Bulgarian Turks

Turks in Bulgaria

Distribution of Turks in Bulgaria by District in 2001

In 1878 Turks outnumbered Bulgarians in Bulgaria. They began emigrating during and after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-8. The movement continued, with some interruptions, through the late 1980s. Between 1923 and 1949, 219,700 Turks left Bulgaria. Then a wave of 155,000 emigrants either were "expelled" (according to Turkish sources) or were "allowed to leave" (according to Bulgarian sources) between 1949 and 1951. The number would have been far greater had Turkey not closed its borders twice during those years. In 1968 an agreement reopened the BulgarianTurkish border to close relatives of persons who had left from 1944 to 1951. The agreement remained in effect from 1968 to 1978.

The biggest wave of Turkish emigration occurred in 1989, however, when 310,000 Turks left Bulgaria as a result of the communist Zhivkov regime's assimilation campaign. That program, which began in 1984, forced all Turks and other Muslims in Bulgaria to adopt Bulgarian names and renounce all Muslim customs. Bulgaria no longer recognized the Turks as a national minority, explaining that all the Muslims in Bulgaria were descended from Bulgarians who had been forced into the Islamic faith by the Ottoman Turks. The Muslims would therefore "voluntarily" take new names as part of the "rebirth process" by which they would reclaim their Bulgarian identities. During the height of the assimilation campaign, the Turkish government claimed that 1.5 million Turks resided in Bulgaria, while the Bulgarians claimed there were none. (In 1986 Amnesty International estimated that 900,000 ethnic Turks were living in Bulgaria.)

The motivation of the 1984 assimilation campaign was unclear; however, many experts believed that the disproportion between the birth rates of the Turks and the Bulgarians was a major factor. The birth rate for Turks was about 2 percent at the time of the campaign, while the Bulgarian rate was barely above zero. The upcoming 1985 census would have revealed this disparity, which could have been construed as a failure of Zhivkov government policy. On the other hand, although most Turks worked in lowprestige jobs such as agriculture and construction, they provided critical labor to many segments of the Bulgarian economy. The emigration affected the harvest season of 1989, when Bulgarians from all walks of life were recruited as agricultural laborers to replace the missing Turks. The shortage was especially acute in tobacco, one of Bulgaria's most profitable exports, and wheat.

During the name-changing phase of the campaign, Turkish towns and villages were surrounded by army units. Citizens were issued new identity cards with Bulgarian names. Failure to present a new card meant forfeiture of salary, pension payments, and bank withdrawals. Birth or marriage certificates would be issued only in Bulgarian names. Traditional Turkish costumes were banned; homes were searched and all signs of Turkish identity removed. Mosques were closed. According to estimates, 500 to 1,500 people were killed when they resisted assimilation measures, and thousands of others went to labor camps or were forcibly resettled.

Before Zhivkov's assimilation campaign, official policy toward use of the Turkish language had varied. Before 1958, instruction in Turkish was available 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 at home. Fines were levied for speaking Turkish in public.

After the fall of Zhivkov in 1989, the National Assembly of Bulgaria attempted to restore cultural rights to the Turkish population. In 1991 a new law gave anyone affected by the name-changing campaign three years to officially restore original names and the names of children born after the name change. The Slavic endings -ov, -ova, -ev, or -eva could now be removed if they did not go with one's original name, reversing the effect of a 1950s campaign to add Slavic endings to all non-Slavic names. The law was important not only for Turks, but also for the minority Gypsies and Pomaks who had been forced to change their names in 1965 and 1972 respectively. In January 1991, Turkish-language lessons were reintroduced for four hours per week in parts of the country with a substantial Turkish population, such as the former Kurdzhali and Razgrad districts.

According to the 2001 census, there are 746,664 ethnic Turks in Bulgaria. Today, the Turks of Bulgaria are concentrated in two rural areas in the Northeast (Ludogorie/Deliorman) and the Southeast (the Eastern Rhodopes). They form the absolute majority in the province of Kardzhali and relative majority in the province of Razgrad.

History

Turks, although today numerically small –a little over 1 million people (about 2 percent of the total Balkan population)- have played a role in shaping the history of the Balkans far beyond their numbers.

In late antiquity the rolling plains of the Danube and Prut rivers in the Balkans’ north east served Turkic tribes from the Eurasian steppes as an open door into the heart of the peninsula and the riches of the Eastern Roman Empire. Huns and related tribes swept through the Balkans in the 5th and 6th centuries, followed by the Avars and their allies in the sixth and seventh. Among these later were Bulgars, who established a state south of the Danube. Unlike the Avars, whose settlements in the Balkans proved transitory, the Bulgar state persisted in the face of concerted Byzantine pressures. By the 9th century the Bulgars were challenging the Byzantine Empire for political hegemony in the Balkans, but by that time they also were well on the way toward ethnic assimilation into their Slavic-speaking subject population. The conversion of the Turkic Bulgar ruling elite to Orthodox Christianity at mid-century opened the gate to their rapid and total Slavic assimilation. Within a hundred years of the Bulgar conversion, most traces of their Turkic origins had disappeared, except for their name – the Bulgars had been transformed into Slavic Bulgarians.

