Revival Process
Assimilation policy in Bulgaria, 1984–1989
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The Revival Process (Bulgarian: Възродителен процес, romanized: Vazroditelen protses) was a forced assimilation campaign in communist Bulgaria that targeted Bulgarian Turks and included mass forced name changes.[9][10] Most forced name changes occurred in late 1984 and early 1985,[1] but the government kept restrictions in place until December 1989.[2] 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.[9][20] Estimates of the death toll vary among sources. In 1989, the campaign culminated in state pressure on Bulgarian Turks to emigrate, and more than 300,000 people left Bulgaria as a result.[21] After party leaders removed Todor Zhivkov from power, the new government restored the right to hold Turkish names and eased religious and cultural restrictions.[22][5][23]
Timeline
| Event | Date |
|---|---|
| Revival Process began | December 24–25, 1984 |
| Renaming declared complete | March 31, 1985 |
| Mass departures to Turkey began | May 29, 1989 |
| Right to hold Turkish names was restored | December 29, 1989 |
| Bulgarian National Assembly condemned the Revival Process | January 11, 2012 |
Terminology
The Revival Process
Scholars described the term "Revival Process" as a euphemism.[24][25][26] The term was not widely used at first, but later became common.[26] Scholarship described the policy as forced assimilation.[27][28] The term was first used at a meeting of the Politburo of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) on January 18, 1985,[29] likely by Georgi Atanasov.[30]
Bulgarian Turks
Muslim communities overlapped, and some Slavophone Muslims and Muslim Roma identified as Turks,[31][32] the latter sometimes to avoid stigma.[31] Group identity in Bulgaria had both religious and ethnic dimensions.[33] Slavophone Muslims living mainly among Turks more often emphasized Bulgarianness, while those living mainly among Bulgarians more often emphasized Turkishness.[34] 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.[35]
Forced assimilation
Background
By the time of the Revival Process, communist Bulgaria was a party to international organizations and treaties protecting the rights of minority groups,[36] but it did not comply with these obligations in pursuit of assimilation policies.[36] The regime feared backlash from Turkey and sometimes avoided extending previous measures to Turks.[37] According to the 1975 census, Turks made up about 8.4% of Bulgaria's population.[38] Turks lived mainly in northeastern and southern Bulgaria, notably Kardzhali Province.[39] Authorities enforced the Revival Process most intensely in these areas.[40]
Although scholarship generally dates Turkish settlement in Bulgaria to the 14th century under Ottoman rule,[41] the Bulgarian communist regime claimed that 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.[42] It claimed that domestic Turks who remained in Bulgaria were descendants of Bulgarians who had been Turkified in language and religion.[43][12] The regime cited the existence of small remnant populations of Turkic Christians, who were possibly descendants of much older waves of Turkic settlement in Bulgaria.[44]
Academic Dimitrov linked the timing of the Revival Process to shifts in the Soviet Union in the early 1980s, which reduced external constraints on Bulgarian domestic policy.[45] Dimitrov argued that a renewed phase of the Cold War, weakening of Soviet leadership, and Konstantin Chernenko's extended illness coincided with the period when the renaming campaign was implemented.[45] Bulgaria’s consistently pro-Soviet foreign policy gave the Zhivkov government greater latitude to pursue assimilation measures than other satellites.[45]
Academic İbrahim Karahasan-Çınar identified key theorists of the policy other than Zhivkov as:[46]
- Milko Balev - Central Committee secretary
- Georgi Atanasov - Central Committee secretary
- Pencho Kubadinski - Several prominent positions
- Stoyan Mihaylov - Central Committee secretary
- Aleksandar Lilov[note 1][47] - 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[30]
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.[35] Zhivkova championed Bulgarian culture and policies aimed at cultural revival.[35] 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.[35] Zhivkova's death in 1981 led to the primacy of non-inclusive ideas with regard to cultural revival.[35]
Georgi Tanev argued that Bulgarian Turks had a strong sense of group identity manifested in "language, tradition and customs."[30] He argued that Turks were separated from the body of the Bulgarian nation due to their social environment.[30] He submitted proposals to the BCP Politburo on how to address this situation and later rose through the communist state hierarchy.[30] He later became interior minister and received the Hero of the People's Republic of Bulgaria award.[30]
Shortly before the Revival Process, the regime introduced a new unified identity system under ESGRAON within the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works of Bulgaria.[48][49] The regime linked the rollout of the system to the planned mass issuance of new identity documents and committed to issuing those documents by 1985.[48]
Initial campaigns
