Revival Process
Assimilation policy in Bulgaria, 1984–1989
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Revival Process (Bulgarian: Възродителен процес, romanized: Vazroditelen protses) was a forced assimilation campaign in the communist-led People's Republic of Bulgaria that targeted Bulgarian Turks, and included mass mandatory name changes. The forced name changes began on December 24–25, 1984,[9][10] and continued into early 1985.[1] The government declared renaming complete on March 31, 1985, but restrictions remained in place until December 1989.[2][5] Officials presented the campaign as a restoration of Bulgarian origins.[11][12]
Mothers affected by the Revival Process display photographs of conscripted sons in summer 1989. | |
| Date | December 1984[1]–December 1989[2] |
|---|---|
| Location | Bulgaria |
| Type | Forced assimilation |
| Target | Bulgarian Turks |
| Perpetrator | |
| Outcome | |
| Deaths | Various estimates |
| Non-fatal injuries | Several thousand[7][8] |
| Arrests | Several thousand[7][8] |
The state banned public use of the Turkish language,[13][14][15] and restricted religious and cultural practices.[16][17][18][19] Authorities imposed fines, detention, and internal exile on resisters.[20][21] Estimates of the death toll vary among sources. In 1989, the campaign culminated in state pressure on Bulgarian Turks to emigrate, and as a result, more than 300,000 people left Bulgaria in a mass exodus that began on May 29, 1989.[22] On November 10, 1989, party leaders removed Todor Zhivkov from power, and on December 29 the same year,[5][23] the new government restored the right to hold Turkish names, and eased religious and cultural restrictions.[23][5][24] On January 11, 2012, the National Assembly of Bulgaria formally condemned the Revival Process.[25]
Terminology
The Revival Process
Scholars described the term "Revival Process" as a euphemism.[26][27][28][29] The term was first used at a meeting of the Politburo of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) on January 18, 1985,[30] likely by Georgi Atanasov;[31] it was not widely used at first but later became common.[28] The policy has been described as forced assimilation.[32]
Bulgarian Turks
In communist Bulgaria, Muslim communities overlapped, and some Slavophone Muslims and Muslim Roma identified as Turks,[33][34] the latter sometimes to avoid stigma.[33] Group identity in Bulgaria had both religious and ethnic dimensions;[35] Slavophone Muslims living mainly among Turks more often emphasized Bulgarianness, while those living mainly among Bulgarians more often emphasized Turkishness.[36] Officials relied on contested ethnic categories when enforcing the policy, and the measures sometimes affected people whose identity did not fit neatly into official labels.[37]
Forced assimilation
Background
By late 1984, communist Bulgaria was a party to international organizations and treaties protecting the rights of minority groups,[38] but it did not comply with these obligations and pursued assimilation policies.[38] The government feared a backlash from Turkey and sometimes avoided extending previous measures to Turks.[39] According to the 1975 census, Turks made up about 8.4% of Bulgaria's population.[40] Turks lived mainly in northeastern and southern Bulgaria, notably Kardzhali Province.[41] Authorities enforced the Revival Process most intensely in these areas.[42]
Although scholarship generally dates Turkish settlement in Bulgaria to the 14th century under Ottoman rule,[43] the Bulgarian communist government said any of the Turkish minority who felt connected with Turkey emigrated to Turkey under a limited migration treaty between Bulgaria and Turkey in effect from 1969 to 1979.[44] It also said domestic Turks who remained in Bulgaria were descendants of Bulgarians who had been Turkified in language and religion.[45][12] The government cited the existence of small remnant populations of Turkic Christians, who were possibly descendants of much older waves of Turkic settlement in Bulgaria.[46]
The position of the Soviet Union with respect to minority policy in Bulgaria was highly impactful.[47] Academic Dimitrov linked the timing of the Revival Process to shifts in the Soviet Union in the early 1980s that reduced external constraints on Bulgarian domestic policy.[48] According to Dimitrov, a renewed phase of the Cold War, a weakening of Soviet leadership, and Konstantin Chernenko's extended illness coincided with the implementation of the renaming campaign in Bulgaria.[48] Bulgaria’s consistently pro-Soviet foreign policy gave the Zhivkov government greater latitude than other Soviet satellite countries to pursue assimilation measures.[48]
Academic İbrahim Karahasan-Çınar identified key theorists of the policy other than Zhivkov as:[49]
- Milko Balev - Central Committee secretary
- Georgi Atanasov - Central Committee secretary
- Pencho Kubadinski - Several prominent positions
- Stoyan Mihaylov - Central Committee secretary
- Aleksandar Lilov[note 1][50] - Central Committee secretary
- Dimitar Stoyanov (internal affairs minister) - Internal Affairs minister
- Petar Mladenov - Foreign minister
- Georgi Tanev - Kardzhali District Committee (Bulgarian: Окръжен комитет, romanized: Okrazhen Komitet) first secretary[31]
