In the book “BALKAN SAVAŞLARI’NDAKİ MEZALİMLER”, by author Gyula Mészáros, written in 2020, we can find various documents and reports of Serbian and Bulgarian atrocities and war crimes against Muslim civilians in the villages of Kostara, Stoyran, Doyran, Kavadarci, Karsut, Radovista, Strumica, Osmaniye, Thessaloniki, Korkut, Rumelia, Rojden, Tikvesh, Beknishta, Kavadar, Sitne, Kosani, Bitola, Serres, Sultan Yeri, Eğri Dere, Kırcaali, Kara Tepe, and Koc Tepe
Cited from the publication:
Bulgarian massacres
“The Bulgarian government guaranteed that their lives and property would be spared; they were ordered to return to their villages. Then, in groups of 3,000-5,000, they began withdrawing from the cities. A group of 4,600 people, consisting solely of women and children, had only gotten two kilometers from the city when Bulgarian soldiers and committee members attacked them and massacred every last person.”
Kostara
“They arrested another group near the village of Kostara, between Stoyran and Doyran, and left each with only one shirt. Those who tried to escape were stabbed and bayoneted to death. They brutally raped many women, a feat no human conscience can accept.”
Kavadarci
“Accusing the Turks of plunder, the Bulgarians committed nothing but plunder and destruction in Kavadarci for three days. They massacred those who tried to flee and set the village on fire.”
Karsut
In the village of Karsut, a district of Avret Hisar, people fled to a mosque and a barn. Bulgarian and Serbian soldiers set fire to both buildings and massacred those who fled.
The Bulgarian committee members destroyed property worth approximately 50,000,000 crowns and destroyed the lives of more than 40,000 people.”
“Bulgarian gangs pursued them like hungry wolves and slaughtered them one by one on the way. The 4,000 people in a second caravan and the 3,000 fugitives in a third caravan met a similar fate. There was no one left to deliver the news.
Dojran (Doyran) in Selanik (Thessaloniki)
After the occupation of this small town and its surroundings, mass killings took place there as well. Bulgarian gangs held a blood trial and, within a short two weeks, sentenced the Muslims to death. They slaughtered many of them under brutal torture, using them as targets, raping girls and women before killing them. They extorted blood from the wealthy, but then executed each one only after a ransom was paid.
Radovista, Strumica and Osmaniye
The most inhumane of all was the massacre of every last member of the escape caravans, consisting of women, young children, and the elderly (p. 29). When the Bulgarians decimated the male population of the surrounding villages, the survivors from Radovista, Strumica, and Osmaniye fled towards Dojran, hoping that at least they would be protected there and save their lives. They had already left behind their native lands, their homes, all their possessions, and the mutilated bodies of their men. Only their lives remained, nothing else that could be saved.
But Dojran offered no refuge to these homeless people; their terrified eyes saw only blood and smoke everywhere. The caravan, now hopeless, fled. The first group consisted of 4,600 people, only women, children, and the elderly. They had just set out from the city.”
The unburied corpses lying by the roadside were a sad witness to the extent of the Bulgarians’ robbery. Before they were massacred, many of them were robbed of their poor, rag-like clothing. The population of the Turkish villages of the Dojran region was thus completely massacred.
These degraded lands, which reeked of unburied corpses and were reduced to ruin, would later be inhabited by Bulgarian gangs with blood on their hands. Because those who slaughtered the Turks could freely possess all these lands. (p. 30) This is the state of Bulgarian land occupation in the 20th century. (Official)”
Thessaloniki
“The villages and small farms around Thessaloniki were the scene of unprecedented atrocities. Bulgarian gangs in Macedonia were constantly implementing a policy of racial extermination against the Muslim population, and they continue to do so today. They captured the male population of the villages and imprisoned them in mosques. At night, they took them into the mountains and massacred each and every one of them.
Young Turkish girls were forced to marry Bulgarian young men. The Bulgarian government, however, turned a blind eye to all this and allowed the Bulgarian people and the gangs to continue their plundering.”
Korkut
“(p. 28) In the Muslim village of Korkut, in the neighborhood called Avrat Hisarı, they rounded up all the men from 200 houses, imprisoned them in the mosque, poured petrol on them, and burned them alive. They also burned three elderly women in a similar manner. Such atrocities, unseen anywhere else in the world, are repeated daily in Rumelia, and the Bulgarian population is carrying out these acts with great demonstrations and celebrations.”
