Nationalities Papers, Vol. 28, No. 1, 2000

POMAK BORDERLANDS: MUSLIMS ON THE EDGE OF

NATIONS

Mary Neuburger

We contact the world
only through our boundaries.

1

Blaga Dimitrova

In a recent issue of the Bulgarian periodical Sega (Now) a reporter related an
extraordinary tale of how various name-changing campaigns had marked the experi-
ence of a Bulgarian-speaking Muslim—hereafter “Pomak”—in the village of
Bachkovo.

2

The story began during the Balkan Wars in 1912–1913 when Hasan, the

aforementioned Pomak from the Rhodope mountains of southern Bulgaria, was
forced to change his name to Dragan as part of the wartime state campaign for
Muslims with “Slavic origins” to “reclaim their Bulgarian names.” A change in
politics at the beginning of World War I opened the door for Dragan to change his
name back to Hasan; and so he did. In the late 1930s, however, he was
again compelled to change his name back to Dragan, in line with the Rodina
(Homeland) directed name-changing campaigns, described in depth below. After the
Communist takeover in 1944 Dragan was able, again, to change his name back to
Hasan as wartime “Fascist” policy was reversed. But with the movement towards
“national integration” in the 1960s Hasan was forced, again, to change his name back
to Dragan. After the fall of Communism in Bulgaria in November 1989 “Dragan”
again was allowed to change his name back to Hasan; and so he did.

3

In his one

lifetime this “Bulgarian” of Islamic faith, subject to the whims of the Ž ckle and
contested Bulgarian national project, changed his name six times. Admittedly, the
Pomak’s fate in Balkan history seems to be primarily as pawn in Bulgarian and other
Balkan national rivalries and domestic designs. Pomak history is, more often than
not, the story of the center looking to the margins and imposing its own designs.
Having said that, these designs—generally driven by the dual forces of modernity
and nationalism—were always subject to a spectrum of Pomak responses and
strategies.

No Balkan Muslim identity is more contested, more wrapped in multiple inter-

twining twisted webs of myth and history than the Slavic-speaking Muslims or
“Pomaks” of the Southern Balkan range.

4

Even to group this disparate and scattered

group into one narrative, as I do here, might be misleading. Pomaks are not, after all,

ISSN 0090-5992 print; 1465-3923 online/00/010181-18 Ó

2000 Association for the Study of Nationalities

M

.

NEUBURGER

a self-proclaimed nation or ethnic group with a separate or distinct mass group
consciousness. The term or concept of “Pomak,” I think most would agree, is rarely
employed as a proactive self-identiŽ cation. Instead it is used mostly by non-Pomaks
to describe those populations who speak a dialect of Bulgarian and profess Islam and
therefore do not neatly Ž t into the category of Bulgarian or Turk, not to mention
Greek, Macedonian, or Albanian.

5

“Pomak” is just one of many terms used to

describe the inbetweenness, rather than the national afŽ liation, of this population.
Until the twentieth century Pomaks seem to have had primarily local, pre-national
identities that were most tied to their Islamic religious afŽ liation, the traditional basis
for collective identities in the Balkans. At some point—and it is not clear exactly
when—this Muslim afŽ liation morphed into an attachment to “Turkishness” as it
emerged and slowly spread from Turkey to Bulgaria, primarily after World War I.
At the same time, since at least the 1930s (as I will detail shortly) a small but vocal
minority of Pomaks—under heavy Bulgarian in uence—deŽ ned themselves as
“Bulgaro-Mohammedans.”

6

The movement they founded, Rodina (Homeland), fo-

cused on assertion of the essential “Bulgarianness” of the Pomak population in light
of their shared language—which had emerged as another strong indicator of identity,
especially in the eastern Balkans, by the nineteenth century. Only in the 1990s have
there been reports of emergent myths among Pomak individuals about the pre-Ot-
toman, pre-Slavic, and hence unique origins of Pomaks.

7

Nevertheless, there never has been a signiŽ cant mass movement or tendency on

the part of Pomaks to express or pursue rights based on their “Pomakness.”

8

Hence,

a historical study of the Pomak question is necessarily a study of the Pomak face in
a Balkan hall of mirrors.

All that really unites Pomaks is their adherence to Islam and their use of kindred

South Slavic dialects most closely related to Bulgarian and Macedonian. There is
perhaps some Pomak cohesion in terms of shared territory, with the largest concen-
tration in the Central Rhodopes of contemporary Bulgaria, spilling over into Greek
and Turkish Thrace as well as into Macedonia. In general, though, the geographic
distribution of Pomaks is as fragmented—both by modern  uctuation of borders and
the isolating effect of the mountain terrain—as the many names used to describe this
population. These names attest to the multiple discourses and national claims that
have encircled Pomaks, accompanying the rise of nationalism in the region. Various
terms have been used to describe that population, which I will continue to call
“Pomak” for simplicity’s sake, including Arkhani, Torbeshi, or Porturs (primarily in
Macedonia), but also many agenda-speciŽ c hyphenated terms such as Bulgaro-Mo-
hamedani

, Bulgarian-Muslims, Macedonian-Muslims, Muslim-Serbs, Pomak-Turks,

Slavophone-Islamicized-Greeks, Slavicized Albanians, and so on. This confusion of
appellation re ects precisely the conceptual confusion that haunts the Pomak pres-
ence in the southern Balkans. With the Ottoman retreat from Europe in the
nineteenth century, Pomak populations were caught up in a vortex of conceptual
chaos about Balkan borders, that is, the question of how land and people should be

182

POMAK BORDERLANDS

delineated into nations and states. Not surprisingly, all of the ponderings of neighbor-
ing nations at one time or another, with unmitigated certainty, claimed Pomaks as
their own.

9

These con icting certainties tended to gain momentum as Bulgarian, Greek,

Turkish, Serbian, Albanian, and later Macedonian national projects gained the
political vehicles of nation states in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

10

Although some of the claims were certainly less urgent, more tenuous, perhaps
merely academic and on the periphery of national priorities, other claims emerged as
more pressing and central to nationalist discourse. For Bulgaria, certainly, the
“Pomak question” has had the most pervasive presence in the Bulgarian national
imagination and role in Bulgarian nation-building projects. Both in terms of aca-
demic inquiry and state action, the Bulgarian encounter with its Pomak populations
has been historically the most dramatic. This is perhaps because the overwhelming
majority of Pomaks have lived within Bulgaria’s borders since the Balkan Wars
(1912–1913), where they represent more of a signiŽ cant critical mass than in other
Balkan states. I will justify, therefore, my focus on the Bulgarian context in this
article in terms of the extreme pitch of nationalist theories and practices towards
Pomaks as well as the high drama of Pomak experience in twentieth-century
Bulgaria.