Karahasan-Çınar does not list Lyudmila Zhivkova, the daughter of Todor Zhivkov. Zhivkova had been a member of the BCP's Politburo from 1977 until her death.[37] Zhivkova championed Bulgarian culture and policies aimed at cultural revival.[37] Though she adhered to an inclusive understanding of cultural revival that emphasized connections with foreign cultures, many who surrounded Zhivkova sought the restoration of cultural purity.[37] Zhivkova's death in 1981 led to the primacy of non-inclusive ideas in cultural revival.[37]
Georgi Tanev said Bulgarian Turks had a strong sense of group identity that manifested itself in "language, tradition and customs",[31] and that their social environment separated Turks from the body of the Bulgarian nation.[31] He submitted proposals to the BCP Politburo on how to address this situation and later rose through the communist state hierarchy.[31] Tanev later became interior minister and received the Hero of the People's Republic of Bulgaria award.[31]
Shortly before the Revival Process, the Bulgarian government introduced a new, unified identity system under ESGRAON within the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works of Bulgaria.[51][52] The government linked the rollout of the system to the planned mass issuance of new identity documents, and committed to issuing these documents by 1985.[51]
Initial campaigns
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Bulgarian policy toward minority groups evolved over the decades of communist rule.[53][54] From 1950–1951, the communist government expelled a large number of Turks from the country, and later implemented assimilation campaigns primarily aimed at non-Turkish Muslim minorities. For example, from 1962, the government barred Slavophone Muslims from attending Turkish-language schools, and in 1972, it entirely banned Turkish-language schools.[55] The government forced many Muslims to change their names; by 1974, around 150,000 Slavophone Muslims and 200,000 Turks had been forced to adopt new names.[56][57][58]
In 1971, the government adopted a new constitution that provided a foundation for assimilation policies[29] and offered much weaker protections to minority groups,[59] though it still guaranteed rights to citizens who were relevant to the Revival Process.[60] Officials replaced the term "national minorities" with "citizens of non-Bulgarian origin",[29][61] and their discourse increasingly framed minority identities as compatible with eventual assimilation.[62]
In 1978, the government attempted to phase out traditional and religious holidays and observances in favor of approved socialist ones.[63] It sent officials to Islamic funerals to ensure participants carried out proper socialist rites and prayed in the Bulgarian language.[63] The prescribed rituals combined elements associated with Bulgarian Christian practice with Marxist-Leninist atheism.[64]
Shortly before the Revival Process, the state made education policy more assimilationist, promoting mixed marriages,[65] and requiring Turkish-minority teachers to undergo ideological training.[65] Between 1981–1983, authorities forced around 100,000 people, mainly Muslim Roma, to change their names.[66] It then extended the measure to Crimean Tatars and Alians, a Shia group, shortly before the Revival Process began in 1984.[66][67] The government also resolved to issue around 250,000 identity papers bearing new Bulgarian names to Muslim Roma.[68] So, even before the Revival Process began in earnest, the government's desire to implement something like the Revival Process were felt popularly.[69]
Start of the Revival Process
According to Dimitrov, the Revival Process began on the night of December 24–25, 1984.[1] The initiative began before the BCP leadership openly debated it, though the party soon aligned behind the policy. A Central Committee plenum on February 13–14, 1985, endorsed the campaign after Zhivkov had extended it nationwide.[70]
Approved name lists
After disputes over which names should count as Bulgarian, officials compiled a list of about 5,000 approved names, including many linked to the Orthodox Christian calendar.[71] Some modern names without Slavic or Christian associations also appeared.[72] This list was originally intended to advise those in mixed marriages, but it grew in scope with time.[72] Officials did not complete the "Classifier of Bulgarian Names" before the start of the Revival Process, but the state provided indices from which people were required to choose their new names.[73]
Officials accepted some foreign names if people could write them in Bulgarian;[74] these included names of Turkish, Armenian, and Arabic origin.[75] In addition, some Bulgarian family names were of Turkish origin, which presented a dilemma to the state.[73] The same body that developed the basis for the "Classifier of Bulgarian Names" sought to create an acceptable foreign-name classifier at some future point.[75]
Renaming
