Nationalities Papers, Vol. 28, No. 1, 2000

TURKS AND TATARS IN BULGARIA AND THEBALKANS

Ali Eminov

The Koran and the Bible are God’s graceWhich is what all four holy Books embrace;To scorn and segregate this or that raceWould be the darkest stains on one’s face.

As)ik Veysel

Nationalist movements everywhere aim to create “territorially bounded political units(states) out of homogeneous cultural communities (nations).”1 Unfortunately, ethnic,linguistic, religious, political, and personal identities rarely coincide with geograph-ical boundaries that enclose nation states. There are always groups within nationstates whose identities are different from the majority. The leaders of nation statesoften see the presence of multiple ethnic communities within a single nation state asa sign of tension and instability, a threat to the integrity and indeed the very survivalof a nation state. Consequently, they seek ways to culturally homogenize the nationso that the state and the nation come to coincide with one another.

Attempts at cultural homogenization can take various forms: a state can try tomaintain the illusion of cultural homogeneity by denying the existence of minoritieson its territory; it can recognize the existence of minorities, grant them certain rights,and try to integrate them into society; it can try to assimilate minorities into themajority culture; or it can try to get rid of minority populations through populationexchanges, expulsion, or, in extreme cases, genocide. One or more of these strategieshave been used by all Balkan states in dealing with their minority populations.

In this article I describe and evaluate the historical experience of Turks inBulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, and Romania and Tatars in Bulgarian and RomanianDobruca.2 In all Balkan countries, but especially in Bulgaria and Greece, the Turkshave been imagined as the alien Other: Muslim, barbaric, cruel, and without historywhile the Self (Bulgarian, Greek, etc.) is imagined as Christian, civilized, and witha long and rich historical past. The construction of identities as oppositionalstructures is based mostly on subjective experience of difference and not on anyobjective criteria. Changes in subjective experience of difference result in changes inone’s perception of the Other. Identity construction serves to maintain boundariesbetween different groups and the extent of change in identities depends to a greatextent on how rigid or permeable these boundaries are. This means that identities aresocially constructed and historically contingent.

ISSN 0090-5992 print; 1465-3923 online/00/010129-36 Ó 2000 Association for the Study of Nationalities

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Historical Background

The present ethnic and religious mosaic in the Balkans is the product of millenniaof migratory invasions. The central location of the Balkans as a gateway betweenEurope, Asia, and Africa and the existence of a well-developed road systemfor carrying military, administrative, commercial, and cultural traf� c sinceancient times facilitated such movements. Like other powers before them, theOttoman Turks conquered the Balkans by securing and controlling these importantarteries.

Turkic groups that have passed through or settled in Bulgaria and theBalkans include the Huns, Avars, Bulgars, Pechenegs, Oguz, Uz, Cumans, Tatars,Turcomans, and Turks, among others. As Poulton observes, most of these groupshad little long-term impact upon the cultural, religious, and political landscape ofBulgaria and the Balkans. They either returned to their original homelands orwere gradually assimilated into local populations, contributing to the formationof the three main linguistic branches of Balkan Islam: the Turkish, Albanian, andSlavic speaking concentrations.3 Of all the Turkic groups that have passedthrough or settled in Bulgaria and the Balkans, the Turks were the major players inreshaping the ethnic, religious, and politico-economic landscape of Bulgaria and theBalkans.

The conquest of the Balkans by the Ottoman Turks set in motion importantpopulation movements which modi� ed the ethnic and religious composition of theconquered territories.4 This demographic restructuring was accomplished throughOttoman colonization of strategic areas of the Balkans with Turkish-speaking settlersfrom Asia Minor and Anatolia.

The greatest impact of Ottoman Turkish colonization was felt in the urban centers.Many towns in Bulgaria and the Balkans became major centers for Turkish controland administration, with most Christians gradually withdrawing to the hinterlands.5

Many urban centers in the southern Balkans achieved Muslim majorities or hadsizeable Muslim minorities by early sixteenth century.6

The problem of explaining the roots of a signi� cant Muslim presence in theBalkans within a century and a half of the Ottoman conquest remains unresolved.Historians in Turkey and other Balkan countries frame the problem of origins quitedifferently. Turkish historians generally emphasize the colonization of strategic areasof Bulgaria and the Balkans by Turks from Asia Minor and Anatolia as the mostimportant source of Muslims in the Balkans. To them Ottoman success in theBalkans was made possible by migrations, voluntary and forced, of masses of Turksinto the Balkans (Barkan’s thesis). As Todorova notes, “In this interpretation theconscious and planned colonization of the Balkans on the part of the Sultan’sgovernment held a central place.” Balkan historians, on the other hand, haveattempted “to refute, or rather relativize, the essential signi� cance of Ottomancolonization in explaining both the success of the Ottoman conquest, and the

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signi� cant size of the Muslim population by the last centuries of Ottoman rule. Thisattempt has centered on the process of conversions to Islam as chie� y responsible forthe growth of the Muslim population in the Balkans.”7 Even though each interpret-ation is problematic, both have been used by various Balkan countries for politicalpurposes, “to prove the ‘blood kinship’ of the contested groups to the larger nationsin the area,” to justify anti-Muslim or anti-Turkish policies in a number of Balkancountries on the one hand and to lay “claim to a direct ethnic connection” and as “ajusti� cation for and, at times, overactive, even aggressive, policy on the part ofdifferent political circles in Turkey” on the other.8

Although the settlement of Turks from Asia Minor and Anatolia and from otherparts of the Empire continued throughout the Ottoman period, a demographicbalance between Christians and Muslims was achieved by the early sixteenthcentury. This demographic balance began to be reversed in the aftermath of theRusso-Turkish war of 1877–1878. During and following the war, large numbers ofTurks and other Muslims (most of the Tatars and almost all the Circassians) left theBalkans with the retreating Ottoman armies, initially to areas in the southern Balkansstill under Ottoman control, and later to Turkey. As a result of massive emigrationof Turks and other Muslims from Bulgaria and the Balkans there was a precipitousdecline in the proportion of Muslims, especially in urban areas, and a correspondingincrease in the proportion of Bulgarian Orthodox, both in absolute numbers and inpercentages.9 Intermittent emigration of Turks and other Muslims from Bulgaria andother Balkan countries to Turkey has further depleted their numbers. Nevertheless,signi� cant Turkish and other Muslim communities remain in Bulgaria, Macedonia,northeastern Greece, and Romanian Dobruca.

Before presenting a more detailed discussion of Turks and Tatars in differentBalkan countries an important caveat is in order. Of� cial � gures provided bymost Balkan countries about the size of minority populations are suspect. Manipu-lation of demographic statistics to strengthen ethnic claims to disputed territorieshas a long history in the Balkans. As King notes, “One of the most valid claims… a nation-state can make to a contested territory is that the inhabitants of thearea are of the same nationality as the majority of the state making the claim.Such governments have not hesitated to alter census data in order to ‘prove’their position.”10 The manipulation of census statistics about the ethnic compositionof Macedonia by Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey to strengthen their ethnicclaims to the region early in the twentieth century is a case in point.11 Similarly,census � gures within Balkan states often combine different nationalities with thedominant nationality in order to give the impression of high degree of ethnichomogeneity and “to create a staatsvolk.”12 The of� cial position of the Bulgariangovernment between 1984 and 1989 that all citizens of Bulgaria, including those ofTurkish descent, were Bulgarians and the continued insistence of the Greek govern-ment that there are no ethnic minorities in Greece but only a Muslim minority areexamples of this.

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The Settlement of Tatars in Dobruca

The earliest movement of Tatars to Dobruca coincided with the crumbling of theEmpire of the Golden Horde during the fourteenth century. Sporadically over thenext several centuries groups of Tatars from Russia, the Crimea, and the Caucasuswould continue to arrive and settle in Dobruca. The Crimean War (1853–1856)precipitated a general exodus of Tatars from the Crimea and northern Caucasus,many of whom settled in Dobruca.

The wars between the Ottomans and the Russians from 1768 to 1829 werelargely fought in Dobruca. These wars were disastrous for the agricultural economyand the population of the area. By the end of these wars large areas of Dobrucabecame depopulated. In the 1850s the Ottoman government felt a need to advertisein European newspapers for potential immigrants to settle in Dobruca, “promisingthem land for agriculture, tax exemptions, and a variety of religious and culturalincentives.”13 The response to these appeals came from an unexpected quarter,Crimea.

Russian annexation of the Crimean peninsula in the late eighteenth century led todeterioration of the situation of Crimean Tatars. The Russians, who saw the Tatarsas a hostile element in the newly conquered territory, encouraged their emigrationand sought to colonize the areas vacated by Tatars with foreigners (such as OrthodoxBulgarians) considered more friendly to the Russians. After the declaration of war onRussia by the Ottoman Empire in 1853, the Russian civil and military authorities inCrimea were faced with the question of what to do with a population whose loyaltyto the Russian regime was suspect. One of the measures being seriously consideredwas to move Tatars either out of Crimea altogether or at least to the interior of Russiawhere they could not be in a position to aid the Ottoman Turkish forces in any way.14

Some Tatars emigrated to the Ottoman Empire early in the war but the bulk of Tataremigration took place later “in conjunction with allied military operations” andimmediately after the war. The total number of Tatars who emigrated during andimmediately after the war is estimated at 30,000 to 40,000.15

After the Peace of Paris (1856) which ended the war, the attitude of the Russiangovernment towards the Tatars of Crimea became known very quickly. To theRussian Emperor Alexander II, emigration of Tatars, either clandestine or open,should be encouraged, “since this emigration would rid the country of a ‘harmfulelement’.” 16 Also at the end of the Crimean war “The Porte decided to assist thosewishing to emigrate; … a commission to handle their transportation and settlementhad been established … The Porte promised the newcomers free land, draft animals,and aid in procuring seed and agricultural implements.” 17 According to Ottomansources, between 1854 and 1864, “a total of 595,000 immigrants, mostly fromCrimea, plus a few from Kazan found refuge in Ottoman lands. Of these approxi-mately 120,000 were settled in Dobruca.”18

To settle large numbers of immigrants over a short period of time the Ottoman

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authorities called for the establishment of an entirely new town, the town ofMecidiye (Medgidia in Romania today), in Dobruca “speci� cally to accommodaterefugees from Crimea and to serve as a center for the economic development ofcentral Dobruca.”19 Additional accommodation for the new immigrants was built invillages around Mecidiye in present-day Romania as well as in the eyalet (province)of Silistre and in the sancaks of Vidin, Tirnova (Tirnovo), and Islimye (Sliven), allin present-day Bulgaria.20

The emigration of Tatars from Crimea and the northern Caucasus as well asCircassians from the Caucasus changed the ethnic composition of Dobruca consider-ably. Even prior to the Crimean war the population of Dobruca was largely Muslim.The settlement of Tatars from Crimea and Circassians from the north Caucasusduring and following the Crimean War strengthened the Muslim element in Dobrucaeven further. According to the 1866 Ottoman census Muslims made up 98.5% of thepopulation of Mecidiye, 93.3% of Mangalia, and 70% of Babadag21 and accordingto the Salname (Ottoman statistical yearbook) of 1875, 88.1% of Kyustendza, 72.9%of Harsovo, and 62.9% of the nahiye of Isakca.22

According to the Ottoman census of 1866, like cities in Romanian Dobruca, mostcities in Bulgarian Dobruca had Muslim majorities: Ruse with 53%, Shumen 52.6%,Razgrad 69.6%, Silistre 64.3%, Balchik 77.4%, Provadia 71.4%, Osman Pazar81.2%, Eski Dzhumaja 64.4%, and Hacioglu Pazardzhik with 84.7%.23 Although theethnic breakdown of the Muslim population is not available, Tatars made up asigni� cant portion of Muslims. Todorov notes that over 97% of the immigrants fromCrimea and north Caucasus were settled in Dobruca. Towns in Dobruca in whichimmigrants made up over 10% of the population included Mecidiye (95.7%),Hacioglu Pazardzhik (48.5), Mangalia (31.8), Provadia (19.4), Osman Pazar (12.4),and Varna (11.8%).24 Georgeoff, using data from Encyclopedia Britannica publishedin 1891, indicates that in 1870 there were between 80,000 and 100,000 Tatars livingin the Danubian province of the Ottoman Empire.25 During and immediately after theRusso-Turkish war of 1877–1878 large numbers of Tatars left Bulgaria with theretreating Ottoman armies.26

During the twentieth century the number of Tatars and Turks in Romania has� uctuated considerably due primarily to two factors: the fate of the contested regionof southern Dobruca, and the emigration of Turks and Tatars to Turkey.27 SouthernDobruca, with a predominantly Turkish and Tatar population at the beginning of thetwentieth century, changed hands several times between Romania and Bulgaria. Itwas granted to Romania by the Treaty of Bucharest in 1913. Bulgarian forcescaptured it in 1916 but the area was returned to Romania in 1918. Southern Dobrucaremained in Romanian hands until 1940 when it was ceded to Bulgaria by the Treatyof Craiova, which established the present-day frontier between the two countries.28

While southern Dobruca was under Romanian rule the Romanian authorities at-tempted to change the ethnic composition of the territory, which was largelyTurkish/Tatar and Bulgarian, in favor of Romanians by encouraging and helping

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Romanians to settle there. This attempt was largely unsuccessful. King notes that “bythe time of the 1930 census, after several years of Romanian rule, the two southerndistricts of Dobruca contained only 21 percent Romanians, as against 38 percentBulgarians and 34 percent Turks.”29

Political instability in Dobruca during the � rst half of the twentieth centuryprecipitated several episodes of emigration of Turks and some Tatars from RomanianDobruca to Turkey. Between 1913 and 1930 some 36,000 people, mostly Turks,emigrated to Turkey. According to the 1930 Romanian census there were 150,773Turks and 22,092 Tatars in Romanian Dobruca, making up 21.2% of its population.30

The pace of emigration of Turks from Romania picked up in the 1930s, precipitatedby the expropriation of Turkish landholdings, the worsening of the economicsituation brought on by the worldwide depression, and the generally negativepolitical climate for most minorities in Romania at that time. The signing of theTurkish–Romanian Convention in 1936 to facilitate emigration of Turks and Tatarsto Turkey precipitated widespread emigration of Turks and Tatars. Within a veryshort period of time, 1937–1939, some 130,000 to 150,000 people emigrated toTurkey. Included among these emigrants were most of the Alevi/Kizilbash (Shiite)population of northern Dobruca.31 By the end of World War II the combined Turkishand Tatar population of Romania had been reduced to about 55,000, comprising6–7% of the population of Dobruca compared with 21% in 1930. In the 1948 censusthe combined total of Turks and Tatars was only 28,782.