In bold outline, the Bulgarian approach to the Pomak populations within and

outside its borders held many similarities to the formulations of neighboring Balkan
states. That is, for all of the surrounding nation-state projects, Pomaks have
historically been the object of desire. They were claimed as co-nationals by this
multitude of Balkan nations, at one time or another, as a result of their own
pre-national, non-committal inbetweenness. They were perceived as a gray zone, ripe
to be painted white or black by the pretenders to their national wills. With the logic
typical of Balkan nationalist discourse since the nineteenth century, each nation
could claim the Pomaks based on a common Slavic language (Bulgarians, Macedo-
nians, Serbs) or religion (Turks, Albanians). Differences in either or both attributes
were explained away by cultural change attributed to historical processes. Hence
Pomaks had converted to Islam under Ottoman duress (according to Bulgarians,
Macedonians, Greeks), or lost their original language due to (admittedly voluntary)
linguistic assimilation (according to Turks, Albanians, Greeks), or both their lan-
guage and religion through these processes (the Greeks). For all the nations in
question their penchant to claim the Pomaks had less to do with any real afŽ nity for
Pomaks as a kindred population and more to do with their value as fodder for
ethnographic battles over the disputed territories of Thrace and Macedonia.

11

This

objective dominated Balkan writings at least until after World War II, when a
revision of the deŽ nitive post-1913 division of the Pomak domains became increas-
ingly unlikely. At this point, Balkan academic and institutional projects aimed at
Pomaks focused inwards, at integrating the remnants of Pomak difference within
their respective nation states.

183

M

.

NEUBURGER

I want to make it clear here, however, that the intermittent periods of extreme

measures in the Bulgarian–Pomak encounter are far from an exclusive by-product of
authoritarian, Communist extremism indicative of this post-1945 period. Rather, I
would argue that the roots of the Bulgarian approach—both in theory and in
practice—to the Pomak question reach deep into the Ž rst half of the century. Like
other Balkan peoples in this period, Bulgaria threw its net wide in claiming wide
swaths of contiguous territories and the peoples that inhabited them as purportedly
assimilated co-nationals. In the words of the renowned Bulgarian ethnographer of the
early twentieth century, Stoyu Shishkov:

The Picture drawn today in [Bulgarian] history in comparison with other nations is as rare
as it is tragic, Hellenized Bulgarians to the South, Romanianized in the North, Serbianized
in the West, and TurkiŽ ed in all districts which fall within the ethnographic reach of the
Bulgarian tribe.

12

In spite of these far- ung claims, it was clearly Macedonia (and to a slightly lesser

extent Thrace) that was the real territorial prize that drew Bulgarian ethnographic
attention. As the linguistically assimilated peoples mentioned above seemed some-
how lost forever to the Bulgarian fold, the Slavic-speaking Christians and Muslims
of Macedonia and Thrace seemed somehow redeemable.

In an age of increasingly language-based nationalisms, Pomaks (secondary only to

Macedo-Slavs) seemed to offer the most promise as potential converts to
“Bulgarianness.” Shishkov, whose life work focused on historical and ethnographic
study of the Pomaks, set out to “scientiŽ cally” prove the “Bulgarianness” of the
“forcibly Islamicized” Pomaks in Macedonia and Thrace. According to Shishkov, the
geographically contiguous “Turks” were also the product of “Ottoman assimilation
politics” but had irretrievably forsaken their Bulgarian heritage in favor of their
Turkish tongue. In light of his discoveries of Pomak “Bulgarianness,” inside and
outside Bulgarian borders, Shishkov began to advocate and consistently replace the
term “Pomak” with “Bulgaro-Mohammedan,” a term that would assume a dominate
role in Bulgarian discussions of the Pomaks by the 1930s and certainly in the
post-war period.

Shishkov’s portrayal of the Pomaks—something echoed in virtually all later

ethnographic work—elevates Pomaks who “spoke the most pure dialect of old-
Slavic” to Bulgarians in the “purest” sense.

13

In addition to studying Pomak dialects,

Shishkov also delved into various aspects of Pomak folk culture that were both akin
to and differentiated from Bulgarian folk culture. As was convenient to his politi-
cized aims, all those aspects of Pomaks’ culture that coincided with Bulgarian
custom were embraced as “native” proofs of ethno-national brotherhood, while
disparities were written off to “foreign” in uences that had been imposed under
Ottoman occupation. In particular, Pomak Turco-Arabic names and clothing, as well
as certain “unhygienic” household practices were studied, recorded, and lamented as
“foreign” to the Bulgarian spirit of the Pomak population.

14

184

POMAK BORDERLANDS

With ethnography as inspiration, it was these overt signiŽ ers of culture that

differentiated Pomaks from Bulgarians—along with the Muslim faith itself—which
Ž rst became the targets of Bulgarian state campaigns on its Pomak borderlands. After
the eruption of the First Balkan War in 1912, Bulgarian troops marched deep into
their own southern borderlands and crossed the border into Ottoman Thrace and parts
of Macedonia. On the heels of military mobilization and conquest, extreme measures
were taken to tame the Bulgarian borderlands and establish cultural hegemony in the
newly acquired territories. The primary target was Islam itself, as Bulgarian troops
and Orthodox priests carried out mass forced conversions of some 200,000 Pomaks
in hundreds of villages in Western Thrace and Macedonia, as well as the Rhodope
mountains. SigniŽ cantly, accompanying these religious measures, Pomaks were
compelled to take Bulgarian names—tantamount to baptism—and certain items of
Pomak attire—namely the fez, the turban, and “veil”—were replaced with Bulgarian
hats and scarves.

15

As wartime ofŽ cials in the Pomak districts requested supplies

from the central government, not only Bibles and crosses but also hats and scarves
were on their wish lists. The assumption was clearly that Christianity only in
combination with so-deŽ ned Bulgarian hats, kerchiefs, and names would make
Bulgarians out of Pomaks.

16

The voluntary nature of such conversions is highly unlikely especially in light of

the spirit of resistance which seems to have been ignited by the Bulgarian cam-
paigns.

17

Not only did these incursions into Pomak villages and souls cause the

migration of Pomaks from Bulgarian territories, but large numbers of the remaining
Pomaks protested on the streets and held discussions in their cafe´s. Many sponta-
neously re-Islamicized and re-donned the fez, the turban, and the veil.

