page_title: Second Balkan War
section_title: Ottoman intervention
hierarchical_section_title: Second Balkan War / Ottoman intervention
caption_attribution_description: English: Ahmet Izzet Pasha (1864-1937), Prime Minister (Grand Vizier) of the Ottoman Empire for 25 days in 1918, during the last days of World War I
context_page_description: The Second Balkan War was a conflict which broke out when Bulgaria, dissatisfied with its share of the spoils of the First Balkan War, attacked its former allies, Serbia and Greece, on 16 / 29 June 1913. Serbian and Greek armies repulsed the Bulgarian offensive and counter-attacked, entering Bulgaria. With Bulgaria also having previously engaged in territorial disputes with Romania, this war provoked Romanian intervention against Bulgaria. The Ottoman Empire also took advantage of the situation to regain some lost territories from the previous war. When Romanian troops approached the capital Sofia, Bulgaria asked for an armistice, resulting in the Treaty of Bucharest, in which Bulgaria had to cede portions of its First Balkan War gains to Serbia, Greece and Romania. In the Treaty of Constantinople, it lost Edirne to the Ottomans.
  The political developments and military preparations for the Second Balkan War attracted an estimated 200 to 300 war correspondents from around the world.
context_section_description: The lack of resistance to the Romanian invasion convinced the Ottomans to invade the territories just ceded to Bulgaria. The main object of the invasion was the recovery of Edirne (Adrianople), which was held by Major General Vulko Velchev with a mere 4,000 troops. The majority of Bulgarian forces occupying Eastern Thrace had been withdrawn earlier in the year to face the Serbo-Greek attack. On 12 July, Ottoman troops garrisoning Çatalca and Gelibolu reached the Enos–Midia line and on 20 July 1913 crossed the line and invaded Bulgaria. The entire Ottoman invasion force contained between 200,000 and 250,000 men under the command of Ahmed Izzet Pasha. The 1st Army was stationed at the eastern (Midia) end of the line. From east to west it was followed by the 2nd Army, 3rd Army and 4th Army, which was stationed at Gelibolu.
  In the face of the advancing Ottomans, the greatly outnumbered Bulgarian forces retreated to the pre-war border. Edirne was abandoned on 19 July, but when the Ottomans did not occupy it immediately the Bulgarians re-occupied it the next day (20 July). Since it was apparent that the Ottomans were not stopping, it was abandoned a second time on 21 July and occupied by the Ottomans on 23 July. Edirne had been conquered by Sultan Murad I in the 1360s and had served as the first European capital of the Empire before the capture of Constantinople in 1453. Minister of War Enver Pasha, in a typical display of vanity, called himself the "Second Conqueror of Edirne", although the conquering forces had met no resistance on the way to Edirne.
  The Ottoman armies did not stop at the old border, but crossed into Bulgarian territory. A cavalry unit advanced on Yambol. The Ottoman invasion, more than the Romanian, incited panic among the peasantry, many of whom fled to the mountains. Among the leadership it was recognized as a complete reversal of fortune. In the words of historian Richard Hall, "[t]he battlefields of eastern Thrace, where so many Bulgarian soldiers had died to win the First Balkan War, were again under Ottoman control." Like the Romanians, the Ottomans suffered no combat casualties, but lost 4,000 soldiers to cholera. During the invasion and in the aftermath of the conquest, the Ottoman forces carried out atrocities against the Bulgarians in Eastern Thrace and expelled nearly all of them, as recounted in the 1918 book The Destruction of the Thracian Bulgarians in 1913.
  To help Bulgaria repulse the rapid Ottoman advance in Thrace, Russia threatened to attack the Ottoman Empire through the Caucasus, and send its Black Sea Fleet to Constantinople; this caused Britain to intervene.
caption: Ahmed Izzet Pasha in uniform (c. 1913)
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