By late 1984, Bulgarian authorities had forced many non-Turkish Muslims to change their names in earlier campaigns, and that year, the government expanded the policy to include Turks.[23][76] Local municipalities often carried out the renaming through administrative procedures.[23][77] Officials summoned individuals in their villages and required them to replace their Turkish names with Bulgarian ones chosen from approved lists.[23][77] Officials enforced the name changes through intimidation, which was often backed by security forces and military vehicles.[20] Employers also renamed Turks at the direction of officials.[78] The Bulgarian government required municipalities to enforce the use of the new names in both the renamed person's public and private life.[79] The government described the renaming as voluntary, but outside observers regarded it as coerced.[80][81]
Initially, authorities only required Turks living in or originating from the southern region of Rhodopes to change their names. After receiving reports on the initial renaming actions, the BCP's Politburo ordered the expansion of the campaign.[1] Authorities implemented the order in February 1985,[82] and on March 31 that year, the Bulgarian government declared the process completed and issued new identity documents to those affected.[23] The government seized the old identity documents,[83] and planned a census that year using the new documents.[84][85] The census was conducted between December 4–12,[86] and authorities gradually released the results,[86] but did not publish the final census results until 1988.[87][86] "Turks" and "Muslims" entirely disappeared as categories in this census.[88] Despite the census data, sources differ on the number of people renamed. One documented figure says around 310,000 individuals in Haskovo and Kardzhali provinces had been renamed by January 18, 1985.[1]
| Number renamed | Time frame / scope | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 800,000[76] | Christmas 1984–February 1985 | — |
| 822,588[89] | Revival Process up to May 1989 | — |
| 850,000[3][4] | Revival Process | — |
| 850,000–1,100,000[90] | Revival Process | — |
| Nearly 1 million[91] | December 1984–January 1985 | — |
| 1,306,000[89] | Uncertain | According to the source, this estimate might combine totals from the Revival Process with some from before the campaign. |
Other policies
The Bulgarian government banned the use of the Turkish and Romani languages in public,[13][14][15][92] although up to 70% of the Turkish minority could not speak Bulgarian.[19] The government extended the prohibition to Turkic Christian communities and banned public use of their language.[93] Signs warning it was "forbidden to speak" either "French" or "in a foreign language" were posted in public spaces in majority Turkish areas.[94] Authorities fined people who spoke Turkish in public five leva or more,[20][95][21] and sometimes imprisoned or exiled them.[21] One Turk was imprisoned for five years for persistent use of Turkish and another was exiled from Bulgaria for two years.[21]
The government had already banned some distinctive markers of Muslim identity, such as religious clothing, leading to the widespread adoption of substitutes for these items.[16] For example, dark raincoats became substitutes for veils.[16] Officials went further during the Revival Process; they prevented Muslims from burying their dead in Islamic cemeteries and using traditional headstone shapes.[96] The state also pressured Muslims to deface Islamic symbols and Arabic inscriptions on graves. At times, Turkish families buried their deceased under headstones with only a photograph of the individual because religious symbols were prohibited and they did not wish to use the forcibly assigned "Bulgarian" name.[94] Local authorities ordered the defacement of the Turkish names of 2,000 individuals on gravestones near Pavel.[97] The graves of "well-known" Turkish-langauge writers in Bulgaria were destroyed in 1985.[98] Similarly, authorities had crescents that adorned minarets removed because the symbol is associated with the Turkish nation.[99] They also prohibited store and restaurant owners from serving women in traditional Islamic dress.[18] In some areas, the wearing of traditional Turkish pants was banned.[100]
Authorities strictly enforced the ban on circumcision and required Muslim parents to sign documents promising not to circumcise their child.[15] Officials inspected boys to check compliance;[95] if they found parents had violated the ban, both the parents and the individual who had performed the circumcision faced punishment.[18] In 1987, Amnesty International reported the state imprisoned four women for between six and eight months because they circumcised their sons or grandsons.[19] Despite this, Muslims continued to practice circumcision.[20]
The government also promoted approved Slavic cultural practices. For example, authorities sought to promote traditional Slavic gatherings of young people (Bulgarian: седянки, romanized: sedyanki) among the policy's targets.[101] Officials inspected the mail of most Bulgarian Turks, and sometimes demanded the translation of mail written in Turkish for inspection.[102] Turkish-language music was also banned.[103]
