VOLUNTEERS FROM SANJAK IN GALICIA (1916/1917)

Based on unpublished sources from Serbian, Turkish, Austrian and other archives, we illuminate the phenomenon of Muslim volunteers (volunteers). In this study, on the basis of archival material and the telling of contemporaries, we are talking about Bosniak warriors who were taken away to write history, but most of them did not know the geography. Namely, after the occupation of the Sandžak region (November 21, 1915), in the autumn of 1916 - the spring of 1917, the Austro-Hungarian Army, with the help of local ages and begs, carried out a fierce propaganda campaign, after which in the struggle against the Russians, front in Ukraine, took more than 10 thousand volunteers aged between 18 and 50 years. The occupying Austro-Hungarian authorities used the Ottoman Empire to enter the First World War on the side of the Central Powers for propaganda against the forces of Antanta, accusing them of the First World War for the destruction of Muslims, opposing the Bosniak population the illusion of the renewal of the Ottoman authorities in Sandzak. The second phase of mobilization (1917) denies the claim of "volunteers" because most of them are violently intervened. In the nation, these warriors were still known as "dwarfs". Most of them disappeared or transferred to the Middle East fronts. Every tenth captured or survived returned to homeland, which explains the vast post-war depopulation of the male population.