ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the possibilities of ethnic conflicts to be mitigated within a state and discusses the cooperative alternatives that exist between the states of the Balkans. However, Romania sought to regain the southern Dobrudja, which it succeeded in doing with the settlement of the Second Balkan War. Thus, Bulgaria's view of the Balkan situation from 1913 through World War II was rather cynical. For instance, Bulgaria's conflicts with the Ottoman Turks, the Greeks, and the Serbs can all be traced to the Ottoman period, The administration of the Ottoman Empire created in Bulgarians a sense of being underprivileged, in competition with its neighbors, and historically slighted. Bulgaria's relations with its neighbors were further strained by the internal division among Bulgarian revolutionaries over just what sort of freedom Bulgaria would seek from the Ottoman Empire and what sort of Bulgaria would be set up.