Oguz, Pecheneg, and Cuman Turks tribes appeared in the Balkans between the 9th and 11th centuries. Most of them eventually suffered an ethnic fate similar to the Bulgars and left little lasting impression, although the Gagauz Turks of Bessarabia, a region lying east of the Prut River (now known as Moldova), and some Turks living today in the eastern Balkans may be direct descendants of those medieval Turkic interlopers. Additionally the Ottoman Turks’ five century rule over most of the Balkans established numerous scattered enclaves of Turkish-speaking groups throughout much of the southern portion of the peninsula, with a heavy concentration in the southeastern region of ancient Thrace.

Huns

Turkic peoples first arrived in Bulgaria in the 5th century AD when in 447 AD the Huns, under Attila, crossed the Danube frontier, invaded Thrace and forced the Romans to pay the Huns a heavier tribute and withdraw from a wide strip of land beside the Danube.

Avars

Avars were a highly organized and powerful Turkic tribal confederation governed by a central ruler (khagan). Emperor Justinian’s attempts to enlist them as puppet allies agains other Turkic and Germanic threats north of his Balkan borders backfired. Instead, by the end of the 560s the Avars crushed their German and Turk competitors, conquered the Slav tribes north of the Danube, and created a large confederated tribal state centered on Pannonia. Rather than facing fragmented and feuding tribal groups amenable to manipulation, the empire was presented with a powerfully unified state controlling the entire frontier beyond its Balkan borders.

Bulgars

The Bulgars were a confederation of steppe nomadic Turkic tribes who formerly were a part of successive tribal confederations centered on Ukraine, particularly those headed by the Gök Turks(Tu-chüeh) and the Avars. Those associated with the Gok Turks were reduced to Khazar tributaries in the 630s, while the Bulgar tribes previously tied to the Avars broke away after the kaghanate’s defeat before Constantinople. One of the latter was the Onogur Bulgars, led by Kubrat Khan (605-65), who established the mixed ethnic confederation of Great Bulgaria in the northern Caucasus and the southern Ukrainian steppe. In 635 Kubrat drove the Avars from his lands and forged friendly relations with Eastern Rome. Another Bulgar rebellion against Avars control was led by the chieftain Kuber in the late 670s. He headed a “tribe” of mixed ethnicity (composed of Avar war prisoners) in Slavonia. Kuber rebelled and led his small force south into the central Balkans, where they settled in northern Macedonia. Although his followers were a mixed bag of Bulgars, Thracians, Illyrians, and possibly Franks, the imperial authorities collectively defined them as “Bulgars”. Kubrat’s Great Bulgaria was shattered by the Khazars in the early 640s, and, on his death, leadership of the Bulgar tribes was divided among his surviving sons. One tribal group moved northeast and settled in the upper Volga-Kama River region, becoming the future Volga Bulgar state. Two smaller groups traveled westward to Pannonia and northern Italy, where they fell under the control of the Avars and the East Roman governor of Ravenna, respectively. The main branch of Bulgars, led by Asparuh (died 701), pushed southwestward along the Black Sea coast to the Danube delta in the Balkans’ extreme northeast and subdued the Slavs and Avars on the Wallachian Plain. Sometime in the 670s Asparuh’s Bulgars crossed the Danube into Dobrudzha, a region nominally under imperial authority, where they built a fortified encampment and settled.

Despite previous good diplomatic relations between the Eastern Roman Empire and Asparuh’s father Kubrat, Emperor Constantine IV (668-85) felt ill-disposed to lose even a small portion of his already shrunken imperial territory to the intruders. He attacked the Bulgars with the limited military forces that he could muster, hoping to expel them from their bridgehead south of the Danube, but he was defeated. Unable to keep his military away for long from the more vital Anatolian front against the Arabs, Constantine signed a peace treaty with Asparuh in 681. By the agreement’s terms, the emperor officially recognized the existence of a Bulgar state in Dobrudzha, Asparuh was granted control over Moesia between the Danube and the Balkan Mountains, and the empire undertook to pay the Bulgar ruler an annual tribute. The treaty was signally significant. Throughout the previous decades of turmoil in the Balkans, the empire never relinquished its claim to nominal control of the entire peninsula. Now, for the first time, the empire surrendered specifically designated regions to outsiders. Asparukh’s Bulgar state became the first barbarian state to receive official recognition in the Balkans and in Eastern Europe.

Little is known concretely about the early Bulgar state. It seems it was typically Turkic steppe nomadic and ruled by an autocratic han (a title associated with the sky-god Tengri and directly inherited from the Gok Turks). Another Gök Turk association was the ruling clan's name, Dulo- a leading clan among the Western Gök Turks. Also typical was the Bulgars' political structure, with authority divided between inner and outer cans and all Bulgars elevated above the non-Bulgar tributary populations, who initially participated in the state only as subjects. In Asparuh's state, the tributaries mostly were Slavs, most of whom were collectively known as the Seven Tribes, living on the Danubian Plain in Moesia.

Further evidence culturally linking the Balkan Bulgar state to Turkic steppe traditions was the layout of the Bulgars' new capital of Pliska, founded just north of the Balkan Mountains shortly after 681. The large area enclosed by ramparts, with the rulers' habitations and assorted utility structures concentrated in the center, resembled more a steppe winter encampment turned into a permanent settlement than it did a typical Roman Balkan city.