From the end of World War II until the 1960s emigration of Turks from Romaniato Turkey virtually ceased, a re� ection of the generally unfriendly relations betweenTurkey and communist Romania. One consequence was a steady increase in theTurkish and Tatar populations in Romanian Dobruca—from 14,329 Turks in 1956 to18,046 in 1966, 23,303 in 1977, and 29,832 in 1992. The Tatar population registeredsimilar increases—from 20,469 in 1956 to 22,151 in 1966, 23,107 in 1977, and24,596 in 1992.32

At present most of the Tatars and Turks in Romania live in the towns and villagesof the province of Constanta and the city of Constanta itself. Also “concentrations ofTurks and Tatars are found in the province of Tulcea and outside Dobruca in thetowns of Braila, Cluj, Craiova, Drobeta-Turnu Severin, Iasi, Orsova, Slatina, andTimisoara.”33

Until after World War II what little education Tatar and Turkish children receivedwas in private, essentially religious schools.34 The teachers who taught in theseschools were graduates of the religious college (medrese) in Mecidiye. In 1949 Tatarand Turkish schools were established in accordance with the constitutional provisionmandating that members of non-Romanian nationalities be provided education intheir mother tongue. Soon after, the Romanian government initiated a policy ofseparate development for the Tatars. Most Turkish schools were designated as Tatarschools. A Tatar teacher training college was established in Constanta. Books inKazan-Tatar were imported from the Soviet Union to replace the previously used

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Turkish books. A special Tatar alphabet was created and a number of publicationsappeared using this alphabet.

However, these experiments worsened the already low educational standards inthese schools, prompting Tatar parents to send their children to Romanian publicschools instead of Tatar schools. Declining enrollments in Tatar schools led to theclosing of most of these schools. By the late 1950s only a handful of these schoolsremained open. In 1957 all the remaining Tatar- and Turkish-language schools wereclosed, less than ten years after their establishment, and a process of Romanizing theTatars and Turks was begun.35 However, the Romanization policies of the govern-ment were quite mild when compared with those of Bulgaria. Both religious andsecular publications in Turkish and Tatar could be imported from Turkey or theSoviet Union, and occasional works in Turkish and Tatar continued to be published.After 1989 it again became possible to offer classes in minority languages. So farTurkish classes are offered only at the pre-school level. During the 1990–1991school year 40 children were enrolled in Turkish pre-school classes with twoteachers. By the 1993–1994 school year enrollment had increased to 156 childrenwith seven teachers.36

In 1900 Islam was thriving in Romania. There were 260 mosques open to worshipin Romanian Dobruca. The most important center of Islamic learning was thereligious college (medrese) at Babadag. This college trained religious teachersand other religious personnel to meet the needs of the Islamic community.37 Themedrese was “supported by several thousand hectares of land established as avakif. In 1901 … the medrese was transferred to Mecidiye. In the same year,most of the mosques on Romanian soil were allotted ten hectares of land for theirmaintenance. This provision was later formally embedded in the ‘Land Law’ of 17July 1921.”38 The school remained in operation until 1964, when it was closeddown by the government, ostensibly for lack of interest in religious education on thepart of young Turks and Tatars. Beginning in the 1970s, restrictions on Islamwere eased. Romania, in an attempt to improve its relations with the Islamicworld, began to emphasize “the presence of a � ourishing Muslim minority on itsterritory.”39

The closing down of the only theological school in the country in 1964 meant thatby the 1980s the number of imams who performed “the functions of muezzin andhatib concomitantly” had decreased considerably because of lack of quali� edcandidates and because the Romanian authorities were not endorsing appointment ofnew imams by the mufti. Lack of adequately trained religious personnel meant thatmosques in many villages were not open to worship.40 Imams were appointed onlyto those mosques deemed to “have historical or artistic value.” Moreover, attendanceat mosques that remained open, even on special occasions such as the two majorMuslim festivals, was sparse, consisting mainly of men over 60 years of age. Lackof religious instruction, shortage of well-trained religious personnel, scarcity offunctioning mosques, and anti-religious propaganda combined to create a generation

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of Tatars and Turks ignorant about the fundamental principles of their religion. Thiswas a genuine threat to the preservation of Islam in Romania.41

Nevertheless an organizational infrastructure of Islam remained in place. At thetop of this infrastructure was the mufti, the highest Muslim of� cial in Romania. In1982 Iacub Septar Mehmet, who had been appointed in 1947, was still in of� ce. Intheory, the mufti was charged with the administration of the affairs of the Muslimcommunity in Romania through a High Muslim Council, consisting of 23 persons“elected by the members of the Muslim community by secret ballot.” At thecommunity level, smaller councils, which always include the prayer leaders, theimams, were supposed to administer the funds of pious foundations (vakifs) to takecare of community needs. For practical purposes, however, during communist rule,the mufti, the High Muslim Council, and the local councils were not important in thelives of most Muslims in Romania. The mufti and the members of his administrativestaff were salaried state employees and, as such, spokespersons for state policy. Themufti’s appointments and decisions were subject to con� rmation of the powerfulDepartment of Religious Cults. They represented the of� cial version of Islam to theoutside world, which often had no resemblance to the realities on the ground.42

Since World War II the mufti and the members of his administrative staff have allbeen Tatars. One reason why government authorities have tried to privilege Tatarsover Turks in matters of education and religion is that Tatars, to a much greaterdegree than the Turks, “tend to look upon themselves primarily as Romaniancitizens, and only secondly as Muslims or Tatars.”43 They consider Romania theirhomeland, identify strongly with it, and wish to remain in Romania and do not havea strong desire to emigrate. The Turks, on the other hand, have a strongeridenti� cation with Turkey than with Romania. Many consider Turkey their truehomeland and hope to return there eventually. To them Turkey is a kin state whichwill come to their aid when needed. One consequence of this is that Turks outsideof Turkey have not developed strong identities with the countries in which they live.This is interpreted by authorities in Romania and elsewhere as a sign of unreliabilityand potential disloyalty. The Tatars, whose ancestors came from Crimea, mayconsider Crimea their homeland, but Ukraine is certainly not a kin state to them.Ukraine does not want Tatars to return to Crimea, and it has no interest in the fateof Crimean Tatars living outside Ukraine.

Tatars in Bulgaria

The � rst census carried out after Bulgarian independence from Ottoman rule in 1881(results published in 1884) shows that, even after large-scale emigration of Tatarsand Turks from Dobruca during and after the Russo-Turkish war, in six out of sevendistricts in northeast Bulgaria Muslims were still in the majority.44 It is not possibleto estimate the proportion of Tatars within this population because information onthe ethnic composition of the Muslim population is lacking. The 1893 Bulgarian

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census records only 16,920 Tatars in the entire country, which by this time alsoincluded Eastern Rumelia, annexed in 1885. This compares with an estimate ofbetween 80,000 and 120,000 Tatars in 1870. Emigration of Tatars continued duringthe � rst two decades of the twentieth century so that by the 1926 census theirnumbers had been reduced to 6,191 Tatars. Since then the number of Tatars inBulgaria has remained relatively stable at between 5,000 and 6,000. In the 1992census 4,515 Bulgarian citizens identi� ed their ethnic af� liation as Tatar.45

Tatars in Bulgaria live in areas that are predominantly Turkish in population.During the twentieth century they have been assimilating into the Turkish-speakingpopulation linguistically, socially, and culturally. In the early 1960s the Bulgariangovernment was concerned enough about this trend that it took measures tocounteract it. In April 1962 the Politburo approved “Measures against the TurkishSelf-Identi� cation of Gypsies, Tatars and Bulgarians Professing the MohammedanReligion,” and recommended steps to encourage Bulgarian identity formation amongTatars and Muslim Gypsies.46 The Politburo called for “a systematic ideological andpolitical struggle against the Turkish religious and chauvinistic propaganda and itspan-Turkish and pan-Islamic aims and aspirations.”47 The speci� c recommendationsincluded developing detailed instructions for people working in registry of� ces “thatreligion and personal names are not criteria for nationality. It must also be made clearthat intermarriage does not lead to change of nationality of the spouses. The childrenof intermarried couples can be registered as Bulgarians completely voluntarily andwith the explicit agreement of the parents.”48 Citizens of non-Bulgarian descent wereto be informed that they could change their names and register themselves and theirfamilies as Bulgarians by a simpli� ed procedure that did not require court permissionor a written application. More speci� cally, steps should be taken to minimize theinteraction between Turks, Tatars, Bulgarian-speaking Muslims, and Gypsy Mus-lims.

The Ministry of Education and Culture and the regional people’s councils must takemeasures so that the Turkish language is not taught to the children of Gypsies, Tatars, andBulgarian Muslims. These children must be taught in Bulgarian. The appointment ofTurkish teachers at schools where the children of Gypsies, Tatars, and Bulgarian Muslimspredominate must be avoided. The children of Bulgarian Muslims and Gypsies must notbe allowed to live in hostels or study in the same groups with Turkish children wheneverthis is possible.49

The Politburo recommended that the practice of homogeneous Muslim labor battal-ions in the armed forces should be discontinued. Turkish clergymen should not beappointed to villages with compact Bulgarian Muslim, Gypsy Muslim, and Tatarpopulations. In any case, Muslim clergymen were to refrain from propaganda infavor of the Turkish af� liation of non-Turkish Muslims. The expectation of volun-tary compliance with most of these measures turned out to be naive. All Muslimgroups were subjected to forced assimilation campaigns and forced replacement of

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Turkish/Muslim names with Bulgarian names. Tatars, along with Turks, weresubjected to this indignity during the winter of 1984–1985.

Since the reversal of the forced assimilation policy in late 1989 most havereclaimed their Muslim names. For most of the period since the Russo-Turkish Warof 1877–1878 those Tatars who remained in Bulgaria have lived among Turkishspeakers, have gone to Turkish language schools, have prayed in the same mosques,and have intermarried with Turkish speakers. Such close interaction has led to theassimilation of Tatars into the Turkish-speaking population. The Bulgarian govern-ment’s attempt to reverse this trend during the 1960s failed because the govern-ment’s alternative to Turki� cation was Bulgarianization. Given the small number ofTatars in the country, the government was not willing to invest in Tatar languageschools or to support Tatar cultural institutions. Although a few thousand Bulgariancitizens identify themselves as Tatar today, there is not much to distinguish themculturally, linguistically, or religiously from Turkish speakers.

Turks in Bulgaria

Turks may have begun to settle in the Balkans as early as the thirteenth century;however, the more widespread settlement of Turks in Bulgaria and the Balkanscoincides with the beginning of Ottoman conquests in the Balkans during thefourteenth century. Turkish settlement activity continued throughout the Ottomanperiod, reaching a peak during the mid nineteenth century, when large numbers ofTatars from Crimea and Circassians from the Caucasus were settled in present-dayRomania and Bulgaria.

