The 1910 and 1911 Albanian Uprisings and the Dualism of the Greek Foreign Policy

Convinced that Albanians should continue their fight against the Young Turks because their national existence was at stake, the Albanian’s nationalist, Ismail Qemal Vlora remained in constant contact and on good terms with Greek statesmen and politicians both in the anti-ottoman Uprising of 1910 and in the other one a year later. As long as the Greek state was economically and militarily weak and in non-peaceful relations with its neighbors, and as long as the Great Powers were determined to maintain the status- quo, Greece tried to use at its best the situation created by the Albanian uprisings so as to ensure the European intervention, which would open discussions on the unsolved issues in the Ottoman Empire. Two of those issues, Crete and Macedonia, were considered of primary importance and extremely difficult for the Greek politics. The Greek policy towards the Albanian issue had a dual character: peaceful and armed. The former involved any political action intended to channel the Albanian issue to a dual Greco-Albanian state. The latter referred to the strengthening and continuous supporting of the Uprising against the Ottoman Empire in northern Albania. But this was only one side of the Greek policy towards the Albanian issue. In an effort to implement the Megali Idea, Greece prevented the spread of the Uprisings in Lower Albania, whose territories it openly claimed.Keywords: Ottoman Empire, Albanian National Movement, Greece, Uprising, Megali-Idea