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(Paper prepared for the Conference on Islam and Human Rights in Post-communist Europe, held in Sofia, Bulgaria, March 15-17, 1999)

The Muslim Minorities and Human Rights in Bulgaria and Greece

Ali Eminov

Wayne State College

Nationalist movements everywhere aim to create “territorially bounded political units

(states) out of homogeneous cultural communities (nations)” (Danforth 1995:3).To

nationalists the existence of multiple ethnic communities within the same state is a

source of tension and instability, therefore undesirable. Cultural diversity is a threat to

the integrity of the nation-state. Therefore, ways must be found to culturally

homogenize the nation so that the state and nation come to coincide with one another.

Unfortunately, the ideal of cultural homogeneity within a territorially bounded

state has been difficult if not impossible to achieve in reality. All nation-states include

groups that are not members of the nation with which the state is identified. Leaders of

nation-states are faced with the question of what to do about these minorities. They have

used various strategies to achieve cultural homogeneity. These have ranged from

attempts at absorption of minority groups into the majority through acculturation or

assimilation, to persuade or force members of minority groups to emigrate, including

expulsion, to the extreme step of ethnic cleansing or genocide. Not infrequently officials

in nation-states have tried to maintain the illusion of ethnic homogeneity by denying the

existence of ethnic minorities within their borders. Even when the existence of minorities

are recognized, citizenship of a nation-state does not entitle members of minority groups

full human rights. They are discriminated against in various ways. Often ethnic and/or

religious minorities are used by nation-states as pawns in their internal and international

relations. Bulgaria, Greece and other countries in southeastern Europe with Muslim

minorities, at some time or another, have exploited them to promote national self-interest

or the interests of particular political faction or to further the political power and personal

ambitions of individual politicians.

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In this paper I compare and contrast the status of Muslim minorities in Bulgaria

and Greece during the twentieth century, with particular emphasis on developments

since World War II.

Muslims may have begun to settle in the Balkans as early as the twelfth century,

however, the more widespread settlement of Muslims in Bulgaria, Greece and other areas

of the Balkan Peninsula coincides with the beginning of Ottoman conquests during the

fourteenth century. Muslim settlement activity continued throughout the Ottoman period,

reaching a peak during the mid-nineteenth century when large numbers of Tatars from

Crimea and Circassians from the Caucasus were settled in present-day Romania and

Bulgaria.

Beginning in early decades of the nineteenth century, as independent nation-states

were carved out from the lands of the disintegrating Ottoman Empire, large numbers of

Turks and other Muslims began to emigrate, initially to areas in the southern Balkans still

under Ottoman control and later to Asia Minor and Anatolia. Such emigration altered

significantly the demographic structure of Bulgaria and other Balkan countries

(Crampton 1990: 43-78).

As a result of these migrations the percentage of Muslims in Bulgaria was

reduced from one third to one half of the Bulgarian population prior to the Russo-Turkish

War to less than 20 percent by 1900. It fell under 15 percent by 1934 and continued to

fall fractionally during the subsequent decades but started to climb again during the

1960s and 1970s. The authorities found this increase sufficiently alarming to initiate a

forced assimilation campaign against Muslims. This campaign would culminate in the

forced replacement of Muslim names with Bulgarian names, in several waves among the

Gypsy Muslims between 1960 and mid-1980s, among the Bulgarian-speaking Muslims

during the early 1970s, and finally among the Turkish Muslims during the 1984-85

winter. The campaign against Muslims was part of the government’s efforts to create a

homogeneous single-nation (Bulgarian) state.

The changes in the official status of various Muslim groups in Bulgaria during the

communist period often resulted in the manipulations of statistics on ethnic and religious

composition of the population for political purposes. Starting with the 1946 census, the

government dropped the category 'religious affiliation' from census forms. Statistics on

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the religious affiliation of Bulgarian citizens were not collected again until the 1992

census. For the 1992 census the Sunni and Shi'a Muslims were counted separately. The

reasons for this was not purely demographic. During the debates in parliament prior the

census, some nationalist deputies argued that the Shi'ites in Bulgaria were descendants

of ethnic Bulgarians who had been forced to convert to Islam during the Ottoman

period. Moreover, they claimed, that Shi'ites were a distinct ethnic group with unique

religious beliefs and practices that distinguished them from the majority Sunnis.

Official Bulgarian statistics on the number of Muslims in Bulgaria between 1881

and 1992 are shown on Table 1. As the figures indicate, between 1881 and 1910 the

percentage of Muslim population in Bulgaria was more than halved, from 28.8 percent in

1881 to 14 percent in 1910. Since then, periodic emigration waves of Muslims from

Bulgaria (1950-51, 1969-1978, and 1989 to the present) has kept the Muslim proportion

of the population under fifteen percent.