Communist Bulgaria appointed a chief mufti and regional muftis.[18] The government selected these religious officials for loyalty to itself rather than for their religious training.[18] The state-appointed chief mufti said authorities did not prevent Muslims from performing rites and declared full support for the renaming policy.[18] The national religious body for Muslims in Bulgaria at the time was known as the Supreme Spiritual Council of the Muslim Faith.[104]
With respect to Roma specifically, Mahala semi-nomadic settlements were hidden behind conrete walls.[105]
State media and propaganda
The Bulgarian government controlled most of the country's media outlets, and many journalists came from politically acceptable backgrounds or were members of the ruling party.[106] In January 1985, Todor Zhivkov told the Communist Party's Central Committee the party should remain silent in the press and not issue even general information to particular groups to avoid speculation.[31] In subsequent years, the media echoed official narratives of the essential Bulgarian origin of the Turkish minority.[20] The press published the involuntary declarations of thousands of Turks affirming a Bulgarian identity,[20] and it insisted Bulgarian Turks, who were referred to as "New Bulgarians", approved of the renaming program.[107] Opinion polling indicated indifference among the general public toward the nation's Turkish minority,[108] and the government largely refrained from mobilizing ethnic Bulgarians in support of the Revival Process. According to Dimitrov, opposition to the process among ethnic Bulgarians was limited.[108]
Reaction and resistance
Many targets of the policy continued to privately practice their faith and speak Turkish at home.[109] Resistance included organized opposition and public protests.[110] Some individuals tried to avoid the renaming campaign by hiding in remote areas or moving to larger cities, where implementation could be slower, but most such attempts failed.[111]
Turkish National Liberation Movement
The "Turkish National Liberation Movement in Bulgaria", which was one of several groups that formed in opposition to the Revival Process, was founded in Varna on December 8, 1985.[112] Among the organization's early members were Ahmed Dogan,[note 2] and future co-founder and later chairman of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) Kasim Dal.[note 3] Ahmed Dogan played a prominent role as the organization's leading political theorist;[113] he said the organization never sought secession or to undermine state sovereignty.[114] The movement also sought official recognition of Bulgaria's Turkish minority.[115]
Dogan's role in the organization later became controversial; sources agree he was connected to the Committee for State Security (DS), the Bulgarian equivalent of the Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB), but they differ on whether he was among its founders or later assumed leadership.[116][117][118] Some scholars also say the DS played an active role in the Turkish National Liberation Movement in Bulgaria's creation and development.[118][119] In 1992, former senior intelligence officer Radoslav Raykov stated Dogan was infiltrated into the organization and convicted along with other leaders to build a legend for him.[120] According to Alexei Kalyonski, the term "Liberation Movement" suggests a connection to the DS.[119]
Most of the organization's membership was arrested by mid-1986.[121] Around 200 of its members were arrested and 18 stood trial.[119] Ahmed Dogan received a ten-year sentence.[119]
Armed resistance
Scholars generally found no evidence of organized armed resistance to the Revival Process.[122] Rumen Avramov, who was an economic advisor to Bulgaria's first non-communist president Zhelyu Zhelev, said the scale of state repression prevented the development of organized armed opposition.[122] In support of this repression, the Bulgarian government undertook reforms aimed at modernizing its internal security forces, including rearmament.[123]
Unorganized armed resistance did occur, throughout the Revival Process.[102] Authorities reported more than 600 incidents they described as "terrorism", and blamed Turks and opposition groups, though the attribution and details of many cases are disputed.[122] For example, on March 9, 1985, an attack killed seven people in Bunovo when a train carriage reserved for mothers on a route between Burgas and Sofia was blown up.[note 4][124][125][126] A court sentenced the attack's perpetrators to death[125] and the executions were carried out in late 1988.[127] The government used such attacks to justify tightened security measures.[128][127]
Belene labor camp
During the Revival Process, the Bulgarian authorities reactivated the Belene labor camp,[129] situated on an island in the Danube River, to detain people whom they arrested for resisting the campaign.[130] The BCP used Belene as a labor camp until 1959, when it was converted into a prison.[129] Authorities typically held Turks who resisted in Belene for two–three months,[76] though they held some for much longer. In 1985, authorities incarcerated more than 500 Turks there for resistance to the renaming measures.[129] Authorities often held detainees without judicial sentences at Belene.[131] In April 1986, prisoners in Belene began a hunger strike that lasted around 30 days.[129] In May 1986, authorities released most of the prisoners and then exiled them to various regions of Bulgaria.[129] Authorities released the remaining detainees in early 1987 in districts populated by ethnic Bulgarians.[132]
