Research Information System
ISA 55th AnnualConvention: Spaces and Places: Geopolitics in an Era of Globalization, Toronto, Canada, 26 - 29 March 2014, pp.1-18
Once Joachim Remak proposed that The First World war started as the Third Balkan war. This paper aims at contributing this proposition by constructing a checks and balances model which did materalize after Congress of Berlin in 1878 to fulfill the power vacuum that had been created after the Turco-Russian War. The system rested on the duality of Austria-Hungary and Russia as the balancers and Ottoman Empire as a mid-power to check the ambitious and uneasy new Balkan states; thus it rested on a hierarchy. This system was succesfull in preserving the peace and the Balkan problems were succesfully localized until 1908. The annexation of Bosnia by Austria was the major blow which had started the chain reaction that would lead to the Balkan Wars and the downfall of the mid power -Ottoman Empire- and therefore the system which had rested on her role. The paper will discuss the establishment and the failure of the checks and balances system in Balkans and its relation with the begining of the First World War.