Abstract:

As an “American Board” missionary, Joseph Kingsbury Greene served in the Ottoman Empire for 51 years. He spent most of his time in Istanbul. During his long stay he followed carefully all the events. Meanwhile he formed slowly his judiciary and ideas of what was going on two sides of the Bosporus. Green who witnessed the war and developments of the Balkan wars that has an important place in the Ottoman Empire published his opinion and evaluations in 1913 in a pamphlet entitled “Turkey and the Balkan War”. In this pamphlet, with an American protestant missionary point of view, Greene discussed Turks, the secret of the power of the Turkish armies, the causes of the decline in the Ottomans and the Young Turk revolution of 1908 and analyzed the causes and consequences of the Balkan Wars. In this article, the Ottoman Empire and the Balkan War will be discussed through the eyes of Joseph K. Greene.