TABLE 1 Number of Muslims in Bulgaria, 1881-1992

__________________________________________________________ Year Total population Number of Muslims % of Total __________________________________________________________ 1881 2,007,919 578,060 28.8 1888 3,154,375 676,215 21.4 1900 3,744,283 643,300 17.2 1905 4,035,575 603,867 15.0 1910 4,337,513 602,078 14.0 1920 4,846,954 690,734 14.2 1926 5,478,740 789,296 14.4 1934 6,077,939 821,298 13.5 1946 7,029,349 934,418 13.3 1956 7,613,709 n.a. -- 1965 8,227,046 n.a. -- 1975 8,727,771 n.a. -- 1985 8,948,649 n.a. -- 1992 8,487,317 1,110,331 13.1 ________________________________________________________ Source: Mitev (1994: 214-215); Donkov (1994: 3)

The three largest Muslim groups in Bulgaria are the Turks, the Gypsy Muslims,

and the Bulgarian-speaking Muslims or Pomaks. Of the more than 1.1 million Muslims

in Bulgaria in 1992 72.2 percent were Turkish speakers, 15.9 percent were Bulgarian

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speakers, and 11.1 percent were Romany speakers, the remaining 0.8 percent were mostly

Tatars and Albanians (Natsionalen Statisticheski Institut 1994:222). Muslims were

concentrated in the southeastern and northeastern regions of the country. In the districts

of Smolyan and Kurdzhali in southeastern Bulgaria they were in the majority, with 55.0

and 74.6 percent respectively. In four districts in northeastern Bulgaria Muslims made up

from more than one-third to over half of the population (Razgrad 52.5 percent,

Turgovishte 37.0 percent, Shumen 36.5 percent, and Silistra 36.3 percent). The 1992

census also showed that Muslims were predominantly rural while the Bulgarian Orthodox

were predominantly city dwellers.

In the following pages I discuss briefly the experience of Turkish and other

Muslims in Bulgaria during the second half of the twentieth century in three main areas:

the status of Turkish-language education, the status of Islamic institutions and Islamic

practices, and the participation of Turks in the political process.

Prior to World War II Muslim children in Bulgaria were educated almost

exclusively in schools controlled by the Muslim community (See Eminov 1983). These

schools provided limited education - little beyond religion and the Rs - to a small

percentage of school-age children - almost exclusively male. They were poorly funded

and poorly maintained. Teachers who taught in these schools were poorly trained (Simsir

1988: 13-30). Only about 50 percent of school-age children ever enrolled in elementary

schools. Many of these students dropped out before completing their elementary

education. Of those who managed to complete elementary school, very few continued

beyond. As a result the Muslim population in Bulgaria remained largely illiterate.

According to Mishkova (1994: 86), at the turn of the century (1905) the literacy rate for

Turkish Muslims in Bulgaria was only 4 percent. Only the Gypsies were worse off than

the Turks. No significant improvements took place on this front over the next several

decades.

Community-controlled Muslim schools were nationalized in 1946 and became

part of the public school system in Bulgaria. The nationalization of Muslim schools

brought about a complete revamping of the education of Muslim children. These secular

schools initially offered some courses on religion. However, by the early 1950s teaching

of such courses were discontinued. A uniform nationwide curriculum with an overt

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ideological and atheistic orientation was imposed on these schools and the compulsory

study of Bulgarian was implemented. Strict enforcement of attendance requirements

meant that, for the first time, all school-age children were attending school. Only after

1989 it became possible once again to reopen religious schools and offer classes on

religious subjects.

Several ambitious goals were behind the nationalization and secularization of

Muslim educational institutions. These included, to improve the dismal state of

education among Turks and other Muslims; to support the development of secular

cultural institutions among Muslims; and most important of all, to effect a shift away

from traditional overarching Muslim identity to ethnic Turkish/Bulgarian/Gypsy

consciousness among Muslims. The process of new, ethnically-based identity formation

was to be facilitated by a new ideologically committed Turkish/Pomak/Gypsy

intelligentsia. Over time these parochial ethnically-based identities would be replaced

with an identity with the socialist Bulgarian nation. As far as the communist party was

concerned this latter goal was the most important one.

Some of these goals were realized quite rapidly, others not. Educational

conditions among Muslims improved significantly. Literacy rates rose, approaching the

national average. Compulsory study of Bulgarian in Turkish schools led to high rates of

bilingualism among the young. Support of Turkish pedagogical institutes, the

Department of Turkish Philology at Sofia University, a Turkish branch at Narodna

Prosveta Publishing House, and Turkish professional and amateur theaters encouraged

the development of a native Turkish intelligentsia. Government support of secular

Turkish cultural institutions combined with atheistic propaganda led to the increasing

importance of Turkish ethnic self-consciousness over the traditional Muslim identity.

However, it soon became apparent that the strengthening of Turkish ethnic self-

consciousness was undermining the main goal of communism-- the ethnic unification of

all groups into a single whole, a socialist nation whose members share a single language,

literature, art, culture and customs.

Beginning in the late 1950s (after the 1958 plenum of the Central Committee of

the Bulgarian Communist Party), privileges provided to the members of the Turkish

minority began to be curtailed. The first step in this process was the merger of Turkish

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schools with Bulgarian schools. After the 1959-60 school year all Turkish-language high

schools , vocational schools and teacher-training schools were merged with Bulgarian

schools. The Department of philology at Sofia University became the Department of

Arabic Studies. The Turkish branch of Narodna Prosveta Publishing House, which had

been publishing the works of native Turkish writers, meant that only a few publications

in Turkish would appear in the country after 1970. Turkish books disappeared from

bookstores and libraries, even those published in Bulgaria. During the 1980s Turkish

books and periodicals were confiscated from private libraries of Turks and in some

instances destroyed. Turkish radio broadcasts ended. The few remaining Turkish

language newspapers began to appear in bilingual editions until early 1985 when they

began to appear in Bulgarian only. Between December 1984 and March 1985 the

campaign to assimilate Turks and other Muslims came to its brutal end when close to one

million Muslims were forced to replace their Muslim names with Bulgarian names after

which even speaking Turkish in public was prohibited as the authorities confidently

declared that there were no Turks in Bulgaria, that Bulgaria was single-nation state with a

single language (Bulgarian) and a uniform socialist culture.