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Bulgarian policy towards minority groups evolved over the decades of communist rule.[50][51] From 1950 to 1951, the communist government expelled a large number of Turks from the country. Subsequently, it implemented various assimilation campaigns aimed primarily at non-Turkish Muslim minorities. For example, from 1962, the government barred Slavophone Muslims from attending Turkish-language schools. In 1972, it banned Turkish-language schools entirely.[52] The government further forced many Muslims to change their names. By 1974, authorities made about 150,000 Slavophone Muslims and 200,000 Turks adopt new names.[53][54][55]
In 1971, the regime adopted a new constitution, providing a foundation for assimilation policies.[28] This "Zhivkov Constitution" offered much weaker protections to minority groups,[56] though it still guaranteed rights to citizens that were relevant to the Revival Process.[57] Officials replaced the term "national minorities" with "citizens of non-Bulgarian origin,"[28][58] and their discourse increasingly framed minority identity as compatible with eventual assimilation.[59]
In 1978, the regime attempted to phase out traditional and religious holidays and observances in favor of approved socialist ones.[60] It sent officials to Islamic funerals to ensure participants carried out proper socialist rites and said prayers in the Bulgarian language.[60] The rituals combined elements associated with Bulgarian Christian practice with Marxist-Leninist atheism.[61]
Shortly before the Revival Process, the state made education policy more assimilationist. It promoted mixed marriages,[62] and it required Turkish-minority teachers to undergo ideological training.[62] Between 1981 and 1983, authorities forced around 100,000 people, mainly Muslim Roma, to change their names.[63] It then extended the measure to Crimean Tatars and Alians, a Shia group, shortly before the Revival Process began in 1984.[63][64] The regime also resolved to issue around 250,000 identity papers bearing new Bulgarian names to Muslim Roma.[65]
Start of the Revival Process
Academic Dimitrov dates the start of the Revival Process to the night of December 24–25, 1984.[1] Although the initiative began before the BCP leadership openly debated it, the party soon aligned behind the policy. A Central Committee plenum on February 13–14, 1985, endorsed the campaign after Zhivkov had already extended it nationwide.[66]
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.[67] Some modern names without Slavic or Christian association also appeared.[68] Originally, this list was only meant to advise those in mixed marriages, but it grew in scope with time.[68] While officials did not complete the Classifier of Bulgarian Names before the start of the Revival Process, the state provided name indices.[69] Officials required people to choose their new names from these indices.
Officials also accepted some foreign names if people could write them in Bulgarian.[70] These included names of Turkish, Armenian, and Arabic origin, among others.[71] In addition, some Bulgarian family names were of Turkish origin, which presented a dilemma to the state.[69] The same body which developed the basis for the Classifier of Bulgarian Names sought to create an acceptable foreign name classifier at some future point.[71]
Renaming
Authorities had already forced many other Muslims to change their names in earlier campaigns, but in 1984 the government expanded the policy nationwide to Turks.[22][72] Local municipalities often carried out the renaming through administrative procedures.[22][73] Officials summoned individuals in their villages and required them to replace their Turkish names with Bulgarian ones chosen from approved lists.[22][73] Officials enforced the name changes through intimidation, often backed by security forces and military vehicles.[9] Employers also renamed Turks at officials' direction.[74] The Bulgarian government required municipalities to enforce use of the new names in both public and private life.[75] The government described the renaming as voluntary, but outside observers regarded it as coerced.[76]
Initially, authorities only required Turks living in or originating from the Rhodopes region in the country's south to change their names. After receiving reports on the initial renaming actions, the BCP's Politburo ordered the expansion of the renaming campaign.[1] Authorities implemented the order in February 1985.[77] On March 31, 1985, the Bulgarian government declared the process completed and issued new identification documents to those affected.[22] The government seized the old identity documents,[78] and planned a census in 1985 using the new documents.[79][80] That census was conducted from December 4–12, 1985,[81] and authorities released the results gradually.[81] Authorities did not publish the final census results until 1988.[82][81] "Turks" and "Muslims" disappeared as categories from this census entirely.[83] Despite the census data, sources differ on the total number of people renamed. One documented figure is that around 310,000 individuals in Haskovo and Kardzhali had been renamed by January 18, 1985.[1]
| Number renamed | Time frame / scope | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 800,000[72] | Christmas 1984–February 1985 | — |
