#OnThisDay, July 13, 1878, the treaty of Berlin was signed by the Ottoman Empire and the other major European powers, including the United Kingdom, Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, the Kingdom of Italy, and Russia.
The treaty severely reduced the Ottoman Empire’s territorial possessions in the Balkans. The treaty also recognized the independence of the de facto sovereign principalities of Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro.
During the Serbo-Turkish War of 1876 - 1878, Russia threatened the Ottomans to sign a truce with the Serbians in order to stop the war. The first Serbo-Turkish war was won by the Ottomans but with Russian support to Serbia, the Ottomans lost the second war and the treaty of San Stefano (3 March 1878) was imposed on the Ottomans by Russia.
From June 13 to July 13, 1878, representatives of the major European powers convened in Berlin to renegotiate the Treaty of San Stefano. Congress sought to resolve not just the Russo-Turkish War but the many conflicts in the Balkans as well.
By the terms of the Treaty of Berlin, the Ottomans lost two-fifths of the empire’s territory and one-fifth of its population in the Balkans and eastern Anatolia. Among the territories surrendered were three provinces in the Caucasus region of eastern Anatolia—Kars, Ardahan, and Batum.
The Ottomans lost further territories to the European powers in addition to those surrendered in the Treaty of Berlin. Britain took Cyprus as a colony in 1878, France occupied Tunisia in 1881, and after intervening in Egypt’s 1882 crisis, Britain placed that autonomous Ottoman province under British colonial rule.
These losses convinced Sultan Abdülhamid II that he needed to rule the Ottoman Empire with a strong hand in order to protect it from further dismemberment by ambitious European powers. To his credit, between 1882 and 1908 Abdülhamid protected Ottoman domains from further dismemberment.
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