Editing Macedonia (region) (section)

====Balkan Wars====
{{see also|First Balkan War}}
The imminent [[dissolution of the Ottoman Empire|collapse of the Ottoman Empire]] was welcomed by the Balkan states, as it promised to restore their European territory. The [[Young Turk Revolution]] of 1908 proved a nationalistic movement thwarting the peoples' expectations of the empire's modernization and hastened the end of the Ottoman occupation of the Balkans. To this end, an alliance was struck among the Balkan states in Spring 1913. The First Balkan War, which lasted six weeks, commenced in August 1912, when Montenegro declared war on the Ottoman Empire, whose forces ultimately engaged four different wars in Thrace, Macedonia, Northern and Southern Albania and Kosovo. The Macedonian campaign was fought in atrocious conditions. The retreat of the Ottoman army from Macedonia succeeded the desperate effort of the Greek and Bulgarian forces to reach the city of [[Thessalonica]], the "single prize of the first Balkan War" for whose status no prior agreements were done. In this case possession would be equal to acquisition. The Greek forces entered the city first liberating officially, a progress only positive for them. Glenny says: "for the Greeks it was a good war".

The first Balkan War managed to liberate Balkans from Turks and settled the major issues except Macedonia. In the spring 1913 the Serbs and Greeks begun the '[[Serbianization]]' and the '[[Hellenization]]' of the parts in Macedonia they already controlled, while Bulgarians faced some difficulties against the Jews {{Citation needed|date=August 2008}} and the Turkish populations. Moreover, the possession of Thessalonica was a living dream for the Bulgarians that were preparing for a new war. For this, the Bulgarian troops had a secret order in June 1913 to launch surprise attacks on the Serbs. Greece and Serbia signed a previous bilateral defensive agreement (May 1913). Consequently, Bulgaria decided to attack Greece and Serbia. After some initial gains the Bulgarians were forced to retreat back to Bulgaria proper and lose nearly all of the land they had conquered during the first war.

The Treaty of Bucharest (August 1913) took off most of the Bulgarian conquests of the previous years. A large part of Macedonia became southern Serbia, including the territory of what today is the Republic of North Macedonia, and southern Macedonia became [[Macedonia (Greece)|northern Greece]]. Greece almost doubled its territory and population size and its northern frontiers remain today, more or less the same since the Balkan Wars. However, when Serbia acquired 'Vardarska Banovina' (the present-day Republic of North Macedonia), it launched having expansionist views aiming to descend to the Aegean, with Thessalonica as the highest ambition. However, Greece after the population exchange with Bulgaria, soon after its victory in the Balkan wars, managed to give national homogeneity in the Aegean and any remaining Slavic-speakers were absorbed.

Many volunteers from Macedonia joined Bulgarian army and participated in the battles against Bulgarian enemies in these wars—on the strength of the [[Macedonian-Adrianopolitan Volunteer Corps]] and other units.