Some Authentic Turkish Documents About Macedonia

Introduction.

For all those interested in the situation in the Balkans, I am presenting here extracts from some authentic Turkish documents, which are an indisputable testimony in regard to the ethnic nature of the Macedonian Slavs. 1 am giving here in the first part of the edition a photocopy of Sultan’s FERMAN for the establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate on February 28th, 1870, and some parts from it. In the second part of the booklet I am giving fifteen photostatic copies of the document entitled YEARBOOK OF THE BITOLA VILAET, printed on the Arabic alphabet in 1902. The Yearbook consists of 249 pages. On the first page it is indicated that it had been printed in the Vilaet printing shop in Bitola. The Yearbook presents the official statistics of the Turkish vilaet (provincial) government of Bitola.
Here it should be noted that the term „Vilaet“ was used by the Ottoman regime to name the principal major administrative territorial unit of the empire. All of Macedonia, consisting of 67 thousand square kilometres, was divided into three Vilaets: the Vilaet of Salonik (which included only Macedonian districts) and the Vilaets of Bitola and Kosovo; the last one included also other territories to the north-west, inhabited predominantly by Albanians.
The Bitola Vilaet covered the south-western part of Macedonia, with Bitola as its main administrative city. This province with a predominant Bulgarian population was the most remote from the borders of the present Bulgarian state. It was precisely in this province that the famous llinden insurrection of 1903 took place, where the local Vlahs fought shoulder to shoulder with the Macedonian Bulgarians.

The Yearbook provided also a statistical data of the population for each district of the Vilaet; similar data presented the ethnic structure of the „nahii“ (nahiyas). By the term „nahiya“ the Turks were indicating smaller than a district administrative unit.

The third part of the booklet presents some Turkish documents on the murder of the one of the most famous Macedonian revolutionaries GOTSE DELCHEV (1872-1903). Being born in Kukush, Aegean Macedonia, he was one of the founders and leaders of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (IMRO). Gotse Delchev was a chief organiser and leader of the armed forces (chetas) of IMRO. He was then author of the first statute of IMRO, named „Statute of the Bulgarian Macedono-Adrianopol Revolutionary Committees". The present pro-Serb authorities in Skopje proclaim him as an „ethnic“ Macedonian, the emanation of the great spirit of the ‘Macedonian nation’ and so on – regardless of the Delchev’s writings in which he confessed his Bulgarian consciousness. The Turkish documents on the murder of Gotse Delchev were published in Skopje in 1992 by Aleksandar Stoyanovski (see Appendix No 15).

The fourth part of the book contains several pages from the MEMORIES of the Turkish national hero ENVER BEY (Enver Pasha), born in Resen, Vardar Macedonia. He was one of the Young Turks officers who, with arms in hand, rose in revolt against the Sultan’s regime, dethroned Abdul Hamid, and proclaimed the Huriet (freedom) in 1908. Enver Bey became extremely popular and his name will forever be connected with the above event in Turkish history. His Memoirs refer 30 times to the revolutionary struggle of the Bulgarian population in Macedonia, elaborating on the role played by all social classes: peasants, city folk, intellectuals... Enver Pasha knew Macedonia very well. He had graduated from the military school of Bitola and had stayed in Solun (Salonik), Shtip, Kochani, Veles, Tikvesh and other Macedonian cities. Excerpts from the Enver Bey’s Memoirs were quoted by the Turkish writer Shevket Sureyya Aydemir in his book entitled „From Macedonia to the Middle of Asia“, published in 1970 in Istanbul (see Appendix No 19).

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