Pechenegs

The Pechenegs were a Turkic tribe which had once formed part of the confederation of Western Gok Turks but had been driven back by Karluk Turks toward the Aral Sea. Around year 900 they utilized the pastures between the mouth of Dnieper and the lower Danube. In 934 Pechenegs joined the Hungarian invasion of the Byzantine Empire in Thrace. In 1026 they crossed the Danube, but were repulsed by Constantine Diogenes. In 1051, under the impetus of their own ambitions and in reaction to the drive of the Oghuz, they again invaded the empire. There was a further incursion in 1064, across Thrace to the gates of Constantinople. The drama for Byzantium lay in the fact that when it recruited mercenaries from among the pagan Turks of Europe to fight the Muslim Turks of Asia, the sense of Turkish kinship of the pagans was often stronger than their loyalty to the basileus. This was seen in 1071, on the eve of the Battle of Manzikert, when the Pecheneg corps deserted the service of Emperor Romanus Diogenes for that of Sultan Alp Arslan. In 1087 the Pechenegs once more invaded Thrace as far as Kule (between Enos and Constantinople), where at last they were put to flight, leaving their leader Tzelgu on the battlefield. Alexios I Komnenos made the mistake of pursuing them, and was beaten at Dristra (Durostorum, Silistra) in the autumn of 1087. The empire was saved by the arrival of another Turkic horde, the Kipchaks (Polovtsy) who emerged from the Russian steppe behind the Pechenegs and defeated them on the Danube. But no sooner had all these hordes withdrawn into Russia again than the Pechenegs, under pressure from Kipchaks, invaded Thrace once more in 1088-89, going as far as Ipsala, south of Adrianople, where Alexus had to buy them off. In 1090 the Pechenegs joined with the Seljuk Turks of Asia Minor to attack Constantinople by the valley of the Maritza, from Adrianople to Enos, while the Seljuk fleet attacked the coasts and from Nicea the Seljuk army thretened Nicomedia.

It was a repetition of the situation at the time of Heraclius and the Avars, but now in both Asia and Europe Byzantium was confronted by Turks: pagan Turks in Europe, Muslim Turks in Asia, united agains the empire by ties of kinship. Pechenegs wintered near Luleburgaz, opposite the Byzantine lines, which had been withdrawn to Corlu. Once more Alexios I Komnenos appealed to the Kipchaks, who came down into Thrace from Russia and took the Pechenegs in the rear. On April 29, 1091, the combined Byzantine and Kipchak forces crushed the Pecheneg army at Mount Levunion. It was the decimation of the whole people. The remnants of the Pechenegs, having reformed in Wallachia, made a fresh attempt in the succeeding generation, in 1121 -an attempt which was confined to Bulgaria, north of the Balkan range. But they were surprised and massacred by Emperor John Komnenos in the spring of 1122.

Oghuz

In 1065 a pagan Oghuz (Ghuzz) clan crossed the Danube to the number of 600,000 and devastated the Balkan peninsula as far as Thessalonica and northern Greece. Soon afterward they were annihilated by the Pechenegs and the Bulgars.

Kipchaks (Cumans)

The people known in Turkic as Kipchaks were the same as the Polovtsy of the Russians. They are also known as Cumans. Kipchaks originally formed part of the group of Kimak Turks who lived in Siberia. The Kimaks and the Oghuz were closely related. In 1054 the Kipchaks pushed and drove ahead the Oghuz. They profited by the Oghuz' victory over the Pechenegs and, when Oghuz were cut to pieces by Byzantines and Bulgars in the course of the ill-fated expeditions into the Balkans (1065 and succeeding years), the Kipchaks remained sole master of the Russian steppe.

Turkomans

The first Turks to be invited into Europe as mercenaries came from a colony of Turcomans, who settled in Dobruja , on the western Black Sea coast, after the accession as Emperor of the first Palaelogue, Michael VIII, who had taken refuge from the Latin occupation of Constantinople as an exile at the Seljuk court. These Turcomans came to the aid of a dethroned Seljuk sultan, Kaykaus II, who in turn had taken refuge at Constantinople. After a threatening demonstration against the Emperor, they secured the sultan's release from custody and withdrew with him to the Crimea. But his son and a detachment of his guard remained behind in Constantinople, turned Christian, and formed the nucleus of a corps of Turkish militia which soon grew in numbers, providing a welcome reinforcement to the imperial army.

Ottoman Turks

By mid 14th century the Ottoman Turks were well entrenched with more than a mere foothold in Europe, not as enemies but as allies and indeed relatives of Byzantium, with a Sultan who was son-in-law of one Emperor, brother-in-law of the other - and also son-in-law of the neighboring tsar of Bulgaria.

The Ottomans captured the Thracian cities of Adrianople (Edirne) and Philippopolis (now Plovdiv in Bulgaria) in 1361 and 1363.

In 1363 a force of Serbs and, for the first time, Hungarians , without the aid of the Greeks, crossed the River Maritsa in the direction of Adrianople, only to be pounced upon by the Turks as they slept off the festive nocturnal celebrations of the unopposed crossing - then driven back into the river, and thus all but exterminated.

