Balkan Pact

For other meanings, see Balkan Pact (disambiguation).

Balkan Pact

File:Entente balkanique (timbre roumain).jpg 1940 Romanian stamp featuring the Balkan Entente
250px Members of the Balkan Pact
Formation	February 9, 1934
Extinction	1938
Type	Military treaty
Region served	The Balkans
Membership	Greece Romania Turkey Yugoslavia
Official language	Greek, Turkish, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian

The Balkan Pact was a treaty signed by Greece, Turkey, Romania and Yugoslavia—the Balkan Entente—on February 9, 1934 in Athens, aimed at maintaining the geopolitical status quo in the region following World War I. The signatories agreed to suspend all disputed territorial claims against each other and their immediate neighbors following the aftermath of the war and a rise in various regional ethnic minority tensions. Other nations in the region that had been involved in related diplomacy refused to sign the document, including Italy, Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and the Soviet Union. Nonsignatories were mostly those governments with territorial expansion in mind. The pact became effective on the day it was signed. It was registered in the League of Nations Treaty Series on October 1, 1934.

The Balkan Pact helped to ensure peace between Turkey and the independent countries in southeastern Europe that had been part of the Ottoman Empire, most importantly Greece, but failed to stem regional intrigue. The countries of the pact surrounded Bulgaria, but on 31 July 1938 they signed an agreement with her in Salonika, repealing those clauses of the Treaty of Neuilly and Treaty of Lausanne that mandated demilitarised zones on the Greco-Bulgarian and -Turkish borders, and allowing Bulgaria to re-arm herself. From its strengthened position, Bulgaria would occupy parts of Yugoslavia and Greece during the Second World War.

See also

• Balkan Pact (1953)

External links

• Text of the pact
• Romania and the Balkan Pact (1934-1940)
• The Hidden Side of the Balkan Pact
• BALKAN PACT AND TURKEY