Islam in Bulgaria

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The Makbul Ibrahim Pasha Mosque in Razgrad was built in 1616 by order of Ibrahim Pasha and is the third largest mosque in the Balkans.
The Demir-Baba-Tekke , built in the 16th century, is considered the most important tekke of the Bulgarian Alevis - the Alianes

The Islam in Bulgaria is after Christianity the most widespread religion in the country. Since 2007, Bulgaria has been the country with the largest percentage of Muslims in the enlarged EU . In a pan-European comparison, however, Islam in Bulgaria only ranks sixth with 10 to 13% and roughly on par with Russia (around 14%), but still well behind North Macedonia (33%), Bosnia and Herzegovina (44%), Albania (almost 70%), Kosovo (around 96%) and the European part of Turkey (98%). Most of the Muslims in Bulgaria are ethnic Turks , Pomaks and Roma . The Turkish minority in Bulgaria calls itself the Bulgarian Turks (Turkish: Bulgaristan Türkleri , Bulgar . Български турци / bălgarski turtsi ).

Most of the Muslims in Bulgaria are Sunnis , there are also the Sufi Alians and Alevis , as well as Bektashi . Religiously, the Sunni denomination in Bulgaria is today led by a chief mufti (Turkish başmüftü , bulg. Главен мюфтия / glawen mjuftija ). He is elected from the ranks of the Supreme Muslim Council, in which all ten regional muftis are represented.

The majority of Muslims in Bulgaria are not considered to be very religious.

Demographic Dimensions

Turkish Muslims make up the majority of the population in the Bulgarian oblasts (districts) Kardzhali (66.2 to 69.6%) and Rasgrad (50.0 to 53.7%), Pomaks (Bulgarian-speaking Muslims) form a relative majority in Smolyan Oblast (42 %). The Turkish-Muslim population shares above the national average are also found in the Oblasts of Targovishte (35.8 to 42.7%), Shumen (30.3 to 35.5%) and Silistra (36.1 to 38.2%), but also Dobrich , Russian , Burgas and Haskovo . Over two thirds of all Muslims in Bulgaria live in these ten of the 28 oblasts mentioned.

2001 census

In the 2001 census, fewer than 1 million (12%) of a total of around 7.9 million inhabitants of Bulgaria declared themselves to be devout Muslims, including 747,000 Turks , 131,000 Pomaks , 103,000 Roma and 20,000 other Muslims (e.g. native Tatars and Circassians as well as Arab, Black African, Iranian and Kurdish immigrants). In contrast to the Turks, the Pomaks are not recognized as a national minority, but only as a religious minority of Muslim Bulgarians.

2011 census

Since the first census carried out after admission to the European Union was subject to EU requirements, in 2011 it was possible for the first time not to answer questions about ethnic and religious affiliation or about the mother tongue. Only the total population decline to 7.365 million inhabitants is clear. Only 588,000 citizens described themselves as Turks (8.8%), barely 606,000 stated Turkish as their mother tongue, and 10.2% of those questioned gave no information about their mother tongue. About 10% described themselves as devout Muslims, but 21.8% gave no answer to the question about religion. Muslims in 2011 are broken down into Sunnis (94.6% of those who call themselves Muslims) and Shiites (4.75% of those who call themselves Muslims).

distribution

Distribution of Muslims to Oblasts

Today Turks and Roma live mainly in the northeast of Bulgaria and Pomaks in the southwest (western Rhodope and Pirin Mountains , south of the Maritza river ), there are two contiguous settlement areas.