With the uprisings against Ottoman rule in Bulgaria and elsewhere in the Balkansin the late nineteenth century, and especially during and immediately after theRusso-Turkish war of 1877–1878, the direction of Turkish migrations was reversed.Large numbers of Turks and other Muslims began to migrate, initially to areas in thesouthern Balkans still under Ottoman control and later to Asia Minor and Anatolia.Reliable statistics on Turkish emigration from Bulgaria, especially during andimmediately following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, are not available. Onesource estimates that, in addition to 500,000 Ottoman casualties during the war,one-and-a-half million Turks and other Muslims emigrated from Bulgaria to otherareas of the Balkans still under Ottoman control.50 The Balkan Wars and World WarI precipitated another wave of Turkish emigration. Unfortunately no reliable statisticson emigration are available covering the 1913–1922 period. Turkish sources estimatethat during the Balkan Wars alone some 440,00 Turks emigrated from Bulgaria andother areas of the Balkans to Turkey. Overall some 1.5 to 2 million Turkish and otherMuslims have emigrated from Bulgaria to Turkey since 1878. Emigration continuestoday.

As a result of these migrations the number of Turkish speakers in Bulgaria wasreduced from more than one-third of the Bulgarian population prior to the Russo-

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Turkish War to less than 15% in 1900. It fell under 10% by 1934 and continued tofall fractionally during the subsequent decades but started to climb again during the1960s and 1970s.51 The authorities found this increase suf� ciently alarming toinitiate a forced assimilation campaign against Turks and Muslims. This campaignculminated in the forced replacement of Turkish/Muslim names with Bulgariannames during the 1984–1985 winter and the insistence of the Bulgarian governmentover the next � ve years that Bulgaria was a single-nation (Bulgarian) state.

According to the 1992 census the Turkish speakers in Bulgaria were concentratedin the southeastern and northeastern regions of the country. In the district ofKurdzhali in southeastern Bulgaria they were in the majority, with 65.7% of thedistrict population. In the district of Razgrad in northeastern Bulgaria they made up47.4% of the district population. Other districts with signi� cant Turkish populationsincluded Silistra (33.5%), Turgovishte (32.8%), Shumen (30.3%), Dobrich (14.7%),Burgas (13.8%), Ruse (13.0%), Haskovo (11.4%), and Blagoevgrad (11.3%). The1992 census also showed that Turkish speakers were predominantly rural, with morethan two-thirds (68.5%) living in villages.52

Below I discuss in some detail the experience of Turks in Bulgaria during thesecond half of the twentieth century in three main areas: the status of Turkishlanguage education, the status of Islamic institutions and Islamic practice, and theparticipation of Turks in the political process.

Prior to World War II Turkish children in Bulgaria were educated almostexclusively in private schools controlled by the Turkish community. These schoolsprovided limited education—little beyond religion and the three Rs—to a smallpercentage of school-age children—almost exclusively male. They were poorlyfunded and poorly maintained. Teachers who taught in these schools were poorlytrained.53 Only about 50% of school-age children ever enrolled in elementaryschools. Many of these students dropped out before completing their elementaryeducation. Of those who managed to complete elementary school, very few contin-ued beyond. As a result the Turkish population in Bulgaria remained largelyilliterate. According to Mishkova, at the turn of the century (1905) the literacy ratefor Turks in Bulgaria was only 4%. This compares with over 30% for Armenians.54

Only the Gypsies were worse off than the Turks. No signi� cant improvement tookplace on this front over the next four decades.

The 1947 constitution of Bulgaria recognized the existence of national minoritiesin the country and provided for their education in their mother tongue in Article 79:“National minorities have a right to education in their vernacular and to developtheir national cultures, while the study of Bulgarian is compulsory”55 (emphasisadded). Community-controlled Turkish schools were nationalized in 1946 andbecame part of the public school system in Bulgaria.56 The nationalization ofTurkish-language schools brought about a complete revamping of the education ofTurkish children. Although the language of instruction in these schools remainedTurkish, a uniform nationwide curriculum with an overt ideological and atheistic

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orientation was imposed on these schools and the compulsory study of Bulgarian wasimplemented. Strict enforcement of attendance requirements meant that, for the � rsttime, all school-age children were attending school.

In order to provide education for all school-age children, old schools wererenovated, some religious schools were turned into secular schools, and scores ofnew schools were built. To meet the staf� ng needs of these schools Turkish teacherscolleges (pedagoji) were established in Stara Zagora, Kurdzhali, So� a, and Razgrad,and a Department of Turkish Philology was established at the University of So� a. Aboarding high school for women was opened in Ruse. Within a few short years thenumber of Turkish-language elementary and middle schools, the number of studentsattending these schools, and the number of teachers teaching in these schoolsincreased signi� cantly. For example, during the 1943–1944 school year there were424 Turkish schools of all types in Bulgaria with an enrollment of 37,335 studentsand 871 teachers. During the 1949–1950 school year the number of Turkish-language schools stood at 1,199 with an enrollment of 105,376 and 3,037 teachers.57

Thriving Turkish-language education, Turkish-language publications, Turkish-language radio broadcasts, professional and amateur Turkish theaters, and so oncreated the impression that a renaissance of Turkish culture was underway.

Several ambitious goals were behind the nationalization and secularization ofTurkish educational institutions as well as support of other Turkish cultural institu-tions. First the government wanted to improve the dismal state of education amongTurkish speakers. Second, by making the study of Bulgarian compulsory in thenationalized Turkish language schools, the authorities sought to increase � uency inBulgarian among a largely monolingual population in order to ease their integrationinto Bulgarian society. Third, the government sought to create a secular Turkish-speaking intelligentsia and to use it to effect a shift from primary Muslim identityamong Turkish speakers to ethnic Turkish identity. Finally, this secular Turkish-speaking intelligentsia was expected to take the lead in facilitating a � nal shift ofidentity from parochial ethnic Turkish identity to an identity with the socialistBulgarian nation.

Some of these goals were realized quite rapidly; others not. Educational conditionsamong the Turkish population, as indicated above, improved signi� cantly. Literacyrates among young Turks rose, approaching the national average. Compulsory studyof Bulgarian in Turkish schools led to high rates of bilingualism among the young.Support of Turkish pedagogical institutes, the Department of Turkish Philology atSo� a University, a Turkish branch at Narodna Prosveta Publishing House, andTurkish professional and amateur theaters encouraged the development of a nativeTurkish intelligentsia. As discussed in more detail later on, anti-religious propa-ganda, especially anti-Islamic propaganda, banning of religious instruction, thepersecution of religious leaders, and the replacement of religious leaders with secularleaders all contributed to the emergence of ethnic Turkish identity as the primaryidentity among most Turkish speakers. This was especially true for the young, whose

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worldview was in� uenced considerably by their exposure to anti-religious, seculareducation in Turkish-language schools. However, Turkish speakers saw no contra-diction between being a Turk and a Muslim. Therefore, a shift of emphasis fromreligious to ethnic identity was not problematic for most of them. The attempts of thegovernment to replace parochial ethnic identities with a socialist identity duringthe 1970s and the attempt to impose a Bulgarian identity on Turkish speakersduring the 1980s were strongly resisted because Turkish speakers considered theseidentities alien to their historical experience.

The authorities soon realized that the strengthening of Turkish ethnic self-con-sciousness was undermining the main goal of socialism—the merger of differentethnic groups into a single socialist nation whose members would share a singlelanguage, literature, art, culture, and customs. Beginning in the late 1950s (after the1958 plenum of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party), privi-leges provided to members of the Turkish minority began to be curtailed. The � rststep in this process was the merger of Turkish schools with Bulgarian schools.Turkish-language classes in Bulgarian high schools were eliminated in 1955–1956.After the 1959–1960 school year all Turkish-language high schools, vocationalschools, and teacher training schools were merged with Bulgarian schools. TheDepartment of Turkish Philology at So� a University was replaced with a Departmentof Arabic Studies. Turkish-language instruction in Bulgaria was effectively ended.Turkish books disappeared from bookstores and libraries, even those published inBulgaria. Turkish radio broadcasts ended. The few remaining Turkish-languagenewspapers began to appear in bilingual editions until early 1985, when they beganto appear in Bulgarian only. With the brutal conclusion of the forced assimilationcampaign among Turks between November 1984 and March 1985, the governmentcon� dently announced, “There are no Turks in Bulgaria! Bulgaria is a single-nationstate.”

The Bulgarian authorities justi� ed assimilation by arguing that the Turks inBulgaria were the descendants of Bulgarians who had been forced to convert to Islamby the Ottoman authorities and not the descendants of Turks who had migrated toBulgarian lands during Ottoman times. By changing the names of people and throughother means the authorities said they were helping to restore these people to theirproper Bulgarian roots, “completely disregarding aspects of self-perception andself-consciousness.” 58

Unfortunately for the Zhivkov regime almost all Turks repudiated the imaginedhistory of their origin put forth by Bulgarian ideologues to justify assimilation. It ispossible and likely that some Turkish speakers today are the descendants ofBulgarians who converted to Islam centuries ago and became Turki� ed. However,exactly who and how many Turkish speakers have Bulgarian ancestry is impossibleto determine. What is more important is that today Turkish speakers in Bulgariaconsider themselves Turks and are recognized as such by their Bulgarian neighbors.Moreover, the belief on the part of the Bulgarian authorities that by changing the

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names of a people they could instantly reinvent them as Bulgarians as if they wereimmune to the centuries that formed them turned out to be extremely unrealistic.Subsequent events in Bulgaria were to prove that one cannot legislate identity; thatattempts at repression of cultures precipitate resistance and attempts to preservethem. It has been shown that when the public use of a language is of� cially banned(e.g., Catalan in Franco’s Spain, Turkish in Zhivkov’s Bulgaria), the banned lan-guage gains remarkable power. It becomes a secret weapon to its speakers. Nowspeaking it becomes an act of rebellion and speakers resort to frequent use of it tochallenge the repressive system and to assert and defend their identity. Banning theuse of Turkish in public acted as a powerful ethnic consolidating force, strengtheningcultural, religious, and familial bonds.59

The widespread repression of Turkish culture beginning in late 1984 led to theformation of an underground resistance movement among the Turks, which managedto survive for several years and organized several anti-government protests in thespring of 1989 demanding the restoration of Turkish names and other cultural rights.One response of the Zhivkov regime to these demonstrations was an attempt to solveBulgaria’s “Turkish problem” once and for all by expelling all those who consideredthemselves Turks to Turkey. In the resulting mass exodus over 350,000 Turks left forTurkey between June and mid August 1989. These events contributed to the ousterof Zhivkov from power in November 1989.

The new reform-minded communist government formed after the ouster ofZhivkov quickly reversed the forced assimilationist policy, announcing on 29December 1989 that it had been a grave political error, and pledged itself to thedefense of human rights. With the formal end of the assimilation campaign, itbecame possible to restore the rights that had been denied to Turkish and otherMuslims in Bulgaria for so long. A priority item for the emerging leaders amongTurkish speakers was the reintroduction of Turkish-language classes in publicschools in ethnically mixed areas.

Although the constitution of the Republic of Bulgaria adopted in July 1991 doesnot recognize the existence of a Turkish minority or any other national minority, it,nevertheless, recognizes the existence of individual citizens of non-Bulgarian originand guarantees them certain rights. One such right is recognized in Article 36 (2):“Citizens whose mother tongue is not Bulgarian shall have the right to study and usetheir own language alongside the compulsory study of the Bulgarian language.”60

The Movement for Rights and Freedoms, an organization formed to represent theinterests of Turks and other Muslims, took the lead in working to implement thisprovision of the constitution in public schools. After a period of foot dragging by theruling Bulgarian Socialist (formerly Communist) Party, limited Turkish-languageinstruction was introduced in municipal schools during the second half of the1991–1992 school year. However, the program put in place in 1992 fell far short ofexpectations. Turkish classes remained optional and were not part of the normalschool curriculum. Turkish classes were held after normal schools hours, inconve-

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niencing both students and their parents. Parents were required to formally requestthat school authorities enroll their children in Turkish classes, and a minimum levelof demand needed to be met before Turkish classes could be offered. Moreover,successive governments between 1991 and 1997, mostly socialist dominated, foundways to obstruct the realization of this constitutional right.61 The overwhelmingdefeat of the socialists in the 1997 national elections created a more positiveatmosphere to improve the educational situation of Turkish speakers in Bulgaria.Plans are underway to make Turkish-language classes compulsory for all Turkishchildren, starting with the 1999–2000 school year.

