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There is a significant number of Muslim Gypsies in Bulgaria, who declare themselves as Turks. In fact more than half of the Turks in Bulgaria are Muslim Gypsies not Turks and significant number of other Muslims are accounted for Turks even if they don't speak any Turkish at all. This can be seen in interviews, reports and documentaries. It's all part of the modern expansionist policy of the Turkish state.
According to this article some 1 million Bulgars/ians abused and mistreated 25 million Turks. The Bulgarians must be pretty nasty and dangerous folks. Do you suggest an extermination of the Bulgars/ians or what? Or you're trying to prove that Turks are weak and cowards? This article is quite: hate-inducing and full of Panturkish propaganda. I'm not going to change anything but "truth" and the misinformation in this article bothers me quite a lot. If you know how tight was the security in communist Bulgaria I doubt that there is a way to prove many of these accusations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.91.230.179 ( talk) 12:19, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
"The zero percent annual increase in birth rate among Christian Bulgarians is the primary reason which caused the Bulgarian government to commit "a flagrant violation of human rights" [21] by forcing 900,000 people, 10 percent of the country's population, to change their names. The people affected were all ethnic Turks."
-- This sentance provse how incompetent and biased is the author. First of all during communism Christianity was suppressed and Christians were persecuted and oppressed. Most of the population were atheistic. It makes no sense to use the words "Christian Bulgarians" for the communist era in Bulgaria. The author also seems not to make a difference between Muslim gyspsies and Turks in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian Turks do no recognise the Muslim gyspsies as Turks and they are a very large group if not the Majority of the Muslim population in Bulgaria these days. I'm not going to write anymore. I hope that either this article is written correctly or deleted. If it serves the Turkish/Ottoman ego it serves neither the Truth nor the peace nor the good relations between the nations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.91.230.179 ( talk) 12:27, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
This one needs a lot more on history and current
demographics, as well as sources, pictures, etc. It could be hard based on the relative lack of plausible and in-depth data, but could become the best article on the topic in the Internet.
→ Тодор Божинов / Todor Bozhinov
→
18:26, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
The flag - I have never seen used. In fact I just learned we had such a flag. -- Hasanidin 10:50, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I guess it's s fake. Let's vote to remove it! -- Vladko 18:24, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Hittit ( talk) 05:50, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
The first sentence of the article was taken directly from "Glenn E. Curtis, ed. Bulgaria: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1992". It read
In 1878 Turks outnumbered Bulgarians in Bulgaria.. [1]
The above centence was replaced with the following:
In 1878 Turks were the second largest ethnic group in Bulgaria.
There are two problems here. First, a sentence referencing a source (Library of Congress) was replaced with a POV. Second, the burden of proof is placed on the sentence that was already referenced. The user removing it commented give numbers to prove that. This implies that we are to assume that Bulgarians were always the majority in a territory that was then part of Turkey. Those who dispute the US Library of Congress carry the burden of prooving that this is not a reliable source. Therefore I will restore the original sentence.-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 01:04, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
I would not rely very much on a source that says the following:
Ottoman authorities forcibly converted the most promising Christian youths to Islam and trained them for government service. Called pomaks, such converts often received special privileges and rose to high administrative and military positions.
— G.E. Curtis, Bulgaria: A Country Study, 1992, Library of Congress.
As far as I know from other sources, those are called Janissaries (Yeniceri, new soldiers), not Pomaks. Lantonov ( talk) 10:30, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi. May I know what POV is reverted by that change? The statements are well supported by references from the US Congress Library. Was it the fact that Bulgraia was conquerred by Ottomans or what? -- Petar Petrov 20:37, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
The edits made by User:Petar Petrov are first the previous version is in italics.
--
I object to the term diaspora. It implies that we are immigrants and foreigners, whereas in fact we are natives to the land in which we live. -- 140.180.26.103 21:37, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
What is mean by the term "ethnic Turks"? -- Ilhanli 11:22, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
With strong emphasis on the name-changing campaign of communists in some 10 years in 1980s and nothing said of the forceful Islamisation and Turkisation of Bulgarians accompanied with cruel attrocities during five centuries of Ottoman rule. This is why Turkey is going to lose the feeble Bulgarian support for acceptance in the EU. Lantonov ( talk) 13:28, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 04:46, 17 December 2007 (UTC)Recent scholarship casts grave doubt on the validity of the traditional arguments for mass forced conversions among the Bulgarians. The sources used supporting coercive conversions under Selim I demonstrate little beyond the general factors for such action commonly operating throughout the Balkans. While some violence against Christians is documented, such cases are few. Regarding the Rhodope mass conversions, all of the supporting evidence is suspect. None exists in the original, and internal analysis of the extant copies proves them to be nineteenth-century forgeries. Again, the Rhodope Pomak conversions apparently resulted from the general factors contributing to gradual conversion that operated thoughout the Balkans and not from official Ottoman coersion.(D.P. Hupchick, (Professor of History at Wilkes University, former Fullbright scholar to Bulgaria and past president of the Bulgarian Studies Association., The Balkans, pp.156, ISBN 0-312-21736-6)
The online newspaper "Netinfo.bg" quotes Radio France International:
Сред най-известните терористични атентати от близкото минало у нас, е железопътният атентат през 1985 г. Тогава, вечерта на 9 март, е взривен вагона за майки с деца на влака, пътуващ от София за Бургас. Бомбената експлозия се случва при гара Буново. В атентата загиват седем души, две от тях деца. Девет са тежко ранени.
Взривът е част от поредица бомбени атентати. Части от бомбата могат да се видят в музея на МВР, в експозицията , посветена на тероризма. Извършителите принадлежат към тогавашната нелегална организация Турско националноосвободително движение в България. Техният мотив за терористичните действия е провокиран от действията на държавната власт по време на т.нар. "възродителен процес".
Някои източници твърдят, че движението е предвестник на ДПС. Пряко замесените лица в бомбения атентат са арестувани и осъдени на смърт. Други четирима получават присъди от една до пет години затвор.
Един от осъдените Сабри Али, впоследствие амнистиран, става по-късно областен координатор на ДПС за Бургас.
През 1995 г., 10 години след изпълнение на смъртните присъди на терористите, бе повдигнат въпроса дали те са наистина терористи или борци за свобода.
Според представители на ДПС бомбените атентати по онова време са били единственото средство за борба срещу тоталитарната власт.
Разгоря се бурна политическа полемика в обществото първо, заради издигането на паметни плочи на екзекутираните, а след това, заради тяхното сваляне.
Повече от 20 години избухването на бомбата във влака не се приемано еднозначно.
Миналата година от Общонародния комитет за защита на националните интереси поискаха ДПС, като приемник на Турското националноосвободително движение, да се извини за терористичните актове.
От комитета настояха 9 март да бъде обявен за ден на жертвите на тероризма като протест срещу проявите на тероризъм, независимо дали е религиозен, държавен, политически или расов. Lantonov ( talk) 06:43, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Translation:
Among the most well-known terrorist acts from the recent past in Bulgaria, is the railway assassination act in 1985. Then, in the evening of March 9, a bomb exploded in the railway car for mothers and children in the train going from Sofia to Burgas. The bomb explosion happened at Bunovo station. In the explosion 7 people were killed, 2 of them children. Nine were seriously wounded.
This explosion is among a series of terrorist bombings. Parts of the bomb can be seen in the museum of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in the exhibition on the topic of terrorism. The perpetrators belonged to the then called organisation Turkish national liberation movement in Bulgaria. Their motive for terrorist action was provoked by the activities of the Bulgarian government during the so called "rebirth process".
Some sources say that this movement was a precursor to MRF. The persons directly involved in the bomb assassination went on trial and received a death sentence. Four other persons were sentenced for 1 to 5 years in prison.
One of the sentenced, Sabri Ali, who subsequently received amnesty, became regional coordinator for MRF in Burgas.
In 1995, 10 years after the execution of the death sentences on the terrorists, the issue was raised whether they are terrorists, or freedom fighters. According to MRF representatives, bomb terrorist acts at that time were the only means for fighting the totalitarian government.
A vigorous political discussion raged among the Bulgarian society, first, about the raising of memorial plaques for the executed, then, about their removal.
The opinion about the bomb explosion is not unanimous for more than 20 years. Last year (2005), the Bulgarian Committee for Defence of National Interests asked MRF to apologize for the terrorist acts, as a heir of the Turkish national liberation movement. The Committee requested March 9 to be celebrated as a day for the victims of terrorism, irrespective of whether it is religious, state, political, or ethnic. Lantonov ( talk) 07:59, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Lantonov, I ask you to stop deleting my changes. I provided a source each time you requested. You can not dictate your POV on this subject. You removed more than half of the content that I contributed. If you do not know when Bulgaria declared its independence at least make a research and find about it. It appears you are determined to undo any change I make on any article. When you undid my change to article Bulgaria you commented "no need for a quote to a fact known to sucklings". Is that so? When did Bulgaria declare its independence? Has it occured to you that might have been misinformed? In article Bulgarianization after you undid my contributions I tried to reason with you. After denying the Pomaks were subjected to Bulgarianization you brought up the Armenian genocide issue. I see now you also brought up the usual "500 years of..." intro and the Janissaries. How can one reason with this mentality? I want you to know that I will not give up on this article and allow you to paint a pretty picture of Bulgaria and Bulgarians while continuing to bash the Turks and down play what they have been through in Bulgaria. I realize there will be more people calling the Bulgarianization "harmonization", as you did. If someone points to something wrong in Bulgaria the answer is "It's because of 500 years of Turkish rule". If Bulgarization is brought up then the response is "it was a harmonization performed by the Communists". It looks like all the shortcomings and sins of Bulgaria can be blamed and attributed to elsewhere. I will quote from the Bulgarian born Vicki Tamir who wrote in her book Bulgaria and her Jews:
Indeed, over the centuries, Bulgaria has proved a most faithful practicioner of what Edmund in Shakespeare's King Lear called 'the excellent foppery of the world that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behavior, we make guilty of our disaster the sun, the moon, the stars.'
I will restore my contributions. If you dispute anything instead of deleting or altering the article you need to come here and make your case. If I provide you with a credible source or explanation you are required to accept it. This is the Wikipedia policy. I know that many Bulgarians do not believe there are one million Turks in the Balkans. That's probably because they do not want to have any Turks in the Balkans to begin with. (It is clear that if Turks of Bulgaria gained any rights since the collapse of the communism that was due to external pressure mainly coming from the EU and the US.) However this is not the place to address such fears. If a credible source says "there are one million Turks in the Balkans" then this will be included in the article. I'm somewhat sceptical that this request of mine will make any real difference but let us hope that I will be proven wrong this time. (Also, please, no Bulgarian sources or references. This is an English language encyclopedia that requires English language sources and references. For obvious reasons, save the effort of translating anything as you did above) -- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 03:15, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
As an afterthought, you may learn from my discussion with Nostradamus1 why are those words in the Bulgaria article. I will leave for a short time the article Turks in Bulgaria in the way Nostradamus1 has done it and invite you to take a look at it. From it you will learn that Turks established Bulgaria way back in the 6th century, Byzantium was glad to give up the government of the region to the Ottoman Turks because they were all relatives, the whole history of the Ottoman Empire was a chain of glorious victories over infidels, there was never such thing as forced Islamisation of the Christian population, there was persecution of Turks during the April Uprising and Russian-Turkish war, and the Third Bulgarian State was incorrectly established, because the population was Turkish anyway. Then Turks underwent forced Bulgarisation to become Bulgarians. The conclusion is: there is no reason for existing of Bulgaria, Bulgarians are all Turks, so that Turkey has a sovereign right to govern Bulgaria. The same user goes to all Bulgarian articles, and insists on changing Bulgarians to Bulgars, as the last are nothing but Turks. You can see a sample of Nostradamus1 views in this comment [2], placed insidiously in the middle (not at the end) of an old topic. Then you will, if you have some vestige of conscience, see at least part of the reason behind "sovereign heir". Partly copied from Talk:Bulgaria. Lantonov ( talk) 07:32, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
I believe many Bulgarians will violently oppose the idea that, after all, there were few or no forced conversions. I expect some heated discussions on this. The degree of overall Ottoman oppression of Bulgarians, Forced conversions, Janissaries, Bulgarianization, and the Turkic-ness of the Bulgars are the thorny areas in this context.Recent scholarship casts grave doubt on the validity of the traditional arguments for mass forced conversions among the Bulgarians. The sources used supporting coercive conversions under Selim I demonstrate little beyond the general factors for such action commonly operating throughout the Balkans. While some violence against Christians is documented, such cases are few. Regarding the Rhodope mass conversions, all of the supporting evidence is suspect. None exists in the original, and internal analysis of the extant copies proves them to be nineteenth-century forgeries. Again, the Rhodope Pomak conversions apparently resulted from the general factors contributing to gradual conversion that operated thoughout the Balkans and not from official Ottoman coersion. [6]
"Levsky, Botev, Karadja, and the other haiduts, can easily be called terrorists according to today’s standards". - Nostradamus1
Sure, and Garibaldi, Bolivar, Che Gevara, also can be called terrorists according to your standards. :)
"In the process of liberation we must not take revenge on the peaceful Turkish people, who are as repressed by the Ottoman masters as we, Bulgarians, are" - Vasil Levski in The Organization Rules of the Bulgarian Secret Revolution Committee.
Orde Ivanovski, Macedonian Historian? Ha-ha-ha, go to Kresna-Razlog Uprising to see immediately what is a historic falsification.
"Is this a banana republic that has no clear date of independence?" - N. Bulgarian National Holiday is called the Liberation Day - March 3, 1878.