| 822,588[84] | Revival Process up to May 1989 | — |
| 850,000[3][4] | Revival Process | — |
| 850,000–1,100,000[85] | Revival Process | — |
| Nearly 1 million[86] | December 1984–January 1985 | — |
| 1,306,000[84] | Uncertain | According to the source, this estimate might combine totals from the Revival Process with some from before the campaign. |
Other policies
The state banned speaking Turkish and Romani in public,[13][14][15][87] although up to 70% of the Turkish minority could not speak Bulgarian.[19] The government extended the prohibition to Turkic Christian communities and barred public use of their language.[88] Signs were posted in majority-Turkish areas in public spaces warning that it was "forbidden to speak" either "French" or "in a foreign language."[89] Authorities fined people who spoke Turkish in public 5 leva or more,[9][90][20] and sometimes imprisoned or exiled them.[20] For example, one Turk was imprisoned for five years for persistent use of Turkish while another was exiled from the country for two years.[20]
The regime had already banned some distinctive markers of Muslim identity, such as religious clothing, leading to the widespread use of replacements for these articles.[16] For example, dark raincoats became ersatz veils.[16] Officials went further during the Revival Process. They prevented Muslims from burying their dead in Islamic cemeteries and from using traditional headstone shapes.[91] 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, as religious symbols were prohibited and they did not wish to use the forcibly assigned "Bulgarian" name.[89] Local authorities ordered the defacement of the Turkish names of 2,000 individuals on gravestones near Pavel.[92] Similarly, authorities had crescents that adorned minarets removed because the symbol was also associated with the Turkish nation.[93] 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.[94]
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.[90] If they found a couple to have violated the ban, both the parents and the individual who had performed the circumcision faced punishment.[18] For example, Amnesty International reported in 1987 that the state gave four women prison sentences of between 6 and 8 months because they circumcised their sons or grandsons.[19] Despite this, Muslims continued to practice circumcision.[9]
The state also promoted approved Slavic cultural practices. For example, authorities attempted to promote traditional Slavic gatherings of young people (Bulgarian: Вседянки, romanized: Sedyanki) among the targets of the policy.[95]
Officials inspected the mail of most domestic Turks, and they sometimes demanded that mail written in Turkish be translated for inspection.[96]
Communist Bulgaria appointed a chief mufti and regional muftis.[18] The regime selected these religious officials for loyalty to the regime rather than religious training.[18] The state-appointed chief mufti claimed 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."[97]
State media and propaganda
The government controlled most media outlets, and many journalists came from politically acceptable backgrounds or belonged to the ruling party.[98] In January 1985, Todor Zhivkov argued to the Communist Party's Central Committee that the party should remain silent in the press and not issue even general information to particular groups to avoid speculation.[30] In subsequent years, the media echoed official narratives of the essential Bulgarian origin of the Turkish minority.[9] The press published the involuntary declarations of thousands of Turks affirming a Bulgarian identity,[9] and it insisted that Bulgarian Turks, referred to as "New Bulgarians," approved of the renaming.[99] Opinion polling indicated indifference towards the nation's Turkish minority among the general public,[100] and the government largely did not attempt to mobilize ethnic Bulgarians in support of the Revival Process, though Dimitrov suggests that opposition among ethnic Bulgarians was limited.[100]
Reaction and resistance
Many targets of the policy continued to practice their faith privately and speak Turkish at home.[101] Resistance included organized opposition and public protests.[102] 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.[103]
Turkish National Liberation Movement
The "Turkish National Liberation Movement in Bulgaria" was one of the groups that formed in opposition to the Revival Process. The organization was founded in Varna on December 8, 1985.[104] Among the early members of the organization were Ahmed Dogan[note 2], future chairman of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) and future MRF co-founder Kasim Dal[note 3]. Ahmed Dogan played a prominent role as the leading political theorist for the organization.[105] Dogan claimed the organization never sought secession or sought to undermine state sovereignty.[106] It additionally sought official recognition of the Turkish minority.[107]
