Turkish Version
There are close to 800 thousand Turks living in Bulgaria. Their story was always a story of oppression, for the local population saw them as representatives of occupation force. However, today this minority is considered to be one of the most influential in Eastern Europe. They have played an important role during the last political crisis in Bulgaria. The accession of this country to the EU may turn this minority into Turkey's lobbying instrument inside the Union. AIA brings a reference file on Bulgarian Turks. The information for it came from the Turkish and Bulgarian open sources and also from the state archives of both countries.
The current population of Bulgaria (July 2005 est.) is 7.450 million, approximately 9,4% of them are Turks.
Turks of Bulgaria live in cities such as: Sofia, Shumen, Kircaali, Filibe, Dobrich, Varna, Ruse, Silistra, Pleven, Tinova. Most Turks live in two main areas where they represent the majority of the inhabitants, one in the northeast of the country (Silistra – Varna), the other in the southeastern corner (Haskovo – Kurdzali). The feature that sets the Turks apart from the majority population is religion; a large majority of Turks are Muslim, whereas the majority of Bulgarians are Eastern Orthodox. However, there are also ethnic Bulgarians who are Muslim. Turks have their own language, Turkish, which is now taught in schools at most levels of education.
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Zhivkov (right) and Brezhnev (Sofia) |
For a large part of history, Bulgaria came under the domination of the Ottoman Empire, where religion and not ethnicity was the most relevant distinction. Under the Ottomans, the Turks were an advantaged minority, enjoying most privileges and occupying ruling administrative positions. After Bulgarian independence (late 19th century), there was not a strong backlash against the Turks. The worst period in terms of discrimination and mistreatment occurred in recent history, in the mid-1980s under the leadership of the Communist leader Todor Zhivkov, who initiated a policy of Bulgarization and cultural assimilation. As a consequence, a large number of Bulgarian Turks fled to Turkey. Most of them returned after the fall of Communism, Minority at Risk center based at the University of Maryland's Center for International Development and Conflict Management reports.
The Bulgarian regime improved consistently throughout the past decade, showing signs of democratic consolidation and improvement for the situation of the Turks. Many measures aimed at responding to the demands of the group have been implemented. A factor in this transformation for the better has been the support Turkey, Bulgaria’s neighbor to the south and now a fellow-NATO member, has given to Bulgaria government regarding ethnic Turks. There was also no spillover from the Balkan conflicts into Bulgaria.
Brief historical facts on assimilation measures towards Turkish minority
From the 15th century the Ottoman Empire started settling down Turks coming from Anatolia to Bulgaria.
1878. First San Stefano Treaty (invalid), then Berlin Treaty had made of Bulgaria an autonomous State.
1908. With the establishment of the Second Constitutional Monarchy [Mesrutiyet] in the Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria obtained its official and full independence.
1940. Bulgaria re-conquered Dobrich where Turks were the majority of population. In this region, there are also two other Turkish minorities that speak Turkish: Tatars and Gagauz (7000 inhabitants).
1984. The first program of assimilation of the Turkish minority started under Zhivkov administration. Turkish Bulgarians were forcibly "bulgarized", i.e. themselves and their villages received "pure" Bulgarian names. The Turkish names were forbidden in Bulgaria, and the state had no longer recognized the Turks as a national minority, arguing that Muslims in Bulgaria descended from Bulgarians, who had been forced into Islam by the Ottoman Turks. Hence the official definition, “Bulgarian Turks” appeared, highly disapproved by the Turks of both sides of Maritsa River.
April 1986. Zhivkov administration took the following measures:
1. Changing Turkish names into Slavic ones,
2. Prohibition of speaking Turkish in public areas,
3. Re-settlement of the Turkish-Muslim minority from the so-called “mixed regions” to the areas with Bulgarian majority (that measure aimed to break the unity of the Turkish community,
4. Limiting of the freedom of Islamic worship,
5. Organising social pressure upon the Turkish minority (unemployment) and pushing them to migrate to Turkey.
Those measures affected nearly 1.5 million people. The majority of them was forced to accept the imposed measures. Some Turkish intellectuals collaborated with the authorities; others founded an illegal resistance movement, which turned following the collapse of the Communist regime, into the current political party: The Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF).
Summer 1989. The second assimilation program provoked massive Turkish migration to Turkey, increased dissident activity and international criticism. The biggest wave of Turkish emigration occurred this year when 310.000 Turks left Bulgaria as a result of the Zhivkov regime's assimilation campaigns.
Turks in Bulgarian political life after 1989
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| Ahmed Dogan, MRF leader since 1990 |
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After 1989, nearly 160 political parties had been established in Bulgaria. 4 of them are Turkish: the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF), the Movement for Democratic Development, the Democratic Justice Party and the Turkish Democratic Party.
1990. In the two-round parliamentary elections of the 10th and the 17th of June, the MRF had introduced 23 MPs into the Parliament, where there were 400 seats at that time.