From the beginning, the Communist Party ideologues in Bulgaria saw religion as

a competing ideology to communism and sought to replace it with a socialist ideology.

Islam was a special target for several reasons. It was an alien religion brought to

Bulgaria by the Ottomans who were said to have imposed it on segments of the Bulgarian

Orthodox population by force; Islam was seen as a serious obstacle to the integration of

Turks and other Muslims into Bulgarian society; the loyalty of Turks and other Muslims

were suspect and the perpetuation of Muslim identity a danger to Bulgarian society.

Consquently, government authorities undertook "a concerted effort to undermine the

religious affiliation of the Turkish and Muslim population, and to transform the

traditional elements in their daily life and their Islamic customs" (Hopken 1997:65).

These efforts involved the undermining of the financial and organizational infrastructures

of the Muslim community in Bulgaria. The financial basis of the Muslim community

was undermined by the confiscation of the properties of pious foundations (vakif). The

institutional basis of the Muslim community was undermined by the decisions taken

during the April 1956 plenum of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist

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Party. One such decision was the directive to local party organs to actively work to

reduce the already depleted number of hodzhas (religious teachers, prayer leaders,

community leaders) working in Turkish and Pomak communities. Statistics suggest the

success of this effort. Prior to 1944 there had been about 15,000 hodzhas in Bulgaria. By

mid-1950s their numbers had been reduced to about 2,700. Three years after the

decisions of the April 1956 plenum were implemented in 1958, there were less than 600.

Their numbers would be reduced further to about 400, serving a community of over one

million Muslims (See Mizov 1965: 195. Moreover, the functions of the remaining

hodzhas would be drastically curtailed to merely leading Friday prayers at mosques.

Intense anti-religious propaganda was accompanied by actual banning of Muslim

activities beginning with a ban on teaching of Koran in 1952. Later on during the 1970s

and especially during the 1980s, banned activities would extend to almost all areas of

Muslim life. Fasting during the month of Ramadan was banned. The slaughtering of

lambs during the Feast of Sacrifice was prohibited. The washing of corpses prior to

burial and the internment of the dead in Muslim cemeteries was banned. Muslims were

required to bury their dead in Bulgarian cemeteries according to a new ‘socialist' funerary

ritual. In Muslim cemeteries grave stones with Turkish or Arabic writing were defaced

or destroyed. Chanting of the mevlit was banned. Parents who allowed their young sons

to be circumcised and the person performing the rite were liable to arrest and

imprisonment from two to five years. Young Muslim boys were inspected periodically to

make sure that they had not been circumcised. Parents of new-born boys, while still in

the maternity hospital, were required to sign a document promising not to circumcise

their sons. Traditional wedding customs and ceremonies could no longer be carried out.

Weddings could take place only on Sundays and only in special wedding halls and

according to 'socialist' wedding rites. During weddings the participants were not allowed

to sing Turkish songs and dance Turkish dances. After 1984 the participants could not

even speak Turkish. The wearing of traditional clothes by Muslim women was banned.

Prior to 1984 the number of functioning mosques in Bulgaria had been significantly

reduced. Many were closed to worship and fell into ruin. Others were converted to

alternative uses - museums, warehouses, stores, and restaurants. The crescents and stars,

symbol of Islam, were removed from the top of minarets. Between 1984 and 1989 the

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closure of the remaining mosques accelerated. The government allowed a small number

of mosques to function, but this was essentially for propaganda purposes: the number of

functioning mosques and the number of imams, under 400 by early 1980s, were totally

inadequate for a population of over 1.5 million Muslims in the country. As Baest (1985:

22) observes, “the Islamic clergy, already severely weakened since 1948, were further

decimated” during and after the winter campaign of 1984-1985 against Turkish Muslims.

During the 1980s an observer traveling through the predominantly Muslim areas

of Bulgaria would have been struck by the changes in the architectural landscape of these

regions, and hard-pressed to guess that Muslims been living in these areas for more than

600 years!

After 1989 all restrictions on religious rights imposed arbitrarily by the

communist regime were removed. 1990 was a watershed year for renewed Islam in

Bulgaria. Islamic schools closed during the communist era reopened and new religious

schools were established. In 1990, with help from Turkish pious foundations, an Islamic

Theological Institute was inaugurated in Sofia with a freshman class of 45 students. An

Islamic secondary school in Şumen, Medresetun Nüvvab, which had been turned into a

secular high school during the 1947-48 school year, reopened its doors to students of

religion. Another religious school was established in Momchilgrad. The rights of

Muslims to repair old mosques and to build new ones were restored. Since 1989

hundreds of old mosques have been repaired and scores of new ones built. At the end of

1992 there were close to 1,000 mosques open for religious services: an increase from

about 300 in 1989 (Tomova and Bogoev 1992: 7-8). The restriction on the publication,

importation and distribution of Korans and other religious texts was lifted. The Koran

has been translated into Bulgarian and Turkish. Muslims are freely celebrating important

religious holidays and carrying out traditional funerary and marriage rituals without overt

government interference. Although circumcision of young Muslim boys was allowed,

initially, religious specialists were not admitted to hospitals to carry out the requisite

religious rites during the operation. Hence many Muslim parents resorted to

circumcision outside hospitals, under unsanitary conditions. Only in 1998, for the first

time in fifty years, the authorities allowed the public performance of circumcision rituals.

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On September 1998, more than 30 Muslim boys were circumcised in the Tekke mosque

in Dobrich in northeastern Bulgaria.