18

They kept

their names and refused to christen their children, as they began to build a wall of
resistance to these Bulgarian incursions, a wall that began to thicken into a barrier
perhaps more formidable than traditional religious difference; a barrier, I would
argue, that provoked Pomak estrangement in relation to their Bulgarian host society
and instead encouraged solidarity with Turkish-speaking Muslims and hence eventu-
ally Turkishness. This resistance, in addition to political expediency, necessitated the
reversal of the “baptism” of Pomaks in 1914. Vasil Radoslavov’s Liberal Party won
the 1913 elections in part because of their appeal to Pomak voters on the platform
of reversing the name changes. This reversal was carried out by the Liberal regime
in 1914, appeasing both the Pomak population and Turkey as part of the Central
Powers with whom Bulgaria was courting an alliance.

19

As a result of the Second Balkan War of 1913, Bulgaria lost much of the territory

occupied during the First Balkan War, although it did manage to expand consider-
ably south into Thrace and west into part of Macedonia. The gaining of these
territories, in particular a large portion of the Rhodope mountains of Thrace, brought
a large Muslim population, both Turks and Pomaks, into the new conŽ nes of the
state. Although Turks too had faced particular restraints and increasing ofŽ cial
pressures of one kind or another in pre-socialist Bulgaria, they maintained a large

185

M

.

NEUBURGER

degree of autonomy in communal affairs, a separate existence on the sidelines of
Bulgarian society. Unlike Turks, Pomak populations were increasingly part of new
landscapes of national purpose which gained momentum in the period between the
World Wars.

Bulgarian academics continued to posit the Bulgarianness of the Pomak popu-

lation, expanding and building upon pre-war historical and ethnographic conclusions.
They continued to explore the ethnographic peculiarities of Pomak men and women,
conceptually sorting their Bulgarian characteristics from the “foreign” traits.
Bulgarian social science had stood behind the interwar geographic name changes,
which stripped “foreign” place names from the Pomak-populated Central Rhodopes,
replacing them with the “original” or new Bulgarian ones.

20

As early as 1925, the

Rhodope newspaper, Rodopa, described the “Bulgarianization” or “christening” of
thousands of villages in the Rhodope region as a result of the input from “Bulgarian
science, geographers, historians, ethnographers, archeologists, philosophers and oth-
ers.”

21

But while these geographic name changes touched the only exteriors of

Pomak life, by the late 1930s Pomak interiors again became the arena for national
designs.

In this decade dramatic campaigns were initiated for the changing of Pomak

names and clothes—akin to the crusades of the Balkan Wars—by a small segment
of the Pomak community itself. The Bulgarian government provided Ž nancial
support and encouragement to the Rodina movement, founded by Petur Marinov, a
local Bulgarian ethnographer, and a handful of Pomak reformist-Islamic intellectuals
in Smolyan in 1937. Marinov’s ethnographic agenda—proving the ethnic
“Bulgarianness” of Rhodope Pomaks—melded well with the zealous Bulgarian
nationalism of Rodina’s Pomak founders, themselves primarily products of the
Bulgarian military experience. This potent brew of Bulgarian ethnographer meets
Pomak ex-army ofŽ cers spawned Rodina, a primarily cultural movement with the
goal of diffusing “Bulgarianness” to their “misguided brothers and sisters.”

22

In

the ethnographic tradition, and Marinov was deŽ nitely the intellectual heir of
Shishkov, the term “Bulgaro-Mohammedan” was deemed most appropriate by the
movement as a label for the Pomak population. Their ethno-national unity with the
Bulgarian population was assumed, masked only by the population’s ignorance of its
own history. Hence there was no claim or emphasis on Pomak distinctiveness.
Instead, in their exclusive use of the term “Bulgaro-Mohammedan” Rodina members
asserted the “Bulgarianness” of the Pomak population, whose religion was purported
to be a private affair. Creating a separate term for the group was provisional,
necessitated by the need to target and appeal to Pomaks to participate in the
movement.

The Sbornik Rodina, a collection of writings on the association’s aims and

activities, clearly articulated the organization’s quest to “uproot all that is un-
Bulgarian in the spirit and life of Bulgaro-Mohammedans” while “drawing them
closer together to Bulgarians.”

23

In the words of Rodina leaders:

186

POMAK BORDERLANDS

Our social obligation which falls not only on our group but on all of our brothers,
Bulgaro-Mohammedans, young and old, is to leave behind our formerly stagnant lives and
move ahead on the path of culture and progress, the path which our tribesmen have
already set out upon and gone far ahead.

24

Rodina

accepted much of the modernizing impetus of reformist Islam or Kemalism,

without any direct link to Kemalists themselves, but instead of embracing
“Turkishness” its members laid a Bulgarian path to their national future. Rodina
members, many of them employees of Muslim institutions, did not explicitly reject
Islam. Instead they advanced a language-based concept of the nation, somewhat alien
to the religious-based, millet origins of Balkan nationalisms. As Rodina members
explained:

The time has come for our Muslim co-religionists to recognize their Bulgarian nationality,
to break with this darkness and ignorance, to have a clear comprehension and conscious-
ness that we are Bulgarians by nationality and this does not interfere with our practice of
the Muslim religion.

25

Hence, Rodina adherents refuted the claims of elderly Pomaks who opposed the
association based on the belief that it “weakened the faith and lead the youth into an
atheistic understanding.”

26

Rodina

leaders countered accusations that its members

were “inŽ dels” and even “Communists” with the assertion that “on the contrary one
of the goals of the association is to care for the correct fulŽ llment of Muslim
traditions.”

27

Rodina

even justiŽ ed its work as crucial to restoring a fading Muslim

faith to Pomaks, who “if left alone, will be led to total atheism.”

28

They claimed that

the reason for this was because religion was taught in a “completely unknown,
incomprehensible language, in still more unknown letters.”

29

As a remedy to this

perceived crisis, Rodina developed initiatives for the translation of the Koran and
Muslim prayers into Bulgarian.

30

Importing Bulgarian literacy into Pomak homes,

however, was only one small part of Rodina efforts to eliminate the presumed
vestiges of foreign occupation in the Pomak hearth.

The broader Rodina program also contained a clear priority to “uproot all that is

un-Bulgarian and foreign in Bulgaro-Mohammedan clothes.”

31

Rodina

began a war

Ž rst of words and later of action against all garments and accessories that were
considered to be foreign and therefore “separates and hinders the common merging,
unity and brotherhood between Bulgaro-Mohammedans and Bulgarian Christians.”

