From victims to vital force

Bulgaria’s ethnic Turks mark 20th anniversary of uprising that helped topple communist government

An ethnic Turk man prays in front of a mosque in the town of Dzhebel, Bulgaria, on Tuesday, May 19. Bulgaria’s 10 percent Turkish minority this week marked the 20th anniversary of its uprising against the assimilation policies of the communist regime that eventually led to its downfall.

By Vessela Sergueva - Agence France-Presse

DZHEBEL – Bulgaria’s Turkish minority celebrates the 20th anniversary this week of an uprising that eventually helped topple the communist regime.

On May 19, 1989, Bulgaria’s ethnic Turks – who make up 10 percent of the total population – started a wave of spontaneous protests against the forced assimilation policies of the communist regime.

Beginning at a funeral in the village of Dzhebel in the southern Rhodope mountains, the protests spread within a week to the south and northeast of the country, regions with large Turkish populations.

In response, Sofia embarked on a policy of ethnic cleansing that left it so isolated internationally – even within the Soviet bloc itself – that the communist dictator Todor Zhivkov was ousted.

Nowadays, the Turkish minority party, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, is a vital force in Bulgarian politics and has acted as a junior coalition partner in all of the country’s governments since 2001. But in communist times the Turks were an oppressed minority, and in 1984, the regime adopted a law forcing them to change their Turkish names to Bulgarian ones, banning their language and outlawing Muslim customs.

“The alternative to changing our names was deportation,” said Reshad Uzturk, a 46-year-old driver from Dzhebel.

And the repression did not stop there, he said. “Anyone who spoke Turkish in the street was fined ‘for using incomprehensible language, ’ circumcised baby boys were not admitted to kindergarten.”

A 70-year-old woman, who asked not be named, told AFP that police “tore our shalwars [loose, pajama-like trousers] and made us wear skirts. I was so ashamed I could have died.”

In the communist jargon of the time, the process was referred to as one of national “revival.”

According to the official propaganda, the Turks were actually the descendants of Bulgarians who had been forced to convert to Islam under Turkish rule between the 14th and 19th centuries, but had now forgotten their true origins.

As a Western-orientated country, modern-day Turkey was seen as the archenemy, just waiting to get its hands on Bulgarian territory. And the authorities would not tolerate any form of resistance to their national “revival” policies.

In the uprisings of May 1989, nine ethnic Turks were killed and dozens more injured, says researcher Mihail Ivanov.

“The regime was worried about the growth of this minority and responded to the revolts with ethnic cleansing,” said Antonina Zhelyazkova, head of the Sofia-based Center for Minority Studies. “Leaders of protest movements and thousands of intellectuals were expelled to Turkey. Ordinary people were terrified and followed,” Zhelyazkova explained.

On May 29, 1989, communist leader Zhivkov demanded Turkey open its border to Muslims wanting to leave Bulgaria.

According to the Bulgarian secret service’s archives, some 370,000 Bulgarians of Turkish origin crossed the border between May and November 1989, when Turkey closed it again to stem the influx, said researcher, Ivanov. Only around 155,000 of them later returned.

“They didn’t like me because, as school director, I had spoken against jingoism in the school curriculum. Following the revolt, the police put me on a train to Turkey and separated me from my Bulgarian wife,” said 70-year-old Mumun Mustafa, who later returned to Bulgaria.

Communist dictator Zhivkov may have been successful in assimilating or expelling hundreds of thousands of ethnic Turks, but his policies isolated him internationally.

“Zhivkov never received backing from [the Soviet Union’s reformist leader Mikhail] Gorbachev for his assimilation policies,” Bulgaria’s first democratically elected president Zhelyu Zhelev told AFP. “His total international isolation led to his ousting by the reformers of the Communist Party on November 10, 1989,” he said.