Another problem, which was not resolved until recently, was the question of who

should lead the Muslim community in Bulgaria. The socialist (formerly communist)

governments between 1990 and 1996 continued to support Nedim Gendzhev, who had

been appointed as Chief Mufti and head of the High Muslim Council by the communist

regime in 1988. In 1992 a rival Muslim council selected Fikri Sali as the new Chief

Mufti but the government refused to recognize his selection. The existence of rival chief

muftis and Muslim councils divided the Muslim community, which may have been the

intention of the socialists all along. After the defeat of the socialists in the 1997

elections, the way was open for reconciliation. On August 1997, Nedim Gendzhev, the

head of the High Muslim Council and Fikri Sali, the head of the High Spiritual Council,

signed a declaration agreeing to hold a joint conference to unify the two councils and to

elect a new Chief Mufti. Both decided not to run for election. At the unification

conference, held on October 23, 1997, a new High Muslim Council was formed and a

new Chief Mufti, 35 year old Mustafa Alish Hodzha, was elected.

In the 1990s positive attitudes toward religion have increased among Muslims and

Christians alike in Bulgaria. The shared experience of enforced restrictions on the

practice of Islam during the 1970s and 1980s has rallied the Turks and other Muslims to

their faith. The results of a sociological survey on religious attitudes in Bulgaria suggests

a very gradual but steady recovery of Islam in Bulgaria. According to the results of this

survey, about 31 percent of adult Muslim respondents said they were deeply religious, 42

percent prayed regularly, 20 percent went to the mosque regularly, 23.1 percent

incorporated religion into the celebration of life-cycle events, 17 percent read religious

literature, 45 percent observed religious fasts, 40 percent followed Koranic prohibitions

against drinking and eating pork, but more than 84 percent celebrated religious holidays

regularly (Natsionalen Statisticheski Institut 1993: 57-113; see Hopken 1997: 74-75).

Some conservative religious leaders find these modest gains unsatisfactory. They want to

recreate the overarching Muslim identity that existed in the past and to establish the

primacy of religious principles governing the lives of Muslims in Bulgaria. Members of

the secular Turkish intelligentsia view such a possibility with alarm. They point to the

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inwardness and the isolation of the Muslim community from the larger Bulgarian society

prior to World War II. Such isolation, they argue, resulted in a community that was

largely illiterate, culturally impoverished, economically poor, and politically isolated. To

them, the success of Turks and other Muslims in Bulgaria depends on their full

participation in the civic institutions of Bulgarian society. One would hope that religious

and secular leaders among Muslims in Bulgaria would work to create the conditions that

allow for freedom of religious expression and full participation of Muslims in the civic

institutions of Bulgarian society.

During the communist period Turks and other minorities “had no public voice, no

organizational infrastructure, few shared visible symbols of community and history”

(Bates 1994: 202). During this period there were parliamentarians from among the

minorities in the National Assembly but they did not represent a particular constituency.

Their foremost allegiance was to the Communist Party. Many of them supported the

forced assimilationist policies of the Zhivkov regime against Muslims.

The period since 1989 has “seen the emergence and empowerment of an ethnic

political movement, the rise of politicized Turkish ethnicity, and the construction of a

sense of a national Moslem community” (Bates 1994: 202). To empower Turks and

other Muslims and to mobilize them for political action, the Movement for Rights and

Freedoms (MRF) was formed in January 1990. It drew most of its support from Turks. In

addition about fifty percent of Bulgarian-speaking Muslims (Pomaks) and about a third of

Gypsy Muslims supported it in the multi-party elections in 1990 and 1991 (Bates 1993).

The Movement was immediately labeled as an ‘ethnic Turkish party’ and its legitimacy

was challenged on constitutional grounds. Article 11 (4) of the Constitution prohibits the

formation of “political parties on ethnic, racial or religious lines. . . “ (Sofia Press

Agency 1991: 6). After several unsuccessful attempts to ban the party at the lower

courts, the case reached the Bulgarian Constitutional Court in 1992. The Court rejected

this latest attempt to ban the Movement and left it to function as a political party (East

European Constitutional Review 1992: 11). The Movement for Rights and Freedoms has

participated in all of the national and local elections held so far and has been quite

successful in electing members to Parliament, 23 MPs in 1990, 24 in 1991, 15 in 1994,

and 19 in 1997. The Movement has been even more successful at the local level, electing

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hundreds of village headmen, municipal council representatives and scores of mayors in

areas with ethnically mixed populations.

Muslims in Greece

The earliest settlements of Muslims in the Balkans occurred in what is today northern

Greece, Macedonia and Albania along the ancient Roman road, Via Egnatia, that

connected Constantinople with the Adriatic port of Durazzo, present-day Durres in

Albania. Greece was also the earliest country in the Balkans to gain its independence

from Ottoman rule (1830). Initially it was a small state comprising what is today

southern Greece. Between 1881 and 1920 it gradually expanded at Ottoman expense to

within its present boundaries. The Greek state inherited a substantial non-Orthodox

population, from the Ottoman Empire, primarily Muslim-- Turks, Bulgarian speaking

Muslims, and Albanians. From the beginning Muslims were considered to be foreign

elements within the Greek nation-state, thus, ineligible for Greek citizenship. Under such

conditions, Turks and other Muslims emigrated first to other areas of the Balkans still

under Ottoman control and after the Balkan wars and World War I, and especially after

the establishment of the modern Turkish Republic in 1923, to Turkey. Population

exchanges between Greece and Turkey regulated by a protocol signed between Greece

and Turkey in 1923 reduced the number of Muslims in Greece considerably. Over

400,000 Muslims, mostly ethnic Turks, were sent from Greece to Turkey and about 1.2

million Greeks (Orthodox Christians, many of them Turkish speaking) were sent to

Greece (Poulton 1997 :83). However, the Turks of western Thrace and the Greeks of

