| Keeping the peace | |||||
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It’s 3 February 1897 as the Austro-Hungarian cruiser SMS Kaiserin und Koenigin Maria Theresia and the torpedo-boat destroyer SMS Sebenico sail out of Piraeus destined for the Cretan port of Chania.
When the two battleships dock at Chania the following day, thirty sailors go ashore. At the request of the Austro-Hungarian consul to Crete, Julius Pinter, himself a Hungarian, the platoon quickly establishes as cordon separating the Greek Christian and Muslim quarters in the city, preventing further bloodshed between the two communities.
In separating the two sides, the Austro-Hungarian troops were participating in the first peacekeeping mission in modern history, according to the Hungarian Military History Museum.
At the time of the Austro-Hungarian troop deployment, tension had been at a height on the Ottoman-ruled island for months. The island’s administrators had proven themselves wholly incapable of controlling the excesses of the resident Muslim minority, which opposed the sultan’s attempts to reappoint a Christian governor and restore some of the hard-won rights to the Christian population suspended some years previously.
Tired of Ottoman concessions and yearning for unity with the Greek mainland, rebels from the island’s Greek Christian population, which since the establishment of an independent Greece had revolted in 1841, 1858, 1866 and 1878, resumed their struggle once again.
Massacres
After a Muslim massacre of Christians in Chania in May 1896, renewed tensions, accompanied by a number of Cretan Muslim massacres of Christians, broke out again in February 1897.
Meanwhile, Greece dispatched a naval flotilla under Prince George to cut off Turkish reinforcements, and a 1,800-strong volunteer force landed on the island on February 14, where they were joined by 30,000 local insurgents. Together, the united Greek forces declared enosis, or unity, with Greece and took the fight to the Turkish garrison, which amounted to 10,800 troops.
Determined to prevent further bloodshed, however, the other major European powers, consisting of Britain, France, Germany, Russia and Italy, decided to follow on the Austro-Hungarian intervention, dispatching fleets of warships to Crete.
On February 12, Pasha Djordje Berovic, the Ottoman governor, formally requested the allies to intervene. Within weeks, the European fleet had grown to comprise 68 warships, which were placed under the command of the Italian admiral and headquartered at the Izzeddin fortress, outside Kalyves. On March 1, the administration of the island was assumed by the six powers, with the civil administration entrusted to Pinter, the Austro-Hungarian consul. The following day, the Greek government was called on to withdraw its troops and fleet and some days later the Turkish government was presented with a memorandum outlining a proposal to grant autonomy to Crete.
Six zones
Eventually, both governments agreed to the plan put forward by the powers and on March 20 signed an armistice.
From April onwards, the island was divided into six sectors, each under the authority of one of the powers: the Austro-Hungarians were based at the Izzeddin fortress, the Germans at Souda, the Italians at Ierapetra, the British at Irakleio, the French at Sitia and the Russians at Rethymno. Together, the powers deployed 2,600 troops.
While the situation in Crete was brought under control, war flared up elsewhere between Greece and Turkey. In April 1897, Greek troops crossed the border from Thessaly into Macedonia, then also under Ottoman rule. The following 30-day war ended in defeat for Greece, however.
By autumn, the situation on the island had been consolidated, leading to the gradual withdrawal of the international forces. The Austro-Hungarians, the first force to land, hauled down their colours from the Izzeddin fortress on 4 April 1898.
When Julius Pinter handed over the reins of the civil administration to the newly appointed Turkish governor, the world’s first international peacekeeping mission in the modern sense had come to an end.
Soon after, the autonomous Cretan State was established (see sidebar). This left the Greek Christian majority content, noted the British historian CM Woodhouse, as it was clear to them “that enosis [unity] was now only a step away”.
According to the data of the Institute and Museum of Military History in Budapest, the international force’s first casualty, and thus the first modernday international peacekeeping casualty, was the Hungarian Ferenc Martinak. An officer of the SMS Erzherzogin Stephanie, he died near Kandanos on 10 March 1897.
A Cretan state
ONE OF the outcomes of the Cretan crisis was the establishment of the Cretan State in 1898. It was an autonomous entity under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire and placed under the high commissionership of Prince George, second son of the king of Greece.
The statelet was essentially detached from the Ottoman Empire, whose troops had to vacate the island. In 1908, the members of the Cretan Assembly used the internal turmoil in the Ottoman Empire and the absence of Prince George’s successor, Alexandros Zaimis, to unilaterally declare enosis, or union, with Greece. It was not until the aftermath of the First Balkan War in 1913 that this act was recognised internationally. Under the terms of the Treaty of London, the Ottomans relinquished all claims to the island. In December, the Greek flag was raised at the Firkas fortress in Chania with Eleftherios Venizelos and King Constantine in attendance, and Crete was unified with mainland Greece.
The Muslim minority of Crete - then amounting to about 8 percent of the population - remained on the island but was later relocated to Turkey under the general population exchange agreed in the 1923 Lausanne Treaty between Turkey and Greece.
Developing understanding
The exhibition on the Cretan crisis of 1897-98 and the international response to it is an initiative of the Museum of Military History in Budapest and enjoys the cooperation of its Greek counterpart, the War Museum in Athens.
“This is a common point in the history of our nations,” explained Lieutenant-Colonel Zsolt Annus, defence attache at the Hungarian embassy in Greece, “and we were keen to highlight the Hungarian role in the Austro-Hungarian contribution.”
The opening of the exhibition on May 31 was attended by diplomats and military representatives from all six powers involved in the 1897-98 intervention. Annus hopes that the exhibition may expand through the cooperation with the military history museums of these countries in the future.
Hungarian Ambassador Jozsef Toth said that the exhibition will further enhance the understanding between the Greek and Hungarian people that is already developing at political level through the European Union.
* The Hungarian contribution to the international response to the Cretan crisis of 1897/98 is now the theme of a new exhibition, put together and sponsored by the Hungarian embassy, that runs at the Greece’s War Museum until June 13 and will open in Chania in the autumn
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| Athens News 14/Jun/2010 page 35 | |||||
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