Macedonian Struggle in the context of "Bulgarian Millet"

The Balkan Wars were two conflicts that took place in the Balkan states in 1912 and 1913. In the First Balkan War, the four Balkan states of Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria declared war upon the Ottoman Empire and defeated it, in the process stripping the Ottomans of their European provinces, leaving only Eastern Thrace under Ottoman control. In the Second Balkan War, Bulgaria fought against the other four combatants of the first war. It also faced an attack from Romania from the north. The Ottoman Empire lost the bulk of its territory in Europe. Although not involved as a combatant, Austria-Hungary became relatively weaker as a much enlarged Serbia pushed for union of the South Slavic peoples. The war set the stage for the July crisis of 1914 and as a prelude to the First World War.

By the early 20th century, Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro and Serbia had achieved independence from the Ottoman Empire, but large elements of their ethnic populations remained under Ottoman rule. Over the course of the Macedonian Struggle these states fought for influence between themselves and the Ottoman government within Ottoman Macedonia, during which their governments came under the control of nationalists. In 1912, these countries united to formed the Balkan League. The First Balkan War began on 8 October 1912, when the League member states attacked the Ottoman Empire, and ended eight months later with the signing on 30 May 1913 of the Treaty of London negotiated together with the Great Powers. The Great Powers - particularly Italy and Austria-Hungary -- included independence for Albania in the Treaty. The Second Balkan War began on 16 June 1913, when Bulgaria, dissatisfied with its allotment of territory from Macedonia, attacked its former Balkan League allies. The combined forces of the Serbian and Greek armies, with their superior numbers repelled the Bulgarian offensive and counter-attacked by invading Bulgaria from the west and the south. Romania, having taken no part in the first conflict, had intact armies to strike with and invaded Bulgaria from the north in violation of a peace treaty between the two states. The Ottoman Empire also attacked Bulgaria and advanced in Thrace, regaining Adrianople. In the resulting Treaty of Bucharest, Bulgaria managed to retain most of the territories it had gained in the First Balkan War. However, it was forced to cede the ex-Ottoman south part of Dobruja province to Romania.

The League of the Balkans was a quadruple alliance formed by a series of bilateral treaties concluded in 1912 between the Eastern Orthodox kingdoms of Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro, and directed against the Ottoman Empire, which still controlled much of Southeastern Europe.

The Balkans had been in a state of turmoil since the early 1900s, with years of guerrilla warfare in Macedonia followed by the Young Turk Revolution, the protracted Bosnian Crisis, and several Albanian Uprisings. The outbreak of the Italo-Turkish War in 1911 had further weakened the Ottomans and emboldened the Balkan states. Under Russian influence, Serbia and Bulgaria settled their differences and signed an alliance, which was originally directed against Austria-Hungary, on 13 March 1912, but by adding a secret chapter to it essentially redirected the alliance against the Ottoman Empire. Serbia then signed a mutual alliance with Montenegro, and Bulgaria did the same with Greece.

The Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress (CUP, also translated as the Society of Union and Progress; Ottoman Turkish: اتحاد و ترقى جمعيتی, romanized: İttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti, French: Union et Progrès) was a revolutionary group, secret society, and political party, active between 1889 and 1926 in the Ottoman Empire and in the Republic of Turkey. The foremost faction of the Young Turks, the CUP instigated the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, which ended absolute monarchy and began the Second Constitutional Era. After an ideological transformation, from 1913 to 1918, the CUP ruled the empire as a dictatorship and committed genocides against the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian peoples as part of a broader policy of ethnic erasure during the late Ottoman period. The CUP and its members have often been referred to as "Young Turks", although the Young Turk movement produced other Ottoman political parties as well. Within the Ottoman Empire its members were known as İttihadcılar ('Unionists') or Komiteciler ('Committeemen').

The organisation began as a liberal reform movement, and the autocratic government of Sultan Abdul Hamid II (r. 1876–1909) persecuted it because of its calls for constitutional government and reform. Most of its members were exiled and arrested after a failed coup-attempt in 1896 which started a period infighting among émigré Young Turk communities in Europe. The CUP's cause revived by 1906 with a new "Macedonian" cadre of bureaucrats and Ottoman army contingents based in Ottoman Macedonia which were fighting ethnic insurgents in the Macedonian Struggle. In 1908 the Unionists revolted in the Young Turk Revolution, and forced Abdul Hamid to re-instate the 1876 Constitution, ushering in an era of political plurality. During the Second Constitutional Era, the CUP at first influenced politics from behind the scenes, and introduced major reforms to continue the modernisation of the Ottoman Empire. The CUP's main rival was the Freedom and Accord Party, a conservative party which called for the decentralisation of the empire, in opposition to the CUP's desire for a centralised and unitary Turkish-dominated state.

Kilkis (Greek: Κιλκίς Macedonian/Bulgarian:Кукуш, Kukush) is a city in Central Macedonia, Greece. As of 2021 there were 24,130 people living in the city proper, 27,493 people living in the municipal unit, and 45,308 in the municipality of Kilkis. It is also the capital city of the regional unit of Kilkis.