  • in the south of Kardzhali in the eastern Rhodope Mountains including the neighboring district of Chaskowo , these areas border on the Turkish East Thrace (and formerly belonged directly to the District of Edirne) as well as the Greek West Thrace (where ethnic Turks and Pomaks live as "Greek Muslims" to this day)
  • in the "Pomak" southwest of the Oblast (district) Smoljan , but also the Oblast Blagoevgrad ( Raslog ) and Pazardzhik (there are also individual Pomak settlements in the "Turkish" districts of Kardzhali and Chaskowo)
  • in the "Turkish" northeast and east about north or northeast of the Burgas-Pleven / Lovetsch line (the former Turkish-Tatar Eyâlet Silistra ), mainly the oblasts of Razgrad , Targovishte , Silistra and Shumen , but also Dobrich and Russe
  • as regional exceptions such as "islands" the Turkish communities near Sliven south of the Balkan Mountains and the Pomaks around Lovech north of the Balkans or the Maritza
  • several places on or near the northern Black Sea coast , where the Ottomans systematically settled Turks, Tatars, Caucasians and Turkmens

In return, there have been numerous Pomaken and Muhadschir communities in today's Turkish Marmara region or Aegean region and Black Sea region , especially in or near the coastal cities, but also in the interior of Phrygia ( Eskişehir ), Lycaonia ( Ereğli ), Mysia ( Balıkesir ), Bithynia and Cilicia . However, they are not recognized as an ethnic minority in Turkey and are largely Turkish. Today around 120,000 Turkish citizens emphasize their Bulgarian origin, but only 20,000 of them still state Pomakian-Bulgarian as their mother tongue.

Denominations

Settlement areas of the Alevis in Bulgaria

Most of the Bulgarian Muslims, a total of 546,004 people or 94.6% according to the 2011 census, are Sunni Muslims. Shiite communities such as the Alianas and Alevis , Kizilbaschi and Bektaschites are also present. 24,407 (4.75%) of them live mainly in the provinces of Razgrad , Sliven and Silistra . One of the most famous Tekken of the Bektaschites is the Demir-Baba-Tekke . In 2011, a total of 14,698 people of Turkish origin stated that they did not practice any religion.

Bulgaria and Islam: History

The Jumaya Mosque in Plovdiv

Pre-Ottoman period

More than 100 years before the Ottoman conquest in 1262, supporters of the overthrown Seljuk Sultan Kai Kaus II had already settled in the coastal zone of the western Black Sea between Mesembria and Anchialus , which had been briefly recaptured by the Byzantines. Most of these Muslims had fled to the Nogaiians or Tatars in the Crimea or returned to Anatolia by 1307. From 1285 Bulgaria fell under the sovereignty of the Muslim Mongol ruler Nogai Khan , Nogai's son Tschaka Nogai , who was married to a Bulgarian princess, even became Bulgarian Tsar for a short time in 1299. Then Tatars and Nogai began to settle in the Dobruja.

Ottoman time

The beginnings of a permanent Muslim presence in what is now Bulgaria in the 14th century coincided with the conquest of the country by the Ottoman Turks , which broke the predominance of Christianity . After the battles on the Mariza (1371) , on the Blackbird Field (1389) and at Nikopolis (1396) , all of Bulgaria was annexed to the Ottoman Empire ; Sofia became Ottoman in 1382. The capital Tarnowo was conquered in July 1393, a last crusade against the conquerors failed in 1444 in the battle of Varna .

Under the Ottoman-Turkish rule, which lasted until 1878/1885 and 1908/12, numerous Turks and people of Turkic origin settled in Bulgaria or were resettled here; also converted mainly in the 16th and 17th century Slavic Bulgarians to Islam.

From then on , the Pomaks formed their own group among the Bulgarian and Slavic Muslims , two of their representatives ( Filibeli and Kalafat ) even made the highest careers in the Ottoman Empire as Ottoman grand viziers in the 17th and 18th centuries , as did the one from the northern Bulgarian city of Rustschuk ( Russian ) from the Turk Çelebizade Scherif Hasan Pascha or the young Turk Talât Pascha from the southern Bulgarian town of Kardzhali . The Pomaks are not to be confused with the Turkish minority in Bulgaria. Despite adopting Turkish cultural elements, most of these Slavic Muslims continue to speak a Bulgarian dialect known as Pomakic.

