them over to Bulgaria, according to the terms of the Treaty of Bucharest (1913). The area remained a part of Bulgaria until 1919 and the territory was revived under French protectate. Finally it was annexed by Greece in 1920 except Bulgarian occupation between 1941-1944. Its capital was Gümülcine (Greek: Κομοτηνή, Komotini), now in Greece.
[edit] Overview
President : Hoca Salih Efendi.
Army: Standing force of 29,170, largely infantry. Commander of the Armed Forces [5][page needed] was Süleyman Askerî
As soon as independence was declared the Provisional Government of Western Thrace determined the borders of the country, put up the new flags on the official buildings, commissioned a national anthem, raised an army, published its own stamps and passports[6][page needed], and prepared the budget of the new country.
A Jewish citizen, Samuel Karaso, was tasked by the government with establishing an official press agency and to publish a newspaper named Müstakil (Independent) in Turkish and French. The Ottoman Laws and Regulations were adopted without any change and the cases started to be heard by the Court of Western Thrace.
Bulgaria, after a brief period of control over the area following the Istanbul Convention, passed the sovereignty of Western Thrace to Greece at the end of the World War I, when Greece entered the war against the Central Powers. The Republic was revived between 1919-1920 under French (occupied the region from Bulgarian in 1918) protectorate before Greece took over in June, 1920. The Muslim population of Western Thrace was excluded from the population exchange of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, and possesses a legal minority status in Greece.
[edit] See also
[edit] Sources
- ^ a b International Affairs Agency Turkish Dossier Program, The Western Thrace Turks issue in Turkish-Greek relations, International Affairs Agency, 1992, p. 105.
- ^ Philip Hendrick Stoddard, The Ottoman government and the Arabs, 1911 to 1918: a preliminary study of the Teskilât-ı Mahsusa, Princeton University, 1963, pp. 52-53.
- ^ Andrew Mango, Atatürk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey, Overlook Press, 2002, ISBN 978-1-58567-334-6, p. 102.
- ^ Mesut Uyar, Edward J. Erickson, A military history of the Ottomans: from Osman to Atatürk, ABC-CLIO, 2009, ISBN 978-0-275-98876-0, p. 259.
- ^ Çeçen, Anıl, Tarihte Türk Devletleri, Milliyet Kültür Yayınları, İstanbul 1986
- ^ Çeçen, Anıl, Tarihte Türk Devletleri, Milliyet Kültür Yayınları, İstanbul 1986