The area of Kilkis, during the 20th century, became several times a war theatre; during the Macedonian Struggle, the Balkan Wars, World War I, World War II, the Greek Resistance and the Greek Civil War.

The Young Turk Revolution (July 1908; Turkish: Jön Türk Devrimi) was a constitutionalist revolution in the Ottoman Empire. Revolutionaries belonging to the Internal Committee of Union and Progress, an organization of the Young Turks movement, forced Sultan Abdul Hamid II to restore the Constitution, recall the parliament, and schedule an election. Thus began the Second Constitutional Era which lasted from 1908–1912 and also the Turkish Revolution, an era of political instability and social change which lasted for more than four decades.

The revolution took place in Ottoman Rumeli in the context of the Macedonian Struggle and the increasing instability of the Hamidian regime. It began with CUP member Ahmed Niyazi's flight into the Albanian highlands. He was soon joined by İsmail Enver, Eyub Sabri, and other Unionist officers. They networked with local Albanians and utilized their connections within the Salonica based Third Army to instigate a large revolt. A string of assassinations by Unionist Fedai also contributed to Abdul Hamid's capitulation. Though the constitutional regime established after the revolution eventually succumbed to Unionist dictatorship by 1913, the Ottoman sultanate ceased to be the base of power in Turkey after 1908.

The Chetniks in the Balkan Wars, were paramilitary groups issued of the Serbian Chetnik Organization which, after fighting in the Macedonian Struggle, came under the supervision of the Royal Serbian Army as auxiliary force. During the Balkan Wars, the Chetniks detachments were used as a vanguard to soften up the enemy forward of advancing armies, for attacks on communications behind enemy lines, as field gendarmerie and to establish basic administration in occupied areas. They were used in both Balkan Wars.

The use of the country name "Macedonia" was disputed between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia (now North Macedonia) between 1991 and 2019. The dispute was a source of instability in the Western Balkans for 25 years. It was resolved through negotiations between the two countries, mediated by the United Nations, resulting in the Prespa Agreement, which was signed on 17 June 2018. Pertinent to its background is an early 20th-century multifaceted dispute and armed conflict that formed part of the background to the Balkan Wars. The specific naming dispute, although an existing issue in Yugoslav–Greek relations since World War II, was reignited after the breakup of Yugoslavia and the newly-gained independence of the former Socialist Republic of Macedonia in 1991. Since then, it was an ongoing issue in bilateral and international relations until it was settled with the Prespa agreement in June 2018, the subsequent ratification by the Macedonian and Greek parliaments in late 2018 and early 2019 respectively, and the official renaming of Macedonia to North Macedonia in February 2019.

The dispute arose from the ambiguity in nomenclature between the Republic of Macedonia, the adjacent Greek region of Macedonia and the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. Citing historical and irredentist concerns, Greece opposed the use of the name "Macedonia" without a geographical qualifier such as "Northern Macedonia" for use "by all ... and for all purposes". As a significant contingent of ethnic Greeks identify themselves as Macedonians and view themselves as unrelated to ethnic Macedonians, Greece further objected to the use of the term "Macedonian" for the neighboring country's largest ethnic group and language. North Macedonia was accused by Greece of appropriating symbols and figures that are historically considered part of Greek culture such as the Vergina Sun and Alexander the Great, and of promoting the irredentist concept of a United Macedonia, which involves territorial claims on Greece, Bulgaria, Albania, and Serbia.

Slavic-speakers inhabiting the Ottoman-ruled region of Macedonia had settled in the area since the Slavic migrations during the Middle Ages and formed a distinct ethnolinguistic group. While Greek was spoken in the urban centers and in a coastal zone in the south of the region, Slav-speakers were abundant in its rural hinterland and were predominantly occupied in agriculture. Habitually known and identifying as "Bulgarian" on account of their language, they also considered themselves as "Rum", members of the community of Orthodox Christians.

After the emergence of rival national movements among Balkan Christians, the allegiance of Macedonian Slavs became the apple of discord for nationalists vying for dominion over the region of Macedonia. Parties with national affiliations, mostly Greek and Bulgarian, were formed in their midst, largely expressing and accentuating pre-existing social cleavages. From the 1870s onwards Bulgarian, Greek and Serbian propaganda appealed to them via the creation and operation of national education networks and by supporting the structures of the Bulgarian Exarchate or the Patriarchate of Constantinople respectively. Attempting to instill the "proper" national sense in Macedonian Slavs, and validate the territorial claims over Macedonia in that way. Amidst worsening economic and political conditions for Slav peasants, the clandestine Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, founded in 1893, gained a wide following with a program of agrarian reform imposed by terror, culminating in the staging of the Ilinden uprising of 1903, which was swiftly suppressed by the Ottomans. An armed clash ensued within Slav communities resistant to national proselytization, with IMRO komitadjis fighting against Ottoman authorities and bands of Greek and Serbian nationalists until the pacification imposed after the Young Turk Revolution in 1908. At that time the international observers viewed the majority of them as Bulgarian.