Casualties
On December 26, 1984, in Mogilyane, security forces opened fire on demonstrators during protests against the forced replacement of Turkish names with Bulgarian ones, killing three people, including the young child Türkan Feyzullah.[133] Security forces shot Türkan while her mother carried the child on her back.[134] Mogilyane residents later erected a monument in her memory.[133]
Estimates of the number of people killed, injured, and arrested during the Revival Process varied:
| Number killed | Number injured | Number arrested | Time frame / scope | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 800–2,500[135] | — | — | November 1984–February 1985 | — |
| 1,000+[135] | — | — | November 1984–February 1985 | The source notes that the 1,000+ estimate may be higher if deaths from neglect or suicide in Belene are included. |
| 300–1,500[7] | Several thousand | Several thousand | Late 1984–early 1985 | — |
| 300–1,000[8] | Several thousand | Several thousand | Revival Process | — |
| Estimates varied[136] | — | — | Revival Process | — |
International reaction
The president of Turkey, Kenan Evren, expressed concern with Bulgarian policy toward the Turkish minority and pressured Todor Zhivkov on planned renaming measures as early as 1982.[31] Zhivkov responded with denial,[31] in-line with the initial response of Bulgarian authorities generally.[81] Following the start of the Revival Process, Turkish diplomatic responses were restrained.[31] Evren first formally protested the Revival Process in January 1985.[137] Despite official restraint, some Turkish and Western media described the Revival Process with terms such as "genocide" and "state crime".[138] In Turkey, targets of the policy who left Bulgaria formed migrants' associations and raised awareness about the ongoing assimilation campaign.[139]
The status of Bulgarian Turkish children who had been left behind after their parents fled to Turkey was of particular concern to the Turkish public.[140] The street outside the Bulgarian embassy in Ankara was renamed after one of these children for some time.[141] In 1987, Turkish state television aired a dramatization titled Revival Process about the plight of families separated by events in Bulgaria, prompting a sharp response from the Bulgarian government.[142] Often, Bulgaria responded to these denunciations with comparisons to the Kurdish issue in Turkey,[143] but in line with the Helsinki Accords, the Bulgarian government reduced efforts to obstruct the reception of critical Western and Turkish broadcasts to Bulgaria.[144] In response to the Revival Process dramatization, Bulgaria produced a five-hour-long film titled Time of Violence about violent, forced conversions to Islam in Bulgaria under Ottoman rule.[142]
Turkey raised issues of the Revival Process to a number of international bodies.[145] The Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), predessor to the OSCE, tabled the issue in both their May 7–June 17, 1985 and October 15–November 25 meetings.[145] UNESCO did the same at their October 8&ndashNovember 12, 1985 meeting.[145] The Council of Europe condemned the Revival Process.[145]
In 1987, the Islamic Conference, a predecessor to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation,[19] sent a delegation to Bulgaria. Following this visit, the organization published a report that was critical of Bulgaria.[19] The same body later adopted a resolution expressing misgivings with the Revival Process and reminding Bulgaria of its obligations toward minorities.[146] Other international organizations echoed this condemnation, including the United Nations,[146] whose Human Rights Committee labeled Bulgaria as one of seven countries preventing the peaceful practice of religion.[147]
Muslim clerics from nations like communist South Yemen and eastern-aligned Syria made pro-Bulgarian statements.[31] Soviet-aligned nations were initially silent or neutral in regard to events in Bulgaria.[31] The Soviet Union considered minority affairs an internal Bulgarian issue.[148] Only Greece supported Bulgaria among the nations of the European Community, despite Greek membership in NATO[149]
Second wave of resistance
In the late 1980s, ranking members of the Bulgarian government expressed internal concern about the shortcomings of the Revival Process and the ineffectiveness of the assimilation policies.[150] The government undertook limited resettlement of Turks to western and northwestern Bulgaria, and the placement of Turkish children in assimilatory boarding schools.[151] Minister Pencho Kubadinski suggested people from the Soviet Union should be settled in place of resettled Turks.[151]
A second wave of popular, structured resistance emerged; this movement played a notable role in shaping open civil opposition to the communist government.[113][152] Most of the groups openly declaring opposition to the Revival Process, such as the Independent Society for the Protection of Human Rights, the independent trade union Podkrepa, and the Club for Support of Glasnost and Perestroika (Ekoglasnost) formed in the context of Perestroika.[153][119] On November 13, 1988, the Democratic League for the Protection of Human Rights in Bulgaria was established with Mustafa Yumer as chairman and grew to include several thousand members.[154][119] In April 1989, the Support Society–Vienna 89 was founded in the town of Djebel.[130]