From the beginning, the Communist Party ideologues in Bulgaria saw religion asa competing ideology to communism and sought to replace it with a socialistideology. Islam was a special target for several reasons. It was an “alien” religionbrought to Bulgaria by the Ottomans, who were said to have imposed it on segmentsof the Bulgarian Orthodox population by force; Islam was seen as a serious obstacleto the integration of Turks and other Muslims into Bulgarian society; the loyalty ofTurkish and other Muslims was suspect and the perpetuation of Muslim identity adanger to Bulgarian society. Consequently, government authorities undertook “aconcerted effort to undermine the religious af� liation of the Turkish and Muslimpopulation, and to transform the traditional elements in their daily life and theirIslamic customs.”62 These efforts involved the undermining of the � nancial andorganizational infrastructures of the Muslim community in Bulgaria. The � nancialbasis of the Muslim community was undermined by the con� scation of the propertiesof pious foundations (vakif). The institutional basis of the Muslim community wasundermined by the decisions taken during the April 1956 plenum of the CentralCommittee of the Bulgarian Communist Party. One such decision was the directiveto local party organs to work actively to reduce the already depleted number ofhodzhas (religious teachers, prayer leaders, community leaders) working in Turkishand Pomak communities. Statistics suggest the success of this effort. Prior to 1944there had been about 15,000 hodzhas in Bulgaria. By the mid 1950s their numbershad been reduced to about 2,700. Three years after the decisions of the April 1956plenum were implemented in 1958, there were less than 600. Their numbers wouldbe reduced further to about 400, serving a community of over one million Muslims.Moreover, the functions of the remaining hodzhas would be drastically curtailed tomerely leading Friday prayers at mosques.

Intense anti-religious propaganda was accompanied by the actual banning ofMuslim activities, beginning with a ban on teaching of the Koran in 1952. Later on,during the 1970s and especially during the 1980s, banned activities would extend toalmost all areas of Turkish and Muslim life. Fasting during the month of Ramadanwas banned. The slaughtering of rams during the Feast of Sacri� ce was prohibited.The washing of corpses prior to burial and the internment of the dead in Muslimcemeteries were banned. Muslims were required to bury their dead in Bulgariancemeteries according to a new “socialist” funerary ritual. In Muslim cemeteries

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gravestones with Turkish or Arabic writing were defaced or destroyed. Chanting ofthe mevlit63 was banned. Parents who allowed their young sons to be circumcised andthe person performing the rite were liable to arrest and imprisonment for two to � veyears. Young Turkish and other Muslim boys were inspected periodically to makesure that they had not been circumcised. Parents of new-born boys, while they werestill in the maternity hospital, were required to sign a document promising not tocircumcise their sons. Traditional wedding customs and ceremonies could no longerbe carried out. During weddings the participants were not allowed to sing Turkishsongs and dance Turkish dances. After 1984 the participants could not even speakTurkish. The wearing of traditional clothes by Muslim women was banned.

By the early 1980s the number of functioning mosques in Bulgaria had beensigni� cantly reduced. Many were closed to worship and fell into ruin. Others wereconverted to alternative uses—museums, warehouses, stores, and restaurants. Thecrescent and star, symbol of Islam, were removed from the top of minarets. Between1984 and 1989 the closure of the remaining mosques accelerated. There were severalinstances where mosques and/or minarets were actually destroyed. All of theseanti-Islamic activities were justi� ed on the grounds that Islam was a serious obstacleto the integration of Turks and other Muslims into Bulgarian society. Moreover,Islamic beliefs and practices were portrayed in the press as signs of backwardnessand superstition; as outdated and anti-modern; as promoting religious fanaticism, andso on.64

In the late 1980s there was a conspicuous absence of mosques in the great majorityof villages and city neighborhoods where Muslims lived. Even in mosques open toworship, the voice of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer was silenced. Thedisappearance of mosques from Muslim villages and city neighborhoods removed animportant focus of community activity and solidarity. During the 1980s an observertraveling through the predominantly Muslim areas of southeastern and northeasternBulgaria would have been struck by the changes in the architectural landscape ofthese regions, and hard pressed to guess that Muslims had been living in these areasfor more than 600 years.

Even though secularization affected the ability of Turks and other Muslims topractice their religion and signi� cantly eroded the strength of religious belief,especially among the young, nevertheless religion remained important, especiallyamong older Muslims. Surveys on religious observance carried out during the 1970sfound out that religious observance was twice as high among Turks as amongBulgarians. Even after the ban, Turks and other Muslims continued to celebratereligious holidays in private and conduct funerary ceremonies in the traditionalmanner.

After 1989 all restrictions on religious rights imposed arbitrarily by the communistregime were removed. 1990 was a watershed year for renewed Islam in Bulgaria.Islamic schools closed during the communist era reopened and new religious schoolswere established. In 1990, with help from Turkish pious foundations, an Islamic

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Theological Institute was inaugurated in So� a with a freshman class of 45 students.An Islamic secondary school in Shumen, Medresetun Nuvvab, which had beenturned into a secular high school during the 1947–1948 school year, reopened itsdoors to students of religion. Another religious school was established in Mom-chilgrad. The right of Muslims to repair old mosques and to build new ones wasrestored. Since 1989 hundreds of old mosques have been repaired and scores of newones built. At the end of 1992 there were close to 1,000 mosques open for religiousservices: an increase from about 300 in 1989.65 The restriction on the publication,importation, and distribution of Korans and other religious texts was lifted. TheKoran has been translated into Bulgarian and Turkish. Muslims are freely celebratingimportant religious holidays and carrying out traditional funerary and marriagerituals without overt government interference. Although circumcision of youngMuslim boys was allowed after 1989, initially, religious specialists were not admittedto hospitals to carry out the requisite religious rites during the operation. Hence manyMuslim parents resorted to circumcision outside hospitals, under unsanitary condi-tions. Only in 1998, for the � rst time in 50 years, did the authorities allow the publicperformance of circumcision rituals. On September 1998, more than 30 Muslim boyswere circumcised in the Tekke Mosque in Dobrich in northeastern Bulgaria.

Another problem, which was not resolved until recently, was the question of whoshould lead the Muslim community in Bulgaria. The socialist (formerly communist)governments between 1990 and 1996 continued to support Nedim Gendzhev, whohad been appointed as Chief Mufti and head of the High Muslim Council bythe communist regime in 1988. In 1992 a rival Muslim council selected Fikri Sali asthe new Chief Mufti but the government refused to recognize his selection.66 Theexistence of rival chief muftis and Muslim councils divided the Muslim community,which may have been the intention of the socialists all along. After the defeat of thesocialists in the 1997 elections, the way was open for reconciliation. In August 1997,Nedim Gendzhev, the head of the High Muslim Council, and Fikri Sali, the head ofthe High Spiritual Council, signed a declaration agreeing to hold a joint conferenceto unify the two councils and to elect a new Chief Mufti. Both decided not to runfor election. At the uni� cation conference, held on 23 October 1997, a new HighMuslim Council was formed and a new Chief Mufti, 35-year-old Mustafa AlishHodzha, was elected.

In the 1990s positive attitudes toward religion have increased among Muslims andChristians alike in Bulgaria. The shared experience of enforced restrictions on thepractice of Islam during the 1970s and 1980s has rallied the Turks and other Muslimsto their faith even more than Christians. There indeed appears to be a genuine revivalof Islam as indicated by the renovation of hundreds of old mosques and the buildingof new ones, reopening old religious schools and the establishment of new ones, theready availability of Korans and other religious texts, the revival of once prohibitedreligious rituals, and so on. However, these developments have to be interpretedcautiously because evidence also indicates that patterns of behavior established

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during the last 50 years have not undergone a signi� cant transformation to supporta genuine revival of Islam. The results of a sociological survey on religious attitudesin Bulgaria suggest a very gradual but steady recovery of Islam in Bulgaria.67 Someconservative religious leaders � nd these modest gains unsatisfactory. They want torecreate the overarching Muslim identity that existed in the past and to establish theprimacy of religious principles governing the lives of Muslims in Bulgaria. Membersof the secular Turkish intelligentsia view such a possibility with alarm. They pointto the inwardness and the isolation of the Muslim community from the largerBulgarian society prior to World War II. Such isolation, they argue, resulted in acommunity that was largely illiterate, culturally impoverished, economically poor,and politically isolated. To them, the success of Turks and other Muslims in Bulgariadepends on their full participation in the civic institutions of Bulgarian society. Onewould hope that religious and secular leaders among Muslims in Bulgaria wouldwork to create the conditions that allow for freedom of religious expression and fullparticipation in the institutions of civil society.

The participation of Turkish and other Muslims in the political process in Bulgariaafter independence from Ottoman rule in 1878 was limited. The extent of partici-pation and the effectiveness of parliamentarians representing the Muslim communitywere dependent on the attitudes of Bulgarian rulers. At times, for example during thedecade following the authoritarian coup d’etat in 1934, the participation of Turkishand other Muslims in the political process was severely curtailed. During thecommunist period Turkish and other minorities “had no public voice, no organiza-tional infrastructure, few shared visible symbols of community and history.”68

During this period there were Turkish and other Muslim parliamentarians in theNational Assembly but they did not represent a particular constituency. Theirforemost allegiance was to the Communist Party. Many of them supported, perhapsinvoluntarily, the forced assimilationist policies of the Zhivkov regime againstTurkish and other Muslims.

The period since 1989 has “seen the emergence and empowerment of an ethnicpolitical movement, the rise of politicized Turkish ethnicity, and the construction ofa sense of a national Moslem community.”69 To empower Turkish and other Muslimsand to mobilize them for political action, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms(MRF) was formed in January 1990. Although the Movement was open to allBulgarian citizens, it drew its support laregely from Turkish and other Muslims.Over 90% of ethnic Turks, about 50% of Bulgarian-speaking Muslims (Pomaks), andabout a third of Muslim Roma supported it in the multiparty elections in 1990 and1991.70 The Movement was immediately labeled as an “ethnic Turkish party” and itslegitimacy was challenged on constitutional grounds. Article 11 (4) of the Consti-tution prohibits the formation of “political parties on ethnic, racial or religiouslines”71 After several unsuccessful attempts to ban the party in the lower courts, thecase reached the Bulgarian Constitutional Court in 1992. The Court rejected thislatest attempt to ban the Movement and left it to function as a political party.72 The

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language in the Law on Parties approved by Parliament in 1990 was also intendedto make the mobilization of Turks for political action dif� cult. The Law on Partiesstipulates that candidates running for political of� ce must conduct their campaignsand other political activities in the Bulgarian language. The insertion of thisparticular language into the Law was to prohibit the use of Turkish in politicalcampaigns. Nevertheless, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms was able toovercome these obstacles and has participated in all of the national and localelections held so far and has been quite successful in electing members to Parlia-ment, with 23 members in Parliament in 1990, 24 in 1991, 15 in 1994, and 19 in1997. The Movement has been even more successful at the local level, electinghundreds of village headmen and municipal council representatives and scores ofmayors in areas with ethnically mixed populations.

However, the Movement suffers from factionalism within its ranks. Two splinterparties, one secular, another religious, were formed in 1994 to run their owncandidates in opposition to the Movement’s candidates in the 1994 parliamentaryelections and the 1995 local elections. Although neither party was successful, theysiphoned enough votes from the Movement to reduce its representation in Parliamentfrom 24 to 15 deputies. Just prior to the 1997 national elections some of theopponents of the leadership of the Movement formed an Initiative Council forRenewing the Movement of Rights and Freedoms. The founder of the InitiativeCouncil, Guner Tahir, won a seat in Parliament running on the list of UnitedDemocratic Forces. At a national conference held in December 1998 the InitiativeCouncil was transformed into a new political party, the National Movement forRights and Freedoms (NMRF). This will further erode the support of the main MRFamong Turkish and other Muslims.

The Movement has followed a moderate course, timid some say, distancing itselffrom controversial positions. It has emphasized its secular character by consistentlymaintaining that it is not a religious party. Its cultural demands also have beenlimited. These moderate positions, while contributing to keeping the peace betweendifferent ethnic communities in Bulgaria, are viewed by the critics of the Movementas signi� cant weaknesses. Nevertheless, for the � rst time since Bulgarian liberationfrom Ottoman rule, Turkish and other Muslims have a genuine opportunity toparticipate in the political process on their own terms. They have their own party.They are free to vote for candidates that they feel will best represent their interestsat both the local and national level. So far most of them have chosen to vote for thecandidates of the Movement. That is likely to change.

Turks in Greece

The earliest settlements of Turks in the Balkans occurred in what is today northernGreece, Macedonia, and Albania along the ancient road, Via Egnatia, that connectedConstantinopole with the Adriatic port of Durazzo, present-day Durres in Albania.

