[1][2][14][9][15][16][17][18][4][5] The 19th century saw the rise of nationalism in the Balkans coincide with the decline of Ottoman power, which resulted in the establishment of an independent Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania.

[22] Even before the Great Turkish War (1683–1699) Austrians and Venetians supported Christian irregulars and rebellious highlanders of Herzegovina, Montenegro and Albania to raid Muslim Slavs.

[23] The end of the Great Turkish War marked the first time the Ottoman Empire lost large areas of territory in Europe to Christians.

Most of Hungary, Croatia, Dalmatia, Slavonia, Montenegro, Podolia and the Morea were lost, and the Muslim minorities were killed, enslaved, or expelled to Muslim-ruled lands such as Bosnia.

[28] Professor Mitja Velikonja explains that Muslims and non-Slavs who lived in Hungary, Croatia (Lika and Kordun) and Dalmatia, had fled to Bosnia-Herzegovina, following the loss of the occupied territories in these regions after the Habsburg-Ottoman war of 1683–1699.

[44][47] Some Muslim families then migrated and resettled in Bosnia, where their descendants today reside in urban centres such as Šamac, Tuzla, Foča and Sarajevo.

[50] British historian William St Clair argues that what he calls "the genocidal process" ended when there were no more Turks to kill in what would become independent Greece.

[59] It is worth noting that in several instances, the Russians, under pressure from foreign generals, would not directly carry out massacres themselves, but rather would leave it to the battle-hardened Cossacks and Bulgarian militia.

As a matter of fact, as a result of this, in a very short time, hundreds of thousands of Bulgarians were systematically settled in Turkish houses, evicting their previous owners without mercy.

It was said that dogs and pigs gnawed spoiled corpses...it was a horrible sight..." The Governor of Plovdiv also reports that all Muslims: men, women and children, were shut in the mosque in the Serhadli and surrounding villages by the Bulgarians, and all of them were massacred by having their throats cut.

In these years, local administrations stood idly by as Muslims were assaulted, and as armed Bulgarians, who took advantage of this situation, began to commit rape against Muslim-Turkish women and girls on a massive scale.

[59] Bulgarians gathered Turkish youth and women from their homes at night in many villages, stripped them of their abayas, drank alcohol and sexually violated them.

[67] On the eve of the outbreak of a second round of hostilities between Serbia and the Ottoman Empire in 1877, a notable Muslim population existed in the districts of Niš, Pirot, Vranje, Leskovac, Prokuplje and Kuršumlija.

[85] Serbian forces entered the wider Toplica and Morava valleys capturing urban centres such as Niš, Kuršumlija, Prokuplije, Leskovac, and Vranje and their surrounding rural and mountainous districts.

[95] Tensions in the form of revenge attacks also arose by incoming Albanian refugees on local Kosovo Serbs that contributed to the beginnings of the ongoing Serbian-Albanian conflict in coming decades.

The conflict started in 1763, when the Russian Empire attempted to establish hostile forts in Circassian territory and quickly annex Circassia, followed by the Circassian refusal of the annexation;[103] only ending 101 years later when the last resistance army of Circassia was defeated on 21 May 1864, making it exhausting and casualty heavy for the Russian Empire as well as being the single longest war Russia ever waged in history.

Those who attempted to flee were shot down by Bulgarian commandants posted round the mosque, and Pere Michel found human heads, arms, and legs lying about half burned in the streets.

Whole villages, were made responsible for the total amount; most of the men were imprisoned and were obliged to sell everything they possessed, including their wives' ornaments, to pay the ransom.

For six days rifle shots were heard on all sides; the Muslims were afraid to leave their houses; and of this the Bulgarian soldiers took advantage to pillage their shops.

The Bulgarians subjected several Muslim notables to all sorts of humiliations; they were driven with whips to sweep the streets and stables; and many a blow was given to those who dared to wear a fez.

[132] It is reported that, in the village of Oklanli (or Lagahanli), the Bulgarian troops locked up Turkish women in houses, raped them over a period of 10 days, then burned them alive.

"[134] General Vladimir Liakhov gave the order to kill any Turk on sight and to destroy any mosque often in response to witnessing Armenian massacres and suffering Kurdish irregular attacks.

J. Rummel estimates that 128,000–600,000 Muslim Turks and Kurds were killed by Russian troops and Armenian irregulars; at least 128,000 of them between 1914–1915 according to Turkish statistician Ahmet Emin Yalman.

[139] The Turkish-German historian Taner Akçam in his book A Shameful Act writes of Vehip Pasha's detailed account of the reprisals against Muslims during the retreat of Armenian and Russian forces from Western Armenia in 1917–1918 and sets the figure at 3,000 killed in the Erzincan and the Bayburt areas.

Akçam also makes mention of a study of the Vilayet of Erzurum which sets the number of massacred Muslims as 25,000 in the spring of 1918, however, providing the examination of Armenian historian Vahakn Dadrian who claims from the wartime records of the Ottoman Third Army that "altogether some 5,000–5,500 victims are involved."

[154] The Inter-Allied commission, consisting of British, French, American and Italian officers found that "there is a systematic plan of destruction of Turkish villages and extinction of the Muslim population.

At the Conference, the chief negotiator of the Turkish delegation, Ismet Pasha, gave an estimate of 1.5 million Anatolian Turks that had been exiled or died in the area of Greek occupation.

[160] The forced mass displacement of Muslims out of the Balkans during the era of territorial contraction of the Ottoman Empire has become a topic of recent scholarly interest only in the 21st century.

[162] However, McCarthy's work has faced harsh criticism by many scholars, who have characterized his views as indefensibly biased towards Turkey[163] and defending Turkish atrocities against Armenians, as well as engaging in genocide denial.

He also argues that the dominant powers, by supporting "nation-statism" at the Congress of Berlin, legitimized "the primary instrument of Balkan nation-building": ethnic cleansing.