32

For Pomak men, it was really only the fez that Rodina targeted for intense ridicule
and ultimate displacement with “Bulgarian hats.” Men’s hats represented an easier
focus for Rodina action—as opposed to the more sensitive issue of women’s
veils—and as early as 1938 Rodina had sponsored dramatic campaigns against the
fez. On Kurban Bairam, a major Muslim religious holiday, in 1938 Rodina members
distributed lea ets to Pomaks in Smolyan and surrounding districts, stating “that they
are Bulgarians by nationality and should throw off the red fez, a symbol of

187

M

.

NEUBURGER

foreignness, which offends our Muslim religious sentiments.”

33

Their appeal called

for Pomak men to “immediately throw off forever the foreign hat—the fez, and
replace it with a Bulgarian national hat.”

34

A collection of Rodina writings described

the urgency of their plan—“This moment is historical, there is no time to waste.
Forward! The future is ours!”—with the explanation that “religion has nothing in
common with clothes and hats.”

35

The almost total failure of the appeal to achieve

the desired result prompted the initiation of a dramatic incident in Smolyan, the city
of Rodina’s founding, and the regional capital for the Pomak-populated Central
Rhodopes. In the words of Sbornik Rodina:

On the last day of Bairam the most active members of the association “Rodina” organized
and gathered around forty people and without any kind of previous plan went to the upper
end of the city, a neighborhood which is completely Mohammedan in order to “pluck off
fezzes.” They dispersed along the streets, blocked exits and took up the task of taking all
“fezzes”! The president of Rodina, Arif Beyski, stood on a hillock on the edge of the
neighborhood and gave orders from on high. The whole neighborhood broke into laughter,
rumors, outcries. One could hear jokes and protest.
—-Oh … hold on to your fez!
—-Down with the red fez!

36

Rodina

enthusiasts waited at the entrances of Pomak homes to pull off the fez from

Pomak men as they entered the street. While there was, here as elsewhere, then as
later, some resistance to de-fezzing campaigns in Bulgaria, in general Pomak men
seemed more willing to part with their foreign hat than Pomak women were willing
to give up their foreign garb. The wives of Rodina leaders and other members, who
were active members in the association in their own right, did make every attempt
to set examples in their modern, Bulgarian modes of dress for Pomak women
generally. It was not until the state and Rodina alike were mobilized by the eventful
changes of World War II that Pomak women were subject to more active campaigns
that concerned their so-called “veils.”

37

Since the late 1930s the regime’s interests had been tightly intertwined with the

Rodina

program, which blossomed in the extreme conditions and possibilities of

World War II. By 1941, the euphoria of expansion provoked far-reaching Bulgarian
visions of total territorial and cultural integration of Pomaks into the Bulgarian
nation. Ultimately, the regime’s need of Rodina’s organization and links to local
Pomak communities—however ambivalent—would necessitate a marriage of the
regime’s interests with the Rodina movement. Rodina openly supported all of the
regime’s key wartime legislation, including the “Law for the Purity of the Nation,”
which prohibited mixed marriages between Bulgarians and foreigners; thus mixed
marriages between Pomaks and Turks—heretofore very common—were made il-
legal.

38

Furthermore, the association embraced the Bulgarian expansion into new

territories that held large numbers of Pomaks. Bulgarian territorial expansion enabled
the extension of the Rodina crusade against the “foreign” residue deposited on
Bulgaro-Mohammedan culture, although, again, without a total rejection of Islam. In

188

POMAK BORDERLANDS

fact, Islam was directly utilized as Muslim institutions in Pomak districts were
established or reorganized. The regime sanctioned the expansion of the Rodina
movement into the new territories by insuring that all muftis and clerics in Bulgaro-
Mohammedan districts were pro-Rodina Pomaks and not “Turks” or Pomaks with
Turkish leanings. As of 1942, Pomak muftis were appointed directly by the Ministry
of Internal Affairs and not the Turkish Head Mufti in SoŽ a.

39

When a new muftiship

was established in Ksanti (Xanthi), the key city of Bulgarian-occupied Greek Thrace,
the prestigious position of mufti was immediately bestowed to Arif Beyski, one of
the founding members of Rodina.

40

Rodina

lorded over the constellation of reform measures that sought to reweave

the fabric of Pomak life and hence reshape the human geography of Pomak districts
in the Bulgarian image. The focus of these efforts, as in the years of the First Balkan
War, was ever more sustained measures to change Pomak names, clothes, and even
the very arrangement of Pomak households. Since 1940 Rodina had appealed to the
Pomak populations within Bulgarian territory to shed their Turco-Arabic names,
vestiges of a foreign, undesirable past. Pomaks had been presented with a list of
suitable “Bulgarian national names” and asked to voluntarily chose one.

41

The very

public spontaneous name changes by Muslim ofŽ cials—Arif Beyski, for example,
became Kamen Bolyarov—had not produced the desired effect on the Pomak
masses.

42

By the summer of 1942, limited successes in the name-changing process

provoked the decision at a conference of Rodina religious leaders that name changes
would no longer be voluntary but mandatory; in this way, it was assumed, the
Bulgaro-Mohammedan question would be answered once and for all. This intensiŽ ed
Rodina

name-changing drive was bolstered by the new law passed in the Bulgarian

National Assembly in July 1942 for the “Bulgarianization of the Mohammedan
Names of Bulgaro-Mohammedans,” which led to the rapid forced name changes of
some 60,000 Pomaks.

43

Yet in spite of the intervention of local police and Muslim

ofŽ cials, large numbers of the name-changing forms that had been distributed to
Pomak families were not turned in.

44

Even Rodina admitted that the 1942 directive by local muftis to change foreign

names once and for all—Ž rst for newborns then adults—had elicited a negative
reaction among the local population. One article in Sbornik Rodina described how
one Muslim “fanatic” had refused to give a Bulgarian name to his new son. The
Pomak in question, as the Rodina writings related, had spoken out in anger against
the prospect, as he threatened, “I will kill him before I allow him to take a Bulgarian
name.” These Rodina writings further asserted that certain “fanatic” Pomaks had
claimed that they refused to bear children so that they would not have to give them
Bulgarian names.

45

On the other hand, pro-Rodina Pomaks had allegedly borne

children for the very purpose of giving them Bulgarian names. As one Pomak, Salih
Rumetsov, from the village of Vievo, was said to have testiŽ ed, “I thought that I
would have no more children … but expressly for the sake of taking a Bulgarian
name, soon I will have kids and give them the most beautiful [Bulgarian] names.”

46

189

M

.