Istanbul and the islands of Imbros (Gökçeada) and Tenedos (Bozcaada) were exempt

from the exchange. According to the Turkish delegation to the Lausanne Convention, the

total population of western Thrace in 1923 was 191, 699. Of these 129,120 or 67 percent

were Turks, 33,910 or 18 percent were Greeks, the rest were mostly Bulgarians. The

Greek side, on the other hand, put the number of Turks in western Thrace at 103,000

(Human Rights Watch, 1990: 1-12). The Lausanne Convention spelled out the rights of

the Muslim community in Greece and the Greek Orthodox community in Turkey. Each

country was required to guarantee and protect the rights of minorities on their territories

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(Human Rights Watch 1990: 47-50). The purpose of these requirements was to insure

the preservation of the ethnic and religious character of the Muslim minority in Greece

and the Greek minority in Turkey.

According to Angelopoulos (1979: 125-26), population exchanges between

Bulgaria and Greece under the Neuilly Treaty of 1919, population exchanges between

Greece and Turkey under the Lausanne Convention of 1923 and emigration of Turks and

other Muslims during this century have created an ethnically homogeneous Greek state.

In his words, "there is no Slav community nor any other alien community except for the

small Moslem one. Thus there no longer exists any substantial ethnological question in

Greece." He goes on to claim that "Greece represents in Europe, a country with

practically ideal ethnic, linguistic and religious homogeneity and unity" (Angelopoulos

1979: 129).

The most serious human rights violations in Greece today are connected to the

official denial of ethnic identity. The only officially recognized minority in Greece is the

Muslim minority. If pressed, Greek authorities acknowledge that some members of this

minority are Turcophone and others are Slavophone but they are adamant that

Turcophone Muslims are not ethnically Turkish and Slavophone Muslims are not

ethnically Bulgarian. They are not ethnically Greek either. In the language of Article 19

of the Greek Nationality Law they are “persons of non-Greek ethnic origin.” Greek

authorities justify their denial of ethnic identity of Muslims by insisting that the Lausanne

Treaty mentions Muslims in Western Thrace, not Turks or ethnic groups. The ambiguity

about their identity relegates Muslims to second class citizenship status in Greek society

and subjects them to discriminatory policies as discussed later on (See Ahmet 1989).

There is a near-unanimous support of the official position among Greek intellectuals and

the hierarchy of the Greek Orthodox Church. Those who dissent from this view are

subject to arrest and imprisonment.

Since 1951 the Greek authorities have not provided any official figures on the

number of Muslims in Greece and the ethnic makeup of this population. Hence, reliable

figures for Turks or other minorities are difficult to come by. In the absence of published

official figures on the size of the Muslim population and its ethnic and linguistic makeup

we must rely on unofficial estimates. Knowledgeable observers agree, however, high

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emigration rates of Muslims from Western Thrace to Turkey and to EU countries,

especially Germany, have kept their numbers virtually unchanged since 1923. Poulton

(1993: 183) cites one estimate for 1981 provided by the Information Office at the Greek

Embassy in London. According to this source, there were "a total of 110,000 people

belonging to religious minorities of whom some 60,000 were Turkish-speaking Muslims,

30,000 Pomaks, and 20,000 Athingani . . . or Roma Gypsies." These estimates are

disputed by turkey as well as Turkish sources in Western Thrace who "claim a total of

100,000 t0 120,000 Turkish-speaking Muslims in Western Thrace." Christidis (1996:

153-54) gives an estimate of 114,000 Muslims in Western Thrace for 1993. In addition

to Western Thrace there "are thought to be some 35,000 Muslims in Athens, and another

15,000 in Rhodes and Chios." That would bring the total of Muslims in Greece to about

164,000.

The relations between Greece and Turkey have greatly affected the treatment of

the Muslim minority in Western Thrace. As Bahcheli (Commission on Security and

Cooperation in Europe 1996: 4) observes, “When those relations [have] been smooth -

and there was a time when those relations were not too bad - the conditions for the

community [were] good, too. This was the case roughly between 1930 and 1955” (See

Bahcheli 1990). During the late 1940s and the early 1950s, as a result of rapprochement

between Greece and Turkey as members of NATO and tense relations with the newly

established communist regimes in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, Greece relaxed its

"traditional antipathy towards the use of ethnic labels to refer to ethnic minorities in

Western Thrace and upheld the entire Pomak/Turk/Muslim minority as 'Turkish'. It also

embarked on a state-sponsored policy of assimilating the Pomaks into the Turkish

population: compulsory schooling in Turkish for Pomaks was introduced, and they were

now forced to declare themselves as Turks, a policy supported by Turkey. Thus at this

juncture the Pomak/Turkish/ Muslim community of Western Thrace was regarded as a

national Turkish minority" (Poulton 1997: 85-86; see Seypel 1989). This practice was

ended in the 1950s as the relations between Greece and Turkey deteriorated over the

Cyprus question. However, the consistent denial of the Bulgarin ethnicity of Pomaks

forced many Pomaks to draw closer to the Turkish community, believing that Turkey as a

kin-state would protect the interests of all Muslim in Greece. Consequently, over the

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years most Pomaks in Western Thrace have come to "manifest a Turkish national

consciousness in part through enculturation and education in minority [Turkish] schools

and through intermarriage with ethnic Turks" (Karakasidou 1995: 71). This certainly was

not the intention of Greek authorities.

