Illustrated Atrocity: The Stigmatisation of Non-Muslims through Images in the Ottoman Empire during the Balkan Wars

Abstract

Illustrated Atrocity: The Stigmatisation of Non-Muslims through Images in the Ottoman Empire during the Balkan Wars

This article shows that native non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire were seen as «internal» enemies in the course of the Second Constitutional Period after the Young Turk revolution in 1908. It is argued that the Balkan Wars were a watershed in the creation of native non-Muslims as «others». The influx of Muslims from the Balkans and Crete populated the Ottoman Empire with people who were full of resentment against the Ottoman Empire's native Christians, whose co-religionists had expelled them from their homeland. Their accounts of immigration and sufferings deeply influenced Muslim public opinion. This is demonstrated by referring to the spreading of sentiments of Muslims through various print media such as periodicals, pamphlets, leaflets, flyers and, above all, illustrations showing how Muslims suffered in the hands of Greeks and Bulgarians in the lost lands.