These associations were at the heart of what are known as the "May Events" (Bulgarian: Майските събития, romanized: Maiiskite subitiya) in Bulgaria; these events occurred from May 19–27, 1989, mainly in northeastern Bulgaria.[155] Demonstrators, estimated at 30,000–53,000, carried out hunger strikes and mass protests, and at times clashed with police.[118] They aimed to attract the attention of the world community, especially the CSCE symposium "Freedom of the Spirit and the Human Dimension in Europe", which was held from May 30–June 23, 1989[note 5] in Paris, France.[156][94] Academic Mihail Ivanov notes that from May 19–27, 1989, between 25,000 and 30,000 demonstrators took to the streets in northeastern Bulgaria.[157] These actions sometimes turned into riots.[119]
Bulgaria became increasingly isolated from its Eastern bloc allies during the Revolutions of 1989.[119] Diplomatic pressure on Bulgaria from Turkey also increased.[119] The president of France, François Mitterrand, visited Bulgaria in January 1989 and held meetings with dissidents at the French embassy in Sofia.[158]
The Bulgarian government responded to the protests by sending soldiers, fire brigades, and the national police (then styled as the people's militias) against the demonstrators.[159] The soldiers, who were serving a mandatory two-year stint in the army, were loaded into trucks covered with opaque tarps, without prior information about their assigned task.[159] Violent riot-control methods, including the deployment of tear gas and occasionally firearms, were used.[119] Sources differ on the number of protesters killed; Alexei Kalyonski estimated between seven–ten protesters were killed, and that hundreds were injured.[119] Tomasz Kamusella estimated that 30–102 protesters were killed and hundreds were injured. [94] According to Bulgarian authorities, only seven deaths occurred.[94] Opposition leaders were subsequently removed from Bulgaria;[119] Mustafa Yumer, for example, was expelled to Turkey.[119]
1989 forced migration
The Bulgarian government concluded part of the Muslim population could not be assimilated and shifted toward promoting emigration.[23] At the end of May 1989, after prominent dissidents were removed,[160] authorities enabled mass departures by loosening travel restrictions,[161] intimidating individuals,[162] and later, opening the border with Turkey. Authorities framed the departures as temporary tourist travel,[162] and propaganda referred to the episode as the "Big Excursion".[162]
From May 29, 1989, until August that year, over 300,000 people left Bulgaria for Turkey under state pressure.[22] In August 1989, Turkey temporarily closed the border with Bulgaria, ending the forced migration.[163]
Aftermath
On November 10, 1989, party leaders forced Todor Zhivkov to resign,[23] and the new Bulgarian government restored the right of Bulgarian citizens to have Turkish names on December 29 that year.[5] In less than two years after Zhivkov's resignation, the new government reopened religious and Turkish-language schools across Bulgaria, and adopted a new national constitution guaranteeing freedom of religion.[24]
Restoration of original names
Despite the restoration of the legal right to hold Turkish names, those affected by the Revival Process faced obstacles in restoring their previous names.[164] In March 1990, Bulgaria adopted legislation enabling that restoration, but its early implementation was burdensome, requiring a court procedure and two supporting witnesses.[5][164] The law required people who restored their names to keep Bulgarian suffixes, such as "-ov" and "-ova".[164] By late May 1990, Bulgarian officials indicated about one-fifth of eligible people had applied to restore their names,[5] although the number of name restorations continued to grow. For example, academic Yelis Erolova restored her Turkish name only after 1990.[6] In some areas, older Bulgarian Turks more commonly restored their names than younger people.[165] On November 16, 1990, the government adopted a reform that shifted name restoration toward a "less cumbersome administrative procedure".[5]
Strengthening of Turkish identity
The Revival Process strengthened Turkish self-identification among the targeted minority.[166][167] Sinem Arslan said the government's actions strengthened in-group solidarity and Turks' tendency to protect their ethnic identities,[167] and led Bulgarian Turks to "underline" their Turkish identity.[168] Scholars have said this identity increasingly highlighted the community's Turkishness rather than its Bulgarian character.[169] People described themselves as "Turks of Bulgaria" rather than "Bulgarian Turks".[169] Gruev and Kalyonski said these changes also sharpened boundaries between Bulgarian Turks and other communities.[170] According to Yelis Erolova, her family made her think of Turkey as her "mother nation".[6]
Nationalist backlash
