Balkan Pact

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 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.