NEUBURGER

Government ofŽ cials did express satisfaction with the good results of the intensiŽ ed
campaign in many Pomak districts. As one ofŽ cial reported:

This movement which is liquidating the dark past of the Bulgaro-Mohammedans, plants
in them love and attachment for Bulgarshtina [all that is Bulgarian] and ushers in a bright
era into the life of Bulgarians in the Rhodopes and the Aegean Sea area.

47

On the other hand, there were complaints of a lack of Rodina activists and an
excessive amount of “Turkish propaganda” in the districts where the name changing
had been unsuccessful.

48

In addition to its name-changing campaigns, Rodina proposed that it was in the

nation’s interest to Ž nally de-fez and de-veil Bulgaro-Mohammedans in the new
lands, replacing the existing garments with “Bulgarian national hats and clothes.”

49

By 1943 the government had passed the “law on clothes” which ordered Pomaks to
toss away the fez, knitted caps, and others head coverings that “look like fez,” and
for women to throw off their veils, replacing them with “scarves that tie in back.”

50

The majority of Pomaks in the old and new territories of Bulgaria did not meet these
measures with great enthusiasm. As the Bulgarian state, with Rodina as its tool,
attempted to reshape Pomaks in the Bulgarian image, again they provoked a reaction.
With the change of regime at the end of the war, Pomaks again reclaimed their
names, their clothes, and their identities from the initially weak Communist regime.

The Communist period was indeed a new era for Pomaks as well as Turks in

Bulgaria, but with important continuities. In the shadow of Red Army occupation
and hence Soviet practice on the “national question,” the Bulgarian Communist Party
(BCP) out of necessity played the internationalist card—which translated to positing
the “friendship of peoples” in Bulgaria—in relation to Muslim minorities. Muslim
populations, it seems, were needed as allies in this period when newly deŽ ned
enemies abounded in Bulgarian society and outside the country’s borders. On the
Soviet model, the BCP was required to bring Turks and Pomaks into the party fold,
offer Turks the resources for their own “national” development, and incite them to
spread world revolution to their Turkish co-nationals abroad. In practice, in spite of
claims to brotherhood, autonomous Turkish institutions were disbanded, hundreds of
thousands of Turks were expelled in 1950–1951, and the regime often regarded
Turkish populations with suspicion—as accessories of NATO-allied Turkey to the
south. Pomaks, on the other hand, were not considered a minority population by the
new regime, which ofŽ cially embraced them as an integral part of the Bulgarian
nation, albeit with special needs because of their “backward” state. To an extent
never experienced, the state and the academic community entered into an unholy
alliance in their pursuit of taming the borderlands—of negotiating a “bright future”
of utopian proportions. In the course of the Communist period, it became increas-
ingly clear that Bulgarian Communism was not about moving beyond nationalism,
as its theorists promised. Instead nationalism would become the tool with which
Communism would pave Bulgaria’s new “road to modernization.” Furthermore, to

190

POMAK BORDERLANDS

an unprecedented extent local Muslim elites, religious and secular, would be forced
into conformity and brought into the work of the state. As in the past, state incursions
into the Pomak borderlands would also provoke various forms of resistance on the
local level.

While the regime initially established some Pomak-speciŽ c institutions and re-

versed some of the wartime excesses, there was a sense of residual tension form the
wartime and pre-war periods.

51

A sense of distrust towards Pomaks was expressed in

early party reports from the Central Rhodopes which declared that “The [Pomak]
opposition has served only foreign interests … breaking forever with everything
Bulgarian and so the Bulgarian nation.”

52

The BCP could not help but harbor concern

over a letter that was sent by a group of Pomaks addressed to the American, British,
and Greek governments against the tyranny of the “Bulgarian yoke.” The letter
contended that Pomaks were “racially Turkish” and therefore wished to emigrate to
Turkey via Greece and avoid imminent “Bulgarianization.”

53

On the other hand, BCP

supporters among the Pomak population had written letters denouncing the writers of
the letter in question as “Fascists among us, who are preparing to sell us and our
freedom to foreign interests.”

54

These letters, which could have had a variety of

motivations and instigators, proclaimed “death to the traitors” and deplored this
attempt to “cut off the Pomak population from the Bulgarian nation.”

55

This show

of support did little to assuage the fears of Fatherland Front ofŽ cials that the bulk of
the Pomak population “considered themselves to be Turkish.”

56

It was assumed

that Pomak loyalties were also highly suspect because of their cultural afŽ nities
to Muslim Turks, afŽ nities that had only grown stronger among the vast majority
of the population as a reaction to past state and Rodina directed assimilation
campaigns.

Rodina

itself was also suspect by virtue of its association with the pre-war

“Fascist” regime. Rodina members themselves, however, proved to be rather cha-
meleon-like politically in their sudden turn to a pro-Communist stance in the
post-war period. Their larger aims and cultural project, it seems, tended to respond
to the winds of political change as long as modernization—or Bulgarianization—was
part of the program. Rodina’s key members were initially enthusiastic about becom-
ing cadres of the new regime and continuing Rodina work with the assumption that
the very progress-oriented Communists would support their cause. Peter Marinov—
the renowned ethnographer, and Rodina’s one prominent non-Pomak (Bulgarian
Christian) member—and other leaders had even entered the Communist Party in
1944–1945. By 1947, however, as the BCP consolidated power in SoŽ a, Marinov
and other key Rodina members were expelled from the party and positions of
responsibility after being accused of carrying out “Fascist” forced name changes and
clothing reform measures. In fact, it was no accident that Rodina was not ofŽ cially
rehabilitated by the BCP until 1984, the precise year of the launching of the “Rebirth
Process” that required the Turks of Bulgaria to change their names to Bulgarian
names. Nevertheless, the spirit and form of Rodina campaigns would be resurrected

191

M

.

NEUBURGER

far earlier but mostly without the help and support of former Rodina members—
much to the chagrin of Peter Marinov in particular.

57

In the context of the general

thrust of economic and social modernization of the Bulgarian borderlands, the
Rhodope villages of southern Bulgaria were soon revisited by the winds of change.

Bulgaria, in light of the perceived “special circumstances” of its Muslim minority

question, had pursued socialist integration with a vigor that, in many ways, was
unique to the Eastern Bloc. In the course of the Communist period the Bulgarian
regime went well beyond the parameters of its model, Soviet nationalities policy, in
its gradually unfolding quest to build one nation under Communism on Bulgarian
territory. Bulgaria—so often touted as the most loyal Soviet satellite—to a certain
extent did pave its own road to socialism.

