While in Kosova, there was much talk of a large university they were attempting to found there, doubtless for reasons similar to Bediuzzaman's Medresetu'z-Zehra. It provided Bediuzzaman with just the opportunity he had been waiting for. He suggested to Sultan Resad and the CUP leaders who were accompanying him that the East was in greater need of a university such as that, for it was like the centre of the Islamic world. They accepted his arguments and promised that a university would be opened in the Eastern Provinces. At the end of the following year, the Balkan War broke out and Kosova was lost to the Empire, whereupon Bediuzzaman applied for the nineteen thousand gold liras allotted to its proposed university. His application was accepted. He then returned to Van and on a site on the shores of Lake Van at Edremit, finally laid the foundations of the Medresetu’z-Zehra. But it was not to be. With the outbreak of the First World War shortly afterwards, the construction was halted and never resumed.

Sultan Resad and his accompanying party completed their visit to Rumelia on returning to Salonica. There they once again boarded the warship Barbaros and attendant vessels, and, being greeted by a cannon-salute at Canakkale, retraced their path to Istanbul. There, on 26 June, they were met by large welcoming crowds. The trip had lasted three weeks.

The tide that was flowing against the Ottomans was running too strongly by this time, however, to be stemmed by such gestures, despite the Sultan's enthusiastic reception on the trip and the large demonstrations of loyalty. The nationalists and separatists continued to receive support from the foreign powers, but more than anything it was CUP misrule that exacerbated the already volatile situation and led finally to the end of Turkey in Europe with the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913. Also in late 1911 there had been the Tripolitanian War: Italy had attacked Tripoli and Benghazi, modem-day Libya, and they too were lost to the Empire. The Italians went on to occupy the Dodacanese Islands and bombard the entrance to the Dardanelles. And with the outbreak of the Balkan War in November 1912, Greece seized the Aegean Islands, and Salonica was also lost.