Post-communist Bulgarian efforts to improve the lives of Bulgarian Turks quickly elicited a backlash from nationalist elements. On October 25, 1990, the MRF club in Shumen was bombed.[171] When the National Assembly discussed measures related to the restoration of Turkish names, around 200 people protested outside.[171] Some local governments conceded to nationalist demands;[171] for example, the city of Razgrad bowed to nationalist pressure and decided not to teach the Turkish language in schools.[171] Post-communist prime minister Andrey Lukanov expressed concern regarding the possible "unconstitutional" extension of the Turkish language to Pomaks through the teaching of the language in schools.[171] His successor, Dimitar Iliev Popov similarly warned of "Muslim aggression".[171]
Impact on the Cold War
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Prior to the start of the Revival Process, relations between the People's Republic of Bulgaria and Turkey were particularly strong.[149] Todor Zhivkov had even visited Turkey in 1983.[149] While the Revival Process was addressed in exchanges between the two sides of the Cold War, for a while, interactions proceeded mostly as they had before the campaign began.[97] The process led to strained relations, including the condemnation of the Revival Process by NATO,[145] but diplomatic channels remained at least partially open.[143][31] Turkish ambassador to Bulgaria, Ömer Engin Lütem, described the most difficult phase of relations during this period as a "war of notes".[31] Because key records in Russia and the United States remain inaccessible, and the topic has received limited scholarly attention, the campaign’s precise effects on the late Cold War remain unclear.[172]
Relations sharply deteriorated in 1989; in August that year, the United States recalled its ambassador to Bulgaria.[173][174] The United States Senate officially condemned that year's events in Bulgaria, and international actors organized a fact-finding mission without participation from any Eastern Bloc nation.[175] The Soviet Union refused to mediate between Bulgaria and Turkey when official tensions grew,[175] although it engaged in shuttle diplomacy via its diplomatic mission in Ankara.[176] According to Dimitrov, the failure of these efforts convinced the Soviet leadership Zhivkov had "outlived his usefulness" and led them to support an anti-Zhivkov faction within the Bulgarian government led by foreign minister Petar Mladenov.[177]
Legal aftermath
In 1990, Bulgaria implemented an amnesty for those convicted of political crimes.[178] Authorities released 31 of 81 Turks still imprisoned for resistance to the assimilation campaign, but they kept the other 50 imprisoned because courts had convicted them under the criminal code.[178] A similar distinction between "political" and "criminal" offenses led to condemnation in instances beyond Bulgaria.[179]
Following the fall of communism, prosecutors opened proceedings against some of the high-level officials who had overseen the Revival Process, including Zhivkov and Mladenov. On January 18, 1990, authorities issued a warrant for Zhivkov's arrest, and months later, he was moved to house arrest[180] and still allowed to travel around Bulgaria.[181] Prosecutors charged the defendants for abuses associated with the Belene camp,[182] and Zhivkov faced additional charges unrelated to the Revival Process.[180] Prosecutors did not charge some perpetrators of the Revival Process.[182] Although legal proceedings began in 1991, they were still ongoing when Zhivkov died in 1998.[183] In 2022, prosecutors dropped the remaining charges after the final defendant, Georgi Atanasov, died.[184] Originally, the case was terminated entirely following Atanasov's death,[185] but the Sofia Court of Appeal ordered the Military Prosecutor's Office to continue the investigation following protests from families of Belene camp victims.[184][185] The court ruled that the procedural rights of victims of the Revival Process were not respected and that the case could not be terminated without a declation from the Prosecutor's Office as to what crime had been allegedly committed.[185]
Legacy
Domestic
The reversal of the Revival Process, together with moderation by both the new government and the Bulgarian Turkish community, contributed to Bulgaria’s democratic transition.[186] For example, Bulgaria's first democratically elected president, Zhelyu Zhelev, treated the Turkish political movement as political allies.[186] Zhelev worked to defend the nascent Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) against a legal challenge from nationalists and the post-communist Bulgarian Socialist Party that could have led to the MRF's dissolution.[186] MRF leader Ahmed Dogan worked to marginalize ultra-nationalist elements within the Turkish community, and refrained from calling for autonomy or independence.[186]
The allure and moderating influence of the prospect of European Union (EU) membership contributed to the reintegration of Turks into Bulgarian society.[187] In 2000, the EU adopted the Race Equality Directive and later formally requested Bulgaria's compliance with it.[188] Bulgaria eventually complied with the directive and acceded to the EU in 2007.
