The Salonika Agreement (also called the Thessaloniki Accord) was a treaty signed on 31 July 1938 between Bulgaria and the Balkan Entente (Greece, Romania, Turkey and Yugoslavia). The signatories were, for the former, Prime Minister Georgi Kyoseivanov and, for the latter, in his capacity as President of the Council of the Balkan Entente, Ioannis Metaxas, Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Greece. [1]
The agreement was the result of the realization by the Entente that Bulgaria alone could not threaten the members of the Entente acting in concert and that the Bulgarian government desired to follow a policy of peace. That was shown by at least two signs. A protocol signed at Belgrade on 17 March 1934 by the Balkan Entente was published privately in May and revealed that the members had plans to occupy Bulgaria jointly if efforts to suppress terrorist organizations operating out of its territory were not successful. The new Bulgarian government of Kimon Georgiev, coming to power on 19 May, responded to the private revelation by clamping down on the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization. [2]
Also, on 24 January 1937, the Bulgarian–Yugoslav Treaty of Eternal Friendship was concluded, which was approved by the other members of the Entente although Greece was initially very hostile. [3] In November 1936, the chiefs of staff of the four Balkan powers signed a draft military alliance, which was confirmed as an integral part of the Balkan Pact at the meeting of the Balkan Council on 15–18 February 1937. [2]
The agreement removed the arms restrictions placed on Bulgaria after World War I by the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine and allowed it to occupy the demilitarised zone bordering Greece. [4] The demilitarised zones along the Turkish borders with Bulgaria and Greece, a result of the Treaty of Lausanne, were also abandoned. [5] All the parties committed to a policy of non-aggression, but Bulgaria was not forced to abandon its territorial revisionism. [6]
Bulgaria had long protested the restrictions placed on armaments at Neuilly, but unlike Austria, Germany and Hungary, it had a good track record of abiding by them. In the 1930s, it began to evade them by buying military equipment from Germany since it was refused orders placed in the United Kingdom. The Bulgarians argued, with the support of the United States, that the League of Nations, which was designed to protect weak and disarmed states, was not powerful enough to protect Bulgaria. [7]
In November 1937, when the pace of rearmament had picked up, a British memorandum advised a "blind eye" policy towards it and pressured the Entente and France to do the same to prevent Bulgaria from falling under the influence of the Italo-German Axis. [7] The British memo specified that Bulgaria was set to violate all the pertinent articles of the treaty:
The relevant articles of the treaty are #78, which prohibits fortification of any further places in Bulgaria, #81, which prohibits the importation of arms, munitions, and war materials of all kinds, #82, prohibiting the manufacture and importation into Bulgaria of armoured cars, tanks and any similar machines suitable for use in war, #86, which prohibits the construction or acquisition of any submarine, even for commercial purposes and #89, which prohibits the inclusion in the armed forces of Bulgaria of any military or naval air forces. [8]
Turkey strongly opposed Bulgaria's accelerated rearmament in 1934, especially on account of the weakness of the Greek army. By the time of the Salonika Agreement, however, the Greek and Turkish armies had recovered from the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922), leaving it to be accepted as a fait accompli. [9]
The Balkan Wars were a series of 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 original 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 thus served as a prelude to the First World War.
The Balkans, corresponding partially with the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the whole of Bulgaria. The Balkan Peninsula is bordered by the Adriatic Sea in the northwest, the Ionian Sea in the southwest, the Aegean Sea in the south, the Turkish straits in the east, and the Black Sea in the northeast. The northern border of the peninsula is variously defined. The highest point of the Balkans is Musala, 2,925 metres (9,596 ft), in the Rila mountain range, Bulgaria.
Entente, meaning a diplomatic "understanding", may refer to a number of agreements:
The (Montreux) Convention regarding the Regime of the Straits, often known simply as the Montreux Convention, is an international agreement governing the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits in Turkey. Signed on 20 July 1936 at the Montreux Palace in Switzerland, it went into effect on 9 November 1936, addressing the long running Straits Question over who should control the strategically vital link between the Black and Mediterranean seas.
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.