After the Ottoman Turks under sultan Murad I advanced into Thrace, conquered Adrianople, and thereby gained control of the Maritsa River valley, which led into the central Balkans, the Serbs and the Bulgarians formed an alliance to drive the Turks back. Their early efforts ended in defeat, and the Bulgarians were compelled to become vassals of the Ottomans(1366). Another campaign to resist Turkish expansion was organized in 1371 by Vukašin Mrnjavčević, the king of the southern Serbian lands, and his brother Despot Uglješa who gathered an army of 70,000 men and marched into the Maritsa valley. On September 26, 1371 while halting at Chernomen (Chirmen) located between Philippopolis and Adrianople, however, his forces were surprised by a much smaller Turkish army and defeated.

The battle confirmed Bulgaria's status as a vassal-state to the Turks and destroyed the independent South Serbian kingdom, whose new ruler, Marko Kraljevic, became a vassal of the sultan. Macedonia and ultimately the remainder of the Balkan Peninsula were exposed to Turkish conquest.

Sofia and Salonika were taken in 1385 and 1386. Murat I crushed the Serbs at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 but was killed by a Serbian prisoner after the battle. Lazar, the Serbian king, was taken prisoner. Murat's son Beyezid captured Bulgaria's capital Turnovo in 1393. Nicopolis, the Bulgarian fortress on the Danube, fell the same year. Bulgarian Czar Shishman was imprisoned and executed. Bulgaria was annexed the same year.

A disorganized and ill-led crusade against the Sultan Beyazid -the Thunderbolt- had ended in disaster at Nicopolis on September 25, 1396.

The Ottomans defeated the Hungarians at Varna on the shores of the Black Sea in 1444. The Hungarian general Janos Hunyadi, who had been the effective ruler of Hungary since the disappearance of Władysław III, the King of Poland and elected ruler of Hungary, at Varna, was defeated by Sultan Murad II at the Second Battle of Kosovo on October 19, 1448.

Emigration

Population of Bulgaria between 1880 and 1910

During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-8 many Turks, including large and small landowners, left their lands. Thought many returned after the signing of the treaty of Berlin they were soon to find the atmosphere of the lands they had left behind uncongenial and large numbers emigrated once again to the more familiar cultural and political atmosphere of the Ottoman Empire. This massive emigration turned the Turks –who were the majority in pre-war Bulgaria - into a minority. The decline in the Turkish-speaking population of Bulgaria in the period of 1880-1910 does not include these people and therefore give an absolutely accurate picture of the Turkish emigration for many Turks left before the first census was taken.

Bulgarian population increased from two and a half million in 1892 to three and a half million in 1910, and stood at over four and three-quarter million in 1920. This increase took place despite the emigration of a large number of Bulgaria’s Turkish speaking inhabitants. In 1881 the Turks represented almost a quarter of the population of Bulgaria and Rumelia, yet by 1892 the proportion was 17.21 percent and in 1910 11.63%; in the same years the Bulgarian speaking elements were 67.84% , 75.67% and 81.63% of the total.

Transfer of Land

The transfer of land from Turkish to Bulgarian ownership which was the most important effect of Turkish emigration was a complex process. Such transfers had taken place before 1878 and in the Tatar Pazardzhik district, for example, where Bulgarian landowners had been unknown in 1840, some two thousand plots had been bought by them between 1872 and 1875. In 1877 and in the following years the process of transfer took place on an immensely grater scale, both here and elsewhere.

With the outbreak of war some Turks sold their property, mostly to wealthy local Bulgarians. Other Turks rented their lands, usually to dependable local Bulgarians, on the understanding that it would be handed back if and when the owners returned. Most departing Turks, however, simply abandoned their land and fled, the fall of Pleven had made it clear that the Russians were to win the War. As the Turks fled many Bulgarians left the hills and forests and seized some of the land now made vacant. The incidence of seizure varied regionally. In the north-east the Turks were numerous and, feeling safety in numbers, few of them had left and those remaining were therefore strong enough to discourage seizures by Bulgarians. In the north and south-west on the other hand almost all Turks had fled and their lands were immediately taken over by local Bulgarians who often divided up the large estates found in these areas. In the remainder of northern Bulgaria transfers, often under the cloak of renting, took place in approximately one third of the communities. In the Turnovo province, for example, there were seventy-seven Turkish mixed Turkish-Bulgarian villages of which twenty-four (31.0%) were seized by Bulgarians, twenty two (28.5%) were later repossessed by returning Turkish refugees, and another twenty-two remained unaffected; the fate of the remaining nine is unknown. In the south-west there was much more tension and violence. Here there was no polite fiction about renting and there were cases of Bulgarian peasants not only seizing land but also destroying buildings.

In vast majority of the cases it was local Bulgarians who seized the vacant land but Bulgarians from other parts of Bulgaria where there had been little Turkish emigration, and Bulgarian refugees from Macedonia and Western Thrace also took part in the seizures. In later months the publication of the terms of the Treaty of Berlin naturally intensified the flow of refugees from these areas and they were reported by the prefect of Burgas province as helping themselves to émigré land “in a most arbitrary fashion”.

In Burgas and the rest of Eastern Rumelia the Treaty of Berlin intensified the land struggle by making Bulgarians more determined to seize sufficient land before Ottoman sovereignty was restored. It also encouraged the former Turkish owners to return. With these problems the Russian Provisional Administration had to contend.