Dogan's role in the organization later became controversial. Sources agree that 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 assumed leadership later.[108][109][110] Some scholars further argued that the DS played an active role in the organization's creation and development.[110][111] In 1992, former senior intelligence officer Radoslav Raykov stated that Dogan was infiltrated into the organization and convicted along with other leaders to build a legend for him.[112] Scholar Alexei Kalyonski further argued that the very term "Liberation Movement" suggested a connection to the DS.[111]
Most of the membership of the organization was arrested by mid-1986.[113] Around 200 members of the organization were arrested and 18 stood trial.[111] Ahmed Dogan received a ten-year sentence.[111]
Armed resistance
Scholars generally found no evidence of organized armed resistance to the Revival Process.[114] Rumen Avramov, who was an economic advisor to Bulgaria's first non-communist president, Zhelyu Zhelev, argued that the scale of state repression prevented the development of organized armed opposition.[114] In support of this repression, Bulgaria undertook reforms aimed at the modernization of its internal security forces, including rearmament.[115]
Unorganized armed resistance did occur, particularly in 1986.[96] 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.[114] For example, an attack killed seven people in Bunovo on March 9, 1985 when a train carriage reserved for mothers on a route between Burgas and Sofia was blown up,[note 4][116][117][118] and a court sentenced those responsible to death.[117] The executions were eventually carried out in fall 1988.[119] The regime used such attacks to justify tighter security measures.[120][119]
Belene labor camp
During the Revival Process, the Bulgarian authorities reactivated the Belene labor camp,[121] situated on an island in the Danube River, to use as a detention location for people whom they arrested for resisting the campaign.[122] The BCP used Belene as a labor camp until 1959, when it was transformed into a prison.[121] Authorities typically held Turks who resisted in Belene for 2–3 months,[72] though they held some for much longer. In 1985, authorities incarcerated more than 500 Turks there for resistance to the renaming measures.[121] Authorities often held detainees without judicial sentences at Belene.[123] In April 1986, prisoners in Belene began a hunger strike that lasted around 30 days.[121] In May 1986, authorities released most inmates and then exiled them to various regions of the country.[121] Authorities released the remaining detainees in spring 1987 to districts populated by ethnic Bulgarians.[124]
Casualties
In Mogilyane, security forces opened fire on demonstrators on December 26, 1984, during protests against the forced replacement of Turkish names with Bulgarian ones, killing three people, including the young child Türkan Feyzullah.[125] Security forces shot Türkan while her mother carried the child on her back.[126] Locals later erected a monument in her memory in Mogilyane.[125]
Estimates of the number of people killed, injured, and arrested generally during the Revival Process varied:
| Number killed | Number injured | Number arrested | Time frame / scope | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 800–2,500[127] | — | — | November 1984–February 1985 | — |
| 1,000+[127] | — | — | 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[128] | — | — | Revival Process | — |
International reaction
The President of Turkey, Kenan Evren, expressed concern with Bulgarian policy towards the Turkish minority and pressured Todor Zhivkov on planned renaming measures as early as 1982.[30] Zhivkov responded with denial.[30] Following the start of the Revival Process, Turkish diplomatic responses were restrained.[30] Evren first formally protested the Revival Process in January 1985.[129] However, despite official restraint, some Turkish and Western media described the Revival Process as "genocide" and a "state crime."[130] In Turkey, targets of the policy who left Bulgaria formed migrants' associations and raised awareness about the ongoing assimilation campaign.[131]
Of particular concern to the Turkish public was the status of Bulgarian Turkish children who had been left behind after their parents fled to Turkey.[132] The street outside the Bulgarian embassy in Ankara was renamed after one of these children for some time.[133] In 1987, Turkish state television aired a dramatization, titled Revival Process, regarding the plight of families separated by the events in Bulgaria, which prompted a sharp response from the Bulgarian government.[134] Often Bulgaria responded to these denunciations with comparisons to the Kurdish issue in Turkey,[135] but in line with the Helsinki Accords, the regime reduced efforts to obstruct the reception of critical Western and Turkish broadcasts to Bulgaria.[136] 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.[134]
In 1987, the Islamic Conference, a predecessor to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation,[19] sent a delegation to Bulgaria. On the basis of this visit, the organization published a report critical of Bulgaria.[19] The same body later adopted a resolution expressing misgivings with the Revival Process and reminding the People's Republic of Bulgaria of its obligations towards minorities.[137] Other international organizations echoed this condemnation, including the United Nations,[137] whose Human Rights Committee labeled Bulgaria as one of seven countries preventing the peaceful practice of religion.[138]
