Country: Bulgaria

Group: Turks

Date finalized: 4/21/2022

Team: Ryan Oakley (lead), Omer Carrillo, Erin Fagan, Hunter Blevins

Content Warning: Ethnocide, discrimination, stereotyping

Approximate Time Period: 1908-Present

Since Bulgaria achieved independence from the Ottoman empire in 1908, a variety of actors, regimes, and institutions have discriminated against Bulgarian Turks. 

Much of this discrimination is rooted in a conception of Bulgaria as a homogeneous, Bulgarian-speaking, Orthodox Christian nation (Kamusella, 2020). Throughout its history and under different regimes, Bulgaria has launched assimilation campaigns of varying brutality against the Turks, who practice Islam and speak Turkish. These campaigns have often targeted the language, religion, and any points of difference between this minority population and an idealized Bulgarian.

In the 1980s, the communist dictator Todor Zhivkov harnessed the twinned forces of assimilation and exclusion to lead a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign against the Turkish minority (Kamusella, 2019). In recent years, after the fall of communism and since Bulgaria joined the European Union, Bulgarian Turks have also been excluded from public and social life. While this discrimination is often directed at Bulgarian Turks, it is often based in a broader Islamophobia. In schools, tutors, classmates and teachers have verbally attacked women who choose to wear a headscarf and, in workplaces, employers have fired women for wearing headscarves (Şakir, 2020). But, aside from the discriminatory attitudes of societal actors such as landlords, teachers, and employers, Bulgarian Turks often face institutional and even spatial obstacles. Their rural towns of many Bulgarian Turks are far away from public services such as universities and offer limited high-school options. Many Bulgarian Turks seeking an education are directed to vocational schools, and even successful Turkish students are often excluded from taking university degrees (Dişbudak & Purkis, 2014). This limits their chances at gaining important positions and fully participating in Bulgarian public life. Compared to mainstream Bulgarian society, Bulgarian Turks have lower educational levels and socioeconomic standing (Dimitrovaa et al., 2014).

Since integration into the EU, Bulgaria has addressed some of the language-based discrimination in its education system. Bulgarian Turks can now study Turkish as an elective subject. However, Bulgaria bans using languages other than Bulgarian during election campaigns, a policy that targets Bulgarian Turks and attempts to exclude them from the democratic process (Hakӧz, 2017). History textbooks still present an Islamophobic image of Muslims and a distorted view of Bulgarian history (Şakir, 2020). Furthermore, the Bulgarian media often associates Islam with terrorism, public officials and politicians inflame nationalism by routinely engaging in Islamophobic speech, and the justice system often fails to prosecute or even investigate hate crimes against Muslims (Şakir, 2020).

Data Quality: The data quality is rated a 3. Several credible, peer-reviewed sources are available and there is a wide variety of highly credible evidence that ranges from statistical to personal accounts. 


Sources

  1. Dimitrovaa, R., Chasiotis, A., Bender, M., & van de Vijver, F. J. R. (2014). Turks in Bulgaria and the Netherlands: A comparative study of their acculturation orientations and outcomes. International Journal of Intercultural Relation, 40, 76-86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2014.01.001
  2. Dişbudak, C., & Purkis, S. (2014). Forced Migrants or Voluntary Exiles: Ethnic Turks of Bulgaria in Turkey. Journal of International Migration and Integration, 17(2), 371–388. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-014-0411-z
  3. Hakӧz, C. (2017). BETWEEN “UNWANTED” AND “DESIRED” POPULATIONS: COMPARING CITIZENSHIP AND MIGRATION POLICIES OF BULGARIA, GREECE, AND TURKEY. Balkan Social Science Review, 9(9), 23–47.
  4. Kamusella, T. (2019, February 25). Words matter. Bulgaria and the 30th anniversary of the largest ethnic cleansing in cold war Europe [Magazine]. New Eastern Europe. https://neweasterneurope.eu/2019/02/25/words-matter-bulgaria-and-the-30th-anniversary-of-the-largest-ethnic-cleansing-in-cold-war-europe%EF%BB%BF/
  5. Kamusella, T. (2020). Between Politics and Objectivity: The Non -Remembrance of the 1989 Ethnic Cleansing of Turks in Communist Bulgaria. Journal of Genocide Research, 22(4), 515–532. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2020.1726649
  6. Şakir, A. N. (2020). ISLAMOPHOBIA IN BULGARIA. In EUROPEAN ISLAMOPHOBIA REPORT 2019. SETA. https://www.islamophobiaeurope.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2019eir-BULGARIA.pdf