The Russo-Turkish War of 1877 and 1878

The Russo-Turkish War last for ten months and 1 week. It was a conflict between an Eastern Orthodox coalition, led by Russia and including Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro, and the Ottoman Empire. It was fought in the Balkans and was mainly about emerging Balkan nationalism in states that had been dominated by the Ottoman Empire for centuries. There was also the idea that Russia wanted to gain back some of the territories it had lost during the Crimean War of the 1850s.

The Russian coalition won the war and pushed the Ottoman Empire back to Constantinople and it claimed territories in the Caucasus and it annexed the Budjak region which lies between present-day Ukraine and Moldova.

The full scale war, while a victory for the Russian Empire, did lead to some problems for the citizens of the Russian Empire, namely the Muslim population. The treatment of the Crimean Tartar ethnic group, majority of whom were Muslim, got increasingly cruel.

Another, somewhat irrelevant but interesting consequence of the war is that this was the point when there was a divergence between the signs of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent. Originally the Red Cross was the symbol for medical personal and medical aid, as it was the neutral flag of Switzerland in inverted colours, but during the war, the Ottoman Empire elected to switch their sign with the Red Crescent which is the flag of modern-day Turkey in inverted colours. To this day there remains a divide between the two, with Christian and more secular countries using the Red Cross symbols, with most Muslim countries opting for the Red Crescent.