Eastern Front in the Balkan Wars (1912-1913)

The Balkan Wars are extremely important in terms of taking place in a period when the Ottoman Empire was military unprepared, politically turbulent and economically inadequate just before the First World War. The four Balkan states, which were almost impossible to meet until then, established alliances among them against the Ottoman Empire with the support of Russia. Their goals were to share the territory of Macedonia. The battles carried out on the Thrace Region, the Eastern Front, which determines the fate of the war. In these battles, which were rarely encountered in terms of Ottoman military history, the Ottoman armies lost their battles in Kırklareli and Lüleburgaz-Pınarhisar in a very short time and had to withdraw to the Çatalca line. This led to the siege of Edirne and the connection between the Eastern Front and the Western Front to break. The loss of almost all Thrace territory in a month of about one month caused different reactions in the Ottoman and international public opinion, but prepared the ground for government changes and coup in domestic politics. Ultimately, with the London Treaty signed with the intervention of the European states, the Ottoman Empire lost most of its territory in the Balkan geography. However, it was perhaps the last chance that the Balkan allies were brought to war among themselves and that Romania was included, in order to reclaim some of the lost lands of the Ottoman Empire. Thereupon, the Turkish Army, which was further operation from Çatalca, was saved Edirne and Kırklareli from the Bulgarian occupation. Keywords: Balkan Wars, Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria, Eastern Front, Military Operations, Public Opinion.