-- Lantonov ( talk) 13:39, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Lantonov, you removed a lot of referenced material making 20 edits and/or reverts in a day. You are rejecting referenced sources simply because what these sources say disagrees with what you think. I asked you not to edit and undo without discussing but you are not listening. -- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 04:43, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
In eight months, Russian troops occupied all of Bulgaria and reached Constantinople. At this high point of its influence on Balkan affairs, Russia dictated the Treaty of San Stefano in March 1878. This treaty provided for an autonomous Bulgarian state (under Russian protection) almost as extensive as the First Bulgarian Empire, bordering the Black and Aegean seas. But Britain and Austria-Hungary, believing that the new state would extend Russian influence too far into the Balkans, exerted strong diplomatic pressure that reshaped the Treaty of San Stefano four months later into the Treaty of Berlin. The new Bulgaria would be about onethird the size of that prescribed by the Treaty of San Stefano; Macedonia and Thrace, south of the Balkans, would revert to complete Ottoman control. The province of Eastern Rumelia would remain under Turkish rule, but with a Christian governor.
Whereas the Treaty of San Stefano called for two years of Russian occupation of Bulgaria, the Treaty of Berlin reduced the time to nine months. Both treaties provided for an assembly of Bulgarian notables to write a constitution for their new country. The assembly would also elect a prince who was not a member of a major European ruling house and who would recognize the authority of the Ottoman sultan. In cases of civil disruption, the sultan retained the right to intervene with armed force.
The final provisions for Bulgarian liberation fell far short of the goals of the national liberation movement. Large populations of Bulgarians remained outside the new nation in Macedonia, Eastern Rumelia, and Thrace, causing resentment that endured well into the next century. (Bulgarians still celebrate the signing of the Treaty of San Stefano rather than the Treaty of Berlin as their national independence day.) In late 1878, a provisional Bulgarian government and armed uprisings had already surfaced in the Kresna and Razlog regions of Macedonia. These uprisings were quelled swiftly by the Turks with British support. During the next twenty-five years, large numbers of Bulgarians fled Macedonia into the new Bulgaria, and secret liberation societies appeared in Macedonia and Thrace. One such group, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), continued terrorist activities in the Balkans into the 1930s.
Any more questions? Lantonov ( talk) 16:01, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
"au-ton-o-my (Ó ton'uh mee) n. pl. <-mies> 1. independence or freedom, as of the will or one's actions. 2. the condition of being autonomous; self-government or the right of self-government; independence. 3. a self-governing community. [1615-25; < Gk]"
(This is copied from Talk:Bulgaria where Nostradamus1 very officially has posed the same question) Lantonov ( talk) 08:35, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Below is a very recent article in the Turkish press which I provided as a source in the online newspaper "Turkish Daily News", information about which Nostradamus1 consistently deletes. Lantonov ( talk) 13:39, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Bulgaria's Turks and Turkey's Kurds Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Cengiz AKTAR [3]
see Pan-Turkism:) Lantonov ( talk) 08:46, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I am very busy in the moment and have no time to argue a lot but it seems to me that this is a Turkish propaganda which I am not going to tolerate. It is very easy to say that the Bulgarians hate the Turks and have invented the Islamization and that the years of Ottoman domination were years of prosperity for the Bulgarian lands.
First, the Bulgars. Yes, there are some theories that they might be of Iranian origin but according to most historians (and me) they were of Turkic origin. BUT there is a great difference between the Turkic peoples and the contemporary Turks which you know perfectly well and I am not going to explain here. I mean that the Turks are simple a branch of the Turkic peoples, just like the Bulgars, Khazars, Avars, Turkmen and others, the contemporary Turks do NOT unite all Turkic peoples. And as the article is for the Turks in Bulgaria, the history of the other Turkic peoples is not necessary. And in the first Bulgarian Empire the Bulgars were outnumbered by the Slavs and the Slavs also played a major role in the state affairs and supplied tens of thousands of soldiers for the Bulgarian army, so the Empire was not Bulgar only and it was during the first Empire when the comtemporary Bulgarian people began to form (9th - 10th cent.)
There are a lot of sources for Islamization and I am going to supply them as soon as possible. How can you imagine that thousands of people in the Rhodopes would accept Islam without a purposeful and forceful process of Islamisation by the Ottoman authorities?
Also the Ottoman domination ruined the culture of the Bulgarian people and brought almost nothing to the Bulgarian land. You might simply compare the architectural and scientific heritage between the Ottoman-held territories and the rest of Christian Europe - it is obvious which lands developed better.
And also I would call the process of Bulgariaztion (excluding that stupid action of Zhivkov, which was by the way commanded by USSR) and bad attitude of Bulgarians to Turks a myth just as you deny the Islamization, emigration and massacre of hundreds of thousands Bulgarian by the Turks.
And finally I would like to see the number of the population, not just a statement that the Turks outnumbered the Bulgarians in Bulgaria. According to the first census in Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia the Bulgarians were a majority. I will revert your edits because they are some sort of Turkish propaganda which I do not like at all and spoils my opinion for the Turks which is quite good in comparison to some other countries. -- Gligan ( talk) 11:01, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
1. You wrote It is very easy to say that the Bulgarians hate the Turks...: Yes, unfortunately it is very easy and true. (Rationalising this hatret is also unacceptable and unreasonable 100 or more years after Bulgarian independence). To quote a Bulgarian official who answered the American reporter-write R. Kaplan in 1985:
If it weren't for the Turkish invasion in the 14th century we would be 80 million now. They assimilated us; now we will assimilate them. The Turks still have an invoice to pay for killing Levsky.
I won't quote refernces about the standard "500 years of Turkish Yoke...".
Is this a bad thing, that Bulgarians survived 500 years and preserved their Bulgarian language and culture? From your words it appears so bad that it can even be considered a crime. And, no, your baseless allegations cannot be tolerated by any person who has some respect for his native land. Lantonov ( talk) 09:22, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
2.You wrote the contemporary Turks do NOT unite all Turkic peoples: I can tell you that the sense of kinship is quite different among Turks than that of Slavs. I meet people from Western China, Uygurs, and we connect right away. You can not take your own understanding of ethnic affinity and impose it here. The subject is Turks in Bulgaria, not history of Bulgaria. As a result the article will include the Turkic people who played a role in the History of tha territory that is in context. I knew it would cause great uneasiness among Bulgarians whose main position is that they are the rightful owners of the land victimised by the invading Turks. What makes you think that all the Turks came after the Ottoman conquest given that there were quite a few other Turkic people who had a presence in the Balkans long before that. Some of the must have settled as Hupchick suggests and contributed to the gene pool. And even if they did not they still deserve a mention here. If it is left to Bulgarians they will paint a picture that Turks are an alien people to Bulgarian who came and if possible should leave since they never belonged here to begin with.(I normally do not like even to mention Turkey to make a point but since you seem to imply that Turks in Bulgaria only are related to those in Turkey here is a link to the office of Turkish Presidency that explains the 16 stars of the presidential emblem. Even if you can;t read Turkish I am sure you should be able to guess some of the names. So do not ask the removal of Avars, Khazars, etc. from the history of Turks since they simply consider them as part of their history. That is sufficient. [12] (Another analogy here would be to ask Bulgarians not to mention Thracians since there is no historical intermingling of Slav, Bulgars, and the Thracians.)
3.You wrote the history of the other Turkic peoples is not necessary: I strongly disagree. One of my references, (The Balkans by Hupchick), clearly includes the Turkic people together with the Turks and this by itself is sufficient to include them here. The history of Turkic peoples as it applies to Bulgaria is very necessary in an article titled Turks in Bulgaria. Otherwise we would have to remove any mention of Slavic peoples from an article titled Bulgarians in Bulgaria since Bulgarian ethnicity was formed much later. The context is important here and the Bulgarians seem to have a bias and interest in eliminating the mention of the word Turkic from their history. (The Iranian theory explains this. I have not heard much enthusiasm about the theory (actually the forgeries are a scientific proof) that there was no official forced Islamisatin of the Pomaks. Here is a good theory that would help heal the victim mentality of a nation but no one seems to need it.)
4. You wrote: And in the first Bulgarian Empire the Bulgars were outnumbered by the Slavs and the Slavs also played a major role in the state affairs: Yes, I agree. But what the article has about Bulgars is not to play down the role of the Slavs in Bulgaria. The context is Turks in Bulgaria and -so it happens- Bulgars were a Turkic people too. It would perfectly be acceptable to put more wight on the Slavic element in an article, say, Bulgarians in Balkans or, Slavs in Bulgaria. The focus is on the Turkic element here so I simply copied a few paragraphs from the reference book that summarized the Bulgars' initial presence in Bulgaria in the corresponding section.
5. You wrote: it was during the first Empire when the comtemporary Bulgarian people began to form (9th - 10th cent.): Yes, I completely agree. That is why only the early Bulgar history in Bulgaria is summarized in corresponding section. 6.You wrote: How can you imagine that thousands of people in the Rhodopes would accept Islam without a purposeful and forceful process of Islamisation by the Ottoman authorities? : Yes, I can easily do so. There is no need for speculation. Albanians and Bosnians of the Balkans are a clear example. Or did you think that they too were forcibly converted to Islam? There were benefits of converting to Islam during the long Ottoman era. Had forceful conversions been a policy there would be no Bulgarians today. How many Bulgarians there were on this planet in 1878? Go back 400 years and apply forceful conversions you would have no Bulgarians left. It is only the Bulgarians and the historians of Victorian romanticism support that. They are in the lala land.
7.You wrote: the Ottoman domination ruined the culture of the Bulgarian people and brought almost nothing to the Bulgarian land.: I disagree. That is Bulgarian self pitty.
The conquered Christian populations of the Balkans were submerged in a powerful, highly centralized, theocratic imperial state grounded in the precepts of Islamic civilization and Turkic traditions. While the subject Christians were reduced to second-class status in Ottoman society, those precepts and traditions offered them a certain measure of religious toleration, administrative autonomy, and economic well-being that was exceptional for non-aristocratic society in the rest of Europe. That condition changed during the 17th century, when the effects of Western European technological developments and global exploration began to inflict consistent military defeats and economic hardships on the Turks, resulting in the destabilization of Ottoman society and a progressive worsening in the overall situation of the Ottomans’ non-Muslim subjects that continued though the 18th century. Hupckick, The Balkans
8.You wrote: And also I would call the process of Bulgariaztion (excluding that stupid action of Zhivkov, which was by the way commanded by USSR) and bad attitude of Bulgarians to Turks a myth: Blame it on USSR? It is always the fault of others, isn't it?
9.You wrote: I would like to see the number of the population, not just a statement that the Turks outnumbered the Bulgarians in Bulgaria. : I copied most of the paragraph starting with "1878 Turks outnumbered Bulgarians in Bulgaria" from a book from Library of Congress. It is not a sentence I made up myself. It is a verifiable statement. If you dispute it you carry the burden of providing the numbers.-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 01:55, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
Let me put together two quotes from Nostradamus1: First quote: "Levsky, Botev, Karadja, and the other haiduts, can easily be called terrorists according to today’s standards." Second quote: "If you pay attention I do not call Levsky a terrorist. I am merely suggesting that in the eyes of the authorities of the time his/their actions would have been perceived so." No need for comment. The lie is self evident. Lantonov ( talk) 07:36, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
The full article can be read here.-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 00:46, 10 January 2008 (UTC)Picking up books at random I discover that Bulgarians built the pyramids before they travelled east of the Urals; that Bulgarians inspired the Inca civilisation; that the tomb of the Goddess Bastet can be found near a small town on the Turkish border; that the EU is just the last in a succession of Vatican- Jewish-Communist-Turkish plots – take your pick! – to destroy Bulgaria.
We have to distinguish between religion and nationality. Many of the Islamised Bulgarians preserved the Bulgarian language and traditions (those traditions that were not contrary to Islam). Most are in the Rhodopes (Ahryani) but there are also some in Vardar Macedonia in the region of Tikvesh (called Torbashi) and in North Bulgaria (around Lovech and Teteven, called Pomaks). We call them all Pomaks, and dump them together with the Turks, as of Turkish ethnicity. And this is not new, it is done for years. For instance, the first census in Eastern Rumelia in 1880 lists Turks and Bulgarian Muslims in one place as the same nationality (total population 815.946, Turks and Bulgarian Muslims 174.700). And of course they will be Turkized, as they do not find acceptance in Bulgarians. Our neighbors (for instance, the Greeks) were quick to use this situation to claim that Pomaks are Greek, and even tried to invent some "Pomak language". This attempt failed because Pomaks use different dialects of Bulgarian, depending on the region. Lantonov ( talk) 12:44, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
If you knew very well that Pomaks are Bulgarian, then what about those words of yours: "After denying the Pomaks were subjected to Bulgarianization you brought up the Armenian genocide issue." How can Pomaks be Bulgarianised if they were already Bulgarian? Lantonov ( talk) 07:30, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I just had a look at the sources used by N. Most of the so-called American sources have been taken from nationalist Turkish sites, e.g. from Ingilish.com. For instance, one of the sources that purports to be from Syracuse University, written by a Turk and a Bulgarian(?) casts doubt on such Bulgarian classic writers as Ivan Vazov, Aleko Konstantinov and the fundamental ethnographic and historic monograph of Mutafchieva on the Pomaks, denies all attrocities committed during Ottoman rule and extols the virtues of the Ottoman Empire. It also have a synopsis on the Turan Union, the pan-Turkic organisation that falsifies history in order to "unite" all Turkic peoples, and lists the activities of this organisation in Bulgaria after the Liberation. Evidently, the author(s) of that article is a very active member of the Turan Union. Lantonov ( talk) 11:33, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Ethnic Turks in Bulgaria - NATO and Department of State statement - transcript
US Department of State Bulletin, Oct, 1989
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1079/is_n2151_v89/ai_8139879 —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Ilhanli (
talk •
contribs)
17:16, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
HRW.com (Human Rights Watch)
Bulgaria
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1989/WR89/Bulgaria.htm --
Ilhanli (
talk)
17:31, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
NATO.int
http://www.nato.int/acad/fellow/97-99/atanassova.pdf
This political line was reversed by the early seventies and was substituted by consistent attempts
for cultural assimilation of all the largest ethnic communities. The process of the forced
assimilation of Roma and Pomaks preceded chronologically the campaign against the Turks. The
main target of assimilation however became the Turks who in 1984 were forced to change their
names and adopt Bulgarian ones. Brutal measures were introduced against Islam and the Turkish
language. Over 1,000 Turks were detained in prison and over one hundred were killed.xviii
During the mass demonstrations of Turks in 1989 the communist authorities resorted to violence
and provoked mass emigration of Turks mainly to Turkey. Some 370,000 Turks left the country
in 1989 but about 152.000 later returned back to Bulgaria.