Muslim clerics from nations like communist South Yemen and eastern-aligned Syria made pro-Bulgarian statements.[30] Soviet-aligned nations were initially silent or neutral with respect to the events in Bulgaria.[30]
Second wave of resistance
In the late 1980s, ranking members of the regime expressed internal concern about the shortcomings of the Revival Process and the ineffectiveness of the assimilation policies.[139] The regime undertook limited resettlement of Turks to western and northwestern Bulgaria and the placement of Turkish children in assimilatory boarding schools.[140] Minister Pencho Kubadinski even suggested that people from the Soviet Union should be settled in place of resettled Turks.[140]
A second wave of popular resistance emerged, this time more organized than before, which played a notable role in shaping open civil opposition to the communist regime.[105][141] Most of the groups openly declaring opposition to the Revival Process formed in the context of Perestroika, 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."[142][111] 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.[143][111] In April 1989, the "Support Society - Vienna 89" was founded in the town of Djebel.[122]
These associations were at the heart of what are known as the "May Events" (Bulgarian: Майските събития, romanized: Maiiskite subitiya) in Bulgaria from May 19, 1989 to May 27, 1989, which took place mainly in Northeastern Bulgaria.[144] Demonstrators, estimated at 30,000–53,000, carried out hunger strikes and mass protests and at times clashed with police.[110] They aimed to attract the attention of the world community and especially of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE, later renamed to OSCE) symposium "Freedom of the Spirit and the Human Dimension in Europe," which was held from May 30, 1989 until June 23, 1989[note 5] in Paris, France.[145][89] Academic Mihail Ivanov notes that from May 19, 1989 to May 27, 1989, between 25,000 and 30,000 demonstrators took to the streets throughout Northeastern Bulgaria.[146] These actions sometimes turned into riots, both in cities and rural areas.[111]
Bulgaria was increasingly isolated from its Eastern bloc allies during the Revolutions of 1989.[111] Diplomatic pressure from Turkey also increased.[111] The president of France, François Mitterrand, visited Bulgaria in January 1989 and held meetings with dissidents at the French embassy in Sofia.[147]
The state responded by sending soldiers, fire brigades, and the national police (then styled as the people's militias) against the demonstrators.[148] 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.[148] Violent riot-control methods were used, including the deployment of tear gas and occasionally firearms.[111] Sources differ on the number of protesters killed. Alexei Kalyonski estimated that only 7–10 protesters were killed while hundreds were injured.[111] Tomasz Kamusella estimated that 30–102 protesters were killed and hundreds were injured. [89] Bulgarian authorities admitted only 7 deaths.[89] Opposition leaders were subsequently removed from the country.[111] Mustafa Yumer, for example, was expelled to Turkey.[111]
1989 forced migration
The government concluded that part of the Muslim population could not be assimilated and shifted toward promoting emigration.[22] At the end of May 1989, after prominent dissidents were removed,[149] authorities enabled mass departures by loosening travel restrictions,[150] intimidating individuals,[151] and later opening the border with Turkey. Authorities framed the departures as temporary "tourist" travel,[151] and propaganda referred to the episode as the "Big Excursion."[151]
From May 29 until August 1989, over 300,000 people left the country for Turkey under state pressure.[21] In August 1989, Turkey temporarily closed the border with Bulgaria, which ended the forced migration.[152]
Aftermath
On November 10, 1989, party leaders forced Todor Zhivkov to resign,[22] and the new Bulgarian government restored the right of Bulgarian citizens to have Turkish names on December 29, 1989.[5] In less than two years after the fall of Zhivkov, the new government reopened religious and Turkish-language schools across Bulgaria, and it adopted a new national constitution guaranteeing freedom of religion.[23]
Restoration of original names
Despite the restoration of the legal right to hold Turkish names, those affected by the Revival Process still faced obstacles in restoring their previous names.[153] In March 1990, Bulgaria adopted legislation enabling that restoration, though early implementation could still be burdensome, requiring a court procedure and two supporting witnesses.[5][153] The law required people who restored their names to keep Bulgarian suffixes, such as "-ov" and "-ova."[153] The government adopted a reform on November 16, 1990, which shifted name restoration toward a "less cumbersome administrative procedure."[5] By late May 1990, Bulgarian officials indicated that only about one-fifth of eligible people had applied to restore their names,[5] though the number of name restorations continued to grow subsequently. For example, academic Yelis Erolova described restoring her Turkish name only after 1990.[6] In some areas, older victims more commonly restored their names than younger ones.[154]
