Abstract:

Balkan crisis that began with Herzegovina Rebellion in 1875 could be accepted to be the crossroad for the England’s eastern politics and for Ottoman-English relations. The public opinion pressure caused by Bulgarian rebellion, which was an important phase of Bulgarian crisis, prepared the ground for British government to reconsider the eastern politics and to lead it to a new stage of change. Despite that, British government did not quit its political stand that was based on Ottoman’s independence and its union of territory. The shift in England’s political stance lasted during Ottoman-Serbian, Montenegrin wars and right before the Istanbul Conference that was gathered to solve the “Eastern Question”. This political stance was going to be moved to a more radical line with England’ conference representative Lord Salisbury whose main opinion was to divide the Ottoman and to make a deal with Russia. Since the deal that was prepared by the cooperation of Salisbury and Russian representative Ignatiew totally ignored the independence of the Ottoman Empire, it was going to invite a failure rather than a solution. As a result, this prepared the ground for Russia to move alone against Ottoman Empire in behalf of Europe to “save the Christians from the dominion of Ottomans,” and thus engulfed Ottoman Empire to a war with Russia in April of 1877.

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