Cited in Hellanic Resource Network (hri.org)
U.S. Department of State
Bulgaria Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1996
Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
January 30, 1997
BULGARIA
http://www.hri.org/docs/USSD-Rights/96/Bulgaria96.html --
Ilhanli (
talk)
17:46, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
Can I ask you why you have deleted Naim Süleymanoğlu and Halil Mutlu from the list? -- Ilhanli ( talk) 12:26, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
Naim Süleymanoğlu was born in Bulgaria and he is citzen of Bulgaria
look here, and sometimes he is IN Bulgaria
OR Think like that
What about those people (Turks) who will leave the country? Why we must delete their names from the list, they were famous Turks in Bulgaria for that time. Can't we add historical names?
What about John Atanasof? ok, you will say that we do not talk about "in Bulgaria" but if you look here:
Bulgaria you'll see that his name is repeated two times even he was not Bulgarian citizen, he was only about 3 times in Bulgaria and even his mother wasn't Bulgarian.--
Ilhanli (
talk)
13:48, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
I'll reedit the section as Notable names-- Ilhanli ( talk) 13:53, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
While editing the page, please write the explanatory reasons for that in the "Edit summary" part, so i'll not waste my time here... -- Ilhanli ( talk) 14:00, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
I have not heared Turks who are speaking Bulgarian (between friend etc.), i know it because I'm 'between ' them. May there be some few in number people, but it dos not change the general picture. And I think they are talkink about the Pomaks. Of course evry citizen knows Bulgarian, but it will be better to say that they are using only Turkish, since it is mother language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ilhanli ( talk • contribs) 10:11, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
Someone is repeatedly including the following sentence:
Recent genetic research confirm the local, Anatolian - Balkanic origin of the Turks and reject the theory about significant Asiatic contribution to their DNA.
Can someone elaborate on it? This user is drawing his/her own conlusions. What is of local, Balkanic (perhaps a new word?) origin and what is not? What is being compared against what?-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 01:12, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
No one responded to my inquiry about the above. The DNA data says nothing to justify a sentence like the above. This is merely a restatement of what those unpunished Bulgarian criminals argued during the assimilation campaigns. It will not stand in this article. Furthermore one can argue about the article Bulgaria, for instance. Why is there no DNA talk and discussion about the so called Slavs in Bulgaria. Are Bulgarians indeed Slavs, for example? Is there any comparison to other DNA data? Again, it will not stand. Those pushing for it must have heard it from some people close to them or were supporters and/or were involved in those acts themselves.-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 04:05, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
This article is currently under informal mediation. see here. -- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 02:31, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
"As Russian forces pushed south in January 1878, the troops, the Bulgarian volunteers, and the emboldened local Bulgarian villagers inflicted a welter of atrocities on the local Muslim population. Some 260,000 Muslims perished in the war's carnage, and over 500,000 refugees fled with the retreating Ottoman forces. [17]"
“ | Let the Turks now carry away their abuses, in the only possible manner, namely, by carrying off themselves. Their Zaptiehs and their Mudirs, their Blmhashis and Yuzbashis, their Kaimakams and their Pashas, one and all, bag and baggage, shall, I hope, clear out from the province that they have desolated and profaned. This thorough riddance, this most blessed deliverance, is the only reparation we can make to those heaps and heaps of dead, the violated purity alike of matron and of maiden and of child; to the civilization which has been affronted and shamed; to the laws of God, or, if you like, of Allah; to the moral sense of mankind at large. There is not a criminal in an European jail, there is not a criminal in the South Sea Islands, whose indignation would not rise and over-boil at the recital of that which has been done, which has too late been examined, but which remains unavenged, which has left behind all the foul and all the fierce passions which produced it and which may again spring up in another murderous harvest from the soil soaked and reeking with blood and in the air tainted with every imaginable deed of crime and shame. That such things should be done once is a damning disgrace to the portion of our race which did them; that the door should be left open to the ever so barely possible repetition would spread that shame over the world. William Gladstone, British prime minister | ” |
The text quoted in the first paragraph in this section was introduced in the article here [14]. Somehow it failed to surprise me. Lantonov ( talk) 09:09, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Justin McCarthy. Read about his deeds and misdeeds here:
In this paper by an eminent Turkish professor, J. McCarthy's central role in denying Turkish attrocities everywhere is desribed in detail. That he has such mission can be seen also on his book flyer. We read ( ISBN 0878500944):
"Death and Exile is the history of the deportation and death of millions of Muslims in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from areas that have remained centers of conflict - the Balkans, the Middle East, and what was the Soviet Union - and shows how these ethnic and religious conflicts developed. The history of the expansion of the Russian Empire and creation of new nations in the Balkans has traditionally been told from the standpoint of the Christian nations that were carved from the Ottoman Empire. Death and Exile tells the story from the position of the Turks and other Muslims who suffered death and exile as a result of imperialism, nationalism, and ethnic conflict. Death and Exile radically changes our view of the history of the peoples of the Middle East and the Balkans. It presents a new framework for understanding conflicts that continue today."
In other words, traditionally we have a view of history that has been told over and over. However, forget what you know, he will tell us another story: it is not Muslims who persecuted Christians, it is the other way around. And if we still resist in accepting this POV, Nostradamus1 will punish us by the rulebook.
The whole exercise in this article is to push this POV. This is the aim of the extensive explanations in this discussion, the repeated bashing of the "Bulgarian nationalism" and denying everything that is known about Bulgarian history. Lantonov ( talk) 06:49, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
The 250,000 Muslims who perished, and the 500,000 who fled were part of the bloody armies of Suleiman Pasha, and the bashibozuk that committed the carnages of Batak, Perushtitsa, Klisura, Bratsigovo, Stara Zagora, Panagyurishte, Tryavna, Tetevan, Sevlievo, Dalboki, and many other towns and villages, killing small children, and carrying them on bayonets. Bulgarians forgave them but did not forget. Lantonov ( talk) 08:02, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 01:41, 12 January 2008 (UTC)Few of the cities and only a small part of the countryside in Bulgaria were scenes of protracted battle, so civilian losses due to battle were relatively few. Nevertheless, 17 percent (262,000) of the Muslims of Bulgaria died during and immediately after the 1877-78 war. Some 515,000 surviving Muslims, almost all Turkish, were forced from Bulgaria into other areas of the Ottoman Empire, never to return home. They were victims of a combination of local Bulgarian rapacity and what later generations would call state terror. When Russian troops entered part of Bulgaria, Bulgarian revolutionaries, Russian soldiers, especially Cossacks, and Bulgarian peasants began a programme of rape, plunder and massacre. The result was the flight of the Bulgarian Muslims. Some 55 percent of the Muslims of Bulgaria, mainly Turks, were either evicted or killed. J. McCarthy, The Ottoman Peoples and the end of Empire, 2001, p.48
About McCarthy's credibility look again here [16]. I will quote only a small part of this document:
"In short, the figures in the Turkish National Assembly letter attributable to Justin McCarthy are wrong. His assertions that “the names of only a very few of the missionaries whose writings were used in the reports are known to us ” are entirely the product of his imagination. Furthermore, the classifying of those Armenians who survived the deportations as “Armenian activists,” as McCarthy and by extension the Turkish National Assembly letter have done, is also unfounded. The claim that “32 of the code names [in the documents] belong to completely fictitious persons” is simply not true. And finally, the assertion that certain documents need be considered incorrect or unreliable simply on the basis of the fact that their authors are missionaries or of Armenian origin is one fraught with danger, and one that comes very close to out-and-out racism."
Quote some more from McCarthy for everyone to see where you are driving at. Do you have any other source? Where did he get those numbers from? A bad dream?
Read also the Wiki article Taner Akçam and the related: "A question of authority Our increasing reliance on Wikipedia changes the pursuit of knowledge" [ [17]]. It is very enlightening about what a biased Wiki article can do to a person, or to a nation, or country, in the present context. Let's not forget that Levski and Botev are "terrorists" :). Lantonov ( talk) 10:19, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
I did not suggest that the 500,000 are only part of the regular Ottoman Army. Most of those who fled were the bashibozuk that committed the massacres in hundreds of Bulgarian towns and villages. For people, who do not know what bashibozuk is: the male Islamic population that is gathered by the local hodzha on every occasion that threatens Muslim control and by his fanatic religious speech instigated to kill every "infildel" ( Giaour) on sight, especially women and children. Believing that "the more giaours they kill, the better they would live in the other world" they committed the hideous attrocities, a small part of news for which reached the West. England, who all the time supported the Ottoman Empire, was horrified of the events seen by her own witnesses and correspondents. Therefore, the speech of her Prime Minister quoted above. This is why England did not support the Ottomans in the war of 1878, as she supported them in the previous wars. History must be studied not to forget those horrors. Unfortunately, they are forgotten, and history is repeated: Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, and so on. There are also people who for various motives (most often connected to some green pieces of paper) try to make us forget history.
For what I said above, read here:
For the life of Turks in post-Ottoman Bulgaria, migration (to Ottoman Empire and back), reasons for migration, etc., read this source:
This source is the most authoritative one, because Prof. Jireček, a professional Czech historian, toured extensively the Balkans, including Bulgaria exactly in the period of the events and wrote about all this in great detail, including all facts that he personally saw. I haven't seen or heard anyone accusing Jireček of racism. Lantonov ( talk) 07:55, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
You have to give general informatin about the topic. Not spesific. -- Ilhanli ( talk) 23:00, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
As I can see from the title, the article is for the Turks in Bulgaria, not about the Turkic peoples in Bulgaria. So the section for the Turkic peoples has no place here. When are you going to understand the difference of a group of peoples and just one people of that group? -- Gligan ( talk) 17:49, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
On the contrary, the outsider can make the difference between turks and Turkic peoples, something that you obviously cannot or most probably do not want to admit because you are busy to make greater turkish propaganda. And wikipedia is not place for propaganda as far as I remember. And also I have another question to you: is the Armenian genocide a forgery as well??? -- Gligan ( talk) 08:58, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
"As I can see from the title, the article is for the Turks in Bulgaria, not about the Turkic peoples in Bulgaria. So the section for the Turkic peoples has no place here."
First of all, Tatars' and Turks' language is very close to the each other. Second, both people are Muslims. Third, Turkic people do not see themselves as different nation from each other. They call Tatars: Tatar Türkleri, and the Turks: Selçuklu (or Osmanlı) Türkleri. That is why Tatars were married with Turks when they meet each other in West of Black Sea (Bulgaria). So, some Turks' ancestors are Tatars, Gagauz etc...-- Ilhanli ( talk) 10:31, 21 January 2008 (UTC) If you are writing "turkified bulgarians" why we do not need to write "turkified tatars"? -- Ilhanli ( talk) 16:13, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
I welcome the fact that this page is protected; however, it is left in a state, offending for Bulgaria as a country, with false statements, introduced almost entirely by Nostradamus1, pushing his pan-Turkic, genocide-denial POV. I think it is good to have another review by neutral reviewer(s), which must take into account all sources, listed in the previous mediation page see here in their entirety, not selectively cited, as in this article (13 sources listed by Nostradamus1, and 52 sources listed by me). Also, I share the opinion of Taner Akçam that insistence to disregard Bulgarian or Slavic sources is an "out-and-out racism", and request such sources to be reviewed too, because this matter relates to Bulgarian history, and reflects on the image of Bulgaria, not on the image of some other country (modern Turkey is not the Ottoman Empire, and thus cannot be held responsible for Ottoman attrocities). Lantonov ( talk) 16:03, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
It seems that Nostradamus1 has given reliable sources, and it appears that it is you who are trying to erase the history of Bulgaria. IP: 81.86.223.147 (range 81.86.192.0 - 81.86.223.255)
This last statement was by a person, hiding his identity behind an IP address. Lantonov ( talk) 16:16, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
An informative article by Christopher Buxton. According to him "Under Communism, the Bulgarians saw their national mythology blossom. Now it flourishes". I could not agree more.-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 02:02, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
I think this article needs an important update: 15% of Turks in Bulgaria. Anton Tudor ( talk) 18:17, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
The Muslim community in Bulgaria is represented by three main ethnic groups: Turks, Bulgarian-speaking Muslims (Pomaks) and Roma (Gypsy) Muslims. According to the last two population censuses from 1992 and 2001, the total number of Muslims (based on “religious belonging”) is 1,110,295 (out of 8,887,317 total population) in 1992, and 966,978 (out of 7,928,901) in 2001. The biggest ethnic constituent, according to “ethnic belonging”, of the Muslim community in Bulgaria--the Turks--enumerated 800,052 persons in 1992, and 746,664 in 2001. 762,516 persons indicated Turkish as their “mother tongue” respectively in the 2001 census. However, due to the fact that a substantial part (if not the greater part) of the Muslim Roma identify themselves as Turks to avoid the social stigma associated with the term “Gypsies”, the total number of Turks in Bulgaria has to be reduced. In addition, a certain number of Pomak Muslims also identify themselves as Turks. Thus, the number of the Turkish minority should be further lowered if one completely ignores the generally shared claim that the actual number of Bulgarian Turks is far greater than what is officially indicated. Considering this, the exact number of Turks in Bulgaria can only be speculated upon.