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Greece was also the earliest country in the Balkans to gain its independence fromOttoman rule (1830). Initially it was a small state comprising what is today southernGreece. Between 1881 and 1920 it gradually expanded to its present boundaries. TheGreek state inherited a substantial non-Orthodox population from the OttomanEmpire, primarily Muslim—Turks, Bulgarian-speaking Muslims, and Albanians.From the beginning Muslims were considered to be foreign elements within theGreek nation state, thus, ineligible for Greek citizenship and targets of discrimi-nation. Under such conditions, Turks and other Muslims emigrated � rst to otherareas of the Balkans still under Ottoman control and after 1923 to the TurkishRepublic. Population exchanges between Greece and Turkey regulated by a protocolsigned between the two countries in 1923 reduced the number of Muslims in Greececonsiderably. Over 400,000 Muslims, mostly Turkish speakers from Greece, weresent to Turkey and about 1.2 million Orthodox Christians, mostly Greek speakers,were sent to Greece.73 However, the Turks of Western Thrace and the Greek speakersof Istanbul and the islands of Imbros (Gokceada) and Tenedos (Bozcaada) wereexempt from the exchange. The Lausanne Convention spelled out the rights of theMuslim community in Greece and the Greek Orthodox community in Turkey. Thetwo countries promised to protect, fully and completely, the life and liberty of all oftheir citizens “without distinction of birth, nationality, language, race and religion;”to allow their citizens “free exercise of any creed, religion, or belief” withoutgovernmental interference; to guarantee full civil and political rights to minoritiesand equality before the law; that there would be no restrictions on the free use of“any language in private intercourse, in commerce, religion, in the press or publica-tions of any kind or at public meetings;” that each country would guarantee minoritypopulations “equal right to establish, manage, and control at their own expense, anycharitable, religious and social institutions, any schools and other establishments forinstruction and education, with the right to use their own language and to exercisetheir own religion freely therein;” and that in areas with signi� cant minoritypopulations both governments would “grant adequate facilities for ensuring that inprimary schools the instruction shall be given to the children … through the mediumof their own language” although the teaching of the of� cial national language couldbe made obligatory. The treaty also stipulated that the national, regional, and localstate bodies should provide an equitable share of public funds for minority educa-tional, religious, or charitable institutions.74 The purpose of these requirements wasto insure the preservation of the ethnic and religious character of the Turkish-speaking minority in Greece and the Greek-speaking minority in Turkey. Ever since1923 relations between Greece and Turkey have been colored by debates over towhat extent each country has lived up to its promise.

Angelopoulos claims that population exchanges between Greece and Turkey underthe Lausanne Convention of 1923 and emigration of Turkish and other Muslimssince then have created an ethnically homogeneous Greek state. In his words, “thereis no Slav community nor any other alien community except for the small Moslem

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one. Thus there no longer exists any substantial ethnological question in Greece.”75

He goes on to claim that “Greece represents in Europe, a country with practicallyideal ethnic, linguistic and religious homogeneity and unity.”76 Those who expressdoubts of the of� cial version court danger.77 The of� cial version insists that there isno ethnic Turkish minority or any other ethnic minority for that matter, but only aMuslim minority. Assertions of the existence of an ethnic Turkish minority, in thewords of Karakasidou, “clash with the uncompromising supremacy of the Greeknational idiom. In effect they provoke the full force of the Greek penal code whichcondemns them for creating rifts in the sacred homogeneity of the population andinciting citizens to violence.”78 Prominent religious and secular leaders from amongthe Muslim minority in Greece have been prosecuted for speaking about theexistence of a Turkish minority or acting in its behalf.79 Nationalist intellectuals whoproduce pseudoscienti� c articles and books in support of the of� cial position are notonly praised by the Greek authorities but are extended special recognition as heroesand patriots. This is an example of how historians and other intellectuals in nationstates create imagined communities that legitimate national interests. In the processof nation building the existence of the Other is ignored, if not denied altogether, eventhough the facts on the ground indicate otherwise.

The Greek censuses of 1928, 1940, and 1951 collected statistics on the linguisticand religious breakdown of the population. 191,254 Greek citizens in 1928, 229,075in 1940, and 179,895 in 1951 identi� ed their mother tongue as Turkish.80 However,not all who identi� ed their mother tongue as Turkish were ethnic Turks. Many wereOrthodox Greeks from Turkey who had settled in Western Thrace after 1922. TheseGreek Orthodox Christians had lived for generations among Turkish speakers in AsiaMinor and had become linguistically Turki� ed while continuing to adhere to theirOrthodox faith. After settling in Greece they continued to identify their mothertongue as Turkish. In the 1928 census 16,773 Greek citizens identi� ed their mothertongue as Bulgarian, most of whom were Muslim (Pomak).81 In the 1940 and 1951censuses the Greek authorities created a new, non-existent language for them,Pomacian, in order to make the case that they were not ethnically Bulgarian;therefore, Bulgaria could not lay a claim to an ethnic Bulgarian minority in Greece.The 1928, 1940, and 1951 Greek censuses also provided statistics on the religiousbreakdown of the population, which provide a better clue to the size of the Turkishminority in Greece. 126,017 Greek citizens in 1928, 141,090 in 1940, and 112,665in 1951 identi� ed themselves as Muslim.82 Since 1951 the Greek authorities have notprovided any of� cial � gures on the ethnic makeup of the population of Greece.

From unof� cial sources it is clear that high emigration rates of Turkish and otherMuslims from Greece to Turkey and to EU countries, especially Germany, have kepttheir numbers virtually unchanged since 1923, at between 100,000 and 120,000Muslims of various kinds. Christidis gives an estimate of 114,000 Muslims inWestern Thrace in 1993. In addition to Western Thrace there “are thought to be some35,000 Muslims in Athens, and another 15,000 in Rhodes and Chios.”83 That would

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bring the total of Muslims in Greece to about 164,000. One of the major reasonsbehind emigration has been discrimination against Turkish and other Muslims inWestern Thrace. Such discrimination has discouraged the development of a strongsense of identity with Greece among Muslims.

The relations between Greece and Turkey have greatly affected the treatment ofthe Muslim minority in general and the Turkish minority in particular. As Bahcheliobserves, “When those relations [have] been smooth—and there was a time whenthose relations were not too bad—the conditions for the community [were] good, too.This was the case roughly between 1930 and 1955.”84 During the late 1940s and theearly 1950s, as a result of rapprochement between Greece and Turkey as membersof NATO and tense relations with the newly established communist regimes inYugoslavia and Bulgaria, Greece relaxed its “traditional antipathy towards the use ofethnic labels to refer to ethnic minorities in Western Thrace and upheld the entireMuslim minority as … a national Turkish minority.”85

After 1955, in response to the Cyprus problem, Greece reverted back to itstraditional distrust of Turkey, and the conditions of the Turkish minority in WesternThrace began to deteriorate. The onset of civil strife between Greek and TurkishCypriots in 1963, the 1967 coup by the colonels in Greece and their active supportof Enosis or union of Cyprus with Greece, and the Turkish military intervention inCyprus in 1974 all contributed to serious curtailment of the rights of the Turkishminority in Thrace. In the words of Poulton, “active discrimination against theTurkish/Muslim minority became the norm.”86 More importantly, these eventsbrought about a fundamental shift in of� cial perception of the Muslim community.The Turkish character of the Muslim minority was denied altogether. Attempts weremade, not unlike in Bulgaria, to support the notion that Turkish speakers in Greecewere not of ethnic Turkish origin but descendants of ethnic Greeks who had beenconverted to Islam and Turki� ed. But unlike in Bulgaria in the 1980s, Greece did notattempt to impose a Greek identity upon Muslims.

Since the mid-1950s the of� cial position of the Greek government has been thatthere are no ethnic minorities in Greece but only a small Muslim minority. Thisposition has had near unanimous support from Greek intellectuals and the OrthodoxChurch hierarchy.87 If pressed, Greek authorities will admit that there are Turco-phone and Slavophone Muslims in Greece but adamantly insist that the former arenot ethnically Turkish and the latter are not ethnically Bulgarian. Of� cially they arenot ethnically Greek either because, according to Greek national idiom, they lackGreek national consciousness, which can only be “established on the basis ofcommon racial origin, often but not always common language and religions, andespecially common history and ideals.”88 Persons with Greek national consciousnessare also Greek Orthodox. Being a Muslim, therefore, automatically implies being anon-Greek As such, Turkish and other Muslims are not entitled to the samecitizenship rights as ethnic Greeks. The ambiguity about the exact status of Muslimsin Greece has been exploited by various governments since the mid-1950s to

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discriminate against them and to interfere in their educational, cultural, and religiousinstitutions. Discrimination against Turkish and other Muslims increased substan-tially under the rule of the military junta between 1967 and 1974.

The return to democracy in 1974 did not reverse these discriminatory practices. AHelsinki Watch mission to Western Thrace in 1990 con� rmed reports of humanrights abuses. Alleged violations included the arbitrary deprivation of citizenship;restrictions on movement of ethnic Turks and other Muslims within Western Thrace;restrictions on freedom of expression and freedom of religion; restrictions on therights of Muslims to buy land, to repair old homes or build new ones, to repair oldmosques or build new ones, to buy or sell businesses; restrictions on obtaininglicenses to operate farm machinery, and even driver’s licenses; restrictions onpolitical freedoms; discrimination in public sector and civil service employment;underfunding of infrastructure projects in Muslim areas; degrading treatment ofMuslims by government of� cials; and most fundamental of all the denial of theethnic identity of Turkish and other Muslims.89 Two follow-up reports since then,one in 1992 and another in 1998, note some improvements in the situation of ethnicTurks and other Muslims. By 1992 restrictions on buying and selling of houses andland, repairing and building houses and mosques, obtaining car, truck and tractorlicenses, operating small businesses, and so on had been eased.90 By 1998 the Greekgovernment had taken additional steps to improve the situation of Muslims. Forexample, in 1994 the government discontinued the traditional practice of appointinggovernors and municipal councils in Western Thrace. From then on these individualswould be elected directly by the voters. It appears that direct election of governorsand mayors of municipalities makes these individuals more responsive to the needsof their constituents and more willing to use development funds to improve the longneglected infrastructure projects in the region. In 1995 restrictions of movement intoand out of Pomak areas along the Greek–Bulgarian border were lifted. Also in 1995,the government took steps to improve the dismal state of education in minorityschools and established a university quota for graduates from minority schools.91

However, the 1998 report concludes that important problems remain. I discuss someof these problems in greater detail below.

One serious problem is the arbitrary and discriminatory application of certain lawsto the detriment of Greek citizens of Turkish origin. Greek jurisprudence distin-guishes between those citizens who have Greek national consciousness and thosewho do not have Greek national consciousness. Citizens who lack Greek nationalconsciousness, such as Turks, could be deprived of Greek citizenship under theapplication of Article 19 of the Greek Nationality Law. Article 19 stated that “Aperson of non-Greek ethnic origin who leaves Greece without the intention ofreturning, may be declared as having lost Greek nationality.”92 Between 1955 and1998, this article was frequently and arbitrarily used by Greek authorities “to denyre-entry of Turks and to deprive ethnic Turks who leave the country, even fortemporary periods, of their Greek citizenship.”93 Under this article some 60,000

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Muslims, mostly ethnic Turks, were deprived of Greek citizenship. Article 19 waswas � nally repealed in 1998, but the repeal was not retroactive.

There have been three main factors that have in� uenced identity formation amongMuslims in Greece during the twentieth century: Islam, Turkish national ideology,and the discriminatory, at times repressive, policies of Greek governments towardsmembers of the Muslim minority.

Islam emphasizes the transnational nature of personal identities. The focus is onmembership in a community of faith, Umma, not on the particular ethnic identitiesof its members. Historically Islam has worked against the construction of nationalidentities. The notion of transnational identity became institutionalized in the Ot-toman millet system. As Malcomson observes, “From the Ottoman point of viewethnic tribalism was, at best, a very regrettable human tendency, one that madegoverning their vast empire unnecessarily dif� cult.”94 Indeed, it was ethnic tribalismor nationalism that eventually led to the break-up of the Ottoman Empire. Nationalideology, on the other hand, focuses on the nation as the primary source of personalidentities. This idea, alien to Islam, was slow to penetrate countries and communitiesthat were largely Muslim. It was only after the establishment of the Turkish Republicin 1923 that Turkish national ideology began to make signi� cant inroads in Muslimcommunities in Bulgaria, Greece, and elsewhere in the Balkans.

After 1923 there arose two competing notions of identity among Muslims inGreece in response to radical changes in Turkey under the leadership of MustafaKemal Ataturk. One group, led by conservative Islamicist leaders, wanted tomaintain the traditional transnational character of Muslim identity. They repudiatedboth Turkish national ideology and the Kemalist reforms and waged an intensepropaganda war against these. A second group, led by young secular nationalists,wholeheartedly embraced the Kemalist reforms. They formed an Association ofTurkish Youth in 1928 and used it as the main vehicle to introduce many of theKemalist reforms to Muslims in Greece, including the Latin script.

The experience of Muslims under the repressive military junta between 1967 and1974 persuaded religious and secular leaders within the Muslim community to workclosely together to strengthen the af� nity of all Muslims with the Turkish nation.After 1974 the process of the development of Turkish ethnic consciousness amongmost Muslims regardless of their ethnic background accelerated. By the 1990sTurkish ethnic consciousness had become the dominant identity among Muslims inGreece, not only among ethnic Turks but also among most Pomaks and MuslimRoma. Over a relatively brief period of time, “membership in the religious Muslimcommunity was transformed into membership in the Turkish national collectivity.”95

Ethnic Turkish self-consciousness among many Pomaks and Muslim Roma hasreached a point where, especially to outsiders, they “even deny their ethnolinguisticorigin in the belief that being called ‘Pomaks,’ or ‘Romas’ is merely a state arti� ceto suppress them.”96 Turkish-language instruction in minority schools in Greece hasbeen instrumental in transforming the traditional transnational Muslim identify into

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ethnic Turkish identity not among only ethnic Turks but also Bulgarian-speakingMuslims (Pomaks) and Muslim Roma. Turkish teachers in these schools have beenthe primary agents of Turkish national ideology.

