Turks in Bulgaria - History - Turks in Bulgaria From Liberation To Communist Rule (1878 To 1945)

Turks in Bulgaria From Liberation To Communist Rule (1878 To 1945)

The estimates of the number of Turks in the current Bulgarian territories prior to the Russo-Turkish war of 1878 vary. Major urban centers were with Muslim majority and remained overwhelmingly Muslim well until the 19th century. According to Aubaret, the French Consul in Ruse in 1876 in the Danube Vilayet alone there were 1,120,000 Muslims and 1,233,500 non-Muslims of whom 1,150,000 were Bulgarian. As Russian forces and Bulgarian volunteers pushed south in January 1878 they inflicted a welter of atrocities on the local Muslim population.NYT 23.11.1877. The Ottoman army has also been accused of attacking Muslim non-combatants and using refugees to shield their retreat. Certainly many perished of hardship during their flight. The number of casualties is uncertain, it is estimated at tens of thousands. The figure of refugees is uncertain too, Professor Richard Crampton estimates it as an exodus of 130,000-150,000 people of whom approximately half returned for an intermediary period encouraged by the Congress of Berlin in 1878, while Dr. Hupchick claims that the refugees were 500,000. Atrocities against the Turks and Pomaks committed by Russian troops and Bulgaria units are also described in the 1878 Rhodope Commission signed by French, Italian, English and Turkish representatives. The Commission points out the burning of 80 Muslim villages after signing the armistice and a number of other war crimes against the Muslim civilian population. The Commission presents the figure of 150,000 refugees in and around the Rhodope Mountains.

According to Justin McCarthy, the Russian aim was to inflict massive Muslim civilian casualties. The victims are put into four categories: 1) battle casualties 2) murders by Bulgarian and Russian troops 3) denial of necessities for life leading to starvation and death from disease 4) death caused by refugee status. Members of the European press who covered the war in Bulgaria reported on the Russian atrocities against Muslims. Witness accounts from Shumen and Razgrad describe children, women and elderly wounded by sabres and lances. They stated that the entire Muslim population of many villages had been massacred.

It should be noted that the Ottoman army committed numerous atrocities against Christians during its retreat, most notably the complete devastation of Stara Zagora and the surrounding region, which might have provoked some of the attacks against ethnic Turks. There were also returning in the homeland Bulgarian refugees from Wallachia, Moldavia and Russia which escaped from the Ottoman rule.

During the War many Turks, including large and small landowners, abandoned their lands. Though 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.

Bulgarian population increased from two million at the 1881 census to two and a half million by 1892, and stood at three and a half million by 1910 and at four million by 1920. This increase took place while a large number of Bulgaria's Turkish-speaking inhabitants were emigrating. At the census in 1881 the Turkish-speaking people in Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia were about 700,000 and represented 24.9% of the population, yet by the 1892 census the proportion was 17.21 percent and by the 1910 census 11.63%; in the same years the Bulgarian speaking elements were 67.84%, 75.67% and 81.63% of the total.

During the Balkan Wars in August 1913 the majority Muslim population of Western Thrace (including the regions of the Southern Rhodope Mountains and the Kircaali/Kurdzhali region) established the Provisional Government of Western Thrace. The short-lived republic had a population of over 230 000 of which app. 80% were Turks and Pomaks. Western Thrace was left to Bulgaria with the Istanbul agreement signed on 29 September 1913 which guaranteed the rights of Turks living in the region. The region stayed under Bulgarian control until 1919. Since Bulgarians comprised only a fraction of the population of Western Thrace ceding the territory to Bulgaria was seen as an unacceptable option by both the population of Western Thrace and Turkey at that time. Having lost the territory in 1913 the Ottoman State intended to keep the area mainly Turkish populated with hopes of one day regaining Western Thrace.