From Cooperation to Alienation: An Insight into Relations between the Serres Group and the Young Turks during the Years 1906–9

Abstract

This article deals with the genesis and development of the unlikely cooperation between the Serres group, the Leftist breakaway faction of the Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (MRO) and the Young Turk organization in Ottoman Macedonia in the period 1906–9. The author argues that reasons of political expediency made this pact possible. The Serres Committee’s decision to work with the Young Turks was linked to its policy of opposing the Bulgarian administration and its Macedonian organizations. Further, the Serres group believed that the pact with the Young Turks would increase its political freedom and power in Macedonia, while the Young Turks felt that the cooperation with the Serres group would raise their influence among the Christian population in Macedonia and provide evidence of their ability to unite Christians and Muslims against the Hamidian regime. Following the successful July 1908 movement, the ruling Young Turks preserved their understanding with the Left MRO faction as a means of putting pressure on the Bulgarian government and diminishing the influence of its Macedonian organization. Yet in those years of bilateral cooperation signs of reciprocal circumspection and mistrust were obvious. Both sides considered the maintenance of this awkward pact a ‘necessary evil’. Had it not been for their common fear of Bulgaria and its Macedonian Committees, it would have been impossible for the two sides to tolerate each other since their ideology, policies and activity differed substantially both in content and perspective.