Minority schools in Greece were established in accordance with the provisions ofthe Treaty of Lausanne of 1923. Article 40 of the Lausanne Treaty stipulates that theMuslim minority in Greece would have the authority to “establish, administer, andsupervise” schools in which the education would be in the language of the minority.Both Greece and Turkey interpreted this treaty language to mean that the medium ofinstruction in these schools would be Turkish. Bilateral agreements were signedbetween Greece and Turkey stipulating that these schools would be staffed withteachers from Turkey and that ethnic Turkish students from Greece would beallowed to go to Turkey to attend teacher training colleges.97 The Greek governmentwas obligated to help establish and maintain minority (Turkish) primary andsecondary schools in Western Thrace. The Greek authorities were to provide anequitable share of public funds for the running of these schools. Scores of Turkish-language primary schools were established as stipulated in the Lausanne Treaty andoperated according to the provisions of bilateral agreements signed in 1951 and 1968between Greece and Turkey. The deterioration of Greek–Turkish relations over theCyprus problem in the mid-1950s and the harsh treatment of Muslims under the ruleof the military junta between 1967 and 1974 put the affairs of the Turkish minorityinto a period of crisis which has persisted to this day. After 1967 “the administratorsof the special [minority] schools began to be appointed by the Greek authoritiesrather than being elected by the parents, and the textbooks that had been beingbrought from Turkey under the 1951 agreement were no longer considered accept-able.”98 Minority schools remained open but government meddling in the administra-tion of these schools increased.

Since 1967 the Greek authorities have assumed increased control over administrat-ive and instructional decisions concerning the operation of these schools. Since thelate 1960s the Greek authorities have severely limited the hiring of teachers fromoutside Greece. In 1968 a special teacher training academy was set up in Salonicato prepare teachers for Turkish primary and secondary schools in Greece. Since 1968only the graduates from this academy could be hired to teach in Turkish schools. Theprimary purpose of the establishment of this school was to limit contact betweenTurks in Greece and Turks in Turkey as well as to minimize the in� uence of Turkishculture on Turks living in Greece. According to Poulton, “This academy takes muchof its intake from Greek secondary schools and, its critics claim, relied on anoutdated religious curriculum deliberately to create an incompetent Hellenizededucation system in Western Thrace isolated from the mainstream of modern Turkishculture.”99 Moreover, history books used in minority schools “portray Turks as crudestereotypes and while Turkish pupils are allowed some books from Turkey, therehave been inexplicable delays resulting in outdated textbooks having to be used.”100

Christidis reports that during the 1992–1993 school year, “there were 232 primary

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schools, 2 secondary schools and two religious schools (medrese) serving theminority.” There were 9,050 minority students in primary schools and 1,602 insecondary schools. Of these 678 “were enrolled in minority secondary schools andmedreses, and 924 at non-minority secondary schools.” A total of 432 teachers wereemployed in Muslim minority schools during the 1992–1993 school year. More thanhalf of these teachers (210) were graduates of the teacher training academy inSalonica, 98 had diplomas from colleges in Turkey, 97 were graduates of Islamicschools in Western Thrace, 11 had diplomas from secondary schools, and seven weregraduates of primary schools.101 What is striking in these � gures is the fact that fora minority population that is estimated to be between 100,000 and 120,000, therewere only two secondary schools with 1,602 students. One of these secondaryschools has not graduated any students for several years while the other has averagedsix graduates a year between 1985 and 1990.102 The lack of suf� cient schools to meetthe needs of the Muslim community and the poor quality of education offered in theexisting schools are re� ected in the extremely high illiteracy rate among the Turksof Western Thrace. According to Oran, during the late 1980s, the illiteracy rateamong Turks in Western Thrace was around 60%. This compares with a rate of14.2% for the population of Greece as a whole.103

Despite the inferior education that minority schools in Western Thrace provide, asmall number of graduates from these schools have managed to continue theireducation and obtain university degrees, many from universities in Turkey. Theseuniversity graduates have formed the nucleus of a professional class with Turkishnational ideology who are in a position to help Turks and other Muslims in WesternThrace to deal more effectively with Greek bureaucracy. More surprisingly, to theconsternation of the Greek authorities, they have also managed to use Turkishnational ideology to transform “a heterogeneous Muslim minority into an increas-ingly consolidated group with Turkish national consciousness.”104

Turkish Speakers in Macedonia

Turks in the former Yugoslavia were found primarily in the Kosovo province ofSerbia and Macedonia.105 Here I will focus on the Turkish speakers who live inMacedonia. Prior to the Balkan Wars the majority of the Macedonian population wasMuslim—Turks, Slavic-speaking Muslims, Albanians, and so on. However, thestates that coveted Macedonia—principally Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece—engagedin heated claims and counterclaims about the “true” nationality of the population ofMacedonia.

With the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of nation states in theBalkans during the nineteenth century, Macedonia became a region contestedbetween Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia. Taking advantage of the chaotic situation inthe area, each country attempted to consolidate and expand at the expense of

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Macedonia. In support of their territorial claims on Macedonia, each countryadvanced various historical, linguistic, dialectal, religious, ethnic, educational, andother arguments, produced ethnic maps, and published census � gures.

Around 1900 all the claimants to Macedonian territory produced census � gures—Bulgaria (1900), Greece (1904), Serbia (1889), and the Ottoman Empire (1905)—showing widely divergent � gures for the ethnic composition of the population ofMacedonia. According to the Bulgarian census � gures, 52.3% of the population ofMacedonia were Bulgarians, and Turks with 22.1% were a distant second; accordingto Greek � gures the Greeks were in the majority with 37.8%, followed by Turks with37%, and Bulgarians with 19.3%; in the Serbian census 71.3% of the population ofMacedonia were Serbs. The Ottoman census of 1905 showed that Muslims were inthe majority with 51.8%, followed by Bulgarians with 30.8%, and Greeks with10.6%.106 Looking at these � gures, one is hard pressed to believe that they refer tothe same population or the same country. Macedonians are not mentioned in any ofthese censuses.

Ultimately the actual ethnic make-up of the Macedonian population did not matter.The Bulgarians claimed that “Macedonians were Bulgarians, or hellenized Bulgars ifthey spoke Greek, while the Greeks claimed that they were slavicized Greeks (andannexed southern Macedonia), while Serbia declared the northern section of Mace-donia to have been the part of a medieval Serbian ‘state’ and annexed most of thenorthern section in 1912–13.”107 Only Bulgaria, as the loser in the Second BalkanWar in 1913, was deprived of its claim to a large part of Macedonia.

The number of Turkish speakers in Macedonia has � uctuated considerably duringthe second half of the twentieth century as indicated in Yugoslav censuses. Wide� uctuation in the number of Turkish speakers in Macedonia in the � rst four post-warYugoslav censuses was in� uenced by both internal and external events. After WorldWar II the loyalty of Turkish speakers in Macedonia was suspect. To escapepersecution, many Turkish speakers identi� ed themselves as Albanians in the 1948census. With the Tito–Albania split in 1953, the loyalty of Albanians in Macedoniabecame suspect. This, combined with Tito’s decision to allow emigration of Muslimsto Turkey, led many Albanians and Macedonian-speaking Muslims to identifythemselves as Turks during the 1953 census. One indication of this is that of the203,938 Turks in the 1953 census “32,392 gave Macedonian as their mother tongueand 27,086 gave Albanian. The number of declared Albanians fell from 179,389 to165,524 in 1953.”108 According to Yugoslav � gures, between 1953 and 1966 some80,000 Muslims, mostly ethnic Turks, emigrated to Turkey. The number of Turks inMacedonia continued to fall in subsequent censuses. In the 1994 Macedonian census82,976 Macedonians identi� ed themselves as Turks, making up 4% of the populationof Macedonia.109

Turkish speakers live throughout Macedonia but they are more numerous indistricts close to the Albanian and Kosovo borders. According to the 1994 Macedo-nian census Turkish speakers made up over 30% of the population of the district of

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Brod, and over 25% of the district of Debar. The districts of Krushevo, Gostivar, andResen also have substantial Turkish populations.110

Turkish speakers were a recognized “nationality” (narodnost ) in formerYugoslavia and were allowed full cultural and political rights. As De Jong notes,“Former Yugoslavia, and now Macedonia and truncated Yugoslavia are the onlycountries in the Balkans where the Turkish minority has � ourished.”111 After 1944,for example, the educational opportunities of the Turkish community in Macedoniawere expanded. During the 1944–1945 school year, “there were sixty primaryschools with 3,334 pupils, using Turkish as the language of instruction.”112 Over thenext decade additional schools opened and enrollments rose. By the 1950–1951school year there were over 100 primary schools with more than 12,000 students andstaffed with 257 teachers. Enrollment in primary schools reached a peak during the1953–1954 school year, when more than 15,000 students were enrolled in Turkishprimary schools. During the 1950s this trend was reversed as a result of increasedemigration of Turks to Turkey. The total number of Turkish schools in Macedoniahad dropped to 27 by the 1958–1959 school year—26 primary schools and onesecondary school, “with just over 6,000 pupils and 219 teachers. While the numberof primary schools had increased to � fty-three by 1988, the number of pupilsremained more or less the same.”113 During the 1994–1995 school year there were54 primary schools with 5,491 students and 274 teachers and four secondary schoolswith 383 students and 67 teachers.114 Turkish-language schools in Macedonia havebeen instrumental in developing and maintaining a sense of Turkish identity amongTurkish speakers.

Even before the establishment of communist rule in Yugoslavia, Turkish and otherMuslims were allowed to practice their religion without government interference.Prior to 1930 various Muslim groups in Yugoslavia—Albanian, Bosnian, Turkish—had their separate governing organizations. In 1930 these separate Muslim groupswere “united under the authority of a single ulama, the Rais-ul Ulama, who enforcedIslamic religious and legal dogma and managed the affairs of the Islamic community.Headquartered in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia’s Islamic community included about 3,000religious leaders and 3,000 mosques in the 1980s. The only Islamic school oftheology in Europe was located in Sarajevo, and Islamic secondary schools operatedin Sarajevo, Skopje, and Pristina. A religious school for women, attached to theIslamic secondary school in Sarajevo, had a capacity for 60.”115

According to Curtis, “Relations of the postwar communist government with theIslamic community were less troubled than those with the Orthodox or RomanCatholic churches.”116 Communist Yugoslavia was the only country in the Balkanswhich did not pursue an anti-Islamic policy and allowed complete religious freedom.The recognized nationalities were given considerable autonomy in managing theirown cultural and religious affairs. Such autonomy and self-government contributedgreatly to the maintenance and strengthening of ethnic identities in formerYugoslavia.117 During the 1960s and 1970s, “Tito used Yugoslavia’s Islamic com-

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munity to maintain friendly relations with oil-producing Arab countries becauseYugoslavia needed access to inexpensive oil.”118 After the Iranian revolution in 1979the concerns of the government about destabilizing contacts between YugoslavMuslims and fundamentalist governments in the Middle East were put to rest untilthe break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991 as the ulama in Yugoslavia disavowed allconnection with pan-Islamic movements.

After the break-up of the former Yugoslavia, common Islamic leadership andinstitutions for all Muslims living in successor states became impractical. Continuingviolent con� icts in Bosnia and Kosovo also mitigated against such an arrangement.Moreover, as each new successor state becomes strongly attached to its sovereigntyand guards it zealously, so too each ethnic community wants to assert its ownautonomy in exercising its cultural rights. What is emerging in the Republic ofMacedonia and other successor states of former Yugoslavia is the establishment ofethnic-based cultural institutions and organizations.

Conclusions

Of the four countries discussed in this paper, in Bulgaria and Greece, to a muchgreater degree than in Macedonia and Romania, identity construction among Turkishspeakers has has been a response to their treatment as the alien Other and to attemptson the part of state authorities to deny or manipulate their identity.

