The Contrasting Legacies of the South Slav Question

Abstract

Territorial disputes and demographic shifts shaped Ottoman relations with the Balkans before, during, and after the First World War. Ottoman Great War aims included recovery of territory in Thrace, Macedonia, and the Aegean Islands lost in the Balkan Wars. Wartime deportations of Greek Orthodox Christians reached their climax in the Turkish War of Independence and the population exchanges of 1922–23. The resulting Turco-Greek antagonism was one of the more enduring legacies of the Ottoman Great War.