The Provisional Administration did not have the power, even if it had had the will, to prevent so popular a movement as the seizure of vacant Turkish land, but not could the Administration allow this movement to go completely unchecked for this would give the Turks and the British the excuse to interfere in the internal affairs of the liberated territories. Given these dangers the Russians handled the agrarian problem with considerable skill. In the summer of 1877 Bulgarian refugees from Macedonia, Thrace and Ottoman Rumelia had been allowed to harvest the crops left by Turkish émigrés and in September all Bulgarians, the incoming refugees and the indigenous, were allowed to sow vacant Turkish land, though it was insisted that this did not in any way signify a transfer of ownership. With the mass exodus of Turks after the Treaty of San Stefano the Provisional Administration had little choice but to allow the Bulgarians to work the vacant land with rent, set at half the value of the harvest, to be paid to the legal owner. In many cases the Bulgarians simply refused to pay this rent and the Russians were not over-zealous in collecting such monies.

When the Treaty of Berlin guaranteed Turkish property rights and restored southern Bulgaria to the Sultan’s sovereignty at least 80,000 of the 150,000 Turkish émigrés had returned by September 1878. This caused enormous problems including housing the returning Turks whose property had been taken over by Bulgarians or destroyed. In September local authorities ordered that any houses taken over by Bulgarians were to be restored to their former owners on the latter’s demand, whilst other returning Turks were given Tatar or Circassian land.

These problems were insignificant compared to those raised when the returning Turks demanded the restitution of their lost lands.

In July 1878 the Russian Provisional Administration had come to an agreement with the Porte by which Turkish refugees were allowed to return under military escort, if necessary, and were to have their lands back on condition that they surrendered all their weapons. In August 1878 it was decreed that those returning would not be immune from prosecution and anyone against whom any charges were substantiated would be deprived of his lands. This decree did more than anything else to discourage the return of more Turks and from the date of this enactment the flow of returning refugees began gradually to diminish. There were, however, many claims still to be dealt with and in November 1878 mixed Turkish and Bulgarian commissions were established in all provinces to examine these claims. The decisions were to be made in accordance with rules drawn up by the Russian embassy in Constantinople in consultation with the Porte, and under them Bulgarian could secure the legal right to a piece of land if they could produce the authentic title-deeds, tapii, and thereby prove that the land at dispute had originally been taken from them forcibly or fraudulently.

After the departure of the Russians in the spring of 1879 the administration in Plovdiv ordered to enforce court decisions returning land to the Turks. Only half of the courts had recorded such decisions. Other actions were even less emotive and in 1880 the position of the Bulgarians in Eastern Rumelia had improved. The Plovdiv government introduced new methods for authenticating claims, allowing local courts to issue new title deeds if they were satisfied that existing documentation proved ownership, or if local communal councils had issued certificates attesting ownership. Most local councils were entirely Bulgarian or were dominated by Bulgarians and decided in favour of their co-nationals far more often than did the mixed commissions with whom the prerogative of adjunction had previously rested. In many instances, too, Bulgarians refused to relinquish land they had seized and as late as 1884 there were still Turkish landlords demanding the implementation of court orders restoring their property.

The Bulgarians in Rumelia were also helped from 1880 onwards because the Turks began to drift once more into exile. This was very much the result of disappointed hopes for a full restoration of Turkish power south of the Balkan range. By 1880 the Bulgarians had become the majority and had established political ascendancy in the province and to this many Turks, and particularly the richer and previously more influential ones, could not adapt. The Turks had seldom persecuted the Christians, that had been the intermittent past time of Pomak (Bulgarian Muslim), Circassian and Tatar, but the Turks have never allowed the Bulgarians social or legal equality. Now they were forced to concede their superiority and for many Turks this was too much to bear and they gratefully accepted offers of land from the Sultan and returned to the more familiar atmosphere of the Ottoman Empire.

The Turks were also encouraged to emigrate from Bulgaria by regulations against the cultivation of rice -which was originally introduced to the region by the Turks. Rice was a staple crop for the Turks and in its prohibition many of them saw yet another sign of unacceptable Bulgarian domination. An even more important impulse to Turkish emigration was the Bulgarian land tax of 1882. By Moslem law all land was owned by God but after the abolition of feudalism in the 1830’s use of that land conferred temporary wardship upon the user, and thus the tithe which had been the main levy on land until 1882 conformed to traditional Moslem codes of thought and practice. The land tax did not. Furthermore land tax applied to all land in a man’s possession not, as under the tithe, merely to that part which had been cultivated. This hit the Turks hard for they customarily left large proportion, in many cases as much as half, of their land fallow. Taxation now fell on the fallow land too but production and earnings could not be increased by the same proportion and as a result many of the remaining Turkish owners of large estates left Rumelia, as the government in Plovdiv had intended they should. Significantly 1882 was the peak year for the sale of larger Turkish properties in Rumelia, though the sale of such properties continued steadily throughout the first half of the 1880’s. From the end of the war to the summer of 1880 only six large Turkish chifliks in Eastern Rumelia had been sold but the five years before union with the Principality of Bulgaria in 1885 saw the sale of about a hundred. That most of the larger Turkish owners and many smaller ones left Rumelia was undoubtedly an important factor in the easy attainment of Bulgarian supremacy in Rumelia during the early 1880’s.