The assimilation policies of the Zhivkov regime attempted to impose a Bulgarianidentity on ethnic Turks. These policies were reversed in late 1989. The rights ofTurks, Tatars, and other Muslims who had been targets of assimilation were restored.The constitution of the Republic of Bulgaria adopted in 1991 recognizes theexistence of citizens of non-Bulgarian origin (but not national minorities) andguarantees the right of these citizens to be educated in their mother tongue, todevelop their cultures in accordance with their ethnic self-identi� cation, and topractice their religion freely. Since 1989 considerable progress has been made intranslating these constitutional guarantees into action. Much still remains to beaccomplished. However, despite serious problems in the areas of education, politics,religion, and the economy, most Turks and Tatars in Bulgaria today are morecon� dent about themselves and feel greater pride in who they are when comparedwith the recent past. They have reclaimed most of their cultural and civil rightswithout the violence that characterizes the relationships between ethnic groups inmany formerly communist states in Eastern Europe. However, the legal status of theTurkish minority in Bulgaria is not entirely satisfactory. Bulgaria is the only countryin Eastern Europe whose postcommunist constitution and legal system does notrecognize the existence of national minorities or collective minority rights. Thismaintains the � ction that Bulgaria is a homogeneous, single-nation state.

While Bulgaria, Romania, and Macedonia have made real progress on minorityissues since 1989, Greece, a democratic country and an EU member, has made the

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least progress. The adage that in the Balkans truth and history are national consider-ations, generated and reproduced by the academic establishment and church hier-archy closely allied with government authorities, describes very aptly the discourseon minority issues in Greece. Of the four countries discussed in this paper, Greeceis the only one where the government insists that there is no ethnic Turkish minorityor any other ethnic minority. Serious protests against government policies by Turkishand other Muslims in Western Thrace in the late 1980s and early 1990s and theheavy-handed response by the authorities to these protests brought the plight of theTurkish minority to international attention. The Greek authorities responded byeasing some of the restrictions against members of the minority. However, seriousproblems in minority education, government interference in Muslim religious affairs,restrictions on freedom of expression, and so on remain. The status of some 60,000ethnic Turks who were deprived of Greek citizenship under Article 19 is unresolved.As long as the Greek government continues to deny the existence of an ethnicTurkish minority a reconciliation between the Greek Orthodox and Muslim com-munities is not possible.

In Romania the numbers of Tatars and Turks together are less than 55,000, about0.2% of the total population. Although beginning in the 1960s Tatars and Turksbecame targets of assimilation, these efforts were relatively benign when comparedwith the policies of the Zhivkov regime in Bulgaria. Since 1989 all restrictions onthe Tatar and Turkish language and the practice of Islam have been lifted. Today thedesire of Tatars and Turks to speak their language and to practice their religion is notseen as a threat to Romanian national security. Both groups have bene� ted from theconcessions to Romania’s largest minority, the Hungarian minority.

The status of the Turkish-speaking minority in Macedonia today remains quitefavorable. They are free to organize their lives according to their cultural preferencesunhindered by the state. In addition to having their own schools, they have their“own newspapers, periodicals, radio and television programmes, schools and avariety of cultural organizations.”119 However, the ethnic-based politics of recentyears in Macedonia puts small minorities such as Turks in a perilous situation. Sincethese minorities lack the numerical strength to form their own political parties andto elect their own candidates to political of� ce, their ability to maintain their culturalinstitutions will depend on the goodwill of the two major groups, the Macedoniansand the Albanians, among whom they live.

The presence of sizeable Turkish and other Muslim minorities in the Balkansremains a source of tension in the region. Fear, suspicion, and dislike of Turkish andother Muslims among Balkan peoples, a residue of several centuries of Ottoman rule,remain. The negative image of Islam and Muslims is perpetuated by historytextbooks, literature, folklore, and the mass media. Most Balkan historiographycontinues to frame the Ottoman conquerors, and by extension all Muslims, asbloodthirsty barbarians, cruel tormentors and oppressors, who brought only ruin intheir wake; � ve centuries of the “Turkish yoke” in the Bulgarian formulation.

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Although these fears had diminished over the years, recent events in Bosnia andKosovo have been used by ethnic nationalists to resurrect these fears to mobilizeanti-Turkish and anti-Islamic sentiment for political purposes. One result is height-ened and often violent con� ict, as we are witnessing in Kosovo today. However, allis not dark and gloomy. Developments in Bulgaria since 1989 offer hope thatreconciliation between different ethnic, linguistic, and religious communities ispossible; that history can be demythologized; that the nation state can be reimaginedwith room for diversity.

NOTES

1. Loring Danforth, “Nationalism in Eastern Europe: Nations, States, and Minorities,” CulturalSurvival, 1995, Vol. 19, No. 2, p. 3.

2. Refers to an area south of the Danube delta from Tulcea in Romania to Varna in Bulgaria.Among the various spellings—“Dobruja,” “Dobrugea,” “Dobrudzha,” and “Dobruca” amongothers—I’ve chosen the last, the Turkish spelling. In this spelling the letter “c” is pronouncedas “j” in the word “jam.”

3. Hugh Poulton, “Islam, Ethnicity and State in the Contemporary Balkans,” in Hugh Poultonand Suha Taji-Farouki, eds, Muslim Identity and the Balkan State (New York: New YorkUniversity Press, 1997), p. 15.

4. Some Turkish speakers may have begun to settle in the Balkans long before the beginningof Ottoman conquests in the region, perhaps as early as the middle of the eleventh century.See H. T. Norris, Islam in the Balkans: Religion and Society between Europe and the ArabWorld (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1993), pp. 146–155. One suchgroup is the Turkish-speaking Orthodox Christians, the Gagauz. The origins of the Gagauzare disputed. Over the years they have been regarded as the descendants of Greek, Bulgarian,Albanian, or Wallachian Christians who had maintained their religion but had been Turki� edduring the Ottoman period. A more popular traditional view held that they are of AnatolianTurkish origin. The researches of T. Kowalski, Les Turcs et la Langue Turque de la Bulgariedu Nord-Est (Krakow: Commission Orientaliste de l’Academie de Cracovie, 1933) and “Leselements ethniques turcs de la Dobrudja,” Rocznik Orientalistyczny, Vol. 14, 1938, pp. 66–80,in Dobruca established a close connection between the Turkish spoken by the Gagauz andAnatolian Turkish. The researches of Paul Wittek, “Yazicioghly ‘Ali on the Christian Turksof Dobruja,” BSOAS, Vol. 14, 1952, pp. 639–668 and “Les Gagaouzes—les gens deKaykaus,” Rocznik Orientalistyczny, Vol. 12, 1952, pp. 12–24; Wlodzimierz Zajaczkowski,“Gagauz,” Encyclopedia of Islam, Vol. 2 (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1965), pp. 971–972, and “K etnogenezu Gagauzov,” Folia Orientalia, Vol. 15, 1974, pp. 77–86); KemalKarpat, “Gagauz’larin tarihi mensei uzerine kisa bir bakis,” I. Uluslararasi Turk FolklorKongresi Bildirileri, Vol. 1, 1976, pp. 163–177, and others support this hypothesis. However,more recent analysis of historical and linguistic evidence indicates that the Gagauz are asynthetic population, formed from the melding of Pechenegs, Uz, Cumans, and AnatolianTurks. See Harun Gungor and Mustafa Argunshah, Gagauz Turkleri: Tarih-Dil-Folklor veHalk Edebiyati (Ankara: Kultur Bakanligi Yayinlari, 1991), and Dunden Bugune Gagauzlar(Ankara: Elektronik Iletisim Ajansi Yayinlari, 1993). There are an estimated 12,000 Gagauzin Bulgaria, about 30,000 each in Greece and Romania. Most of the Gagauz today live inMoldova and the Ukraine.

5. L. S. Stavrianos, The Balkans Since 1453 (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1958),p. 98; Omer Barkan, “Quelques observations sur l’organization economiques et sociales des

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villes Ottomanes de XVI et XVII siecles,” Recueils de la Societe Jean Bodin, 1955,pp. 292–293.

6. Omer Barkan, “Research on the Ottoman Fiscal Surveys,” in M. A. Cook, ed., Studies in theEconomic History of the Middle East from the Rise of Islam to the Present Day (London:Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 170.

7. Maria Todorova, “The Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans,” in Carl L. Brown, ed., ImperialLegacy: The Ottoman Imprint on the Balkans and the Middle East (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1996), pp. 62–63.

8. Ibid., p. 64.9. For a discussion of demographic changes in Bulgarian towns following the Russo-Turkish

War of 1877–1878, see Richard Crampton, “The Turks in Bulgaria, 1878–1944,” in KemalKarpat, ed., The Turks of Bulgaria: The History, Culture, and Political Fate of a Minority(Istanbul: Isis Press, 1990), pp. 43–78.

10. R. R. King, Minorities under Communism: Nationalities as a Source of Tension amongBalkan Communist States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 91.

11. See Victor Friedman, “Observing the Observed: Language, Ethnicity, and Power in the 1994Macedonian Census and Beyond,” in Barrett R. Rubin, ed., Toward Comprehensive Peace inSoutheast Europe: Con� ict Prevention in the Balkans (New York: Twentieth Century FundPress, 1996), pp. 81–105, 119–128.

12. King, Minorities under Communism, p. 92.13. Kemal Karpat, “Ottoman Urbanism: The Crimean Tatar Emigration to Dobruca and the

Founding of Mecidiye, 1856–1878,” International Journal of Turkish Studies, Vol. 3,1984–1985, p. 3.

14. Mark Pinson, “Russian Policy and the Emigration of Crimean Tatars to the Ottoman Empire,”Part I, GuneydogÏ u Avrupa Arastirmalari Dergisi, Vol. 1, 1972, pp. 42–43.

15. Ibid., p. 44.16. Ibid.17. Karpat, “Ottoman Urbanism,” p. 7.18. Ibid., p. 8. See also Kemal Karpat, “Population Movements in the Ottoman State in the

Nineteenth Century: An Outline,” Collection Turcica, 1983, pp. 385–428, and “The CrimeanEmigration of 1856–1862 and the Settlement and Urban Development of Dobruca,” in Ch.Remercier-Quelquejay et al., eds, Turco-Tatar Past, Soviet Present: Studies Presented toAlexandre Bennigsen (Paris: Editions Peeters, 1986).

19. Karpat, “Ottoman Urbanism,” p. 1.20. Ibid., pp. 11–12.21. Nikolai Todorov, “The Balkan Town in the Second Half of the 19th Century,” Etudes

Balkaniques, Vol. 2, 1969, p. 38.22. Ibid., p. 33.23. Ibid.24. Ibid., p. 3925. John Georgeoff, “Ethnic Minorities in Bulgaria,” in George Klein and Milan J. Reban, eds,

The Politics of Ethnicity in Eastern Europe (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981),p. 71.

26. The Russo-Turkish war of 1877–1878 was fought mostly on Bulgarian soil. Tatars, nursinga hatred toward Russians who had forced them out of their homes in Crimea less than aquarter century before, fought ferociously and mercilessly against the Russians and theBulgarians who supported the Russian war effort, taking no prisoners. Remaining in Bulgariaafter the war would have exposed the Tatars and their families to certain death at the handsof the Russians and the Bulgarians. Most chose to leave with the retreating Ottoman armies.

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27. The most comprehensive description of the rich cultural life of Turkish and Tatar communi-ties in Romanian Dobruca remains Ulkusal’s Dobruca ve Turkler (Dobruca and the Turks).It was originally published in Constanta in 1940. After emigrating to Turkey, the authorrewrote, expanded, and updated the monograph and it was published in Ankara in 1966.

28. Frederick De Jong, “The Turks and Tatars in Romania: Materials Relative to Their Historyand Notes on Their Present-Day Condition,” Turcica: Revue d’Etudes Turques, Vol. 28,1986, pp. 170–171, 174.

29. King, Minorities under Communism, p. 48.30. De Jong, “The Turks and Tatars in Romania,” pp. 171–172.31. Ibid., p. 172. In Bulgaria the Shiites are known as Alevi, Aliani, or more generally as

Kizilbash (“red head”) after their traditional headgear with 12 stripes representing the 12imams. Most of the Kizilbash settled in Dobruca in large numbers, either voluntarily or bybeing deported there from Anatolia by the Ottoman authorities between the � fteenth andseventeenth centuries. Traditionally the Kizilbash were associated with various Su�orders active in the Balkans during the Ottoman period. Since the Kizilbash were con-sidered “heterodox,” even heretical, by the majority Sunnis, they were subject to periodicpersecutions. In the face of such persecution, they have adopted the strategy of conceal-ment in an attempt to maintain their true identity, “outwardly professing to be orthodoxSunnis to their Turkish or Bulgarian neighbors, or alternately claiming to be Bektashis,depending on who is addressing them” (H. T. Norris, Islam in the Balkans, p. 98). Besidesconcealment, village and confessional endogamy have helped them maintain their religiousidentity and traditions. According to the 1992 census, there were 85,773 Shiites in Bulgaria,accounting for 7.7% of the Muslim population in Bulgaria. For more information onorigins of the Kizilbash and their relationship to Su� brotherhoods, see Frederick DeJong, “Notes on Islamic Mystical Brotherhoods in Northeast Bulgaria,” Der Islam, Vol. 63,1986, pp. 303–308, and “Problems Concerning the Origins of the Qizilbas in Bulgaria:Remnants of the Saffaviya?” Academia Nazionale dei Lincei (Rome), Vol. 25, 1993,pp. 203–215.