As the party initiated measures targeting social, economic, and political inte-

gration—i.e., collectivization, industrialization, education, minority recruiting into
the party—it attempted to gradually seduce or compel Pomaks into the “socialist
nation.” As the impotency of the proverbial carrot became increasingly clear in
socialist Bulgaria of the 1950s, the BCP turned to the stick. By the 1960s and 1970s
the BCP reinvented the very same campaigns that had been tried and had failed to
Bulgarianize Pomaks during the Balkan Wars and World War II. As in both of these
earlier campaigns, Pomak names and clothes would become central targets of
de-TurkiŽ cation efforts. On the other hand, religion would occupy a rather ambigu-
ous place, as Islam was attacked as backward and degenerate, while the regime still
kept in place, purged, and worked through Islamic institutions for its own assimila-
tory objectives.

The clothing campaigns among Pomaks in the Communist period targeted primar-

ily women, as men’s garment choice proved to be less of an issue. Admittedly, in the
immediate post-war years the regime had allowed and even encouraged Pomaks to
re-don the fez as a part of the reversal of Rodina policy. As Marinov described it in
his personal memoirs, the fez (and the veil) came back and “as a demonstration of
force the fezzes of opponents were pulled onto the heads of Rodintsi (Rodina
members).”

58

Yet this fezophilia was rather short-lived, as anti-fez pronouncements

seemed to easily reverse Pomak preference in favor of other hats, berets for example,
that were more acceptable to the powers that be. Pomak men, after all, were not
expected to go bare-headed, or even wear brimmed hats, which had provoked mass
opposition in Turkey several decades earlier. Women on the other hand faced several
multifaceted, ongoing state campaigns that endeavored to redress them completely
from head to ankle, which I have discussed at length elsewhere.

59

In short, any

scarf-like or cloak-like articles of clothing which resembled a veil, or additionally
baggy Turkic style pants (shalvari), were made the subject of BCP ridicule by the
1950s. In spite of pronouncements indicating a totally “de-veiled” and “de-shal-
varied” Pomak (and Turkish) population by the end of the 1950s, these campaigns
extended into the 1960s, 1970s, and even 1980s and combined the use of force with
appeals to women on the basis of progress, hygiene, and fashion. In conjunction with

192

POMAK BORDERLANDS

the “rebirth process” of 1984–1985, shalvari, in particular, were made illegal for all
Muslims of Bulgaria.

60

At the same time, by the 1960s, Pomak names, as markers of both personal and

cultural identity, had again become the target of intense state-directed name-
changing campaigns. The crusade to change Pomak Turco-Arabic names to Bulgar-
ian ones, however, was carried out in a rather unsystematic way, in part because of
the various opinions within the party itself and variable zeal for carrying out the
measures on the local level. The measures were introduced in different villages in the
Rhodopes at different times with varying degrees of force and resistance. Most
discussions of name changing focus on the 1971–1974 period when Pomak name
changing indeed took a more dramatic turn.

61

Yet archival sources reveal that a series

of measures were taken in certain areas of southern Bulgaria as early as 1960 in
connection with the “Cultural Revolution.”

To a large degree the early phases of the name-changing campaigns were

theoretically “voluntary” and aimed both at giving Pomak newborns Bulgarian
names and changing the names of Pomak children in the Bulgarian state schools.

When local ofŽ cials in the Blagoevgrad district decided to use force in carrying

out the “Cultural Revolution” in relation to Pomak names in 1964, there were major
clashes with local Pomaks. Voluntary divisions of some 100 administrators, border
guards, and other military personnel actually set out in trucks for the villages of
Yakorudi, Eleshnitsa, and Satovcha to carry out name changes. They blockaded
villages, cut phone lines, and in one case even destroyed a bridge to cut off lines of
escape and resistance.

62

Nevertheless, a large group of men had made it out of the

district and actually gone to SoŽ a to complain to the central authorities and the
Turkish consulate.

63

After being forced to give up their passports in order to be

issued new Bulgarian ones, a large group of women had thrown stones at the heads
of the visiting functionaries.

64

In fact, these protests were so pronounced that they

actually brought the temporary return of Pomak names in this district, only to be
replaced with Bulgarian names again by 1970.

By 1970, the BCP had passed a resolution that called for the total mass name

changing of Pomaks and which ushered in the last and most conclusive phase of this
process. 1970–1974, although it has gained less attention in the literature, can be
viewed as a precursor to the “rebirth process”—the renaming of the Turkish
population in 1984–1985. As the regime launched the dramatic forced name chang-
ing of this period, there was signiŽ cant unrest, in particular in Madan and Rudozem
in 1970 and Dospat-Barutin in 1971.

65

Perhaps the most dramatic manifestation of

protest was in February 1970 in Madan, where thousands of men and women
gathered and regathered for several days to protest against name changing. Pressure
was brought to bear here and elsewhere especially through the workplace, where the
failure to re-register with Bulgarian names meant the loss of jobs, pensions, or other
government beneŽ ts. Furthermore, numerous participants in the demonstrations were
interned and some were reportedly killed, their bodies thrown into local rivers or

193

M

.

NEUBURGER

mine shafts.

66

In Rudozem, the protesters of 1970 were mainly women who spent

three days gathering at the local administrative center, speaking out against the
authorities and insulting and threatening local administrators.

67

Apparently, in this

area and others, women played a major role in name-changing protests because these
campaigns had Ž rst and foremost targeted the names of newborn babies, which
struck a very emotional cord with Pomak women.

As these measures were carried out in the course of the 1960s and 1970s, Peter

Marinov, the Rodina patriarch and Rhodope ethnographer, observed and commented
in painstaking detail in his personal diaries, now housed in the Plovdiv archives.
Over the years he even wrote detailed letters of advice to the BCP authorities both
in SoŽ a and on the local level in the Rhodopes, which mostly went unanswered, but
not necessarily ignored. Marinov’s main criticism of the measures of the Communist
period was that Rodina was not rehabilitated and that most key Rodina members like
himself were not embraced by the party or used in the name-changing and clothing
reform campaigns. At the same time he expressed satisfaction that the work of
Rodina

was basically being continued, and carried out to the letter, although

occasionally with excessive force. By 1974, Sbornik Rodina, the collection of Rodina
writings from 1937 to 1944 was being prepared for republication, considered by
Marinov to be a de facto rehabilitation. But, as mentioned above, it was not until
1984 that the BCP Ž nally ofŽ cially reversed its position on Rodina and welcomed
the movement into its pantheon of progressive forces in Bulgarian history. Mean-
while, the BCP had already long used Rodina formulations as rationale for its own
Pomak policy. In this way the BCP paved a path to 1984 brick by brick.