Simultaneously, other waves of Turkic tribes, among which the Bulgars (a unifying name for Ogurs, Utigurs, Kutigurs, Onogurs, Kotrags, and others), moved to the North – Northwest after the collapse, first, of the Hunic union, and, then, of the Great Turkic Haganate, and entered the Balkans through the Danube River. Their invasions to the Peninsula were particularly intensive during VII century. -- Anton Tudor ( talk) 05:14, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
"Roma write "Turkish" in the census because they dont like the stigma attached"? if that's true, then it is strange that only 654 people in Sofia officially consider themselves Turkish... http://www.nsi.bg/Census/Ethnos.htm te po-skoro perhaps write "Bulgarian" instead, and if this IS true, then that would simply mean that there is an even larger Roma minority than some people would probably like to accept... by all means, if you can demonstrate this, then provide the figures and subtract them, then Explain what you are doing and Why - we cannot leave out important info from an Encyclopaedia (which by definition is supposed to encompass all knowledge) and hope that no-one notices. it isn't like we're running out of space over here: dig it up, post it, explain it, and that way both you, me, and everyone else will be all the better informed.
ps. what's your point about the Turkic tribes? it doesn't tie in with the rest of the argument. Ta —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.176.111.71 ( talk) 09:23, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
The reason is that these people have property and permanent addresses in Bulgaria (substantial amount received their retirement allowances from Bulgaria etc.) and from the estimated 150 000 Bulgarian nationals (holding double citizenships) in Turkey some 70 000 have exercised their right to vote in Bulgarian elections. Furthermore, this would also show a more realistic figure of the size of the community since traveling between the countries is an every day event.
Hittit ( talk) 06:00, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
During the Communist regime the Turks in Bulgaria experienced three other emigration waves over a period of time, namely: 1950-1951, 1969-1978, and in 1989 and onwards. Before the start of the first one, the then First Party Secretary and Prime Minister, Todor Zhivkov, handed a note to the Turkish government in which he demanded that Turkey accepts 250,000 Turks from Bulgaria within a three-month period. A total of 212,150 entry visas to Turkey were issued by the Turkish consulate in Bulgaria between 1 January, 1950 and 30 September, 1951, but only 154,393 of the Turkish-Muslim migrants are able to leave for Turkey. Simsir informs that every month approximately 5,000 Turkish-Muslim families (or 20,000 people) striped of property entered Turkey only during the months of December, January and February 1950-1951. Being financially unprepared to meet such an influx of poor Bulgarian migrants, Turkey closed its borders on 8 November 1951, and as a response, the Bulgarian government banned migration and in November 1951 started a campaign of passport confiscation. The second wave started in 1969 (and continued actively by 1978) as a result of the conscious fear of the Bulgarian Turks of forced assimilation, a process that was already launched against the Pomak Muslims in the early 1970s and brought to an end shortly afterwards (1970-1974). However, the 1969-1978 wave is known as the “emigration of close relatives”, because the suddenly interrupted inflow of Turks/Muslims in November 1951 left many families divided. Thus, about 70,000 of the persons who received migrant visa remained in Bulgaria without being able to leave. These and other people (with at least one family member in Turkey) started to collect and submit petitions in which they requested the Bulgarian authorities to allow them to migrate. Thus, by March 1964 the number of Bulgarian Turks and other Muslims who had singed the petitions reached 400,000 persons. Finally, due to this pressure the Bulgarian and Turkish authorities met in Ankara and signed a migration agreement on 22 March, 1968. According to this agreement only very close relatives were eligible for immigration: spouses, parents, grandparents, children/grandchildren and their spouses and children, as well as unmarried siblings (married siblings were excluded). The agreement included providing opportunities for potential migrants to take their possessions with them or sell them and keep the money. The Turkish authorities expected an inflow of about 25-30,000 Bulgarian Turks/Muslims, who – in accordance with the agreement – would bring their property with them. However, as Bulgaria started to break away from the 1968 agreement, it almost expelled its Turks with no property at all. More than 130,000 persons emigrated from Bulgaria in the course of 10 years (between 1969 and 1979).
The third and most frustrating emigration wave for the Bulgarian Turks—the so-called “Big Excursion” (summer of 1989)—was a direct consequence of the so called “Revival Process” against them, when they were forcedly deprived of their names and identity (1984-1985). Declassified archive documents from that time reveal that the then Communist authorities planned to get rid of 200-300,000 Turks by expelling them from the their home country. More than 350,000 Bulgarian Turks left the country in the summer of 1989, about 100,000 of which later returned. Anton Tudor ( talk) 05:20, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
To begin with, I would like to see here the definitions of "Turkic peoples" and "Turkish people". -- Gligan ( talk) 08:31, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Medieval Turkic Peoples of Bulgaria
In late antiquity the rolling plains of the Danube and Prut rivers in the Balkans’ north east served Turkic tribes from the Eurasian steppes as an open door into the heart of the peninsula and the riches of the Eastern Roman Empire. Huns and related tribes swept through the Balkans in the 5th and 6th centuries, followed by the Avars and their allies in the sixth and seventh. Among these later were Bulgars, who established a state south of the Danube. Unlike the Avars, whose settlements in the Balkans proved transitory, the Bulgar state persisted in the face of concerted Byzantine pressures. By the 9th century the Bulgars were challenging the Byzantine Empire for political hegemony in the Balkans, but by that time they also were well on the way toward ethnic assimilation into their Slavic-speaking subject population. The conversion of the Turkic Bulgar ruling elite to Orthodox Christianity at mid-century opened the gate to their rapid and total Slavic assimilation. Within a hundred years of the Bulgar conversion, most traces of their Turkic origins had disappeared, except for their name – the Bulgars had been transformed into Slavic Bulgarians.
Oguz, Pecheneg, and Cuman Turks tribes appeared in the Balkans between the 9th and 11th centuries. Most of them eventually suffered an ethnic fate similar to the Bulgars and left little lasting impression, although the Gagauz Turks of Bessarabia, a region lying east of the Prut River (now known as Moldova), and some Turks living today in the eastern Balkans may be direct descendants of those medieval Turkic interlopers. Additionally the Ottoman Turks’ five century rule over most of the Balkans established numerous scattered enclaves of Turkish-speaking groups throughout much of the southern portion of the peninsula, with a heavy concentration in the southeastern region of ancient Thrace.
Tatars were come from north and some of them are still in Bulgaria, since they were also a Turkic tribe some of them were married with Turks. It has to be noted that "Turkic" is a new word and most people do not know (especially in Bulgaria) this word, they are using "Turk" since the word "Turk" both means "Turk" and Turkic". And the two languages are very close to each other. In south Bulgaria there is some villages named in Turkish "Tatarköy" or "Tatarlı". As it is known from the natives there in this villages were many Tatars.
Why you are removing this part?
This part is here because some Turks' ancestor are not onlu Seljuks but other Turkic tribes. If there is "tukified bulgarians" in the article why don't we add "turkified turkic people"? -- Ilhanli ( talk) 09:27, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Before I answer the above questions -who were clearly brought up out of an obvious POV and bad intent- I'd like to ask the following questions. What sort of a verifiable source/reference are the Turks of/in Bulgaria to provide so that they can mention any related Turkic peoples -who played a role in the history of the land- in an article dedicated for the Turks in Bulgaria? Another question is as follows: What do the Slavs, Bulgars, and Thracians have to do with the contemporary Bulgarians given that
Answer the above and I will provide the reasons as to why in an article titled Turks in Bulgaria we should be allowed (by insecure Bulgarians) to mention the medieval Turkic peoples who were present in the land that is today known as Bulgaria?
Would you prefer a source from Bulgaria or from abroad? I will try to provide something but let us agree on the rules first since you guys have a not-so great reputation in this area. All three of you -regardless of your so-claimed academic level of education/degree- (Lantonov, Gligan, and Laveol) have been representing yourselves according to the well-known Bulgarian reputation when it comes to history so far. Keep up with the good work after elaborating on the above. The world needs to be informed about this curiosity.-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 07:42, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
I am adding this section back. Those opposing the existence of this section in this article about the Turks need to make a good argument as to why an article named Turks in Bulgaria can not include a section and information about the Medieval Turkic Peoples of Bulgaria. How is this section not related to the article. -- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 03:51, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
This section is simply the well known Bulgarian Communist-Nationalist propaganda and argument that was used during the Bulgarian trademark name change campaings. As expert historians stated it clearly the documents used to support the alleged forced conversions in Bulgaria have been proven to be forgeries. Furthermore this article is about Turks not the Bulgarians who converted to Islam. An in-depth article on this subject can be read here-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 02:12, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
This is my suggestion;
Under the Settlement of Turks in Bulgaria we can add sub part, at the end, with header like this:
+Effects of the Turks
++Effects on Bulgarians
+++Islamization text about islamization (note:for me the only problem is that; are the Pomaks were included in Bulgarian
nation or they were somwere between Bulgarians and
Bosniaks, i do not know
+++Turkification text,
Janissaries, bla, bla...
++Effects on Turkic people; text, genetic contributions of tatars, gagauzes to the turks, bla bla (not:Bulgars will not be included) --
Ilhanli (
talk)
18:01, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
This edit war about the two contested passages (the one about Turkification, and the one starting with what the "rolling plains" did in late antiquity) can only be solved if both are removed. They are both unsalvagably poor quality. I am making no judgment about whether some suitably brief treatment of medieval Turkic groups is appropriate (in my personal view, it may well be so), but all this coverage can only be reinserted in a constructive way if it gets completely rewritten. Come on, write for the enemy. Rewrite this stuff in such a way that your opponents will recognise it as a vast improvement. If you can't do that, you're POV-pushers beyond hope. This goes to everybody here.
I will go rouge on you guys and block everybody who simply reinserts either of the contested passages. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:47, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
I requested formal mediation here. Anyone interested can join. I listed the last four surviving war veterans.-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 02:55, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
I regretfully have to notice that the article currently has what looks like unnecessary duplication of info to me. I introduced the section header "Summary" because the Table of Contents started very down below. But after reading I notices that a huge piece is about Bulgarization, which (a) again described in sections below and {b} already has its own article. I will recommend, according to wikipedia:Summary style, to put Zhivkov's assimilation campaign into a separate article, because it is a clearly defined separate topic, and make a summary section here. If you agree, I can do it myself, or someone else. Inshallah. Mukadderat ( talk) 19:19, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
The User Laveol insisted here and here to remove this map from the article. I don't see anything wrong with the map. -- Olahus ( talk) 17:18, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
Is there anyway we can get the reference for this sentence in English?;
As a response to the Bulgarian government policies, on March 9th, 1985, an underground Turkish organisation (TNFM) was responsible for planting an explosive device on the Sofia-Burgas train.[22]
Preferably, a reference from a book or newspaper written in English? Thanks.
Kansas Bear (
talk)
19:59, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 02:25, 3 June 2008 (UTC)It has been suggested that discontented Turks were responsible for the extraordinary terrorist attacks which affected Bulgaria in 1984 and 1985. On 30 August 1984 bombs exploded in the railway station at Plovdiv and at the airport in Varna; on that day Zhivkov traveled between the two cities. There were also reports that shortly after the explosions fly-sheets promising ‘Forty Years: Forty Bombs’ appeared in the streets of a number of Bulgarian cities. On 9 March 1985 seven people died in a suspicious fire on a Bulgarian train, and later in the same month the chief prosecutor, when introducing new and more stringent anti-terrorist regulations, admitted to the Subranie that thirty deaths had been caused by such acts of violence in the preceding year. Apart from the very dubious hints at Turkish complicity there is as yet no indication as to who might be responsible for these outrages. (R.J. Crampton, A Short History of Modern Bulgaria, pp.206, Cambridge University Press)
I suggest removing this section. I am not aware of any scientifically recognized Turkish dialects in Bulgaria. There certainly are differences in choice of words and their pronounciation even between villages as close as a few kilometers but presenting this in this way as dialects is misleading in my view.-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 01:04, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
Should we include people who were born before Bulgaria became liberated or gained its independence in the list? Also equating Ottomans with Turks is a common recurrence (so much so that even today in Turkey the so called "Turkishness" is equated with citizenship not ethnicity. It's different in the Balkans. The article refers to the ethnic Turks of Bulgaria). There are many notable Ottoman citizens who were not ethnic Turks. For example, Midhat Pasha was a Pomak and Talat Pasha was a Roma. Both were born before 1878. While Midhat Pasha did contribute greatly both to the empire and Bulgaria in particular Talat's relation to Bulgaria is nothing more than being born to a gypsy family in a village of Kizdali before the Province of Eastern Rumelia was created. What was his notable achievement in Bulgaria? I suggest taking Talat Pasha out.-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 02:09, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
Well, as a Turk from Bulgaria I would not want the history of my nation to be limited to the existence of the Bulgarian Republic, which was just established in 1908 (You see the Bulgarians doing that?). As I see in the article Mithat Pasha is not mentioned in the notable person’s list. The history of the Turks in Bulgaria extends back to the 13th Century if we do not take into account earlier Turkic tribe settlements. It would not be far fetched to say that our existence in the region of Bulgaria and the Balkans today is the result of the Ottomans. Calling Talat Pasa a gypsy from Kircaali? If you base your sources on Armenian theories I thought they called him a Jew and the Young Turks described as Zionists. ( Hittit ( talk) 08:01, 19 June 2008 (UTC))
A number of dubious flags have been added. They bring no value to the article other than attempt some sort of nationalistic sentiment. "Ottoman coat of arms" or "Flag of Turkish Republic of Western Thrace" bring nothing. I, for one, have never heard of that so called republic. Did any state recognise it at the time? Also, Western Thrace is in Greece. Let us take these images -that might even be self-work/original research- out. (There are also three maps of Bulgaria. Come on.)-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 02:31, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
The names of Plovdiv and Shumen in 1897 were not Filibe and Shumla, but simply Plovdiv and Shumen. Chief White Halfoat ( talk) 06:08, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
Currently the article states that:
On 10 May 2006, the Bulgarian Parliament rejected a bill that was sponsored by the Bulgarian nationalist party Ataka on recognition of the Armenian Genocide.
This sentence carries some serious flaws. It suggests that the bill was a movement to recognize THE "Armenian Genocide". That was not the case. The bill submitted to and rejected by the Bulgarian National Assembly was a movement to recognize the killings of Armenians AS A genocide. There is a big difference here. In order to align it to what it was I am going to change the sentence as follows::
On 10 May 2006, the Bulgarian National Assembly rejected a bill that was sponsored by the Bulgarian nationalist party Ataka to recognize the killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire as genocide.