1991. The MRF had increased its seats to 24 in the parliamentary elections of the 13th of October. Thereafter, in local elections, it had obtained 27 municipalities and 653 mukhtars (village headmen).
1994. The three Turkish parties had participated in the parliamentary elections of the 18th of December. In those elections, the MRF had lost nearly 160.000 votes, and obtained only 5.44% of total votes. Thus, the three parties altogether could obtain 320.000 votes in total. The Socialist Party had won the elections. During this period, the government dismissed the Chief Mufti, Fikri Salih Efendi, who was elected by the Muslim minority, and appointed Nedim Gencev as the President of the Religious Affairs Committee. Those events had caused great tumult among the Muslim minority, and provoked a “mufti problem” in the country.
1997. In the middle of the 1990’s, Bulgaria had suffered from a major political and economic crisis. As a result, on the 10th of January, 1997, Parliament building had been occupied and even burned down. The Union of Democratic Powers won the early elections on April, 19th. In those elections, the MRF managed to obtain only 52 per cent of Turkish votes.
2001. Bulgaria held parliamentary elections on the 17th of June. The contest resulted in an overwhelming victory for former King Simeon II and his newly-formed National Movement of Simeon II (NMS). The movement, which was founded only three months before the elections, could easily defeat the ruling centre-right Union of Democratic Forces and the Socialist Party. The Bulgarian Parliament officially approved the coalition government, which was composed by the NMS and the MRF on the 24th of July, giving the Prime Minister of the Simeon’s government an additional 21 deputies.
2005. The parliamentary elections on the 25th of June produced Bulgaria's most colourful, mixed coalition in the fifteen years since the end of communism, with seven parties, though none of them securing a majority to govern on its own. The Socialist Party won 31 per cent of total votes, which translates into 82 seats in the 240-seat unicameral legislature. The ruling NMS-II came in second with 20 per cent (53 seats), and the MRF was third with 13 per cent (34 seats). Those three parties formed the new government, where the MRF was granted three ministries: Emel Ethem, the Deputy President and the Minister of Natural Disasters, Cevdet Cakirov, the Minister of Environment, and Nihat Kabil, the Minister of Agriculture.
Turkish media in Bulgaria
Today there are eight Turkish newspapers published in Bulgaria. Apart Zaman, which is the weekly version of that published daily in Turkey, the other seven newspapers are:
Right and Liberty (Hak ve Özgürlük),
Scion (Filiz),
Muslims (Müslümanlar),
Islam Culture (Yslam Kültürü),
Trust (Güven),
Cricket (Circir),
Balloon (Balon),
After 1993, broadcasts in Turkish started on the Bulgarian National Radio. In spite of promises, the Bulgarian National Television did not start broadcasting in Turkish yet. Broadcasts of Turkey can be watched through a satellite dish. For the moment, although there is not prohibition, Turks of Bulgaria have no radio station and no proper TV-channel.
Religion
Today, Turks in Bulgaria have neither political nor religious unity. Since the 1990’s, Turks are in the zone of interest of various Christian missioners. In this regard, Pomak Turks and Muslim Gypsies compel their special interest. Moreover, the Bulgarian administration tries to organise Pomak Turks into a different religious structure; this compromises the Turkish unity in Bulgaria. Elsewhere, the Turks can now elect their own religious leader, the Chief Mufti, who is Selim Mehmed today.
Culture and education
Before Zhivkov's assimilation campaigns, official policy towards the use of the Turkish language varied. Before 1958, teaching in Turkish was permitted at all educational levels, and university students were trained to teach courses in Turkish in the Turkish schools. After 1958, Turkish-language majors were taught in Bulgarian only, and the Turkish schools were merged with Bulgarian ones. By 1972, all Turkish-language courses were prohibited, even at the elementary level. Assimilation meant that Turks could no longer teach at all, and the Turkish language was forbidden, even for speaking at home. Fines were levied for speaking Turkish in public.
After the fall of Zhivkov in 1989, the Parliament attempted to restore cultural rights of the Turkish population. In 1991, a new law gave to those, who had been affected by the name-changing campaign, three years to officially restore their original names and the names of children born after the name change. The Slavic endings -ov / -ova or -ev / -eva could be removed if they did not go with one's original name (annulling the effect of a 1950’s campaign, which had consisted in adding Slavic endings to non-Slavic names). The law was important not only for Turks, but also for Gypsies and Pomaks, who had been forced to change their names in 1965 and 1972 respectively. In January 1991, Turkish-language lessons were re-introduced for four hours per week in parts of the country with a substantial Turkish population, such as the former Kurdzhali and Razgrad districts. Turkish that is spoken by the Turks living in Bulgaria is very close to Turkish spoken in Turkey, though they use Cyrillic alphabet.
Related items:
The Bulgarians Against the Turks (27.07.2005)
Bulgaria: Crucial Elections on the Way to Europe (26.06.2005)
The Rapprochement Through Customs (20.06.2005)
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