According to the Encyclopaedia of Islam , Eastern Bulgaria already had a Turkish-Muslim majority at the beginning of the 16th century. In the 19th century there were Muslim majorities in Plovdiv , Pleven , Vidin , Varna and other important administrative cities, around a third of the population of Bulgaria was Muslim at that time. Also Brockhaus' Conversations-Lexikon was for 1885 to over 42% Muslims in the Principality of Bulgaria and over 20% for Eastern Rumelia, together nearly 33% for both halves of Bulgaria.

Most of the Muslims in Bulgaria are Hanafi Sunnis . Early 16th century, however, the Turkish Sultan sent Selim I after his victory over the Shiite Persians as Alevi and Shiite Turks zwangsumsiedeln to Bulgaria, so that today there is also some 80,000 Shiites and some Bektashi , primarily in the region of Razgrad or Sliven are .

Bulgarian state independence and emigration of Muslims

The so-called Bulgarian April uprising against Ottoman rule in 1876 and its consequences led to the Russo-Turkish War of Liberation . The first Turks fled the country during the war. After the Turkish defeat, the Bulgarian state was re-established. In the Berlin Treaty of 1878 it was decided to establish an autonomous tributary principality of Bulgaria and an Ottoman province of Eastern Rumelia . While the Tarnowo Constitution was being drawn up , the Turkish minority had its own representatives in the first National Assembly, alongside the numerous other minorities. However, this did not prevent the emigration of hundreds of thousands of Muslims to Anatolia . The wave of emigration continued even after the principality was united with the province of Eastern Rumelia in 1885. In 1885 there were 778,558 Muslims in united Bulgaria, who made up 32.72% of the total population. From the founding of the Principality of Bulgaria (1878) to 1912, approx. 350,000 Turks emigrated.

On December 8, 1910 was the first time in what is now Bulgaria Supreme Muftirat and a chief mufti (bulg. Главен мюфтия / glawen mjuftija ) selected.

Bulgaria's borders after the London Conference (1913) and the Treaty of Bucharest (1913)

In the First Balkan War of 1912, the Ottoman Empire lost its last European territories, with the exception of the area around Constantinople. The countries of the Balkan Federation shared the former Ottoman vilayets in Europe. The territories conquered in the war in Thrace , the Rhodope Mountains (today's districts of Blagoevgrad , Smolyan and Kardzhali ) and the Strandscha Mountains as well as a small part of Macedonia fell to Bulgaria . However, there was a mixed population, especially in regions of Thrace and the Rhodope Mountains.

Within the framework of the Balkan Federation, however, there were disputes between Bulgaria on the one hand and Serbia and Greece on the other over the distribution of the territories in Macedonia, which resulted in the Second Balkan War. Bulgaria lost areas in which an Islamic majority or minority lived. The southern Dobruja came to Romania , Eastern Thrace to the Ottoman Empire and part of Macedonia in Greece and Serbia . To take advantage of this situation, the Islamic population of Thrace (Pomaks and Turks) allied with the Greek and Jewish against the Bulgarian to form the short-lived Provisional Government of Western Thrace . They were supported by Greece with weapons and by the Turkish secret organization Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa , which pursued the goal of founding a unified, Islamic and all-Turkish state and expelled the Bulgarian population of Thrace (see Thracian Bulgarians ).

After the end of the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 , several hundred thousand people, including Muslims, were lost through flight or “resettlement” through organized “population exchange” programs that came about in the intergovernmental peace treaties (with regard to Bulgaria, see the Treaty of Constantinople ) , their home on the Balkan Peninsula. In all Balkan states, around 27% of Muslims perished between 1914 and 1925, and over 60% emigrated to Turkey or were expelled there. Compensation for the loss of property of the respective refugees from the Balkan Wars of 1912/1913 between Bulgaria and Turkey was regulated in the 1925 Angora Treaty .

After the defeat of Bulgaria in the Second Balkan War and the reorientation of Bulgarian politics (the opponent was no longer the Ottoman Empire or the Turks, Pomaks and Muslims, but the hegemonic efforts of Serbia and Greece), the situation of the Muslims living in Bulgaria also changed. The attempts at Bulgarization and Christianization that took place in the Rhodope Mountains during the Balkan Wars were reversed. During the First World War Bulgaria fought with the Ottoman Empire on the side of the Central Powers against Greece. Muslim troop units were also admitted to the Bulgarian army.

