Salonika Agreement
1938 treaty between the Balkan Entente and Bulgaria
The Salonika Agreement (also called the Thessaloniki Accord) was a treaty signed on 31 July 1938 between Bulgaria and the Balkan Entente (Greece, Romania, Turkey and Yugoslavia). The signatories were, for the former, Prime Minister Georgi Kyoseivanov and, for the latter, in his capacity as President of the Council of the Balkan Entente, Ioannis Metaxas, Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Greece.
Background
The agreement was the result of the realization by the Entente that Bulgaria alone could not threaten the members of the Entente acting in concert and that the Bulgarian government desired to follow a policy of peace. That was shown by at least two signs. A protocol signed at Belgrade on 17 March 1934 by the Balkan Entente was published privately in May and revealed that the members had plans to occupy Bulgaria jointly if efforts to suppress terrorist organizations operating out of its territory were not successful. The new Bulgarian government of Kimon Georgiev, coming to power on 19 May, responded to the private revelation by clamping down on the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization.
Also, on 24 January 1937, the Bulgarian–Yugoslav Treaty of Eternal Friendship was concluded, which was approved by the other members of the Entente although Greece was initially very hostile. In November 1936, the chiefs of staff of the four Balkan powers signed a draft military alliance, which was confirmed as an integral part of the Balkan Pact at the meeting of the Balkan Council on 15–18 February 1937.
Terms
The agreement removed the arms restrictions placed on Bulgaria after World War I by the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine and allowed it to occupy the demilitarised zone bordering Greece. The demilitarised zones along the Turkish borders with Bulgaria and Greece, a result of the Treaty of Lausanne, were also abandoned.
“Salonika Agreement” enters the record as 1938 treaty between the Balkan Entente and Bulgaria. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Salonika, Agreement and treaty can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q10513368. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1938, 1934, 1937 and 1936.
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This entry incorporates text from “Salonika Agreement” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.