Strengthening of Turkish identity
The Revival Process strengthened Turkish self-identification among the targeted minority.[155][156] Sinem Arslan argues that the regime's actions strengthened in-group solidarity and the tendency of Turks to protect their ethnic identities.[156] According to Arslan, the actions of the regime led Bulgarian Turks to "underline" their Turkish identity,[157] and scholars have argued that this identity increasingly highlighted the community's Turkishness rather than its Bulgarian character.[158] People described themselves as "Turks of Bulgaria," rather than "Bulgarian Turks,"[158] while Gruev and Kalyonski argue that these changes also sharpened boundaries against other communities.[159] Bulgarian Turkish academic Yelis Erolova recalls how she was made to think of Turkey as her "mother nation" by her family.[6]
Nationalist backlash
Postcommunist Bulgarian efforts to improve the lot of Bulgarian Turks quickly elicited backlash from nationalist elements. On October 25, 1990, the MRF club in Shumen was bombed.[160] When the National Assembly discussed measures related to the restoration of Turkish names, around 200 protested outside.[160] Some governments conceded to nationalist demands.[160] For example, the city of Razgrad bowed to nationalist pressure to not teach the Turkish language in schools.[160] Postcommunist 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.[160] His successor, Dimitar Iliev Popov similarly warned of "Muslim aggression."[160]
Impact on the Cold War
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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.[92] Though there was a straining of relations due to the Revival Process, usual diplomatic channels nevertheless remained at least partially open.[135][30] Turkish ambassador to Bulgaria, Ömer Engin Lütem, described the most strained phase of relations during this period as a "war of notes."[30] However, because key records in Russia and the United States remain inaccessible and the topic has received limited scholarly attention, the campaign’s precise place in the late-Cold War remains unclear.[161]
Relations deteriorated sharply in 1989. The United States recalled its ambassador to communist Bulgaria in August.[162][163] The United States Senate officially condemned the Bulgarian events of that year, and international actors organized a fact-finding mission, albeit without participation from any Eastern Bloc nation.[164] The Soviet Union refused to officially mediate between Bulgaria and Turkey when tensions grew,[164] but it did engage in a sort of shuttle diplomacy via its diplomatic mission in Ankara.[165] Dimitrov argues that the failure of these efforts convinced Soviet leadership that Zhivkov had "outlived his usefulness," and led them to support an anti-Zhivkov faction within the Bulgarian government led by foreign minister Petar Mladenov.[166]
Legal aftermath
In 1990, Bulgaria implemented amnesty for those convicted of political crimes.[167] 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.[167] A similar distinction between "political" and "criminal" offenses led to condemnation in instances beyond Bulgaria.[168]
Following the fall of communism, prosecutors opened proceedings against some of the high-level officials who had overseen the Revival Process, including both Zhivkov and Mladenov. Authorities issued a warrant for Zhivkov's arrest on January 18, 1990, and he was moved to house arrest months later.[169] While under house arrest, Zhivkov was still allowed to travel around Bulgaria.[170] Prosecutors charged the defendants on the basis of abuses associated with the Belene camp,[171] though Zhivkov personally faced additional charges unrelated to the Revival Process.[169] Prosecutors never charged some perpetrators of the Revival Process.[171] Further, while the proceedings began in 1991, courts did not conclude them by the time Zhivkov died in 1998.[172] In 2022, prosecutors dropped the remaining charges after the final defendant, Georgi Atanasov died.[173] However, the Sofia Court of Appeal ordered the Military Prosecutor's Office to continue the investigation following protests from families of Belene camp victims.[173]
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.[174] For example, Bulgaria's first democratically elected president, Zhelyu Zhelev, treated the Turkish political movement as political allies.[174] Zhelev even worked to defend the then-nascent Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) against a legal challenge from nationalists and the post-communist Bulgarian Socialist Party, which could have led to the MRF's dissolution.[174] Similarly, MRF leader Ahmed Dogan worked to marginalize ultranationalist elements within the Turkish community and refrained from calling for autonomy or independence.[174]
The allure and moderating influence of potential European Union (EU) membership contributed to the subsequent reintegration of Turks into Bulgarian society.[175] For instance, in 2000, the EU promulgated the "Race Equality Directive" and later formally requested Bulgaria's compliance with the directive.[176] Bulgaria ultimately did so and acceded to the European Union in 2007.