Numerous scholars have explored the details of the “rebirth process” of 1984–

1985 against the Turkish minority in Bulgaria in detail.

68

The BCP had Ž rst purged,

and then bolstered—in the spirit of “brotherhood of toiling nations”—and then
systematically eroded Turkish educational and other institutions in Bulgaria. Turks—
like Pomaks—had been subject to clothing reform measures as well as other
measures that impeded and eliminated educational opportunities in the Turkish
language. But it was not until 1984 that the BCP leader and Bulgarian president,
Todor Zhivkov, erased Turks from the Bulgarian cultural palette with his famous
pronouncement, “There are no Turks in Bulgaria.” Like Pomaks, Turks were now
assumed to be essentially Bulgarian, both forcibly Islamicized and TurkiŽ ed. It was
a process that was all too familiar. It directly echoed the Bulgarian policy towards
Pomaks, which had been reversed so many times since 1912. In their policy towards
Ž rst Pomaks and then Turks the Bulgarians had, undoubtedly, paved their own road
to socialism and in their own minds reached their Ž nal destination in this dimension
of socialist progress—they had created a uniŽ ed “socialist nation.”

In the post-1989 period, the post-Communist government could not possibly

afford to leave Zhivkov’s legacy intact. Again Dragan has become Hasan, Pomak
women are redonning shalvari and the scarves of their choice, and so on. Although
the Pomak reaction to the period of Communist incursions has been sharp, and new

194

POMAK BORDERLANDS

afŽ nities to Bulgarian Turks have been forged, Pomaks still inhabit a place in-
between nations. They face choices that often lead them out of their remote hamlets,
into SoŽ a, Plovdiv, or smaller regional centers which tend to have a more apparent
Bulgarian character. Many younger Pomaks have led their entire lives with ofŽ cial
Bulgarian names, although generally many assume a private Muslim name. Yet in
the post-1989 period, with the freedom to choose, many young Pomaks have retained
or reverted back to Bulgarian names in pursuit of greater opportunities outside their
local milieu and even abroad.

69

Still, for the most part Pomaks are still on the social

and geographic borderlands of Bulgaria as they are in other neighboring states;
Pomaks it seems will continue to inhabit this place on the edge of nations for
generations to come.

NOTES

1. B. Dimitrova, “Touch,” The Last Rock Eagle: Selected Poems of Blaga Dimitrova (London:

Forest Books, 1992), p. 20.

2. I am well aware of the debates surrounding the term “Pomak,” which has become

increasingly “politically incorrect” in historical and contemporary Bulgarian academic par-
lance for various reasons, such as the lack of use of the term by “Pomaks” themselves, and
the purported “derogatory nature” of the term. However, I still prefer the term to “Bulgarian-
Muslims” or “Bulgaro-Mohammedans,” which imply a kind of essential “Bulgarianness” in
the identities of this population which is far from established.

3. Sega , 1–7 February 1996, p. 27.
4. The following Ž gures for Pomak populations in the various Balkan states (with the exception

of Turkey) are offered by Hugh Poulton, The Balkans: Minorities and States in Con ict
(London: Minorities Rights Group, 1993) (note that some states have more precise Ž gures
than others): Bulgaria (1990) 268,971 (p. 111); for Greece there seem to be no Ž gures after
1912, when the population was 40, 921 (p. 175); Macedonia (1981) 39,555 (p. 39); for
Albania there seem to be no accurate Ž gures and a range of estimates from 3,000–4,000 (the
Hoxha regime) to 100,000 (according to Macedonian Ž gures) (pp. 201–202).

5. See, for example, Ali Eminov, (New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 110.
6. Again, in the post-1989 period a small movement, the Movement for Christianity and

Progress, has emerged around Father Boris Sariev (of Pomak descent) which seeks to
Christianize Pomaks, thus presumably returning them to the fold of the Bulgarian nation.
Ibid

., p. 67.

7. See Eminov’s discussion of this issue, Turkish and Other Muslim Minorities of Bulgaria,

p. 109.

8. In the post-socialist period, Kamen Burov, Pomak mayor of Zhiltusha in the Eastern

Rhodopes, has asserted the existence of a separate “Pomak” minority and has even lobbied
in international circles for the recognition of such a group. The extent of his support at home
is unclear, but surely minimal. See M. Todorova, “Identity (Trans)formation among Pomaks
in Bulgaria,” in L. Ku¨rti and J. Langman, eds, Beyond Borders: Remaking Cultural Identities
in the New East and Central Europe (

New York: Westview Press, 1997), p. 69.

9. For Turkish sources that claim Pomaks as Turks, see Halim Cavusoglu, Balkanlar’da Pomak

Tu¨rkleri: Tarih ve Sosyo-Ku¨ltu¨rel Yapi (

Ankara: KOKSAV, 1993), and Huseyin Memisoglu,

Pages of the History of Pomac Turks (

Ankara: Safak Maatbasi, 1991). An example of a

Serbian source that lumps the Muslims of the “South” (i.e., Macedonia) in with the Muslims

195

M

.

NEUBURGER

of Bosnia and Hercogovina as “belonging to our national tree” is Dragishe Lapchevitza, O
Nashima Muslimanima (

Belgrade: Getse Koina, 1925). Also see Poulton for some discussion

of Pomaks in Albania (pp. 201–203), Macedonia (pp. 55–56), Greece (pp. 175–176), and
Bulgaria (pp. 111–115). A more thorough discussion of Bulgarian sources follows.

10. In the Macedonian case the recognition of nationhood and gaining of a national republic

within the Yugoslav federation in the post-1945 era served as a similar vehicle for propelling
Macedonian claims, as Serbian claims to Muslims this far south and elsewhere were eclipsed
by Yugoslav political realities. The Macedonians, however, were still allowed to claim
Macedo-Slavic-speaking Muslims (in the Macedonian case, normally called Torbeshi). See,
for example, Niyazi Limanoski, Izlamskata Religija and Izlamiziranite Makedontsi (Skopje:
Makedonska Kniga, 1989).

11. For a thorough discussion of Balkan and Great Power pretensions in the area see H.

Wilkinson and E. Barker, Macedonia: Its Place in Balkan Power Politics (London: Royal
Institute of International Affairs, 1950); and S. Danchenko and I.Viazemskaia, Rossiia i
Balkani: Konets XVII–1918 (

Moscow: Akademiia Nauk SSSR, 1990).

12. S. Shishkov, Pomatsi v Trite Buˆlgarski Oblasti: Trakiia, Makedoniia i Miziia (Plovdiv:

Pechatnitsa “Makedonia,” 1914), p. 3.