After the end of the First World War Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire were on the losing side. Bulgaria had to cede further areas (the southwest Bulgarian area of Strumica with its Pomaks and Turks to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, as well as western Thrace to Greece). Bulgaria was ruined not only militarily, but also economically. The enormous masses of Bulgarian refugees from areas lost in the wars that had to be supplied and the impending global economic crisis , which initially began as an agricultural crisis in Bulgaria, led to a reduction in the price of agricultural products (for more on this see Bulgaria under the government of Andrei Lyaptschew ). The Muslim population of Bulgaria, who mostly lived in the countryside, was one of the first to feel these changes. In addition to the many Bulgarians who fled to North and South America , around 50,000 Muslims left the country for Turkey between 1925 and 1930.

In the Treaty of Craiova of 1940, Bulgaria got the southern Dobruja, with about a third of the Muslim population, back from Romania and incorporated it into the north-eastern Bulgarian districts of Silistra and Dobrich .

Muslims in the People's Republic

With the end of the Second World War, a communist regime was also constructed in Bulgaria . After the communist seizure of power in 1944/1946, around 160,000 Bulgarian Turks emigrated by 1958. As part of a “resettlement agreement” between the People's Republic of Bulgaria and Turkey, another 115,000 Turks left the country between 1969 and 1978.

Early 1980 was preparing the communist state and began another " Bulgarisierungs -Welle" which led to the formation of underground organizations and protests with dead among the Muslim population. The state was unable to break the resistance among the population, which Christian Bulgarians increasingly joined, until the end of the 1980s. In the spring of 1989, the communist leadership of the country decided to channel the opposition that had arisen among the Muslim population towards the state to the so-called “ Great Excursion ” (Bulgarian Голямата екскурзия).

After this or despite this wave of refugees of up to 327,000 Muslims who opposed “Bulgarization” in the 1980s, there were still 900,000 members of the Turkish minority in the country in 1991 , of whom barely 800,000 actually recognized themselves as Muslims at that time. With the end of communism, however, came the end of state-imposed atheism , and the belief in religion, including Islam , increased again among Turks and Pomaks . Almost 150,000 Turks who fled in the 1980s returned to Bulgaria , while at the same time many Bulgarians and Turks left Bulgaria looking for work abroad. In the 20 years between 1985 and 2005, the population fell from 9 million to under 8 million, while at the same time the proportion of Muslims in the country rose again slightly.

Democratization of Bulgaria in the 1990s

Seat of the Grand Müftis (Turkish başmüftü ) in Bratja Miladinovi Street in Sofia

Politically, the Bulgarian Turks in particular have been organized into three political parties since 1990; the Movement for Rights and Freedoms , DPS (Bulgarian Движение за права и свободи , ДПС) and the Turkish Democratic Party, TDP (Bulgarian Турска демократическа партия ). However, since the Bulgarian Constitution (Article 11, Paragraph 4) prohibits the establishment of parties on an ethnic, racist or religious basis, the TDP exists in a legal gray area. So far, however, it has been tolerated by the major parties for political reasons, because it represents a spin-off from the DPS. In the case of the DPS, even the constitutional court had to review the party's constitutionality. However, the motion, which was requested by 93 BSP MPs in 1991, missed the necessary majority of 7 out of 12 judges for processing. Since then, the DPS has tried again and again to profile itself as a liberal party in order not to violate the constitution. However, she has to deal with allegations of being an illegal party again and again. In 1997 a formation around Güner Tahir split off from the DPS, which then became part of the National Movement for Rights and Freedoms , NPS (Bulgarian: Национално движение за права и свободи, НПС) , which was founded in 1998 .

However, the DPS entered parliament in 1991 and has since been involved in almost all coalition governments of the post-communist era . In the first free parliamentary elections in 1990 it received 6.01% of the votes cast , in 1991 it received 7.55% and in 2005 even 12.68%, in Kardzhali its results are over 65%. Their goals are free religious practice , Turkish school lessons and the publication of Turkish newspapers. The DPS denies allegations made by Bulgarian nationalists to seek regional autonomy .