Rojden
“(Letter from Osman Nuri, Rojden region official)
Sir, You want to expose the murders and atrocities committed by the enemy occupying Rumelia, crimes we have neither seen nor heard of in history. And you want to tell all of this to the deaf ears of the cultured world.
Allow me to tell you what I witnessed in Tikvesh. The reason for this is that the assassinations committed in Tikvesh and the surrounding villages are no different from the atrocities committed elsewhere.
Serbian massacres and war crimes
Serbian atrocities in Tikvesh
The Serbian army occupied Tikves on October 23. Two hours before the Serbian army entered the city, Bulgarian komitadjis, resembling monsters used to frighten children, poured into the streets carrying flags and shouting “jivio” wild. Serbian soldiers arrived shortly thereafter.
The commander immediately ordered the leading members of the Muslim community to gather in front of the town hall (p. 36) and demanded that the people surrender all their weapons within two hours. They acted in great haste to collect the weapons. On the one hand, they collected the weapons of the Muslim population, and on the other, they immediately armed the Bulgarian population.
The reason for the hasty disarmament of the Muslim population was to deprive these poor people of all means of defense and then to massacre them one after another. And so it was. When the last weapons were collected, the Bulgarians, joined by the Serbs, burst into the homes of the Muslims, stealing everything they found there: furniture, livestock, and grain. But the actual destruction did not end there.
It was the eve of Eid al-Adha. Suddenly, news spread like lightning that a Serbian soldier had been killed in the city. No one knew if this was true or a pretext. The Bulgarian militants, along with the Serbs, then ruthlessly created a bloodbath.”
“They mercilessly massacred everyone they found in the streets: young and old, women and children. The victims’ snow flowed like a stream in the streets. From the evening before Eid until the evening of the following day, gunfire could be heard from all sides.
The murder of our neighbor, court clerk Mehmed Ali, horrified us. They dragged this poor old man out of his house, took him to a small square, and shot him there. The streets echoed with the heartbreaking cries of “Allah, Allah…” (p. 37). On the same day, in a separate location, they shot another clerk in the head. He was Ali Efendi, a young man and his mother’s only son…
In our neighborhood alone, they killed twelve people without any apparent reason. I later heard that a total of one hundred and eighty people were killed in Tikvesh. I later learned from others how many people were killed in the surrounding Muslim villages. Their number exceeds four hundred.
It is impossible to count the number of acts of tyranny and injustice committed against morality and chastity. I will only mention a few of them.
Serbian soldiers entered the house of Sadi Efendi, the chief of the Tarnovo region near Tikvesh, under the pretext of searching for weapons. There, they tied him up and, in front of him, raped his wife and two virgin sisters-in-law. They then looted everything they found in the house.
Serbian soldier climbing the minarets balcony to peep through binoculars looking for Muslim women
“Serbian soldiers were no less humiliating than others in the humiliation of Muslim women. Serbian officers entered the home of a family that had moved here from Kosovo at night and committed similar atrocities. During the day, they climbed to the minaret’s balcony, peeped through binoculars into the courtyards and windows of neighboring houses, and if they spotted a beautiful woman or girl, they made sure to enter that night.”
“It was shining right. There was no mercy, no one to help. The screaming children huddled in terror against their mothers. At least for these things, they must live. There was no time to hesitate.
The girls and young women, their faces covered and sobbing, were then divided among the young men of the village. Each took home his or her own spoils. (Official)
Kavadarci
The following incident interestingly confirms how the Bulgarian population massacred Muslims according to a complex plan:
(p. 42) It happened in the city of Kavadarci (near Tikveş) after the Serbian occupation. It was the evening of Eid al-Adha. A Serbian soldier was looking for straw for his horse and, unable to find it, a few Bulgarians whispered to him where the young man could find it. They went to the house of a man named Hüseyin in the Bala neighborhood and entered through the door. While they were searching for straw, one Bulgarian split the soldier’s head in two with an axe, while another shot him with a pistol.
When the Serb was killed, the Bulgarians immediately rushed into the streets and began shouting at the top of their lungs, “Muslims are killing their soldiers.” The Serbian commander quickly learned of the incident, naturally from the Bulgarians. He then gave the order to kill every Muslim they encountered without mercy. The Bulgarians were expecting this.