Please, discuss any objections below.-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 02:43, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
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ottoman-rule
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
There is a significant number of Muslim Gypsies in Bulgaria, who declare themselves as Turks. In fact more than half of the Turks in Bulgaria are Muslim Gypsies not Turks and significant number of other Muslims are accounted for Turks even if they don't speak any Turkish at all. This can be seen in interviews, reports and documentaries. It's all part of the modern expansionist policy of the Turkish state.
According to this article some 1 million Bulgars/ians abused and mistreated 25 million Turks. The Bulgarians must be pretty nasty and dangerous folks. Do you suggest an extermination of the Bulgars/ians or what? Or you're trying to prove that Turks are weak and cowards? This article is quite: hate-inducing and full of Panturkish propaganda. I'm not going to change anything but "truth" and the misinformation in this article bothers me quite a lot. If you know how tight was the security in communist Bulgaria I doubt that there is a way to prove many of these accusations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.91.230.179 ( talk) 12:19, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
"The zero percent annual increase in birth rate among Christian Bulgarians is the primary reason which caused the Bulgarian government to commit "a flagrant violation of human rights" [21] by forcing 900,000 people, 10 percent of the country's population, to change their names. The people affected were all ethnic Turks."
-- This sentance provse how incompetent and biased is the author. First of all during communism Christianity was suppressed and Christians were persecuted and oppressed. Most of the population were atheistic. It makes no sense to use the words "Christian Bulgarians" for the communist era in Bulgaria. The author also seems not to make a difference between Muslim gyspsies and Turks in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian Turks do no recognise the Muslim gyspsies as Turks and they are a very large group if not the Majority of the Muslim population in Bulgaria these days. I'm not going to write anymore. I hope that either this article is written correctly or deleted. If it serves the Turkish/Ottoman ego it serves neither the Truth nor the peace nor the good relations between the nations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.91.230.179 ( talk) 12:27, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
This one needs a lot more on history and current
demographics, as well as sources, pictures, etc. It could be hard based on the relative lack of plausible and in-depth data, but could become the best article on the topic in the Internet.
→ Тодор Божинов / Todor Bozhinov
→
18:26, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
The flag - I have never seen used. In fact I just learned we had such a flag. -- Hasanidin 10:50, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I guess it's s fake. Let's vote to remove it! -- Vladko 18:24, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Hittit ( talk) 05:50, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
The first sentence of the article was taken directly from "Glenn E. Curtis, ed. Bulgaria: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1992". It read
In 1878 Turks outnumbered Bulgarians in Bulgaria.. [1]
The above centence was replaced with the following:
In 1878 Turks were the second largest ethnic group in Bulgaria.
There are two problems here. First, a sentence referencing a source (Library of Congress) was replaced with a POV. Second, the burden of proof is placed on the sentence that was already referenced. The user removing it commented give numbers to prove that. This implies that we are to assume that Bulgarians were always the majority in a territory that was then part of Turkey. Those who dispute the US Library of Congress carry the burden of prooving that this is not a reliable source. Therefore I will restore the original sentence.-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 01:04, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
I would not rely very much on a source that says the following:
Ottoman authorities forcibly converted the most promising Christian youths to Islam and trained them for government service. Called pomaks, such converts often received special privileges and rose to high administrative and military positions.
— G.E. Curtis, Bulgaria: A Country Study, 1992, Library of Congress.
As far as I know from other sources, those are called Janissaries (Yeniceri, new soldiers), not Pomaks. Lantonov ( talk) 10:30, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi. May I know what POV is reverted by that change? The statements are well supported by references from the US Congress Library. Was it the fact that Bulgraia was conquerred by Ottomans or what? -- Petar Petrov 20:37, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
The edits made by User:Petar Petrov are first the previous version is in italics.
--
I object to the term diaspora. It implies that we are immigrants and foreigners, whereas in fact we are natives to the land in which we live. -- 140.180.26.103 21:37, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
What is mean by the term "ethnic Turks"? -- Ilhanli 11:22, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
With strong emphasis on the name-changing campaign of communists in some 10 years in 1980s and nothing said of the forceful Islamisation and Turkisation of Bulgarians accompanied with cruel attrocities during five centuries of Ottoman rule. This is why Turkey is going to lose the feeble Bulgarian support for acceptance in the EU. Lantonov ( talk) 13:28, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 04:46, 17 December 2007 (UTC)Recent scholarship casts grave doubt on the validity of the traditional arguments for mass forced conversions among the Bulgarians. The sources used supporting coercive conversions under Selim I demonstrate little beyond the general factors for such action commonly operating throughout the Balkans. While some violence against Christians is documented, such cases are few. Regarding the Rhodope mass conversions, all of the supporting evidence is suspect. None exists in the original, and internal analysis of the extant copies proves them to be nineteenth-century forgeries. Again, the Rhodope Pomak conversions apparently resulted from the general factors contributing to gradual conversion that operated thoughout the Balkans and not from official Ottoman coersion.(D.P. Hupchick, (Professor of History at Wilkes University, former Fullbright scholar to Bulgaria and past president of the Bulgarian Studies Association., The Balkans, pp.156, ISBN 0-312-21736-6)
The online newspaper "Netinfo.bg" quotes Radio France International:
Сред най-известните терористични атентати от близкото минало у нас, е железопътният атентат през 1985 г. Тогава, вечерта на 9 март, е взривен вагона за майки с деца на влака, пътуващ от София за Бургас. Бомбената експлозия се случва при гара Буново. В атентата загиват седем души, две от тях деца. Девет са тежко ранени.
Взривът е част от поредица бомбени атентати. Части от бомбата могат да се видят в музея на МВР, в експозицията , посветена на тероризма. Извършителите принадлежат към тогавашната нелегална организация Турско националноосвободително движение в България. Техният мотив за терористичните действия е провокиран от действията на държавната власт по време на т.нар. "възродителен процес".
Някои източници твърдят, че движението е предвестник на ДПС. Пряко замесените лица в бомбения атентат са арестувани и осъдени на смърт. Други четирима получават присъди от една до пет години затвор.
Един от осъдените Сабри Али, впоследствие амнистиран, става по-късно областен координатор на ДПС за Бургас.
През 1995 г., 10 години след изпълнение на смъртните присъди на терористите, бе повдигнат въпроса дали те са наистина терористи или борци за свобода.
Според представители на ДПС бомбените атентати по онова време са били единственото средство за борба срещу тоталитарната власт.
Разгоря се бурна политическа полемика в обществото първо, заради издигането на паметни плочи на екзекутираните, а след това, заради тяхното сваляне.
Повече от 20 години избухването на бомбата във влака не се приемано еднозначно.
Миналата година от Общонародния комитет за защита на националните интереси поискаха ДПС, като приемник на Турското националноосвободително движение, да се извини за терористичните актове.
От комитета настояха 9 март да бъде обявен за ден на жертвите на тероризма като протест срещу проявите на тероризъм, независимо дали е религиозен, държавен, политически или расов. Lantonov ( talk) 06:43, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Translation:
Among the most well-known terrorist acts from the recent past in Bulgaria, is the railway assassination act in 1985. Then, in the evening of March 9, a bomb exploded in the railway car for mothers and children in the train going from Sofia to Burgas. The bomb explosion happened at Bunovo station. In the explosion 7 people were killed, 2 of them children. Nine were seriously wounded.
This explosion is among a series of terrorist bombings. Parts of the bomb can be seen in the museum of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in the exhibition on the topic of terrorism. The perpetrators belonged to the then called organisation Turkish national liberation movement in Bulgaria. Their motive for terrorist action was provoked by the activities of the Bulgarian government during the so called "rebirth process".
Some sources say that this movement was a precursor to MRF. The persons directly involved in the bomb assassination went on trial and received a death sentence. Four other persons were sentenced for 1 to 5 years in prison.
One of the sentenced, Sabri Ali, who subsequently received amnesty, became regional coordinator for MRF in Burgas.
In 1995, 10 years after the execution of the death sentences on the terrorists, the issue was raised whether they are terrorists, or freedom fighters. According to MRF representatives, bomb terrorist acts at that time were the only means for fighting the totalitarian government.
A vigorous political discussion raged among the Bulgarian society, first, about the raising of memorial plaques for the executed, then, about their removal.
The opinion about the bomb explosion is not unanimous for more than 20 years. Last year (2005), the Bulgarian Committee for Defence of National Interests asked MRF to apologize for the terrorist acts, as a heir of the Turkish national liberation movement. The Committee requested March 9 to be celebrated as a day for the victims of terrorism, irrespective of whether it is religious, state, political, or ethnic. Lantonov ( talk) 07:59, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Lantonov, I ask you to stop deleting my changes. I provided a source each time you requested. You can not dictate your POV on this subject. You removed more than half of the content that I contributed. If you do not know when Bulgaria declared its independence at least make a research and find about it. It appears you are determined to undo any change I make on any article. When you undid my change to article Bulgaria you commented "no need for a quote to a fact known to sucklings". Is that so? When did Bulgaria declare its independence? Has it occured to you that might have been misinformed? In article Bulgarianization after you undid my contributions I tried to reason with you. After denying the Pomaks were subjected to Bulgarianization you brought up the Armenian genocide issue. I see now you also brought up the usual "500 years of..." intro and the Janissaries. How can one reason with this mentality? I want you to know that I will not give up on this article and allow you to paint a pretty picture of Bulgaria and Bulgarians while continuing to bash the Turks and down play what they have been through in Bulgaria. I realize there will be more people calling the Bulgarianization "harmonization", as you did. If someone points to something wrong in Bulgaria the answer is "It's because of 500 years of Turkish rule". If Bulgarization is brought up then the response is "it was a harmonization performed by the Communists". It looks like all the shortcomings and sins of Bulgaria can be blamed and attributed to elsewhere. I will quote from the Bulgarian born Vicki Tamir who wrote in her book Bulgaria and her Jews:
Indeed, over the centuries, Bulgaria has proved a most faithful practicioner of what Edmund in Shakespeare's King Lear called 'the excellent foppery of the world that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behavior, we make guilty of our disaster the sun, the moon, the stars.'
I will restore my contributions. If you dispute anything instead of deleting or altering the article you need to come here and make your case. If I provide you with a credible source or explanation you are required to accept it. This is the Wikipedia policy. I know that many Bulgarians do not believe there are one million Turks in the Balkans. That's probably because they do not want to have any Turks in the Balkans to begin with. (It is clear that if Turks of Bulgaria gained any rights since the collapse of the communism that was due to external pressure mainly coming from the EU and the US.) However this is not the place to address such fears. If a credible source says "there are one million Turks in the Balkans" then this will be included in the article. I'm somewhat sceptical that this request of mine will make any real difference but let us hope that I will be proven wrong this time. (Also, please, no Bulgarian sources or references. This is an English language encyclopedia that requires English language sources and references. For obvious reasons, save the effort of translating anything as you did above) -- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 03:15, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
As an afterthought, you may learn from my discussion with Nostradamus1 why are those words in the Bulgaria article. I will leave for a short time the article Turks in Bulgaria in the way Nostradamus1 has done it and invite you to take a look at it. From it you will learn that Turks established Bulgaria way back in the 6th century, Byzantium was glad to give up the government of the region to the Ottoman Turks because they were all relatives, the whole history of the Ottoman Empire was a chain of glorious victories over infidels, there was never such thing as forced Islamisation of the Christian population, there was persecution of Turks during the April Uprising and Russian-Turkish war, and the Third Bulgarian State was incorrectly established, because the population was Turkish anyway. Then Turks underwent forced Bulgarisation to become Bulgarians. The conclusion is: there is no reason for existing of Bulgaria, Bulgarians are all Turks, so that Turkey has a sovereign right to govern Bulgaria. The same user goes to all Bulgarian articles, and insists on changing Bulgarians to Bulgars, as the last are nothing but Turks. You can see a sample of Nostradamus1 views in this comment [2], placed insidiously in the middle (not at the end) of an old topic. Then you will, if you have some vestige of conscience, see at least part of the reason behind "sovereign heir". Partly copied from Talk:Bulgaria. Lantonov ( talk) 07:32, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
I believe many Bulgarians will violently oppose the idea that, after all, there were few or no forced conversions. I expect some heated discussions on this. The degree of overall Ottoman oppression of Bulgarians, Forced conversions, Janissaries, Bulgarianization, and the Turkic-ness of the Bulgars are the thorny areas in this context.Recent scholarship casts grave doubt on the validity of the traditional arguments for mass forced conversions among the Bulgarians. The sources used supporting coercive conversions under Selim I demonstrate little beyond the general factors for such action commonly operating throughout the Balkans. While some violence against Christians is documented, such cases are few. Regarding the Rhodope mass conversions, all of the supporting evidence is suspect. None exists in the original, and internal analysis of the extant copies proves them to be nineteenth-century forgeries. Again, the Rhodope Pomak conversions apparently resulted from the general factors contributing to gradual conversion that operated thoughout the Balkans and not from official Ottoman coersion. [6]
"Levsky, Botev, Karadja, and the other haiduts, can easily be called terrorists according to today’s standards". - Nostradamus1
Sure, and Garibaldi, Bolivar, Che Gevara, also can be called terrorists according to your standards. :)
"In the process of liberation we must not take revenge on the peaceful Turkish people, who are as repressed by the Ottoman masters as we, Bulgarians, are" - Vasil Levski in The Organization Rules of the Bulgarian Secret Revolution Committee.
Orde Ivanovski, Macedonian Historian? Ha-ha-ha, go to Kresna-Razlog Uprising to see immediately what is a historic falsification.
"Is this a banana republic that has no clear date of independence?" - N. Bulgarian National Holiday is called the Liberation Day - March 3, 1878.