32. Elemer Illyes, National Minorities in Romania: Change in Transylvania (Boulder: EastEuropean Monographs, 1982), pp. 34–52; Anuarul Statistic al Ramaniei (Bucharest: ComisiaNationala Pentru Statistica, 1994), p. 110.

33. De Jong, “The Turks and Tatars in Romania,” p. 175.34. Ulkusal, Dobruca ve Turkler, pp. 105–125, 155–163, 231–239, provides a wealth of infor-

mation on Turkish educational institutions and organizations, the Turkish press, and Turkishcultural associations in Romania prior to World War II as well as information about theimpact of communist rule on these institutions.

35. De Jong, “Turks and Tatars in Romania,” pp. 178–179.36. Anuarul Statistic al Ramaniei, pp. 274–277.37. For a more detailed discussion of Islam in Romania prior to World War II, see Ulkusal,

Dobruca ve Turkler, pp. 129–145.38. De Jong, “The Turks and Tatars in Romania,” p. 169.39. Frederick De Jong, “Muslim Minorities in the Balkans on the Eve of the Collapse of

Communism,” Islamic Studies, Vol. 36, 1997, p. 416.40. For example, according to Ulkusal there were 122 mosques in the province of Constanta and

29 in the province of Tulcea. During the 1980s there were about 50 mosques open to worshipin the entire Romanian Dobruca.

41. De Jong, “The Turks and Tatars in Romania,” pp. 180–181.42. Ibid., pp. 182–183.43. De Jong, “The Muslim Minorities in the Balkans,” p. 416.44. Bilal Simsir, Contribution a l’Histoire des Populations Turques en Bulgarie, 1876–1880

(Ankara: Turk Kulturunu Arastirma Enstitusu Yayinlari, 1966), p. 9.

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45. Natsionalen Statisticheski Institut, Rezultati ot Prebrojavaneto na Naselenieto: DemografskiKharakteristiki, 1994, p. 106.

46. Helsinki Watch, Destroying Ethnic Identity: The Gypsies of Bulgaria (New York: HumanRights Watch, 1991), pp. 69–70.

47. Ibid., p. 71.48. Ibid.49. Ibid., p. 72.50. Nedim Ipek, Rumeli’den Anadolu’ya Turk Gocleri, 1877–1890 (Ankara: Turk Tarik Kurumu

Basimevi, 1994), pp. 40–41. Crampton, “The Turks of Bulgaria,” pp. 43–78, provides adetailed discussion of changes in the ethnic composition of the population of Bulgaria as awhole, and especially of the urban population between 1878 and 1944.

51. Kiril Donkov, “Etnicheskijat sustav na naselenieto na Bulgarija,” Statistika, Vol. 36, 1994,pp. 37–38.

52. Natsionalen Statisticheski Institut, Demografska Kharakteristika na Bulgarija (Rezultati ot2% Izvadka): Prebrojavane na Naselenieto I Zhilishtnija Fond kum 4 Kekemvri 1992 Godina(So� a: Natsionalen Statisticheski Institut, 1993), p. 92.

53. Bilal Simisir, The Turks of Bulgaria, 1878–1985 (London: K. Rustem & Brother, 1988),pp. 13–30.

54. Diana Mishkova, “Literacy and Nation-Building in Bulgaria, 1878–1912,” East EuropeanQuarterly, Vol. 29, 1994, p. 86.

55. Jan F. Triska, ed., “Bulgaria,” in Constitutions of the Communist Party States (Stanford:Hoover Institutions on War, Revolution, and Peace, 1968), p. 163.

56. For a detailed discussion of the history of Turkish-language education in Bulgaria see AliEminov, “The Education of Turkish Speakers in Bulgaria,” Ethnic Groups, Vol. 5, 1983,pp. 129–150. For a detailed discussion of the linguistic effects of communist nationalitypolicy on colloquial and literary Turkish and recent development in Turkish-languageeducation in Bulgaria, see Ali Eminov, Turkish and Other Muslim Minorities in Bulgaria(London: C. Hurst, 1997), pp. 138–166.

57. Simsir, The Turks of Bulgaria, p. 155.58. Todorova, “Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans,” p. 64.59. See Djeni Madjarov, “Adaptation—Reality and Image,” in The Ethnic Situation in Bulgaria

Today (So� a: Club ‘90, 1993), pp. 104–121.60. So� a Press Agency, The Constitution of the Republic of Bulgaria (So� a, 1991), p. 11.61. See Wolfgang Hopken, “From Religious Identity to Ethnic Mobilization: The Turks of

Bulgaria Before, Under and Since Communism,” in Hugh Poulton and Suha Taji-Farouki,eds, Muslim Minorities and the Balkan State, p. 79.

62. Ibid., p. 65.63. This is a long poem by Suleyman Celebi celebrating the birth of the Prophet Muhammad. It

is chanted either in memory of a dead person or to mark a special religious or other importantoccasion.

64. For a more extended discussion of government attitudes to Islam and Muslims, see Eminov,Turkish and Other Muslim Minorities, pp. 24–121, and Poulton, The Balkans, pp. 153–161.

65. Ilona Tomova and Plamen Bogoev, “Minorities in Bulgaria: A Report of the InternationalConference on the Minorities, Rome 1991,” The Insider, Vol. 2, 1992, pp. 1–15.

66. Both chief muftis were Turkish speakers. The socialist governments supported NedimGendzhev for two reasons: to reward a loyal supporter, and to punish Turkish speakers whohad voted overwhelmingly for non-socialist candidates in all of the elections held since 1989.

67. See Natsionalen Statisticheski Institut, Demografska Kharakteristika na Bulgaria, pp. 57–113; Hopken, “From Religious Identity to Ethnic Mobilization,” pp. 74–75.

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68. Daniel Bates, “What’s in a Name? Minorities, Identity, and Politics in Bulgaria,” Identities:Global Studies in Culture and Power, Vol. 1, 1994, p. 202.

69. Ibid.70. Daniel Bates, “The Ethnic Turks and the Bulgarian Elections of October 1991,” Turkish

Review of Balkan Studies, 1993.71. So� a Press Agency, The Constitution of the Republic of Bulgaria, (So� a: So� a Press

Agency), p. 6.72. East European Constitutional Review, “Turkish Party in Bulgaria Allowed to Continue,” Vol.

1, No. 2 (Chicago: Centre for the Study of Constitutionalism in Eastern Europe at theUniversity of Chicago Law School, 1992), pp. 11–12.

73. Poulton, “Changing Notions of National Identity among Muslims in Thrace and Macedonia,”p. 83.

74. Human Rights Watch, Destroying Ethnic Identity: The Turks of Greece (New York: HumanRights Watch, 1990), pp. 47–50.

75. Ath. Angelopoulos, “Population Distribution of Greece Today According to Language,National Consciousness and Religion,” Balkan Studies, Vol. 20, 1979, pp. 125–126.

76. Ibid., p. 129.77. See Anastasia Karakasidou, “Politicizing Culture: Negating Macedonian Identity in Northern

Greece,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies, Vol. 11, 1993, pp. 1–28; “Sacred Scholars,Profane Advocates: Intellectuals Molding National Consciousness in Greece,” Identities, Vol.1, 1994, pp. 35–61.

78. Anastasia Karakasidou, “Vestiges of the Ottoman Past: Muslims under Siege in Contempor-ary Greek Thrace,” Cultural Survival, Vol. 19, 1995, p. 71.

79. For speci� c examples of persecution of individuals who challenge the of� cial Greek positionon the ethnic identity of Muslims, see Human Rights Watch, Greece: The Turks of WesternThrace.

80. Angelopoulos, “Population Distribution of Greece Today,” pp. 126–127.81. The drawing of territorial boundaries after the Balkan Wars and World War I had split the

Bulgarian-speaking Muslim communities between Bulgaria, Greece, and Yugoslavia.82. Angelopoulos, “Population Distribution in Greece Today,” p. 128.83. Yorgos Christidis, “The Muslim minority in Greece,” in Gerd Nonneman, Tim Niblock and

Bogdan Szajakowski, eds, Muslim Communities in the New Europe, (Reading, UK: IthacaPress, 1996), pp. 153–154.

84. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Turkish Minority in Western Thrace(Washington, 1996), p. 4.

85. Poulton, “Changing Notions of National Identity,” pp. 85–86; Tatjana Seypel, “The Pomaksof Northwestern Greece: An Endangered Balkan Population,” Journal, Institute of MuslimMinority Affairs, Vol. 10, 1989, pp. 41–49. The Greek government embarked upon a policyto assimilate the Bulgarian-speaking Muslims, the Pomaks, into the Turkish population byrequiring them to attend Turkish-language schools and forcing them to identify themselvesas Turks. This policy was embraced wholeheartedly by Turkish speakers in Greece as wellas by the Republic of Turkey. This practice was ended in the 1950s as the relations betweenGreece and Turkey deteriorated over the Cyprus question. However, the consistent denial ofthe Bulgarian ethnicity of Pomaks forced many Pomaks to draw closer to the Turkishcommunity, believing that Turkey as a kin state would protect the interests of all Muslimsin Greece. Consequently, over the years, most Pomaks in Western Thrace have come to“manifest a Turkish national consciousness in part through enculturation and education inminority [Turkish] schools and through intermarriage with ethnic Turks.” Karakasidou,“Vestiges of the Ottoman past,” p. 71. This certainly was not the intention of the Greekauthorities.

86. Poulton, “Changing Notions of Identity,” p. 86.

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87. The relationship between the Greek Orthodox Church and the Greek government is uniqueamong European Union member countries. Not only is the Greek Orthodox Church theof� cial religion in Greece but it is so powerfully established in popular consciousness thatbeing a Christian and a Greek are synonymous. Moreover, the Church is in the vanguard ofHellenism and Greek nationalism and has enormous in� uence on government policies towardits Muslim minority and toward Turkey. The messages of Archbishop Christodoulos are fullof the virtues of Hellenism and hard nationalism. He takes every opportunity to give vent tohis hostility toward the Turks, whom he calls “eastern barbarians,” calls upon Greeks tomobilize to “liberate Constantinople,” and, on his visits to Western Thrace, urges Greeks todefend Orthodoxy against Muslims, with weapons if necessary. See “Greece’s NationalistArchbishop,” The Economist, 12 December 1998, p. 53.

88. MRG Greece, “The Slavomacedonian Minority in Greece: A Case Study in Balkan National-ism,’ in MRG Greece, James Pettifer and Hugh Poulton, eds, The Southern Balkans (London:Minority Rights Group, 1994), p. 18.

89. See Human Rights Watch, Destroying Ethnic Identity.90. Human Rights Watch, “Greece: Improvements for Turkish Minority: Problems Remain,”

(New York: Human Rights Watch, 1992).91. Human Rights Watch, Greece: The Turks of Western Thrace (New York: Human Rights

Watch, 1998), pp. 10–11.92. Human Rights Watch, Destroying Ethnic Identity, p. 11.93. Poulton, “Islam, Ethnicity and State,” p. 19.94. Scott Malcomson, Borderlands: Nation and Empire (Boston: Faber & Faber), 1994, p. 74.95. Karakasidou, “Vestiges of the Ottoman Past,” p. 72.96. Human Rights Watch, Greece, p. 11.97. Baskin Oran, “The Sleeping Volcano in Turco-Greek Relations: The Western Thrace

Minority,” International Journal of Turkish Studies, Vol. 6, 1992–1994, p. 12498. Ibid.99. Poulton, The Balkans, pp. 185–186.

100. Ibid., p. 186.101. Christidis, “The Muslim Minority in Greece,” pp. 158–159.102. Oran, “The Sleeping Volcano in Turco-Greek Relations,” p. 125.103. Ibid.104. Karakasidou, “Vestiges of the Ottoman Past,” pp. 73, 75.105. See C. N. O. Bartlett, The Turkish Minority in Yugoslavia (Bradford, UK: University of

Bradford Press, 1980).106. Friedman, “Observing the Observed,” p. 85.107. Kemal Karpat, “The Balkan National States and Nationalism: Image and Reality,” Islamic

Studies, Vol. 36, 1997, p. 347.108. Poulton, “Changing Notions of National Identity,” pp. 96–97.109. Statisticheski Godishnik na Republika Makedonija, p. 88.110. Ibid., pp. 106–107.111. De Jong, “The Muslim Minorities in the Balkans,” p. 417.112. Poulton, “Changing Notions of National Identity,” p. 98.113. Ibid.114. Statisticheski Godishnik na Republika Makedonija, p. 57.115. Glenn E. Curtis, Yugoslavia: A Country Study, 3rd edn (Washington: Government Printing

Of� ce, 1992), p. 112.116. Ibid.117. De Jong, “The Muslim Minorities in the Balkans,” p. 418.118. Curtis, Yugoslavia, p. 112.119. De Jong, “The Muslim Minorities in the Balkans,” p. 417.

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