Sharing the Same Fate: Muslims and Jews of the Balkans · 57Roumelia in 1885, and from Greece during the Ottoman-Greek War of
- Jews of Russia and Central Asia who came to the Ottoman Empire
because of Russian persecution should also be mentioned. Even though
it did not materialize, Abdul-Hamid II thought of a mass settlement of
Jewish refugees from Russia and other countries in Eastern Anatolia in
1893.^25
During the Balkan Wars of 1912–13, Greece occupied western Thrace
and Thessaloniki, where Jews and Muslims had been living for centuries.
Greek and Bulgarian soldiers destroyed the mosques and synagogues,
attacked Muslims and Jews, and killed many of them. Greek persecution
forced the Jews and Muslims to flee to Ottoman lands.^26 Some European
journals, such as the Times, Le Temps, and the Jewish Chronicle covered
the attacks on the Jews and Turks and Greek soldiers’ assistance to the
aggressors.^27 According to Tevfik Biyiklioğlu, during the Balkan Wars
and World War I, more than 200,000 Muslims migrated to Turkey from
Thrace, Macedonia, and Epir, which came under Greek rule. Many Turks
from western Thrace, which became Bulgarian, took refuge in Ottoman
lands.^28 Kosovo and Vardar Macedonia passed to Serbia after the Balkan
Wars. Muslims of these regions were forced to accept Christianity. Fol-
lowing the Turkish army’s return, the Turks and other Muslims of the
area began to migrate to the Ottoman territories. Turkish and Muslim
migrations to Turkey continued during the following years as well.^29
During the late nineteenth and early twentienth centuries, the num-
ber of Jewish communities in the Ottoman cities increased by about 50
percent because of migrations from the Balkan countries. For instance,
in Bursa there were 2,179 Jews in 1883, but their number increased to
3,500 around 1900. The Jewish population of Silivri was 1,200 in 1896
and reached 2,024 in 1907. The number of Jews in Istanbul was 40,000 in
1886 and reached 65,000 in 1904; in the same period, the number of Jews
increased from 20,000 to 35,000 in Izmir. The number of Jews in Thes-
saloniki was 30,000 in 1880, grew to 60,000 in 1900, and reached 90,000
in 1908.^30 The Jewish population of Edirne increased from 4,000–5,000 in
1870 to close to 20,000 in 1912.^31
The journal of Angele Gueron, the director of the Alliance Israélite
Universelle School for Girls in Edirne, reflects the feelings of an intellec-
tual Jewish woman who considered herself an Ottoman patriot during
the siege of Edirne during the Balkan Wars. This paragraph was written
when the Bulgarian army entered the city full of promises: