Turks in Bulgaria - Summary

Summary

Today, the Turks of Bulgaria are concentrated in two rural areas, in the Northeast (Ludogorie/Deliorman) and the Southeast (the Eastern Rhodopes). They form a majority in the province of Kardzhali (66.2% Turks compared to 30.2% Bulgarians) and a plurality in the province of Razgrad (50.0% Turks compared to 43.0% Bulgarians). It is important to note, that it is difficult to establish accurately the number of the Turks and that it is likely that the census numbers are an overestimate because some Pomaks, Crimean Tatars, Circassians and Roma tend to identify themselves as Turks. In Bulgaria there are also other Turkish-speaking communities such as the Gajal who could be found particularly in the Deliorman region.

Turks settled in the territory of modern Bulgaria during and after the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. Being the dominant group in the Ottoman Empire for the next five centuries, they played an important part in the economic and cultural life of the land. According to the historian Halil Inalcik, the Ottomans ensured significant Turkish presence in forward urban outposts such as Nikopol, Kyustendil, Silistra, Trikala, Skopje and Vidin and their vicinity. Ottoman Muslims constituted the majority in and around strategic routes primarily in the southern Balkans leading from Thrace towards Macedonia and the Adriatic and again from the Maritsa and Tundzha valleys towards the Danube region. According to Aubaret, the French Consul in Ruse in 1876 in the Danube Vilayet (which included the territory of the post-1878 Bulgarian principality without Eastern Rumelia, and also Northern Dobruja and the Niš region) alone there were 1,120,000 Muslims and 1,233,500 non-Muslims of whom 1,150,000 were Bulgarian. Between 1876 and 1878, through massacres, epidemics and hunger a large portion of the Turkish population vanished. The flow of Turks to Anatolia continued in a steady pattern depending on the policies of the ruling regimes until 1925 after which immigration was regulated. During the 20th century Bulgaria also practiced forced deportations and expulsions, which also targeted the Muslim Pomak population.

The biggest wave of Turkish emigration occurred in 1989, when 310,000 Turks left Bulgaria as a result of the communist Todor Zhivkov regime's assimilation campaign, but around 150,000 returned between 1989 and 1990. That program, which began in 1984, forced all Turks and other Muslims in Bulgaria to adopt Christian names and renounce all Muslim customs. 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. 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 or demolished. Turkish names on gravestones were replaced with Bulgarian names. According to estimates, 500 to 1,500 people were killed when they resisted assimilation measures, and thousands of others were sent to labor camps or were forcibly resettled. During this period the Bulgarian authorities denied all reports of ethnic repression and that ethnic Turks existed in the country. The official government stance was that the Turks in Bulgaria were really Bulgarians who were Turkified and that the entire Turkish population voluntarily chose to change their Turkish/Muslim names to Bulgarian/Slavic ones.

The fall of communism in Bulgaria led to a reversal of the state's policy towards its citizens of Turkish descent. After the fall of Zhivkov in 1989, the National Assembly of Bulgaria passed laws to restore the cultural rights of 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. In January 1991, Turkish-language lessons were reintroduced as a non-compulsory subject for four hours per week if requested. According to the 2011 census in Bulgaria, there are 588,318 persons from the Turkish ethnic group or 8.8% of all ethnic groups, down from 746,664 persons (9.4%) at the 2001 census. 605,802 persons (9.1%) pointed Turkish language as their mother tongue. Statistic results of the 2000 census on the foreign-born population in Turkey showed that 480,817 residents were born in Bulgaria thus forming the largest foreign-born group in the country. The number of Bulgarian citizens from Turkish descent residing in Turkey is put at 326,000, during the 2005 Bulgarian parliamentary elections 120,000 voted either in Bulgaria or polling stations set up in Turkey.