Muslims in Bulgaria: Present

The new mosque in Ardino , southern Bulgaria

The DPS supported certain efforts to reestablish the constitutional monarchy in Bulgaria and, together with Chief Mufti Selim Mehmed, the government of ex- Tsar Simeon Sakskoburggotski until 2005 . The ruling coalition that has been running since 2005 together with the Communist successor party, the BSP , is considered controversial .

In 2002 the law for religious communities (bulg. Закон за вероизповеданията) came into force, which now regulates the institutional structure of the Muslim religious community in Bulgaria.

In 2009 the Progress and Prosperity Party (Bulgarian Прогрес и благодентствие / Progres i blagodenstwie) was founded with Adrian Palow as chairman. She is considered to be the representative of the Bulgarian Muslims and Pomaks and wants to break the monopoly of the DPS.

In September 2009, the brothers Ali and Yuzeir Yuzeirovi tried to found a purely Muslim party called the Muslim Democratic Union (Bulgarian Мюсюлмански демократичен съюз). However, they could not submit an application for registration because they could not collect enough signatures. The attempt to found a purely religious party in Bulgaria, which would have violated the constitution, was also condemned by the leading parties (including the DPS). In August 2010, Yuzeir Yuzeirov was arrested in Belgium for serving two sentences.

On January 11, 2012, the Bulgarian parliament unanimously passed a declaration against the assimilation policy of the former totalitarian regime towards the Muslim minority . The statement was submitted by the chairman of the conservative Blue Coalition Ivan Kostov .

Islamic art in Bulgaria

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Entrance area of ​​the Ahmed Bey Mosque in Kyustendil

During the rule of the Ottoman Empire, most of the buildings of Islamic art were built in what is now Bulgaria. According to the report of the Supreme Mufti, there were 2,356 mosques, 174 tekkes , 142 madrasa and 400 waqfs in Bulgaria during this period . In the period after the Russo-Ottoman War (1877–1878) , the majority of them were destroyed, converted into churches or repurposed for secular purposes.

Today there are 1,458 mosques in Bulgaria. Among the best known include the Eski Mosque in Haskovo , which was built in 1395 and one of the oldest mosques in Bulgaria is that in 1575/76 Sofia Built Banya Bashi Mosque and 1744/45 in the northeastern Bulgarian city of Shumen resulting Tombul Mosque - the largest mosque in Bulgaria and the second largest mosque in the entire Balkan Peninsula. The Ibrahim Pasha Mosque , the third largest mosque in the Balkans, is located in Razgrad and was built in 1616. In Kyustendil , the former administrative center of the Kyustendil Sanjak , the Ahmed Bey Mosque and the Fatih Mehmed Mosque have been preserved, both of which date from the 15th century.

Another special feature are secular buildings such as caravansers , bridges and Besistene . In Burgas on the Black Sea, the still functioning baths ( hammam ) of the Ottoman Sultan Suleyman I the Magnificent from the 16th century can be visited.

