Balkan Wars: The Conflicts That Caused the Demise of the Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire that entered the twentieth century bore little resemblance to the mighty state that had once threatened the gates of Vienna and controlled vast territories across three continents, as centuries of military defeat, territorial losses, and internal decay had reduced the once-formidable empire to a shadow of its former self while the rise of nationalism among its Christian subjects created existential challenges that would ultimately prove insurmountable. The empire's designation as the "Sick Man of Europe" by Tsar Nicholas I in the 1850s had proven prophetic, as successive defeats in wars with Russia, Austria-Hungary, and various Balkan states had stripped away territories while internal rebellions and foreign interventions had demonstrated the weakness of central authority and the growing impossibility of maintaining multi-ethnic unity in an age of rising national consciousness.

The Congress of Berlin in 1878 had marked a crucial turning point in Ottoman decline while establishing the principle that the great powers would determine the fate of Ottoman territories based on their own strategic interests rather than Ottoman preferences or the expressed wishes of local populations. The congress's decisions to grant independence to Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania while creating an autonomous Bulgaria effectively removed the empire's most valuable European provinces from direct Ottoman control while establishing precedents for external intervention that would encourage further territorial losses. The occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary and the British occupation of Cyprus demonstrated how Ottoman weakness invited foreign encroachment while the empire's acceptance of these arrangements revealed the extent to which Constantinople had lost control over its own destiny.