After 1955, in response to the Cyprus problem, Greece reverted back to its

traditional distrust of Turkey, and the conditions of the Muslim minority in Western

Thrace began to deteriorate. The onset of the civil strife between Greek and Turkish

Cypriots in 1963, and the move by the Turkish government to deport all Greeks with

Greek citizenship from Turkey in 1964 (60,000 to 70,000 Greeks eventually left),

significantly worsened the situation of Muslims in Greece. The Greek government

responded to these development by initiating a series of discriminatory policies against

Muslims, including the reinstitution of a 1938 law prohibiting Muslims from engaging in

financial transactions. This law was implemented and strictly enforced during the rule of

the military junta between 1967 and 1974. Turkish military intervention in Cyprus in

1974 contributed further to serious curtailment of the rights of the Muslim minority in

Western Thrace. With the Cyprus crisis, "active discrimination against the

Turkish/Muslim minority became the norm" (Poulton (1997 :86; see Poulton 1993: 182-

88).

The return to democracy in 1974 did not reverse these discriminatory practices. A

Helsinki Watch mission to Western Thrace in 1990 confirmed reported a long list of

human rights violations against Muslims of Western Thrace (Helsinki Watch Report

1990). A follow up report in 1992 noted some improvements in the situation of Muslims

but reported that “important problems still remain involving education, the expropriation

of land, the selection of muftis who are the religious leaders of the Muslim community,

and control of the Wakfs which are charitable foundations.

A serious source of tension between the members of the Muslim minority and the

Greek state is over the arbitrary and discriminatory application of certain laws to the

detriment of Greek citizens of non-Greek origin. Greek jurisprudence distinguishes

between those citizens who have a Greek national consciousness, "established on the

basis of common racial origin, often but not always common language and religion, and

especially common history and ideals, and those who do not have Greek national

15

consciousness (MRG Greece 1994: 18). Citizens who lack Greek national consciousness,

such as Turks, can be deprived of Greek citizenships under the application of Article 19

of the Greek Nationality Law. Article 19 states that, "A person of non-Greek ethnic

origin who leaves Greece without the intention of returning, may be declared as having

lost Greek nationality" (Human Rights Watch 1990: 11). This article has been frequently

and arbitrarily used by Greek authorities "to deny re-entry of Turks and to deprive ethnic

Turks who leave the country, even for temporary periods, of their Greek citizenship"

(Poulton 1997 :19). The Greek government has deprived thousands of Muslims, mostly

ethnic Turks, of their Greek citizenship under Article 19 (Commission on Security and

Cooperation in Europe 1996: 2).

The members of the Muslim community also complain that expropriation of land

by state authorities has seriously depleted Muslim land holdings. At the time of the

signing of the Lausanne convention in 1923, 67 percent of the population of Western

Thrace was Muslim who owned 84 percent of the land. However, in 1923 the percentage

of Greeks in Western Thrace increased sharply as many Greeks from Turkey were settled

there (Karakasidou 1995: 71). Over the last seventy five years Muslim land holdings

have been reduced to around twenty percent, largely through state expropriation of land

without adequate compensation "in the name of public interest" (Christidis 1996: 154).

Since Western Thrace is a border area, the Greek authorities often have used national

security as a justification for appropriation of Muslim-owned land.. Another contributing

factor to the erosion of Muslim land base in Western Thrace is the use of Decree

1366/1938 which to forbids foreign nationals from buying land in border areas. The

Decree treats Muslims as foreign nationals even though they are Greek citizens (Poulton

1993: 183). Expropriation of Muslim land without adequate compensation, reallocation

of land, restrictions on the purchase of land by Muslims, are all aimed to make life for

Muslims difficult and to force them to emigrate.

Members of the Muslim community also allege that they have been prevented

from repairing their old homes or building new ones. One result of this restriction is the

poor quality of Muslim houses in Western Thrace compared to those of their Greek

neighbors. Bahcheli, in a report to the Commission on Security and Cooperation in

Europe (1996: 5) based on a visit to Western Thrace in 1993, found a striking contrast

16

between Turkish and Greek houses. “Virtually every decrepit, sagging, and poor-looking

house belonged to the Turks. The modern and well-preserved homes were those that

belonged to the ethnic Greeks.” An important factor behind the difference in living

conditions between Muslims and Greeks is the difficulties that Turkish and other

Muslims have “in obtaining permits to repair old homes or to build new ones. . “

Government interference in the religious affairs of Turks and other Muslims in

Western Thrace is another area of concern. Under the Treaty of Lausanne the Muslim

community in Greece was guaranteed the right to establish, manage and control their own

religious and charitable institutions. Since 1967 government interference in the affairs of

the Muslim community has increased. For example, prior to 1967, the control of pious

foundations (vakif) were in the hands of the Muslim community who collected and

allocated funds to meet pressing community needs. Members of the Muslim community

also elected their own muftis. The military junta that came to power in 1967 altered these

long-established practices. After 1967 both of these privileges were appropriated by the

government in an attempt to weaken the control of the Muslim community over their

religious affairs (Christidis, 1996: 156-57). After 1967 the muftis were appointed by the

Ministry of Religious Affairs. The Ministry also was empowered to nominate the

directors of Islamic endowments (vakifs), had the power to approve or disapprove their

budgets, and had the veto power over how the funds of these endowments were to be

spent.

