A high-level visit to the region during the Third Albanian rebellion: Sultan Mehmed Reşad's Rumelia trip

Ottoman sultans have traveled to various regions at different times in order to strengthen the central authority and establish contact with the people since the 19th century. Among the Ottoman sultans who continued this tradition during his reign, Sultan Mehmed Reşad's travels were the most important and most notable of which. The travel in question was organized to strengthen state relations with the Albanians and establish dominance in the region after the Albanian rebellions that emerged as a result of the policies implemented by the Union and Progress administration, the political authority of the period, in the Rumelian lands were suppressed. The travel carried out by the sultan and important state authorities to important centers of Rumelia between June 5-26, 1911 stands out as an important strategic initiative in terms of being a means of political legitimacy, establishing psychological superiority in the Balkans and being a unifying symbol among Ottoman elements. In this study, Sultan Mehmed Reşad's 1911 Rumelia trip was evaluated within the framework of a holistic analysis, based on archive documents and existing academic studies, primarily in Istanbul newspapers, in terms of the situation in the region before the trip, Albanian rebellions, policies of the Ottoman governments, the travel process and developments following the trip. During the trip, it was aimed to evaluate how the political atmosphere of the period was reflected in the press and the effects of its function in social perception management by making determinations in line with the news and evaluations in Istanbul newspapers that were in the ruling and opposition positions of the period. The historical results of the Rumelia trip were evaluated by considering the general situation before the trip, the travel process and the developments following the trip as a whole, especially the newspaper news analyzed with a multi-dimensional approach. In this context, the study examines the Rumelia trip as a whole and offers a detailed analysis aimed at understanding the atmosphere of the period.