In Principality of Bulgaria as in Rumelia the chaos of war had allowed a number of seizures to go unrecorded meaning that the new occupiers were to be left in untroubled possession of their land. The Constituent Assembly had considered a proposal to legislate such illegal transfers but no action had been taken as Karavelov had easily persuaded the Assembly that it was pointless to legislate about so widespread a phenomenon. The Bulgarians in the Principality could afford such bold stance as there was little danger of direct Ottoman intervention over the land question. There was a constant stream of emigration my Turks from Bulgaria and by the early 1890’s so many Turks had left the former Turkish stronghold of north-eastern Bulgaria that the government in Sofia began to fear that the area would be seriously under-populated. In 1891 the Minister of Finance reported to the Subranie that there were 26,315 vacant plots in the country, many of them in the north-east and most of them under twenty dekars in extent. There was talk of settling these areas with immigrants from Slavic countries.

In Bulgaria the government also took possession of Turkish land which had been vacant for three years. A number of returning Turkish refugees who demanded restitution of or compensation for their lands were denied both on the grounds that they had without duress left their property unworked for three years.

Bulgarianization

Nationalism, the desire to avenge for being ruled by the Ottomans for more than five centuries , and the zero percent annual increase in birth rate among Christian Bulgarians are the primary reasons which caused the Bulgarian government to commit "a very massive violation of human rights" by forcing 900,000 people, 10 percent of the country's population, to change their names. The people affected were all ethnic Turks.

By 1984 the Roma and the Pomaks had already been forced to give up their Turkish or Muslim names for Bulgarian names. (In 1974 500 of the 1,300 inmates of the notorious Belene labour camp were Pomaks who had resisted pressure to change their names). The communist government had been encouraging the educated Turks to voluntarily adopt Bulgarian names.

In the period between 1984 and 1989, the Communist government of Bulgaria, led by Todor Zhivkov, attempted the forced Bulgarisation of the country's Turkish minority. After the introduction in 1985 of new laws to forcefully assimilate the minority, the Bulgarian government banned education in Turkish and sought to erase Turkish culture and identity. Turkish names were forcibly changed to Slavic ones.

American writer-reporter Robert Kaplan who visited Bulgaria in 1985 describes the forced Bulgarization of Bulgaria's Turkish minority as follows:

It usually happened in the middle of the night. The number of army half-tracks and the blinding glare of searchlights would disturb the sleep of an ethnic Turkish village. Militiamen would then burst into every home and thrust a photocopied form in front of the man of the house, in which he was to write the new Bulgarian names of every member of his family. Those who refused or hesitated, watched as their wives or daughters were raped by the militiamen. According to Amnesty International and Western diplomats, the militiamen beat up thousands and executed hundreds. Thousands more were imprisoned or driven into internal exile.

In May 1989 there were disturbances in regions inhabited by members of the Turkish minority. On 10 May 1989 travel restrictions to foreign countries were partly lifted. Todor Zhivkov gave a speech on 29 May 1989, in which he demanded that Turkey open its borders in order to receive all "Bulgarian Muslims", who wanted to live there. There followed an exodus of over 300.000 Turks to Turkey. On 10 November 1989 Zhivkov was replaced by Petar Mladenov and by the end of that year communism fell.

These laws were removed after the change to democracy in the early months of 1990. On November 10, 1989 Bulgaria’s Communist regime was overthrown. On December 29 a decision was made on the governmental level and later on, on March 1990 a law was ratified on allowing the Turks of Bulgaria to «restore» their Turkish surnames. Until the first of March of the coming year for about 600 thousand applications were received on the above mentioned issue. In the same year the institutition of the Spiritual leader of the Turks of Bulgaria, the Mufti was founded. In 1991 the new Constitution was adopted granting the citizens of non-Bulgarian origin a wide range of rights, lifting the legislative ban of teaching Turkish. In January of the same year another law was adopted allowing the Turks to change their names or «strike out» their Slavonic endings like «ov», «ova», «ev», «eva» within three years[1]. Many have now reverted to their old names and Bulgarian governments have apologised to the Turkish minority for the policies. Some developments noted by the US Department of State 2000 report include the fact that Turkish-language classes funded by the government continued, and that on 2 October 2000 Bulgarian national television launched Turkish-language newscasts.

Since 1992, the Turkish language teachers of Bulgaria have been trained in Turkey. At the initial stage only the textbooks published in Turkey were used for teaching Turkish, later on, in 1996, Bulgaria’s Ministry of Education and Science began publishing the manuals of the Turkish language. Turkish schools are financed by the government of Bulgaria. A number of newspapers and magazines are published: the «Müslümanlar» («Muslims»), «Hak ve Özgürlük» («Right and freedom»), «Güven» («Trust»), «Jır-Jır» («Cricket», a magazine for children), «Islam kültürü» («Islamic culture»), «Balon», «Filiz». In Turkey summer holidays for the Turkish children living in Bulgaria are organized. During the holidays the children are thought the Koran, Turkish literature, Turkish history and language [2].