-- Lantonov ( talk) 13:39, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Lantonov, you removed a lot of referenced material making 20 edits and/or reverts in a day. You are rejecting referenced sources simply because what these sources say disagrees with what you think. I asked you not to edit and undo without discussing but you are not listening. -- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 04:43, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
In eight months, Russian troops occupied all of Bulgaria and reached Constantinople. At this high point of its influence on Balkan affairs, Russia dictated the Treaty of San Stefano in March 1878. This treaty provided for an autonomous Bulgarian state (under Russian protection) almost as extensive as the First Bulgarian Empire, bordering the Black and Aegean seas. But Britain and Austria-Hungary, believing that the new state would extend Russian influence too far into the Balkans, exerted strong diplomatic pressure that reshaped the Treaty of San Stefano four months later into the Treaty of Berlin. The new Bulgaria would be about onethird the size of that prescribed by the Treaty of San Stefano; Macedonia and Thrace, south of the Balkans, would revert to complete Ottoman control. The province of Eastern Rumelia would remain under Turkish rule, but with a Christian governor.
Whereas the Treaty of San Stefano called for two years of Russian occupation of Bulgaria, the Treaty of Berlin reduced the time to nine months. Both treaties provided for an assembly of Bulgarian notables to write a constitution for their new country. The assembly would also elect a prince who was not a member of a major European ruling house and who would recognize the authority of the Ottoman sultan. In cases of civil disruption, the sultan retained the right to intervene with armed force.
The final provisions for Bulgarian liberation fell far short of the goals of the national liberation movement. Large populations of Bulgarians remained outside the new nation in Macedonia, Eastern Rumelia, and Thrace, causing resentment that endured well into the next century. (Bulgarians still celebrate the signing of the Treaty of San Stefano rather than the Treaty of Berlin as their national independence day.) In late 1878, a provisional Bulgarian government and armed uprisings had already surfaced in the Kresna and Razlog regions of Macedonia. These uprisings were quelled swiftly by the Turks with British support. During the next twenty-five years, large numbers of Bulgarians fled Macedonia into the new Bulgaria, and secret liberation societies appeared in Macedonia and Thrace. One such group, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), continued terrorist activities in the Balkans into the 1930s.
Any more questions? Lantonov ( talk) 16:01, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
"au-ton-o-my (Ó ton'uh mee) n. pl. <-mies> 1. independence or freedom, as of the will or one's actions. 2. the condition of being autonomous; self-government or the right of self-government; independence. 3. a self-governing community. [1615-25; < Gk]"
(This is copied from Talk:Bulgaria where Nostradamus1 very officially has posed the same question) Lantonov ( talk) 08:35, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Below is a very recent article in the Turkish press which I provided as a source in the online newspaper "Turkish Daily News", information about which Nostradamus1 consistently deletes. Lantonov ( talk) 13:39, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Bulgaria's Turks and Turkey's Kurds Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Cengiz AKTAR [3]
see Pan-Turkism:) Lantonov ( talk) 08:46, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I am very busy in the moment and have no time to argue a lot but it seems to me that this is a Turkish propaganda which I am not going to tolerate. It is very easy to say that the Bulgarians hate the Turks and have invented the Islamization and that the years of Ottoman domination were years of prosperity for the Bulgarian lands.
First, the Bulgars. Yes, there are some theories that they might be of Iranian origin but according to most historians (and me) they were of Turkic origin. BUT there is a great difference between the Turkic peoples and the contemporary Turks which you know perfectly well and I am not going to explain here. I mean that the Turks are simple a branch of the Turkic peoples, just like the Bulgars, Khazars, Avars, Turkmen and others, the contemporary Turks do NOT unite all Turkic peoples. And as the article is for the Turks in Bulgaria, the history of the other Turkic peoples is not necessary. And in the first Bulgarian Empire the Bulgars were outnumbered by the Slavs and the Slavs also played a major role in the state affairs and supplied tens of thousands of soldiers for the Bulgarian army, so the Empire was not Bulgar only and it was during the first Empire when the comtemporary Bulgarian people began to form (9th - 10th cent.)
There are a lot of sources for Islamization and I am going to supply them as soon as possible. How can you imagine that thousands of people in the Rhodopes would accept Islam without a purposeful and forceful process of Islamisation by the Ottoman authorities?
Also the Ottoman domination ruined the culture of the Bulgarian people and brought almost nothing to the Bulgarian land. You might simply compare the architectural and scientific heritage between the Ottoman-held territories and the rest of Christian Europe - it is obvious which lands developed better.
And also I would call the process of Bulgariaztion (excluding that stupid action of Zhivkov, which was by the way commanded by USSR) and bad attitude of Bulgarians to Turks a myth just as you deny the Islamization, emigration and massacre of hundreds of thousands Bulgarian by the Turks.
And finally I would like to see the number of the population, not just a statement that the Turks outnumbered the Bulgarians in Bulgaria. According to the first census in Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia the Bulgarians were a majority. I will revert your edits because they are some sort of Turkish propaganda which I do not like at all and spoils my opinion for the Turks which is quite good in comparison to some other countries. -- Gligan ( talk) 11:01, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
1. You wrote It is very easy to say that the Bulgarians hate the Turks...: Yes, unfortunately it is very easy and true. (Rationalising this hatret is also unacceptable and unreasonable 100 or more years after Bulgarian independence). To quote a Bulgarian official who answered the American reporter-write R. Kaplan in 1985:
If it weren't for the Turkish invasion in the 14th century we would be 80 million now. They assimilated us; now we will assimilate them. The Turks still have an invoice to pay for killing Levsky.
I won't quote refernces about the standard "500 years of Turkish Yoke...".
Is this a bad thing, that Bulgarians survived 500 years and preserved their Bulgarian language and culture? From your words it appears so bad that it can even be considered a crime. And, no, your baseless allegations cannot be tolerated by any person who has some respect for his native land. Lantonov ( talk) 09:22, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
2.You wrote the contemporary Turks do NOT unite all Turkic peoples: I can tell you that the sense of kinship is quite different among Turks than that of Slavs. I meet people from Western China, Uygurs, and we connect right away. You can not take your own understanding of ethnic affinity and impose it here. The subject is Turks in Bulgaria, not history of Bulgaria. As a result the article will include the Turkic people who played a role in the History of tha territory that is in context. I knew it would cause great uneasiness among Bulgarians whose main position is that they are the rightful owners of the land victimised by the invading Turks. What makes you think that all the Turks came after the Ottoman conquest given that there were quite a few other Turkic people who had a presence in the Balkans long before that. Some of the must have settled as Hupchick suggests and contributed to the gene pool. And even if they did not they still deserve a mention here. If it is left to Bulgarians they will paint a picture that Turks are an alien people to Bulgarian who came and if possible should leave since they never belonged here to begin with.(I normally do not like even to mention Turkey to make a point but since you seem to imply that Turks in Bulgaria only are related to those in Turkey here is a link to the office of Turkish Presidency that explains the 16 stars of the presidential emblem. Even if you can;t read Turkish I am sure you should be able to guess some of the names. So do not ask the removal of Avars, Khazars, etc. from the history of Turks since they simply consider them as part of their history. That is sufficient. [12] (Another analogy here would be to ask Bulgarians not to mention Thracians since there is no historical intermingling of Slav, Bulgars, and the Thracians.)
3.You wrote the history of the other Turkic peoples is not necessary: I strongly disagree. One of my references, (The Balkans by Hupchick), clearly includes the Turkic people together with the Turks and this by itself is sufficient to include them here. The history of Turkic peoples as it applies to Bulgaria is very necessary in an article titled Turks in Bulgaria. Otherwise we would have to remove any mention of Slavic peoples from an article titled Bulgarians in Bulgaria since Bulgarian ethnicity was formed much later. The context is important here and the Bulgarians seem to have a bias and interest in eliminating the mention of the word Turkic from their history. (The Iranian theory explains this. I have not heard much enthusiasm about the theory (actually the forgeries are a scientific proof) that there was no official forced Islamisatin of the Pomaks. Here is a good theory that would help heal the victim mentality of a nation but no one seems to need it.)
4. You wrote: And in the first Bulgarian Empire the Bulgars were outnumbered by the Slavs and the Slavs also played a major role in the state affairs: Yes, I agree. But what the article has about Bulgars is not to play down the role of the Slavs in Bulgaria. The context is Turks in Bulgaria and -so it happens- Bulgars were a Turkic people too. It would perfectly be acceptable to put more wight on the Slavic element in an article, say, Bulgarians in Balkans or, Slavs in Bulgaria. The focus is on the Turkic element here so I simply copied a few paragraphs from the reference book that summarized the Bulgars' initial presence in Bulgaria in the corresponding section.
5. You wrote: it was during the first Empire when the comtemporary Bulgarian people began to form (9th - 10th cent.): Yes, I completely agree. That is why only the early Bulgar history in Bulgaria is summarized in corresponding section. 6.You wrote: How can you imagine that thousands of people in the Rhodopes would accept Islam without a purposeful and forceful process of Islamisation by the Ottoman authorities? : Yes, I can easily do so. There is no need for speculation. Albanians and Bosnians of the Balkans are a clear example. Or did you think that they too were forcibly converted to Islam? There were benefits of converting to Islam during the long Ottoman era. Had forceful conversions been a policy there would be no Bulgarians today. How many Bulgarians there were on this planet in 1878? Go back 400 years and apply forceful conversions you would have no Bulgarians left. It is only the Bulgarians and the historians of Victorian romanticism support that. They are in the lala land.
7.You wrote: the Ottoman domination ruined the culture of the Bulgarian people and brought almost nothing to the Bulgarian land.: I disagree. That is Bulgarian self pitty.
The conquered Christian populations of the Balkans were submerged in a powerful, highly centralized, theocratic imperial state grounded in the precepts of Islamic civilization and Turkic traditions. While the subject Christians were reduced to second-class status in Ottoman society, those precepts and traditions offered them a certain measure of religious toleration, administrative autonomy, and economic well-being that was exceptional for non-aristocratic society in the rest of Europe. That condition changed during the 17th century, when the effects of Western European technological developments and global exploration began to inflict consistent military defeats and economic hardships on the Turks, resulting in the destabilization of Ottoman society and a progressive worsening in the overall situation of the Ottomans’ non-Muslim subjects that continued though the 18th century. Hupckick, The Balkans
8.You wrote: And also I would call the process of Bulgariaztion (excluding that stupid action of Zhivkov, which was by the way commanded by USSR) and bad attitude of Bulgarians to Turks a myth: Blame it on USSR? It is always the fault of others, isn't it?
9.You wrote: I would like to see the number of the population, not just a statement that the Turks outnumbered the Bulgarians in Bulgaria. : I copied most of the paragraph starting with "1878 Turks outnumbered Bulgarians in Bulgaria" from a book from Library of Congress. It is not a sentence I made up myself. It is a verifiable statement. If you dispute it you carry the burden of providing the numbers.-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 01:55, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
Let me put together two quotes from Nostradamus1: First quote: "Levsky, Botev, Karadja, and the other haiduts, can easily be called terrorists according to today’s standards." Second quote: "If you pay attention I do not call Levsky a terrorist. I am merely suggesting that in the eyes of the authorities of the time his/their actions would have been perceived so." No need for comment. The lie is self evident. Lantonov ( talk) 07:36, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
The full article can be read here.-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 00:46, 10 January 2008 (UTC)Picking up books at random I discover that Bulgarians built the pyramids before they travelled east of the Urals; that Bulgarians inspired the Inca civilisation; that the tomb of the Goddess Bastet can be found near a small town on the Turkish border; that the EU is just the last in a succession of Vatican- Jewish-Communist-Turkish plots – take your pick! – to destroy Bulgaria.
We have to distinguish between religion and nationality. Many of the Islamised Bulgarians preserved the Bulgarian language and traditions (those traditions that were not contrary to Islam). Most are in the Rhodopes (Ahryani) but there are also some in Vardar Macedonia in the region of Tikvesh (called Torbashi) and in North Bulgaria (around Lovech and Teteven, called Pomaks). We call them all Pomaks, and dump them together with the Turks, as of Turkish ethnicity. And this is not new, it is done for years. For instance, the first census in Eastern Rumelia in 1880 lists Turks and Bulgarian Muslims in one place as the same nationality (total population 815.946, Turks and Bulgarian Muslims 174.700). And of course they will be Turkized, as they do not find acceptance in Bulgarians. Our neighbors (for instance, the Greeks) were quick to use this situation to claim that Pomaks are Greek, and even tried to invent some "Pomak language". This attempt failed because Pomaks use different dialects of Bulgarian, depending on the region. Lantonov ( talk) 12:44, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
If you knew very well that Pomaks are Bulgarian, then what about those words of yours: "After denying the Pomaks were subjected to Bulgarianization you brought up the Armenian genocide issue." How can Pomaks be Bulgarianised if they were already Bulgarian? Lantonov ( talk) 07:30, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I just had a look at the sources used by N. Most of the so-called American sources have been taken from nationalist Turkish sites, e.g. from Ingilish.com. For instance, one of the sources that purports to be from Syracuse University, written by a Turk and a Bulgarian(?) casts doubt on such Bulgarian classic writers as Ivan Vazov, Aleko Konstantinov and the fundamental ethnographic and historic monograph of Mutafchieva on the Pomaks, denies all attrocities committed during Ottoman rule and extols the virtues of the Ottoman Empire. It also have a synopsis on the Turan Union, the pan-Turkic organisation that falsifies history in order to "unite" all Turkic peoples, and lists the activities of this organisation in Bulgaria after the Liberation. Evidently, the author(s) of that article is a very active member of the Turan Union. Lantonov ( talk) 11:33, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Ethnic Turks in Bulgaria - NATO and Department of State statement - transcript
US Department of State Bulletin, Oct, 1989
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1079/is_n2151_v89/ai_8139879 —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Ilhanli (
talk •
contribs)
17:16, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
HRW.com (Human Rights Watch)
Bulgaria
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1989/WR89/Bulgaria.htm --
Ilhanli (
talk)
17:31, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
NATO.int
http://www.nato.int/acad/fellow/97-99/atanassova.pdf
This political line was reversed by the early seventies and was substituted by consistent attempts
for cultural assimilation of all the largest ethnic communities. The process of the forced
assimilation of Roma and Pomaks preceded chronologically the campaign against the Turks. The
main target of assimilation however became the Turks who in 1984 were forced to change their
names and adopt Bulgarian ones. Brutal measures were introduced against Islam and the Turkish
language. Over 1,000 Turks were detained in prison and over one hundred were killed.xviii
During the mass demonstrations of Turks in 1989 the communist authorities resorted to violence
and provoked mass emigration of Turks mainly to Turkey. Some 370,000 Turks left the country
in 1989 but about 152.000 later returned back to Bulgaria.
