Jovan Ćirković

Jovan Ćirković
File:Jovan Cirkovic.JPG Jovan Ćirković
Born	1871 Pljevlja, Ottoman Empire (now Montenegro)
Died	1928
Allegiance	Serbian Chetnik Organization (1903–08)
Years of service	1903–08
Rank	Voivode (Vojvoda)
Battles/wars	Macedonian Serb Struggle

Jovan Ćirković (Serbian Cyrillic: Јован Ћирковић; 1871-1928), known as Čifa (Чифа) or Ćirko-paša (Ћирко-паша), was a Serbian teacher, revolutionary (Chetnik) during the Macedonian Struggle, and politician.

Life

Ćirković was born in Pljevlja, Ottoman Empire (now Montenegro), into a Serbian Orthodox family. He finished primary school in his hometown. He finished from the Teacher's School of the Society of Saint Sava in 1891, and worked as a teacher in the surroundings of Pljevlja, in Kumanovo, Tetovo, Skoplje, Veles and Prilep. He was also a superintendent and inspector of Serbian schools in the Bitola Vilayet. Since 1901 he was secretary of the Patriarchatic Veles-Debar bishop Polikarp.

In 1903, he and Aleksa Jovanović-Kodža established the Bitola Board of the Serbian Chetnik Organization, in which he would have the task of forming, supplying, managing and coordination of Serb bands (četa) in the Bitola Vilayet. After the Young Turk Revolution (1908), he became the president of the Serbian Board of the Bitola Vilayet, a post he held until 1910 when he was appointed head of the Serbian National Office in Istanbul. After the Balkan Wars, he became the head of the Ohrid Okrug, and after the First World War, the head of the Bitola Okrug (1918). He was a MP from 1920 to 1927 in the Bitola Okrug.

• Jovan Ćirković and Vojislav Tankosić, mission to Kosovo, 1903.jpg

  Jovan Ćirković and Vojislav Tankosić, mission to Kosovo, 1903