Eleftherios Kyriakou Venizelos was a Cretan Greek statesman and prominent leader of the Greek national liberation movement. He is noted for his contribution to the expansion of Greece and promotion of liberal-democratic policies. As leader of the Liberal Party, he held office as prime minister of Greece for over 12 years, spanning eight terms between 1910 and 1933. During his governance, Venizelos entered into diplomatic cooperation with the Great Powers and had a profound influence on the internal and external affairs of Greece. He has therefore been labelled as "The Maker of Modern Greece" and is still widely known as the "Ethnarch".
The Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine was a treaty between the victorious Allies of World War I on the one hand, and Bulgaria, one of the defeated Central Powers in World War I, on the other. The treaty required Bulgaria to cede various territories.
Western Thrace or West Thrace also known as Greek Thrace or Aegean Thrace, is a geographical and historical region of Greece, between the Nestos and Evros rivers in the northeast of the country; East Thrace, which lies east of the river Evros, forms the European part of Turkey, and the area to the north, in Bulgaria, is known as Northern Thrace.
The Treaty of London or the Pact of London was a secret agreement concluded on 26 April 1915 by the United Kingdom, France, and Russia on the one part, and Italy on the other, in order to entice the latter to enter World War I on the side of the Triple Entente. The agreement involved promises of Italian territorial expansion against Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and in Africa where it was promised enlargement of its colonies. The Entente countries hoped to force the Central Powers – particularly Germany and Austria-Hungary – to divert some of their forces away from existing battlefields. The Entente also hoped that Romania and Bulgaria would be encouraged to join them after Italy did the same.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, also known as Mustafa Kemal Pasha until 1921, and Ghazi Mustafa Kemal from 1921 until the Surname Law of 1934, was a Turkish field marshal, revolutionary statesman, author, and the founding father of the Republic of Turkey, serving as its first president from 1923 until his death in 1938. He undertook sweeping progressive reforms, which modernized Turkey into a secular, industrializing nation. Ideologically a secularist and nationalist, his policies and socio-political theories became known as Kemalism (Atatürkism).
Venizelism was one of the major political movements in Greece beginning from the 1910s. The movement first formed under Eleftherios Venizelos in the 1910s and saw a resurgence of support in the 1960s when Georgios Papandreou united a coalition of old Venizelists and nationalist politicians.
The Balkan Pact, or Balkan Entente, was a treaty signed by Greece, Romania, Turkey and Yugoslavia on 9 February 1934 in Athens, aimed at maintaining the geopolitical status quo in the region after the end of World War I. To present a united front against Bulgarian designs on their territories, the signatories agreed to suspend all disputed territorial claims against one another and their immediate neighbours following the aftermath of the war and a rise in various regional irredentist tensions.
The Tsardom of Bulgaria, also known as the Third Bulgarian Tsardom, sometimes translated as the Kingdom of Bulgaria, or simply Bulgaria, was a constitutional monarchy in Southeastern Europe, which was established on 5 October [O.S. 22 September] 1908, when the Bulgarian state was raised from a principality to a tsardom.
Georgi Ivanov Kyoseivanov was a Bulgarian politician who was Prime Minister from 1935 until 1940.
The Armistice of Salonica was the armistice signed at 10:50 p.m. on 29 September 1918 between Bulgaria and the Allied Powers at the General Headquarters of the Allied Army of the Orient in Thessaloniki. The armistice came into force at noon on 30 September 1918. The armistice would remain in effect until the conclusion of the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine, the final general peace treaty, in November 1919.
The Kingdom of Bulgaria participated in World War I on the side of the Central Powers from 14 October 1915, when the country declared war on Serbia, until 30 September 1918, when the Armistice of Salonica came into effect.
The Negotiations of Bulgaria with the Central Powers and the Entente were attempts of the two belligerents in World War I, the Central Powers and the Entente to involve Bulgaria in the war on their side. They are also called The Bulgarian Summer of 1915.
Bulgarian–Turkish relations or the Turko-Bulgarian relations are the bilateral relations between the Republic of Bulgaria and the Republic of Turkey. Bulgaria has an embassy in Ankara, two general consulates in Istanbul and Edirne and a chancellery in Bursa. Turkey has an embassy in Sofia and two general consulates in Plovdiv and Burgas.
Rearmament may refer to:
The Liberation of Serbia, Albania and Montenegro was a military action in the Balkans in the final weeks of World War I. Between 29 September and 11 November 1918, the Allied Army of the Orient liberated these three countries from occupation by the Central Powers.