The Turkish Problem of Bulgaria

As in other parts of Eastern Europe, the repeal of single-party rule in Bulgaria exposed the long-standing grievances of an ethnic minority. Especially in the 1980s, the Zhivkov regime had systematically persecuted the Turkish population, which at one time numbered 1.5 million and was estimated at 1.25 million in 1991. Mosques were closed, Turks were forced to Slavicize their names, education in the native language was denied, and police brutality was used to discourage resistance. The urban intelligentsia that participated in the 1990 reform movement pushed the post-Zhivkov governments toward restoring constitutionally guaranteed human rights to the Turks. But abrogation of Zhivkov's assimilation program soon after his fall brought massive protests by ethnic Bulgarians, even in Sofia.

In January 1990, the Social Council of Citizens, a national body representing all political and ethnic groups, reached a compromise that guaranteed the Turks freedom of religion, choice of names, and unimpeded practice of cultural traditions and use of Turkish within the community. In turn the Bulgarian nationalists were promised that Bulgarian would remain the official language and that no movement for autonomy or separatism would be tolerated. Especially in areas where Turks outnumbered Bulgarians, the latter feared progressive "Islamification" or even invasion and annexation by Turkey--a fear that had been fed consciously by the Zhivkov assimilation campaign and was revived by the BSP in 1991. Because radical elements of the Turkish population did advocate separatism, however, the non-annexation provision of the compromise was vital.

The Bulgarian governments that followed Zhivkov tried to realize the conditions of the compromise as quickly as possible. In the multiparty election of 1990, the Turks won representation in the National Assembly by twenty-three candidates of the predominantly Turkish MRF (The Movement for Rights and Freedoms. At that point, ethnic Bulgarians, many remaining from the Zhivkov regime, still held nearly all top jobs in government and industry, even in the predominantly Turkish Kurdzhali Province. Nevertheless, parts of Bulgarian society felt threatened by the rise of the MRF. In 1990 that faction collided with a hard-line Bulgarian group, the National Committee for Defense of National Interests--an organization containing many former communists instrumental in the Zhivkov assimilation program. In November 1990, Bulgarian nationalists established the Razgrad Bulgarian Republic in a heavily Turkish region to protest the government's program of restoring rights to the Turks. In the first half of 1991, intermittent violence and demonstrations were directed at both Turks and Bulgarians in Razgrad.

These conditions forced the government to find a balance between Turkish demands and demonstrations for full recognition of their culture and language, and Bulgarian nationalist complaints against preferential treatment for the ethnic minority. In 1991 the most important issue of the controversy was restoring Turkish language teaching in the schools of Turkish ethnic districts. In 1991 the Popov government took initial steps in this direction, but long delays brought massive Turkish protests, especially in Kurdzhali. In mid-1991 continuing strikes and protests on both sides of the issue had brought no new discussions of compromise. Frustration with unmet promises encouraged Turkish separatists in both Bulgaria and Turkey, which in turn fueled the ethnocentric fears of the Bulgarian majority-- and the entire issue diverted valuable energy from the national reform effort. Although most political parties supported full minority rights, in 1991 the strength of Bulgarian nationalist sentiment, deeply rooted in centuries of conflict with the Ottoman Empire and not inclined to compromise, promised to make the Turkish question the most pressing human rights issue in Bulgaria for the foreseeable future.

The Movement for Rights and Freedoms

With 120,000 members, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) was the fourth largest political organization in Bulgaria in 1991, but it occupied a special place in the political process. The leader of the movement, Ahmed Dogan, was imprisoned in 1986 for opposition to the Zhivkov policy of assimilating ethnic Turks. Founded in 1990 to represent the interests of the Turkish ethnic minority, the MRF gained twenty three seats in the first parliamentary election that year, giving it the fourth-largest parliamentary voting bloc. Its agenda precluded mass media coverage or building coalitions with other parties, because of the strong anti-Turkish element in Bulgaria's political culture. By mid-1991, the UDF had held only one joint demonstration with the MRF; their failure to reconcile differences was considered a major weakness in the opposition to the majority BSP. In early 1990, the MRF protested vigorously but unsuccessfully its exclusion from national round table discussions among the major Bulgarian parties.

In 1991 the MRF broadened its platform to embrace all issues of civil rights in Bulgaria, aiming "to contribute to the unity of the Bulgarian people and to the full and unequivocal compliance with the rights and freedoms of mankind and of all ethnic, religious, and cultural communities in Bulgaria." The MRF took this step partly to avoid the constitutional prohibition of political parties based on ethnic or religious groups. The group's specific goals were ensuring that the new constitution protect ethnic minorities adequately; introducing Turkish as an optional school subject; and bringing to trial the leaders of the assimilation campaign in the 1980s. To calm Bulgarian nationalist resentment, the MRF categorically renounced Islamic fundamentalism, terrorism, and ambitions for autonomy within Bulgaria. Political overtures were made regularly to the UDF, and some local cooperation occurred in 1991. Although the MRF remained the fastest growing party in Bulgaria, however, the sensitivity of the Turkish issue caused official UDF policy to keep the MRF in isolation.