Article 40 of the Lausanne Treaty stipulates that the Muslim minority in Greece

would have the authority to “establish, administer, and supervise” schools in which the

education would be in the language of the minority. The Greek government was obligated

to help establish and maintain minority [Turkish] primary and secondary schools in

Western Thrace and provide equitable share of public funds for the running of these

schools. Scores of minority primary schools were established as stipulated in the

Lausanne Treaty and operated according to the provisions of bilateral agreements signed

1951 and 1968 between Greece and Turkey.

However, the deterioration of Greek-Turkish relations over the Cyprus problem in

the mid-1950s, and especially after a military junta came to power in Greece in 1967, the

affairs of the Muslim minority entered a period of crisis. Since 1967 the Greek

17

authorities have assumed increased control over administrative and instructional

decisions over how minority schools should be run. Since the late 1960s Greek

authorities have severely limited the hiring of religious and secular teachers from outside

Greece. In 1968 a special teacher-training academy was set up in Salonica to prepare

teachers for Turkish primary and secondary schools in Greece. Since 1968 only the

graduates from this academy could be hired to teach in Turkish schools. . Previously

teachers had come from Turkey. According to Poulton (1993: 185-86), "This academy

takes much of its intake from Greek secondary schools and, its critics claim, relied on an

outdated religious curriculum deliberately to create an incompetent Hellenized education

system in Western Thrace isolated from the mainstream of modern Turkish culture."

Moreover, history books used in minority schools "portray Turks as crude stereotypes

and while Turkish pupils are allowed some books from Turkey, there have been

inexplicable delays resulting in outdated textbooks having to be used (Poulton 1993:186).

Christidis (1996: 158-159) reports that during the 1992-93 school year, "there

were 232 primary schools, 2 secondary schools and two religious schools (medrese)

serving the minority. There were 9,050 minority students in primary schools and 1,602

in secondary schools. Of these 678 "were enrolled in minority secondary schools and

medreses, and 924 at non-minority secondary schools." A total of 432 teachers were

employed in Muslim minority schools during the 1992-93 school year. More than half of

these teachers (210) were graduates of the teacher-training academy in Salonica

(Christidis 1996:159). What is striking in these figures is the fact that for a minority

population that is estimated between 100,000 and 120,000, there were only two

secondary schools with 1,602 students! One of these secondary schools has not

graduated any students for several years while the other has averaged six graduates a year

between 1985 and 1990 (Oran 1992-94: 125). The implementation of a decree in 1984

that examinations for entrance to Turkish secondary schools be in Greek has led to

significant decline in enrollments in Turkish secondary schools (Poulton 1993: 186).

In addition to inadequate number of schools, especially secondary schools, to

meet the needs of the Muslim minority, concerns have been raised about the poor quality

of existing facilities, poorly trained staff, and the poor quality of education that students

enrolled in these schools receive. State provides inadequate resources for running these

18

schools. Often requests for repair of existing schools or the construction of new schools

are delayed or denied altogether. According to Bahcheli (quoted in Christidis 1996: 158),

many of the existing minority schools "consist of dilapidated one-room buildings,

without adequate facilities or equipment. It is common to have one-classroom schools

for the first to sixth grades. Under these circumstances, the quality of the education

received is very poor." The poor quality of education in these schools is reflected in the

extremely high illiteracy rate among Turks of Western Thrace. According to Oran (1992-

94:125), during the late 1980s, the illiteracy rate among Turks in Western Thrace was

around 60 percent. This compares with a rate of 14.2 percent for the population of

Greece as a whole.

Despite the inferior education minority schools in Western Thrace provide, a

small number of graduates from these schools managed to continue their education and

obtain university degrees, mostly from universities in Turkey. These university graduates

have formed the nucleus of a professional class and are in a position to help Turks and

other Muslims in Western Thrace to deal more effectively with Greek bureaucracy. More

surprisingly, to the consternation of Greek authorities, these intellectuals have also

managed to use Turkish national ideology to transform "a heterogenous Muslim minority

into an increasingly consolidated group with Turkish national consciousness"

(Karakasidou 1995: 73, 75).

Like other citizens of Greece, Muslims have a right to vote. However, Greek

authorities have interfered with the exercise of this right in numerous ways. For

example, during the parliamentary elections in 1989 it was alleged that Greek authorities

closed border crossings a few days before elections to keep Turkish Muslims from

returning to Greece to vote; air and bus service to Western Thrace from Athens and other

parts of Greece were cancelled during the election week for the same purpose; thousands

of Greek servicemen were bussed to Western Thrace to vote in an attempt to outweigh

the ethnic Turkish vote; there was a shortage of ballot boxes in Muslim areas; in the same

areas scores of polling places were closed prematurely even while people were still

waiting in line to vote; counting the votes was stopped prematurely and vote totals were

not released; and intimidation of Muslims were reported in several voting place

(Helsinki Watch 1990: 20-30).

19

During the 1980s and 1990s, in response to continuing discrimination and

violation of the human rights of Muslims in Western Thrace participated in widespread

protests. During one such demonstration organized to protest the trial of Dr. Sadik

Ahmet in 1990 in Komotini the Greeks rioted “beating Muslims, smashing windows, and

looting Muslim-owned businesses, while the police allegedly stood by passively and

watched. In all, a total of twenty-one people were injured, a Greek was killed by a

Muslim, and 200 businesses were damaged during the rioting and its aftermath. The

Turkish Council stationed in Komotini was declared persona non grata and expelled

from Greece” (Karakasidou 1995: 74).