See also

literature

  • Ulrich Büchsenschütz: Nationalism and Democracy in Bulgaria since 1989. In: Egbert Jahn (Hrsg.): Nationalism in late and post-communist Europe . Volume 2: Nationalism in the Nation-States. Verlag Nomos, 2009, ISBN 978-3-8329-3921-2 .
  • Roumen Daskalov: The Making of a Nation in the Balkans. Bulgaria: from History to Historiography. Central European University Press, Budapest 2004.
  • Ali Eminov: Turkish and other Muslim Minorities in Bulgaria. London 1997.
  • Kristen Ghodsee : Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe. Gender, Ethnicity and the Transformation of Islam in Postsocialist Bulgaria. Princeton University Press, Princeton 2009, ISBN 978-0-691-13955-5 . (on-line)
  • Iva Kyurkchieva: Bulgarian Muslims in Teteven Region. IMIR Publishing House, Sofia 2004. (Bulg.)
  • Mila Malewa: The Bulgarian Turks - Emigrants in the Republic of Turkey (Culture and Identity). IMIR Publishing House, Sofia 2006. (Bulg.)
  • Ömer Turan: The Turkish Minority in Bulgaria (1878-1908). Türk Tarih Kurumu, Ankara 1998. ISBN 975-16-0955-0
  • Klaus Steinke, Christian Voss (ed.): The Pomaks in Greece and Bulgaria as a model case of Balkan border minorities. Southeastern European Studies Vol. 73. Munich 2007.
  • Encyclopaedia of Islam . Article Bulgaria ( Memento of September 24, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) (I: 1302a), Balkan ( Memento of September 24, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) (I: 998a), Turks ( Memento of December 6, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) ( X: 686b-687a), Plovdiv ( memento of September 24, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) and Pomaks
  • Dimana Trankova, Anthony Georgieff, Hristo Matanov: A guide to Ottoman Bulgaria. Vagabond Media, Sofia 2011. ISBN 978-954-92306-5-9 .