They roamed the streets with Serbs, and within three and a half hours, nothing but rifle fire and cries of “burn” were heard in the city. In all, fifty-two men, women, and children were killed. (Official)”
Beknishta in Tikvesh
“Beknishta village (near Tikveş)
After the occupation of the surrounding area, the Serbian commander settled on Kavadarci.
One day, the Bulgarian villagers of Beknişta, breathless, went to the Serbian commander in Kavadarci and, in terror, told him that they had attacked the Turks in their village and begun to kill them. They demanded that the soldiers come quickly (8.43) and help them, warning that if they did not do so, they would all die.
The commander immediately took the soldiers the next day and personally went to the village. Upon arrival, they found silence everywhere; there was no sign of an uprising, and everyone was peacefully going about their business. Apart from a few scruffy dogs barking at the strangers, nothing else was happening.
“But why did you deceive me and bring me here?”
“Sir, we only wanted to see you, we could not find any other way for you to honor our village with your arrival; that is why we called you!” replied the gathered Bulgarians.
However, this whole maneuver was just a ruse.
Nine Muslims were arrested in Kavadar, and the Bulgarians wanted to deal with them immediately. As soon as the commander and his soldiers left the village, the Bulgarians seized the nine prisoners, took them to a distant location, and brutally murdered them. Upon his return, the commander heard what had happened, but no one touched the murderers. (Official)”
Sitne
“They dragged six adult girls from different families to the village of Sitne, where they raped all of them and continued this rape for six days.
On November 24, they dragged the girls naked into the middle of the village and murdered them all in front of a Bulgarian house called Papadija.
(Tanin, 12 Mart 1913)
The village of Kosani is thirteen kilometers from Monastir. There are only four hundred houses here.
An old man named Hacı Mahmud lived in this village and he was famous for his hospitality.
(p. 48) When Serbian soldiers occupied Bitola, news of this spread throughout the region, and Bulgarian gangs mobilized, searching the area for anything to destroy and ravage. Marauders from the neighboring village of Çapari, ten minutes from Kosani, captured the village’s most respected elder, Hacı Mahmud, dragged him to the mosque, and murdered him. They completely severed his head from his body. They then entered the village and set all the houses ablaze.
(Tanin, 12 Mart 1913)
The destruction of Serres
(Witness description)
“On the morning of a Tuesday, October 23, more than 200 guards, 190 regular soldiers and a large number of civilians entered Serres again after cutting the telegraph lines. I myself had received orders from the Salonika headquarters to keep my cool and not to move from my station: therefore, in accordance with this order, I remained there. But even that day I realized that the local Christian population was preparing something bad against me.”
“Muru Tahsin Bey’s family was also living there; Bulgarian soldiers were constantly coming in and out and stealing anything of value they found; they were raping the women.
It’s impossible to list the names of those whose money, watches, rings, and other valuables were stolen. Bulgarian authorities, to further humiliate the already defenseless Muslims, forced them to perform menial labor. Every day, they made elderly men with white beards, clerics in white and green turbans, and Turkish officials sweep the streets and clean the public toilets.
Sultan Yeri, Eğri Dere, Kırcaali, Kara Tepe, Koc Tepe
“Many people had fled to Komotini from Sultan Yeri, Eğri Dere, Kırcaali, and elsewhere. There must have been several thousand of them. The Bulgarian authorities lulled these unfortunates with every possible assurance and eventually massacred them in groups of hundreds. They particularly massacred the people of Kırca Ali in a systematic and planned manner.
Kara Tepe is a village six hours from Komotini (p. 55), populated entirely by Muslims. The Bulgarian inhabitants of the surrounding villages of Koçlu Altı and Hacılar killed all the Muslims of Kara Tepe and confiscated their property. They showed no mercy even to babies in their cradles.
Similarly, they massacred the Muslim population of the Koç Tepe village in the Komotini region without mercy.
Çay Hane is another Muslim village in the Komotini area. In the neighboring village of Kalaycı, a permanent friendship and brotherhood reigned between the Bulgarian and Turkish populations. Turkish officials had protected the Bulgarians against Serbian and Greek gangs on numerous occasions.
In return for all this service, the Bulgarians of Kalaycı promised their Turkish neighbors protection during the military occupation, but this magnanimity lasted only two weeks. After this, they made a deal with the militants and burned the Muslim village with them, massacring the men and raping the women. The death toll reached 28 or 30.”
Reference
Balkan Academia 