The treatment of Dr. Sadik Ahmet and others who challenge the official version

of the minority in Western Thrace illustrates the extent to which Greek authorities are

willing to go to support that official version. In 1986 Sadik Ahmet, a spokesman for

Turkish minority, was arrested, tried, and sentenced to two-and-a-half year prison term.

He was accused of spreading false information, and falsifying signatures on a petition

sent “to the UN and Council of Europe alleging a policy of assimilation and forced

emigration by the Greek authorities” (Christidis 1996:160). He was accused of claiming

the existence of a Turkish minority in Greece and claiming that he himself was an ethnic

Turk. In 1990 he was sentenced “to 18 months imprisonment and three years’

deprivation of civil rights” (Christidis 1996:160). His sentence was reduced and finally

he was released after paying a fine in lieu of serving his entire sentence. All these

machinations of the Greek authorities did not prevent Dr. Ahmet from being re-elected to

parliament in 1990. Following 1990 elections the Greek Parliament passed a new election

law establishing a threshhold of three percent of the nationwide vote for election to

parliament. Such threshholds are common in many countries but in Greece the law was

passed expressly to prevent the elections of Turks and other Muslims to parliament. To

further marginalize ethnic Muslims politically, additional measures were taken in

Western Thrace to restrict the ability of Muslims to elect their own candidates to local

and regional political offices. One example of this was to combine Muslim districts with

Greek majority districts for the election of governors, making the election of Muslims to

these offices difficult if not impossible. These measures effectively eliminated the

possibility of electing Muslims to parliament and severely limited the chances of electing

20

Muslims to local offices. Nevertheless, during the 1998 elections four towns in Western

Thrace elected Muslims (ethnicTurks) as mayors.

Conclusions

The assimilation policies of the Zhivkov regime, which had culminated in the denial of

the existence of ethnic Turks in Bulgaria, were reversed in late 1989. The rights of

Turks, Tatars and other Muslims which had been targets of assimilation were restored.

The Constitution of the Republic of Bulgaria adopted in 1991 recognizes the existence of

citizens of non-Bulgarian origin and guarantees the right of citizens of non-Bulgarian

origin to be educated in their mother tongue, to develop their cultures in accordance with

their ethnic self-identification, and to practice their religion freely. Since 1989

considerable progress has been made in translating these constitutional guarantees into

action. Most Muslims in Bulgaria today are more confident about themselves and feel

greater pride in who they are when compared with the recent past. They have reclaimed

most of their cultural and civil rights without the violence that characterizes the

relationships between minorities and the majority in many formerly communist states in

Eastern Europe. However, the legal status of the Muslim minority in Bulgaria, especially

its ethnic components, is not entirely satisfactory. Bulgaria is the only country in

Eastern Europe whose post-communist constitution and legal system does not recognize

the existence of national minorities. This maintains the fiction that Bulgaria is a

homogenous, single-nation state. As Hopken (1997: 78-79) observes, even though the

Bulgarian "constitution guarantees cultural rights and freedom from discrimination for all

ethnic and religious groups, it bans anything that might be interpreted as collective

political rights for minorities.

While Bulgaria has made real progress on minority issues since 1989, Greece, a

democratic country and an EU member, has made the least progress. In contrast to

Bulgaria, Greece still insists that there no ethnic minorities on its territory. Those who

express doubts about the official version on this question court danger (see, for example,

Karakasidou 1993, 1994). In the words of Karakasidou (1995: 71), assertions of the

existence of an ethnic Turkish minority, or of any other ethnic minority for that matter,

21

“clash with the uncompromising supremacy of the Greek national idiom. In effect they

provoke the full force of the Greek penal code which condemns them for creating rifts in

the sacred homogeneity of the population and inciting citizens to violence

The presence of sizable Muslim minorities in Bulgaria, Greece and elsewhere in

the Balkans remains a source of tension in the region. Fear, suspicion, and dislike of

Muslims and Islam among Balkan peoples, a residue of several centuries of Ottoman

rule, remain. The negative image of Turks and Islam is perpetuated by most Balkan

historiography which continues to frame the Ottoman conquerors, and by extension Turks

and other Muslims, as bloodthirsty barbarians, cruel tormentors and oppressors who

brought only ruin in their wake; five centuries of ‘Turkish yoke’ in the Bulgarian

formulation. As an article in a recent PER Bulletin (1999:6) puts it “The histories of

other countries in the region -- and of domestic national minorities -- are ignored,

minimized, or, most often, portrayed in a highly distorted or hostile light. Students carry

these prejudices into their adult lives, providing the raw material for future ethnic

conflicts.”

Recently steps have been taken to try to remedy this situation. In 1998

educational representatives from Albania, Bulgaria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Greece,

Macedonia, Romania, Turkey, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia met in Bulgaria to

discuss the issue of bias and prejudice in textbooks. A committee of experts was

established to examine the contents of textbooks used in secondary education, to identify

the biases and prejudices in them and to prepare recommendations for their revision. The

goal is to produce common textbooks without blatantly nationalistic, biased and

prejudiced references to other countries in the region as well as the distorted and often

hostile references to domestic national minorities. The revised textbooks would

downplay wars and conflicts between Balkan countries and instead emphasize their

common heritage. This is a well-intentioned and worthwhile project to pursue.

Finally, the conflict between state sovereignty and minority rights can be

minimized if nation-states recognize and honor the human rights of minorities on the one

hand, and firmly reject the extreme irredentist or autonomist demands on the other. This

dual-track policy may not work in all instances but it is preferable to subjecting

minorities to forced assimilation, expulsion, or worse ethnic cleansing.

22

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