In November 2002, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church declared all victims, including non-Christians, of the Bulgarian communist government, to be martyrs.[189] On January 11, 2012, the Bulgarian National Assembly officially condemned the Revival Process,[25] although according to Tomasz Kamusella, scholars largely ignored the parliamentary recognition.[172] Kamusella described continued public commemorations of Todor Zhivkov in Bulgaria, including statements by national political figures praising him.[190]
After the recognition of the event by the National Assembly, the political party Ataka, described as far-right[191][192][193], introduced a new bill officially contesting the declaration.[194] According to the bill's authors, the declaration represented a boost for separatists, possibly a reference to Bulgarian Turks and Muslims.[194] Ataka's leader, Volen Siderov, said the 2012 declaration could open Bulgaria to substantial compensation payments and raised the possibility the country would be labeled as one that conducted policies of genocide and ethnic cleansing.[195] However, the parliament rejected the bill.[195]
As part of the collective trauma of the Revival Process, some Bulgarians of Muslim origin were left to wonder what their names would have been but for it.[196] Scholars discuss the renaming campaign through the intergenerational transmission of family trauma and burdens carried in intimate everyday life rather than as a closed historical episode.[197]
Academic Natalya Lunkova notes the publication of a renaming-focused anthology of memoirs by targets of the Revival Process was met with mixed reactions in Bulgaria.[198] Nationalists associated with the party Revival criticized the choice of topic and said attention should instead have been paid to transgressions carried out by Turks during the Ottoman occupation of Bulgaria.[198]
Every year, Bulgarian Turkish groups commemorate the official termimation of the Revival Process - December 29 - as "Liberation Day" (Turkish: Kurulus Bairam).[199] In 2013, the Movement for Rights and Freedom called for the inclusion of information about the Revival Process in schoolbooks.[200]
International
In Turkey, public memory of the Revival Process and recorded testimony of victims were limited.[201] Published book-length treatments in Turkey have often focused on individual accounts, which often focus on the events of 1989 and are printed in limited numbers.[202] Turkish media widely praised the 2012 Bulgarian National Assembly's parliamentary declaration condemning the events.[203]
In a 2000 speech at Duquesne University, American National Security Agency director Michael Hayden, who had been stationed in Sofia during the campaign, referred to it only generally, later saying his audience lacked the background to follow a fuller account.[90]
Throughout the Revival Process, many targets sought refuge in countries other than Turkey, especially Austria, Germany, and Sweden.[204] Many found refuge in Australia,[204] Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States.[205]
Responsibility
The ruling communist party later placed personal blame on Todor Zhivkov.[206] The 2012 parliamentary declaration framed the Revival Process as an abuse by the totalitarian communist government generally.[25] One 2012 study of Bulgarian Muslims found Bulgarians generally blamed politicians for the Revival Process.[207] When asked who bore the blame, respondents named the BCP, Zhivkov, and the secret police.[207] Some blamed the Soviet Union and Leonid Brezhnev, who died in 1982.[207] The same study also found those targeted by the Revival Process did not generally blame ethnic Bulgarians and were inclined to forgive them, and instead blamed fellow Muslims who collaborated with the government.[207]
On August 26, 1990, a fire broke out at the Party House in central Sofia, then the headquarters of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), successor to the BCP.[208][209][210] Different sources estimated the fire burned for between four–seven hours, destroying forty rooms and several documents.[208][209] Academic Kamusuella wrote that records related to the Revival Process may have been destroyed in the fire, though the extent of any such loss was unclear.[208][209] Claims regarding responsibility for the fire varied.[209] Former National Assembly member and Sofia municipal councillor Vili Lilkov later stated in the first months after 1989, DS officers had been tasked with destroying or appropriating archives, and that many Ministry of Interior records had been stored in the Party House.[210]
In popular media
Naim Süleymanoğlu (Bulgarian: Наим Сюлейманоглу) was an ethnically Turkish Olympic weightlifter born in Bulgaria in 1967 as Naim Suleimanov (Bulgarian: Наим Сюлейманов).[211] During the Revival Process, authorities forced Süleymanoğlu to change his name to Naum Shalamanov (Bulgarian: Наум Шаламанов), under which he first became a world champion representing Bulgaria.[212][213] He later defected to Turkey, and gave speeches about the Revival Process, bring attention to the campaign.[213] Süleymanoğlu then competed for Turkey in international weightlifting competitions.[212][213] Following his defection, Süleymanoğlu won the gold medal in his weight class at Summer Olympic Games in 1988, 1992, and 1996, representing Turkey.[214] His life story is depicted in the 2019 Turkish film Pocket Hercules: Naim Suleymanoglu.
The Turkish television presenter Gülhan Şen (Bulgarian: Гюлхан Шен), who was born in Bulgaria in 1978, was also affected by the policy. In 1985, authorities forced her to change her name to Galina Hristova Mihailova (Bulgarian: Галина Христова Михайлова), and in 1989 she moved to Turkey.[215] The 2005 film Stolen Eyes depicts a romance between a Bulgarian Turkish woman and a non-Muslim man during the Revival Process. In 2004, author Hristo Kyuchukov published the children's book My Name Was Hussein in the United States, covering the events of the Revival Process through the point of view of a young Muslim Roma boy who is forcibly renamed.[216]
See also
Groups
People
Notes
- Lilov was removed from power in September 1983. He later returned and even delivered the Mladenov government's official denunciation of the Revival Process in December 1989.
- Also referred to at this time as Medi Doganov.
- Also referred to at this time as Diman Sabinov Kisimov.
- Some sources instead give the number of victims as six.
- Note that this conference was held after the forced expulsion implemented thereafter began, but that eventuality was not known to protesters at the time.