Cited in Hellanic Resource Network (hri.org)
U.S. Department of State
Bulgaria Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1996
Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
January 30, 1997
BULGARIA
http://www.hri.org/docs/USSD-Rights/96/Bulgaria96.html --
Ilhanli (
talk)
17:46, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
Can I ask you why you have deleted Naim Süleymanoğlu and Halil Mutlu from the list? -- Ilhanli ( talk) 12:26, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
Naim Süleymanoğlu was born in Bulgaria and he is citzen of Bulgaria
look here, and sometimes he is IN Bulgaria
OR Think like that
What about those people (Turks) who will leave the country? Why we must delete their names from the list, they were famous Turks in Bulgaria for that time. Can't we add historical names?
What about John Atanasof? ok, you will say that we do not talk about "in Bulgaria" but if you look here:
Bulgaria you'll see that his name is repeated two times even he was not Bulgarian citizen, he was only about 3 times in Bulgaria and even his mother wasn't Bulgarian.--
Ilhanli (
talk)
13:48, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
I'll reedit the section as Notable names-- Ilhanli ( talk) 13:53, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
While editing the page, please write the explanatory reasons for that in the "Edit summary" part, so i'll not waste my time here... -- Ilhanli ( talk) 14:00, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
I have not heared Turks who are speaking Bulgarian (between friend etc.), i know it because I'm 'between ' them. May there be some few in number people, but it dos not change the general picture. And I think they are talkink about the Pomaks. Of course evry citizen knows Bulgarian, but it will be better to say that they are using only Turkish, since it is mother language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ilhanli ( talk • contribs) 10:11, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
Someone is repeatedly including the following sentence:
Recent genetic research confirm the local, Anatolian - Balkanic origin of the Turks and reject the theory about significant Asiatic contribution to their DNA.
Can someone elaborate on it? This user is drawing his/her own conlusions. What is of local, Balkanic (perhaps a new word?) origin and what is not? What is being compared against what?-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 01:12, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
No one responded to my inquiry about the above. The DNA data says nothing to justify a sentence like the above. This is merely a restatement of what those unpunished Bulgarian criminals argued during the assimilation campaigns. It will not stand in this article. Furthermore one can argue about the article Bulgaria, for instance. Why is there no DNA talk and discussion about the so called Slavs in Bulgaria. Are Bulgarians indeed Slavs, for example? Is there any comparison to other DNA data? Again, it will not stand. Those pushing for it must have heard it from some people close to them or were supporters and/or were involved in those acts themselves.-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 04:05, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
This article is currently under informal mediation. see here. -- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 02:31, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
"As Russian forces pushed south in January 1878, the troops, the Bulgarian volunteers, and the emboldened local Bulgarian villagers inflicted a welter of atrocities on the local Muslim population. Some 260,000 Muslims perished in the war's carnage, and over 500,000 refugees fled with the retreating Ottoman forces. [17]"
“ | Let the Turks now carry away their abuses, in the only possible manner, namely, by carrying off themselves. Their Zaptiehs and their Mudirs, their Blmhashis and Yuzbashis, their Kaimakams and their Pashas, one and all, bag and baggage, shall, I hope, clear out from the province that they have desolated and profaned. This thorough riddance, this most blessed deliverance, is the only reparation we can make to those heaps and heaps of dead, the violated purity alike of matron and of maiden and of child; to the civilization which has been affronted and shamed; to the laws of God, or, if you like, of Allah; to the moral sense of mankind at large. There is not a criminal in an European jail, there is not a criminal in the South Sea Islands, whose indignation would not rise and over-boil at the recital of that which has been done, which has too late been examined, but which remains unavenged, which has left behind all the foul and all the fierce passions which produced it and which may again spring up in another murderous harvest from the soil soaked and reeking with blood and in the air tainted with every imaginable deed of crime and shame. That such things should be done once is a damning disgrace to the portion of our race which did them; that the door should be left open to the ever so barely possible repetition would spread that shame over the world. William Gladstone, British prime minister | ” |
The text quoted in the first paragraph in this section was introduced in the article here [14]. Somehow it failed to surprise me. Lantonov ( talk) 09:09, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Justin McCarthy. Read about his deeds and misdeeds here:
In this paper by an eminent Turkish professor, J. McCarthy's central role in denying Turkish attrocities everywhere is desribed in detail. That he has such mission can be seen also on his book flyer. We read ( ISBN 0878500944):
"Death and Exile is the history of the deportation and death of millions of Muslims in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from areas that have remained centers of conflict - the Balkans, the Middle East, and what was the Soviet Union - and shows how these ethnic and religious conflicts developed. The history of the expansion of the Russian Empire and creation of new nations in the Balkans has traditionally been told from the standpoint of the Christian nations that were carved from the Ottoman Empire. Death and Exile tells the story from the position of the Turks and other Muslims who suffered death and exile as a result of imperialism, nationalism, and ethnic conflict. Death and Exile radically changes our view of the history of the peoples of the Middle East and the Balkans. It presents a new framework for understanding conflicts that continue today."
In other words, traditionally we have a view of history that has been told over and over. However, forget what you know, he will tell us another story: it is not Muslims who persecuted Christians, it is the other way around. And if we still resist in accepting this POV, Nostradamus1 will punish us by the rulebook.
The whole exercise in this article is to push this POV. This is the aim of the extensive explanations in this discussion, the repeated bashing of the "Bulgarian nationalism" and denying everything that is known about Bulgarian history. Lantonov ( talk) 06:49, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
The 250,000 Muslims who perished, and the 500,000 who fled were part of the bloody armies of Suleiman Pasha, and the bashibozuk that committed the carnages of Batak, Perushtitsa, Klisura, Bratsigovo, Stara Zagora, Panagyurishte, Tryavna, Tetevan, Sevlievo, Dalboki, and many other towns and villages, killing small children, and carrying them on bayonets. Bulgarians forgave them but did not forget. Lantonov ( talk) 08:02, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 01:41, 12 January 2008 (UTC)Few of the cities and only a small part of the countryside in Bulgaria were scenes of protracted battle, so civilian losses due to battle were relatively few. Nevertheless, 17 percent (262,000) of the Muslims of Bulgaria died during and immediately after the 1877-78 war. Some 515,000 surviving Muslims, almost all Turkish, were forced from Bulgaria into other areas of the Ottoman Empire, never to return home. They were victims of a combination of local Bulgarian rapacity and what later generations would call state terror. When Russian troops entered part of Bulgaria, Bulgarian revolutionaries, Russian soldiers, especially Cossacks, and Bulgarian peasants began a programme of rape, plunder and massacre. The result was the flight of the Bulgarian Muslims. Some 55 percent of the Muslims of Bulgaria, mainly Turks, were either evicted or killed. J. McCarthy, The Ottoman Peoples and the end of Empire, 2001, p.48
About McCarthy's credibility look again here [16]. I will quote only a small part of this document:
"In short, the figures in the Turkish National Assembly letter attributable to Justin McCarthy are wrong. His assertions that “the names of only a very few of the missionaries whose writings were used in the reports are known to us ” are entirely the product of his imagination. Furthermore, the classifying of those Armenians who survived the deportations as “Armenian activists,” as McCarthy and by extension the Turkish National Assembly letter have done, is also unfounded. The claim that “32 of the code names [in the documents] belong to completely fictitious persons” is simply not true. And finally, the assertion that certain documents need be considered incorrect or unreliable simply on the basis of the fact that their authors are missionaries or of Armenian origin is one fraught with danger, and one that comes very close to out-and-out racism."
Quote some more from McCarthy for everyone to see where you are driving at. Do you have any other source? Where did he get those numbers from? A bad dream?
Read also the Wiki article Taner Akçam and the related: "A question of authority Our increasing reliance on Wikipedia changes the pursuit of knowledge" [ [17]]. It is very enlightening about what a biased Wiki article can do to a person, or to a nation, or country, in the present context. Let's not forget that Levski and Botev are "terrorists" :). Lantonov ( talk) 10:19, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
I did not suggest that the 500,000 are only part of the regular Ottoman Army. Most of those who fled were the bashibozuk that committed the massacres in hundreds of Bulgarian towns and villages. For people, who do not know what bashibozuk is: the male Islamic population that is gathered by the local hodzha on every occasion that threatens Muslim control and by his fanatic religious speech instigated to kill every "infildel" ( Giaour) on sight, especially women and children. Believing that "the more giaours they kill, the better they would live in the other world" they committed the hideous attrocities, a small part of news for which reached the West. England, who all the time supported the Ottoman Empire, was horrified of the events seen by her own witnesses and correspondents. Therefore, the speech of her Prime Minister quoted above. This is why England did not support the Ottomans in the war of 1878, as she supported them in the previous wars. History must be studied not to forget those horrors. Unfortunately, they are forgotten, and history is repeated: Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, and so on. There are also people who for various motives (most often connected to some green pieces of paper) try to make us forget history.
For what I said above, read here:
For the life of Turks in post-Ottoman Bulgaria, migration (to Ottoman Empire and back), reasons for migration, etc., read this source:
This source is the most authoritative one, because Prof. Jireček, a professional Czech historian, toured extensively the Balkans, including Bulgaria exactly in the period of the events and wrote about all this in great detail, including all facts that he personally saw. I haven't seen or heard anyone accusing Jireček of racism. Lantonov ( talk) 07:55, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
You have to give general informatin about the topic. Not spesific. -- Ilhanli ( talk) 23:00, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
As I can see from the title, the article is for the Turks in Bulgaria, not about the Turkic peoples in Bulgaria. So the section for the Turkic peoples has no place here. When are you going to understand the difference of a group of peoples and just one people of that group? -- Gligan ( talk) 17:49, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
On the contrary, the outsider can make the difference between turks and Turkic peoples, something that you obviously cannot or most probably do not want to admit because you are busy to make greater turkish propaganda. And wikipedia is not place for propaganda as far as I remember. And also I have another question to you: is the Armenian genocide a forgery as well??? -- Gligan ( talk) 08:58, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
"As I can see from the title, the article is for the Turks in Bulgaria, not about the Turkic peoples in Bulgaria. So the section for the Turkic peoples has no place here."
First of all, Tatars' and Turks' language is very close to the each other. Second, both people are Muslims. Third, Turkic people do not see themselves as different nation from each other. They call Tatars: Tatar Türkleri, and the Turks: Selçuklu (or Osmanlı) Türkleri. That is why Tatars were married with Turks when they meet each other in West of Black Sea (Bulgaria). So, some Turks' ancestors are Tatars, Gagauz etc...-- Ilhanli ( talk) 10:31, 21 January 2008 (UTC) If you are writing "turkified bulgarians" why we do not need to write "turkified tatars"? -- Ilhanli ( talk) 16:13, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
I welcome the fact that this page is protected; however, it is left in a state, offending for Bulgaria as a country, with false statements, introduced almost entirely by Nostradamus1, pushing his pan-Turkic, genocide-denial POV. I think it is good to have another review by neutral reviewer(s), which must take into account all sources, listed in the previous mediation page see here in their entirety, not selectively cited, as in this article (13 sources listed by Nostradamus1, and 52 sources listed by me). Also, I share the opinion of Taner Akçam that insistence to disregard Bulgarian or Slavic sources is an "out-and-out racism", and request such sources to be reviewed too, because this matter relates to Bulgarian history, and reflects on the image of Bulgaria, not on the image of some other country (modern Turkey is not the Ottoman Empire, and thus cannot be held responsible for Ottoman attrocities). Lantonov ( talk) 16:03, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
It seems that Nostradamus1 has given reliable sources, and it appears that it is you who are trying to erase the history of Bulgaria. IP: 81.86.223.147 (range 81.86.192.0 - 81.86.223.255)
This last statement was by a person, hiding his identity behind an IP address. Lantonov ( talk) 16:16, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
An informative article by Christopher Buxton. According to him "Under Communism, the Bulgarians saw their national mythology blossom. Now it flourishes". I could not agree more.-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 02:02, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
I think this article needs an important update: 15% of Turks in Bulgaria. Anton Tudor ( talk) 18:17, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
The Muslim community in Bulgaria is represented by three main ethnic groups: Turks, Bulgarian-speaking Muslims (Pomaks) and Roma (Gypsy) Muslims. According to the last two population censuses from 1992 and 2001, the total number of Muslims (based on “religious belonging”) is 1,110,295 (out of 8,887,317 total population) in 1992, and 966,978 (out of 7,928,901) in 2001. The biggest ethnic constituent, according to “ethnic belonging”, of the Muslim community in Bulgaria--the Turks--enumerated 800,052 persons in 1992, and 746,664 in 2001. 762,516 persons indicated Turkish as their “mother tongue” respectively in the 2001 census. However, due to the fact that a substantial part (if not the greater part) of the Muslim Roma identify themselves as Turks to avoid the social stigma associated with the term “Gypsies”, the total number of Turks in Bulgaria has to be reduced. In addition, a certain number of Pomak Muslims also identify themselves as Turks. Thus, the number of the Turkish minority should be further lowered if one completely ignores the generally shared claim that the actual number of Bulgarian Turks is far greater than what is officially indicated. Considering this, the exact number of Turks in Bulgaria can only be speculated upon.