In November 2002, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church declared all victims, including non-Christian victims, of the Bulgarian communist regime to be martyrs.[177] Additionally, on January 11, 2012, the Bulgarian National Assembly officially condemned the Revival Process.[178] However, academic Tomasz Kamusella wrote that scholars largely ignored the parliamentary recognition.[161] Kamusella described continued public commemorations of Todor Zhivkov in Bulgaria, including statements by national political figures praising him.[179]
After the recognition of the event by the National Assembly, the far-right[180][181][182] ultranationalist[181] political party, Ataka, introduced a new bill officially contesting the declaration.[183] According to the bill's authors, the declaration represented a "boost" for "separatists", presumably in reference to the nation's Turks and Muslims.[183] Ataka leader Volen Siderov argued that the 2012 declaration could open Bulgaria up to substantial compensation payments and raised the possibility that Bulgaria would be labeled as a country that conducted policies of "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing."[184] However, the parliament rejected the bill.[184]
As part of the collective trauma from the Revival Process, some Bulgarians of Muslim origin were left to wonder what their name would have been but for the Revival Process.[185] Scholars discuss the renaming campaign through the intergenerational transmission of family trauma and burdens carried in intimate everyday life rather than only as a closed historical episode.[186]
Academic Natalya Lunkova notes how the publication of an anthology of the memoirs of targets of the Revival Process focused on renaming was met by a mixed reaction in Bulgaria.[187] Nationalists associated with the party Revival criticized the very choice of topic and instead suggested that attention should have been paid instead to the transgressions carried out by Turks during the years of Bulgarian subjugation by that empire.[187]
International
In Turkey, public memory of the Revival Process and recorded testimony by victims were limited.[188] Published book-length treatments in Turkey have often focused on individual accounts, which have typically been printed in limited runs and focus on the events of 1989.[189] However, Turkish media widely praised the 2012 parliamentary declaration condemning the events by the Bulgarian National Assembly.[190]
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 explaining that his audience lacked the background to follow a fuller account.[85]
Throughout the Revival Process, many sought refuge abroad in countries other than Turkey, especially in Austria, Germany, and Sweden.[191] Many also found refuge in Australia,[191] Canada, England, and the United States.[192]
Responsibility
The ruling communist party later placed personal blame on Todor Zhivkov.[193] The 2012 parliamentary declaration framed the Revival Process as an abuse by the totalitarian communist regime generally.[178] One 2012 study of Bulgarian Muslims found that Bulgarians generally blamed the politicians of the time for the Revival Process.[194] When asked who bore the blame, respondents blamed the BCP, Todor Zhivkov, and the secret police.[194] Some even blamed the Soviet Union and Leonid Brezhnev (who died in 1982).[194] The same study also found that those targeted by the Revival Process did not generally blame ethnic Bulgarians and were inclined to forgive them, and instead condemn fellow Muslims who collaborated with the regime.[194]
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.[195][196][197] Different sources estimate that the fire burned for between four and seven hours, destroying forty rooms and a number of documents.[195][196] Some accounts suggested that records related to the Revival Process may have been destroyed in the fire, though the extent of any such loss remains unclear.[195][196] Claims regarding responsibility for the fire vary.[196] Former National Assembly member and Sofia municipal councillor Vili Lilkov later stated that, 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.[197]
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).[198] During the Revival Process, authorities forced him to change his name to "Naum Shalamanov" (Bulgarian: Наум Шаламанов), under which he first became a world champion representing Bulgaria.[199] He later defected to Turkey and began competing for his new country in international weightlifting competitions.[199] Following his defection, he won the gold medal in his weight class at three consecutive Summer Olympic Games in 1988, 1992, and 1996, representing Turkey.[200] 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 likewise 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.[201] 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 eyes of a young Muslim Roma boy who is forcibly renamed.[202]
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 ended up being held after the forced expulsion implemented thereafter began, but that eventuality was not known to protesters at the time.