Cheta (armed group)

A cheta (Albanian: çeta; Aromanian: ceatã; Bulgarian: чета; Greek: τσέτης; Romanian: ceată; Turkish: çete; Serbian: чета, romanized: četa), in plural chetas, were irregular armed bands present throughout the 19th-century Ottoman Empire, particularly in Anatolia and in the Balkans.

[1][2] In the late Ottoman Empire, armed rebellions became a chronic feature during the struggle for Macedonia of 1893 to 1912 as armed groups of pro-Bulgarian,[3][4] as well as pro-Serbian, pro-Greek, Aromanian and Albanian formations fought against each other as well as against the Ottoman troops, trying to impose their nationality on the territory's inhabitants at a time when increasingly harsh Ottoman crackdowns indicated that reform and reconciliation of the Ottoman state with the various nationalist groups seemed increasingly less likely.

[8] Muslim chetas were active in Asia Minor after World War I.

They were notorious for their assaults on Christian Orthodox Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians during the late Ottoman genocides of c. 1913 to c. 1924.

[9][10] The term was also used as a synonym for members of the Ottoman Empire's Special Organization[11] (operative c. 1913 to 1920).