ABSTRACT
Thessaloniki was in the vanguard in printing in southeast Europe, with its first press established at the beginning of the 16th century. In the 19th century, Thessaloniki had several Jewish, Greek, and Turkish papers. The first Turkish/Ottoman newspaper, launched in 1869 on the initiative of the local administration, in four languages, was entitled Selanik/Salonica/Thessaloniki/Solun! Until 1908, Thessaloniki’s Bulgarian-language press lagged behind the others in number of imprints and in circulation. This changed in the four years prior to the Balkan Wars, when the Young Turk revolution imposed pacification in Macedonia and returned the national rivalry to more political means. The study of Bulgarian newspapers and periodicals in Thessaloniki before 1912 reveals the quarrels within the Bulgarian-Exarchist community, but also the general hyper-politicization of the press in the service of nationalist aims.