Secondary literature

Web links

Commons : Islam in Bulgaria  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Turkey is only 3%, but with 10 million inhabitants in Europe (97% there).
  2. ↑ All percentages according to the Federal Foreign Office, CIA World Fact Book, various online encyclopedias and Bulgarian censuses
  3. ↑ Census 2011. In: ask.rks-gov.net. Retrieved July 31, 2016 .
  4. ^ Website of the cultural association Bulgaristan Türkleri Kültür ve Hizmet Derneği in Istanbul
  5. ↑ The ten regional muftis have their centers in Sofia, Plovdiv, Goze Deltschew, Smolyan, Pleven, Razgrad, Dobrich, Aytos, Shumen, and Kardzhali
  6. ^ Agence France-Presse : Bulgaria's Muslims not deeply religious: study . Hürriyet Daily New . December 9, 2011. Retrieved March 27, 2013.
  7. ↑ a b http://www.nsi.bg/Census/Religion.htm
  8. ↑ a b Census 2011 (Bulgarian; PDF file; 1.49 MB)
  9. ↑ http://www.nsi.bg/Census/MotherTongue.htm When asked about the mother tongue, more than 762,000 answered Turkish. This difference is similar to the difference among the Roma, whose ethnic group was 371,000, but whose mother tongue Romani was only known to 328,000. It can be explained by the fact that most Muslim Roma prefer Turkish.
  10. ↑ The number results from the difference between religious affiliation and ethnic / linguistic beliefs, the Society for Threatened Peoples ( Memento of December 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) even gives the number of Pomaks in Bulgaria for 2001 as 250,000.
  11. ↑ That would be less than 30% of the Bulgarian Roma. According to Nadège Ragaru ( Memento of November 18, 2006 in the Internet Archive ), however, almost 40% of the Roma in Bulgaria are Muslims, among 371,000 Roma there would be 148,000 Muslims, and 328,000 would be 131,000. The census shows that among the non-Romani speaking Roma there are around 35% Muslim Roma who speak Turkish.
  12. ↑ 1912–1913 Edirne (Bulgarian: Odrin) and 1912–1919 and 1941–1944 Western Thrace were Bulgarian territory
  13. ↑ If one only considers the south of Bulgaria, i. H. the contiguous districts of Smolyan, Blagoevgrad, Kardzhali, Pazardzhik Plovdiv and Chaskowo, with 388,000 of the 1.95 million inhabitants, over 23% are Muslims. Without Plovdiv and Chaskowo located north of the Maritza, the Muslims in the southwest region make up 281,000 of the 955,000 inhabitants and thus 29% - without Plovdiv, Haskowo and Pazardzhik their share is even 37% with 235,000 of 645,000 inhabitants. Taken individually, the Smolyan district has a relative Muslim majority of 40%, while the Kardzhali district has 70% Muslims.
  14. ↑ The Turkish Vilayet Silistra, ruled by a Tatar governor, also extended over the Romanian Dobruja and the Ukrainian regions of Budschak and Jedisan to the borders of the Crimean Khanate. Bulgaria also occupied at least the neighboring Dobruja again from 1916 to 1919, including the port city of Constanta, the center of Islam in Romania.
  15. ↑ 300,000 after archived copy ( Memento from December 24, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  16. ↑ a b Encyclopaedia of Islam , article on Bulgaria [I: 1302a]
  17. ↑ Independence of Northern Bulgaria (north of the Balkan Mountains from Sofia to Varna) as a principality in 1878, annexation of Southeast Bulgaria ( Eastern Rumelia , south of the Balkan Mountains from Plovdiv to Burgas) in 1885, elevation to the kingdom and suspension of Bulgarian tribute payments in 1908, conquest of south-western Bulgaria (Rhodope Mountains) in 1912
  18. ↑ a b Brockhaus' Conversations-Lexikon , supplement volume, pages 208 (Bulgaria) and 578 (Eastern Rumelia). 13th edition, Leipzig 1887: Bulgaria 578,060 Muslims out of 1,404,409 inhabitants (1881), Eastern Rumelia 200,498 Muslims out of 975,030 inhabitants (1885)
  19. ↑ Katrin Boeckh: From the Balkan Wars to the First World War. Small state politics and ethnic self-determination in the Balkans. Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-486-56173-1 , p. 202.
  20. ↑ Bade / Emmer / Lucassen / Oltmer: Encyclopedia Migration in Europe: From the 17th Century to the Present , Verlag Schöningh, 2007, ISBN 978-3-7705-4133-1 , pp. 288 ff.
  21. ↑ a b Февруарска конференция ще избира нов Главен мюфтия
  22. ↑ Hüsamettin Ertürk, İki Devrin Perde Arkası, İstanbul 1957, pp. 115–116.
  23. ^ David Nicolle : The Ottomans - 600 Years of the Islamic World Empire, page 184. Vienna 2008
  24. ↑ през 1968 г. между България и Турция се сключва изселническа спогодба за срок от десет години, от десет години. турци. ( Memento from June 16, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  25. ^ Fischer Weltalmanach 1994, Frankfurt 1993
  26. ↑ When I Forgot My Name , Die Presse, accessed June 11, 2011
  27. ↑ Wolfgang Ismayr: The political systems of Eastern Europe, Leske + Budrich, Opladen, 2002, p. 581.
  28. ↑ Classes in the Turkish language and the list of Turkish school classes met with bitter resistance from Bulgarian Orthodox nationalists in February 1992 when they organized a school boycott in Kardzhali of all places . Likewise, in November 1990, of all places , they had sought a confrontation by proclaiming a “Bulgarian Republic of Razgrad” * (Munzinger Archive / Manual Time Archive Current Events 1990 and 1992 and Munzinger Archive / IH Time Archive 11/90 and 02/92 ).
  29. ↑ In the earlier regional breakdown (1987–1999 there were 9 regions instead of 28 districts) the Muslim “ strongholds ” were assigned predominantly to non-Muslim provinces: Smolyan to Plovdiv (total 14% Muslims), Kardzhali to Haskovo (total 21% Muslims), Shumen to Varna (total share 18% Muslims). Russe alone, with Silistra , Razgrad and Targovishte , came to 34% Muslims (in each case compared with the 2001 census ).
  30. ↑ http://mediapool.bg/show/?storyid=150725
  31. ^ The founders of the "Muslim Democratic Union" are the notorious brothers Ali Yuzeirov and Yuzeir Yuzeirov. The party was found by 680 written declarations while Ali Yuzeirov was elected party chair. ; www.novinite.com , September 29, 2009
  32. ↑ [1]
  33. ↑ http://www.dariknews.bg/view_article.php?article_id=563466
  34. ↑ Sofia condemns previous oppression of the Turkish minority
  35. ↑ [2]
  36. ^ A b Office of the Grand Mufti - Sofia: Müslümanlar Publication 11/2009
  37. ↑ [3] , August 19, 2008