Simultaneously, other waves of Turkic tribes, among which the Bulgars (a unifying name for Ogurs, Utigurs, Kutigurs, Onogurs, Kotrags, and others), moved to the North – Northwest after the collapse, first, of the Hunic union, and, then, of the Great Turkic Haganate, and entered the Balkans through the Danube River. Their invasions to the Peninsula were particularly intensive during VII century. -- Anton Tudor ( talk) 05:14, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
"Roma write "Turkish" in the census because they dont like the stigma attached"? if that's true, then it is strange that only 654 people in Sofia officially consider themselves Turkish... http://www.nsi.bg/Census/Ethnos.htm te po-skoro perhaps write "Bulgarian" instead, and if this IS true, then that would simply mean that there is an even larger Roma minority than some people would probably like to accept... by all means, if you can demonstrate this, then provide the figures and subtract them, then Explain what you are doing and Why - we cannot leave out important info from an Encyclopaedia (which by definition is supposed to encompass all knowledge) and hope that no-one notices. it isn't like we're running out of space over here: dig it up, post it, explain it, and that way both you, me, and everyone else will be all the better informed.
ps. what's your point about the Turkic tribes? it doesn't tie in with the rest of the argument. Ta —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.176.111.71 ( talk) 09:23, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
The reason is that these people have property and permanent addresses in Bulgaria (substantial amount received their retirement allowances from Bulgaria etc.) and from the estimated 150 000 Bulgarian nationals (holding double citizenships) in Turkey some 70 000 have exercised their right to vote in Bulgarian elections. Furthermore, this would also show a more realistic figure of the size of the community since traveling between the countries is an every day event.
Hittit ( talk) 06:00, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
During the Communist regime the Turks in Bulgaria experienced three other emigration waves over a period of time, namely: 1950-1951, 1969-1978, and in 1989 and onwards. Before the start of the first one, the then First Party Secretary and Prime Minister, Todor Zhivkov, handed a note to the Turkish government in which he demanded that Turkey accepts 250,000 Turks from Bulgaria within a three-month period. A total of 212,150 entry visas to Turkey were issued by the Turkish consulate in Bulgaria between 1 January, 1950 and 30 September, 1951, but only 154,393 of the Turkish-Muslim migrants are able to leave for Turkey. Simsir informs that every month approximately 5,000 Turkish-Muslim families (or 20,000 people) striped of property entered Turkey only during the months of December, January and February 1950-1951. Being financially unprepared to meet such an influx of poor Bulgarian migrants, Turkey closed its borders on 8 November 1951, and as a response, the Bulgarian government banned migration and in November 1951 started a campaign of passport confiscation. The second wave started in 1969 (and continued actively by 1978) as a result of the conscious fear of the Bulgarian Turks of forced assimilation, a process that was already launched against the Pomak Muslims in the early 1970s and brought to an end shortly afterwards (1970-1974). However, the 1969-1978 wave is known as the “emigration of close relatives”, because the suddenly interrupted inflow of Turks/Muslims in November 1951 left many families divided. Thus, about 70,000 of the persons who received migrant visa remained in Bulgaria without being able to leave. These and other people (with at least one family member in Turkey) started to collect and submit petitions in which they requested the Bulgarian authorities to allow them to migrate. Thus, by March 1964 the number of Bulgarian Turks and other Muslims who had singed the petitions reached 400,000 persons. Finally, due to this pressure the Bulgarian and Turkish authorities met in Ankara and signed a migration agreement on 22 March, 1968. According to this agreement only very close relatives were eligible for immigration: spouses, parents, grandparents, children/grandchildren and their spouses and children, as well as unmarried siblings (married siblings were excluded). The agreement included providing opportunities for potential migrants to take their possessions with them or sell them and keep the money. The Turkish authorities expected an inflow of about 25-30,000 Bulgarian Turks/Muslims, who – in accordance with the agreement – would bring their property with them. However, as Bulgaria started to break away from the 1968 agreement, it almost expelled its Turks with no property at all. More than 130,000 persons emigrated from Bulgaria in the course of 10 years (between 1969 and 1979).
The third and most frustrating emigration wave for the Bulgarian Turks—the so-called “Big Excursion” (summer of 1989)—was a direct consequence of the so called “Revival Process” against them, when they were forcedly deprived of their names and identity (1984-1985). Declassified archive documents from that time reveal that the then Communist authorities planned to get rid of 200-300,000 Turks by expelling them from the their home country. More than 350,000 Bulgarian Turks left the country in the summer of 1989, about 100,000 of which later returned. Anton Tudor ( talk) 05:20, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
To begin with, I would like to see here the definitions of "Turkic peoples" and "Turkish people". -- Gligan ( talk) 08:31, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Medieval Turkic Peoples of Bulgaria
In late antiquity the rolling plains of the Danube and Prut rivers in the Balkans’ north east served Turkic tribes from the Eurasian steppes as an open door into the heart of the peninsula and the riches of the Eastern Roman Empire. Huns and related tribes swept through the Balkans in the 5th and 6th centuries, followed by the Avars and their allies in the sixth and seventh. Among these later were Bulgars, who established a state south of the Danube. Unlike the Avars, whose settlements in the Balkans proved transitory, the Bulgar state persisted in the face of concerted Byzantine pressures. By the 9th century the Bulgars were challenging the Byzantine Empire for political hegemony in the Balkans, but by that time they also were well on the way toward ethnic assimilation into their Slavic-speaking subject population. The conversion of the Turkic Bulgar ruling elite to Orthodox Christianity at mid-century opened the gate to their rapid and total Slavic assimilation. Within a hundred years of the Bulgar conversion, most traces of their Turkic origins had disappeared, except for their name – the Bulgars had been transformed into Slavic Bulgarians.
Oguz, Pecheneg, and Cuman Turks tribes appeared in the Balkans between the 9th and 11th centuries. Most of them eventually suffered an ethnic fate similar to the Bulgars and left little lasting impression, although the Gagauz Turks of Bessarabia, a region lying east of the Prut River (now known as Moldova), and some Turks living today in the eastern Balkans may be direct descendants of those medieval Turkic interlopers. Additionally the Ottoman Turks’ five century rule over most of the Balkans established numerous scattered enclaves of Turkish-speaking groups throughout much of the southern portion of the peninsula, with a heavy concentration in the southeastern region of ancient Thrace.
Tatars were come from north and some of them are still in Bulgaria, since they were also a Turkic tribe some of them were married with Turks. It has to be noted that "Turkic" is a new word and most people do not know (especially in Bulgaria) this word, they are using "Turk" since the word "Turk" both means "Turk" and Turkic". And the two languages are very close to each other. In south Bulgaria there is some villages named in Turkish "Tatarköy" or "Tatarlı". As it is known from the natives there in this villages were many Tatars.
Why you are removing this part?
This part is here because some Turks' ancestor are not onlu Seljuks but other Turkic tribes. If there is "tukified bulgarians" in the article why don't we add "turkified turkic people"? -- Ilhanli ( talk) 09:27, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Before I answer the above questions -who were clearly brought up out of an obvious POV and bad intent- I'd like to ask the following questions. What sort of a verifiable source/reference are the Turks of/in Bulgaria to provide so that they can mention any related Turkic peoples -who played a role in the history of the land- in an article dedicated for the Turks in Bulgaria? Another question is as follows: What do the Slavs, Bulgars, and Thracians have to do with the contemporary Bulgarians given that
Answer the above and I will provide the reasons as to why in an article titled Turks in Bulgaria we should be allowed (by insecure Bulgarians) to mention the medieval Turkic peoples who were present in the land that is today known as Bulgaria?
Would you prefer a source from Bulgaria or from abroad? I will try to provide something but let us agree on the rules first since you guys have a not-so great reputation in this area. All three of you -regardless of your so-claimed academic level of education/degree- (Lantonov, Gligan, and Laveol) have been representing yourselves according to the well-known Bulgarian reputation when it comes to history so far. Keep up with the good work after elaborating on the above. The world needs to be informed about this curiosity.-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 07:42, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
I am adding this section back. Those opposing the existence of this section in this article about the Turks need to make a good argument as to why an article named Turks in Bulgaria can not include a section and information about the Medieval Turkic Peoples of Bulgaria. How is this section not related to the article. -- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 03:51, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
This section is simply the well known Bulgarian Communist-Nationalist propaganda and argument that was used during the Bulgarian trademark name change campaings. As expert historians stated it clearly the documents used to support the alleged forced conversions in Bulgaria have been proven to be forgeries. Furthermore this article is about Turks not the Bulgarians who converted to Islam. An in-depth article on this subject can be read here-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 02:12, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
This is my suggestion;
Under the Settlement of Turks in Bulgaria we can add sub part, at the end, with header like this:
+Effects of the Turks
++Effects on Bulgarians
+++Islamization text about islamization (note:for me the only problem is that; are the Pomaks were included in Bulgarian
nation or they were somwere between Bulgarians and
Bosniaks, i do not know
+++Turkification text,
Janissaries, bla, bla...
++Effects on Turkic people; text, genetic contributions of tatars, gagauzes to the turks, bla bla (not:Bulgars will not be included) --
Ilhanli (
talk)
18:01, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
This edit war about the two contested passages (the one about Turkification, and the one starting with what the "rolling plains" did in late antiquity) can only be solved if both are removed. They are both unsalvagably poor quality. I am making no judgment about whether some suitably brief treatment of medieval Turkic groups is appropriate (in my personal view, it may well be so), but all this coverage can only be reinserted in a constructive way if it gets completely rewritten. Come on, write for the enemy. Rewrite this stuff in such a way that your opponents will recognise it as a vast improvement. If you can't do that, you're POV-pushers beyond hope. This goes to everybody here.
I will go rouge on you guys and block everybody who simply reinserts either of the contested passages. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:47, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
I requested formal mediation here. Anyone interested can join. I listed the last four surviving war veterans.-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 02:55, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
I regretfully have to notice that the article currently has what looks like unnecessary duplication of info to me. I introduced the section header "Summary" because the Table of Contents started very down below. But after reading I notices that a huge piece is about Bulgarization, which (a) again described in sections below and {b} already has its own article. I will recommend, according to wikipedia:Summary style, to put Zhivkov's assimilation campaign into a separate article, because it is a clearly defined separate topic, and make a summary section here. If you agree, I can do it myself, or someone else. Inshallah. Mukadderat ( talk) 19:19, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
The User Laveol insisted here and here to remove this map from the article. I don't see anything wrong with the map. -- Olahus ( talk) 17:18, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
Is there anyway we can get the reference for this sentence in English?;
As a response to the Bulgarian government policies, on March 9th, 1985, an underground Turkish organisation (TNFM) was responsible for planting an explosive device on the Sofia-Burgas train.[22]
Preferably, a reference from a book or newspaper written in English? Thanks.
Kansas Bear (
talk)
19:59, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 02:25, 3 June 2008 (UTC)It has been suggested that discontented Turks were responsible for the extraordinary terrorist attacks which affected Bulgaria in 1984 and 1985. On 30 August 1984 bombs exploded in the railway station at Plovdiv and at the airport in Varna; on that day Zhivkov traveled between the two cities. There were also reports that shortly after the explosions fly-sheets promising ‘Forty Years: Forty Bombs’ appeared in the streets of a number of Bulgarian cities. On 9 March 1985 seven people died in a suspicious fire on a Bulgarian train, and later in the same month the chief prosecutor, when introducing new and more stringent anti-terrorist regulations, admitted to the Subranie that thirty deaths had been caused by such acts of violence in the preceding year. Apart from the very dubious hints at Turkish complicity there is as yet no indication as to who might be responsible for these outrages. (R.J. Crampton, A Short History of Modern Bulgaria, pp.206, Cambridge University Press)
I suggest removing this section. I am not aware of any scientifically recognized Turkish dialects in Bulgaria. There certainly are differences in choice of words and their pronounciation even between villages as close as a few kilometers but presenting this in this way as dialects is misleading in my view.-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 01:04, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
Should we include people who were born before Bulgaria became liberated or gained its independence in the list? Also equating Ottomans with Turks is a common recurrence (so much so that even today in Turkey the so called "Turkishness" is equated with citizenship not ethnicity. It's different in the Balkans. The article refers to the ethnic Turks of Bulgaria). There are many notable Ottoman citizens who were not ethnic Turks. For example, Midhat Pasha was a Pomak and Talat Pasha was a Roma. Both were born before 1878. While Midhat Pasha did contribute greatly both to the empire and Bulgaria in particular Talat's relation to Bulgaria is nothing more than being born to a gypsy family in a village of Kizdali before the Province of Eastern Rumelia was created. What was his notable achievement in Bulgaria? I suggest taking Talat Pasha out.-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 02:09, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
Well, as a Turk from Bulgaria I would not want the history of my nation to be limited to the existence of the Bulgarian Republic, which was just established in 1908 (You see the Bulgarians doing that?). As I see in the article Mithat Pasha is not mentioned in the notable person’s list. The history of the Turks in Bulgaria extends back to the 13th Century if we do not take into account earlier Turkic tribe settlements. It would not be far fetched to say that our existence in the region of Bulgaria and the Balkans today is the result of the Ottomans. Calling Talat Pasa a gypsy from Kircaali? If you base your sources on Armenian theories I thought they called him a Jew and the Young Turks described as Zionists. ( Hittit ( talk) 08:01, 19 June 2008 (UTC))
A number of dubious flags have been added. They bring no value to the article other than attempt some sort of nationalistic sentiment. "Ottoman coat of arms" or "Flag of Turkish Republic of Western Thrace" bring nothing. I, for one, have never heard of that so called republic. Did any state recognise it at the time? Also, Western Thrace is in Greece. Let us take these images -that might even be self-work/original research- out. (There are also three maps of Bulgaria. Come on.)-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 02:31, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
The names of Plovdiv and Shumen in 1897 were not Filibe and Shumla, but simply Plovdiv and Shumen. Chief White Halfoat ( talk) 06:08, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
Currently the article states that:
On 10 May 2006, the Bulgarian Parliament rejected a bill that was sponsored by the Bulgarian nationalist party Ataka on recognition of the Armenian Genocide.
This sentence carries some serious flaws. It suggests that the bill was a movement to recognize THE "Armenian Genocide". That was not the case. The bill submitted to and rejected by the Bulgarian National Assembly was a movement to recognize the killings of Armenians AS A genocide. There is a big difference here. In order to align it to what it was I am going to change the sentence as follows::
On 10 May 2006, the Bulgarian National Assembly rejected a bill that was sponsored by the Bulgarian nationalist party Ataka to recognize the killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire as genocide.
Please, discuss any objections below.-- Nostradamus1 ( talk) 02:43, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
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ottoman-rule
was invoked but never defined (see the
help page).