Participation in Bulgarian politics

The Bulgarian Turks take part in the country’s political life. Back in the end of 1984 an underground organization called «National Liberation Movement of the Turks in Bulgaria» was formed in Bulgaria which headed the Turkish community’s antigovernemental movement. On January 4, 1990 the activists of the movement registered an organization with the legal name «Movement for Rights and Freedom» (MRF) (in Bulgarian: Движение за права и свободи: in Turkish: Hak ve Özgürlükler Hareketi) in the Bulgarian city of Varna. At the moment of registration it had 33 members, at present, according to the organization’s website, 68 thousand members plus 24 thousand in the organization’s youth wing [3]. As a result of elections held in 2001 and 2005, the MRF was included in the coalition government. At the parliamentary elections held on June 17, 2001, the MRF got 21 deputy mandates by 7.45% of votes. In the parliament, there was also an independent Turkish deputy, Osman Ahmed Oktay. The Turkish party formed a coalition government in a non-Turkic country. Mehmet Dikmen, Minister of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Environment represented the MRF. Filiz Huseynova, presently working at the European Parliament, held the post of the State Minister for minorities. Earlier she was the Deputy Mayor on humanitarian issues in her native town Silistra; she was appointed Minister on July 17, 2003. On June 25, 2005 the parliamentary elections were held. The party’s success was very impressive: it won 14.07% of the votes, 34 MRF members entered the parliament; two of them were Bulgarians. A new coalition was formed which at this time consisted of three parties: the Bulgarian Socialist Party, «National Movement of Simeon II» and the MRF. On 10 May 2006, the Bulgarian Government rejected a bill on recognition of the alleged Armenian Genocide. This came after Emel Etem Toshkova, the Deputy Prime Minister of Bulgaria and one of the leaders of the MRF, the main Turkish party in Bulgaria, declared that her party would walk out of the coalition government if the bill was passed.

Notable Turks of Bulgaria

• Rıza Tevfik Bölükbaşı - Poet, academician, politician, community leader.
• Mehmet Fikri - Poet
• Tahsin Özgüç - Archaeologist, excavator of the great site of Kültepe.
• Recep Küpçü - Poet
• Mehmet Behçet Perim - Poet
• Ertuğrul Özkök - Journalist, editorial writer for Hürriyet.
• Ali Dinçer - Former mayor of Ankara, Turkish National Assembly Deputy Chairman, OICC founding chairman
• Tuna Ötenel - Jazz musician
• Ahmed Doğan - Human rights activist and politician, leader of Movement for Rights and Freedoms.
• Emel Etem Toshkova - Deputy Prime Minister of Bulgaria.
• Nihat Kabil - Minister
• Dzhevdet Chakarov (Cevdet Çakarov) - Minister
• Yıldız İbrahimova - Jazz Singer
• Bedri Şefik - Party leader
• Naim Süleymanoğlu - World and Olympic champion in weightlifting.
• Zekeriya Güçlü - World champion in wrestling
• Halil Mutlu - World and Olympic champion in weightlifting.
• Sibel Gürsoy - Pop musician
• Taner Sağır - World and Olympic champion in weightlifting.
• Esil Duran - Pop-folk ("Chalga") musician
• Gürhan Gürsoy - Fenerbahçe SK football player
• Nevriye Yılmaz - Fenerbahçe basketball player
• Neri Karra - Academic and Entrepreneur
• Leman Ergenc- Slavic Languages Professor, founder of Bulgarian Language Department in Ankara University
• Tchetin Kazak (Çetin Kazak) - Politician, Member of the European Parliament
• Filiz Husmenova (Filiz Hüsmenova) - Politician, Member of the European Parliament
• Nedzhmi Ali (Necmi Ali) - Politician, Member of the European Parliament
• Husein Mehmedov (Hüseyin Mehmedov) - Olympic medalist in wrestling
• Nejdet Zalev - Olympic medalist in wrestling
• Said Chifudov - Olympic medalist in wrestling
• Lyutvi Ahmedov (Lütfü Ahmedov) - Olympic medalist in wrestling
• Osman Duraliev - Olympic medalist in wrestling
• Hasan Isaev - Olympic medalist in wrestling
• Nermedin Selimov - Olympic medalist in wrestling
• Ismail Abilov - Olympic medalist in wrestling
• Nesim Özgür - Former footballer of Fenerbahçe, Galatasaray, Trabzonspor

See also

• Gagauz people
• Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire
• Islam in Bulgaria

Further reading

• Mahon, Milena (1999). "The Turkish minority under communist Bulgaria - politics of ethnicity and power". Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans. 1 (2): 149–162. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |laydate=, |laysource=, |quotes=, |laysummary=, and |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

• Warhola, James W. (2003). "The Turkish Minority in Contemporary Bulgaria". Nationalities Papers. 31 (3): 255–279. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |laydate=, |laysource=, |quotes=, and |laysummary= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

References

• Richard J. Crampton, Bulgaria 1878-1918, A History
• Rene Grousset, Empire of the Steppes
• The Ethnic Turks in Bulgaria: Social Integration and Impact on Bulgarian–Turkish Relations, 1947-2000
• The Diaspora of the Turks of Bulgaria in Turkey
• Ingilish.com
• A Country Study: Bulgaria - Ethnographic Characteristics (Turks)
• Fischer Weltalmanach, 1986-1991
• Bulgarian Olympic Committee