13. See Shishkov (1914), and S. Shishkov, Bulgaro-Mokhamedani : Istoriko-Zemepisen I Naro-

douchen Pregled c Obrazi (

Plovdiv: Turgovska Pechatnitsa, 1936).

14. SigniŽ cantly, Pomak women as purveyors of the practices and properties of the Muslim

hearth were in many ways at the heart of the ethnographic projects of the late nineteenth and
early twentieth century. For a focus on the question of Muslim women see Mary Neuburger,
“Difference Unveiled: Bulgarian National Imperatives and the Re-dressing of Muslim
Women in the Communist Period: 1945–89,” Nationalities Papers, Vol. 1, 1997, pp. 169–
181.

15. V. Georgiev and S. TriŽ nov, Pokruˆstvaneto na Buˆlgarite Mokhamedani 1912–1913: Doku-

menti (

SoŽ a: Akademichno Izdatelstvo “Prof. Marin Drinov,” 1995), p. 8.

16. Ibid., pp. 60, 101, 163.
17. While non-Bulgarian sources tend to agree that said conversions were forced upon the Pomak

population writ large, Bulgarian sources vary in their assessment of these events. Pre-1945
sources tend to assert that Pomaks voluntarily embraced Christiantiy after being “liberated”
by their Bulgarian brothers. Bulgarian sources from the socialist period do contend that the
conversions of 1912–1913 were forced and supply this as evidence that the Pomaks were
alienated early on from the Bulgarian cause by “bourgeois Fascist” mistakes, as opposed to
the presumably correct path of the socialist regime.

18. Georgiev and TriŽ nov, pp. 443.
19. Boncho Asenov, Vuzroditelniyat Protses I Durzhavna Sigurnost (SoŽ a: GEYA-INF, 1996).
20. See Nikolai Michev and Petur Koledarov, Promenite v Imenata i Statuta na Selishtata v

Buˆlgariia: 1878–1972 (

SoŽ a: Nauka i Iskustvo, 1973).

21. Rodopa, 1 December 1925, p. 1.
22. Ibid., p. 55.
23. SODA (Smolyan Okruˆzhen Duˆrzhaven Arkhiv), Smolyan Regional Government Archive,

Smolyan, Bulgaria (F-26K, O-1, E-2, L-8–9: 1939).

24. P. Marinov, ed., Sbornik Rodina, Vol. 1 (Smolyan: Izdaniye na “Rodina,” 1939), p. 20.
25. Marinov, Sbornik Rodina, Vol. 1, p. 13.
26. SODA (F-26K, O-1, E-29, L-1: 1937).
27. M. Stoyanova, “Kuˆm Istoriiata na Dvizhenieto ‘Rodina’ v Istochni Rodopi,” Izvestiia na

Muzeite ot Yuzhna Buˆlgariia

, 16 (October 1990), p. 244; SODA (F-26K, O-1, E-29, L-1:

1937).

196

POMAK BORDERLANDS

28. SODA (F-26k, O-1, E-31, L-3: 1938).
29. SODA (F-26k, O-1, E-31, L-3: 1938).
30. Marinov, Sbornik Rodina, Vol. 1, p. 19; SODA (F-26k, O-1, E-31, L-1: 1938).
31. Marinov, Sbornik Rodina, Vol. 1, p. 34.
32. Ibid.
33. SODA (F-26K, O-1, E-2, L-6: 1939).
34. Marinov, Sbornik Rodina, Vol. 2, p. 18.
35. Ibid., p. 19.
36. Ibid., p. 20.
37. Elsewhere I look more fully at the question of de-veiling among Pomak and Turkish women

in Bulgaria and elaborate the theory that while some of these women (primarily elites in
urban settings) did wear heavier black garments that we might consider to be veils, most
simply tied their headscarves in an idenifying manner—draped across the chin instead of tied
under or behind it. See Neuburger, “Difference Unveiled.”

38. P. Marinov, ed., Sbornik Rodina, Vol. 4, p. 13.
39. TsIDA (F-142, O-2, E-128, L-82: 1944).
40. TsIDA (F-471, O-1, E-1084, L-4: 1942).
41. SODA (F-42K, O-15, E-10, L-319: 1942).
42. Marinov, Sbornik Rodina, Vol. 4, p. 54.
43. Khristov, Khristo. Iz Minoloto na Buˆlgarite Mokhamedani v Rodopite. (From the Past of

Bulgarian Mohammedans in the Rhodopes) SoŽ a: Izdatelstvo na Buˆlgarskata Akademiia na
Naukite, 1958 (1958), pp. 136, 144.

44. TsIDA (F-142, O-2, E-128, L-85: 1944).
45. Marinov, Sbornik Rodina, Vol. 4, p. 28.
46. Ibid., p. 28.
47. TsIDA (F-142, O-2, E-128, L-79: 1944).
48. TsIDA (F-142, O-2, E-128, L-80: 1944).
49. TsIDA (F-264, O-1, E-440, L-6: 1941).
50. SODA (F-26K, O-1, E-31, L-12: 1942).
51. For example the BCP created in 1947 and dissolved in 1950 a Pomak seminary called

Mehmed Sinap. Its demise was justiŽ ed by fears of its “injurious in uence on the conscious-
ness of Bulgaro-Mohammedans … the existence of a special school for them upholds the
mistaken conviction that they are some kind of a minority and something separate from
Bulgarians.” TsIDA (F-165, O-3, E-307, L-7: 1950).

52. TsIDA (F-28, O-1, E-399, L-76: 1946).
53. TsIDA (F-165, O-1, E-38, L-1: 1946).
54. TsIDA (F-165, O-1, E-38, L-20: 1946).
55. TsIDA (F-165, O-1, E-38, L-20: 1946).
56. TsIDA (F-146, O-5, E-605, L-1: 1945).
57. PDA (F-959k, O-1, E-944, L-2: 1969).
58. PDA (959K-1–110–1958, 85).
59. See Neuburger, “Difference Unveiled.”
60. Foreign Policy Institute, The Tragedy of the Turkish Minority in Bulgaria (Ankara: Foreign

Policy Institute, 1989), p. 56.

61. G. Alhaug and Y. Konstantinov, Names, Ethnicity and Politics: Islamic Names in Bulgaria

1912–1992 (

Oslo: Novus Press, 1995), pp. 29–31.

62. PDA (F-959k, O-1, E-225, L-260: 1974).
63. PDA (F-959k, O-1, E-225, L-261: 1974).
64. PDA (F-959k, O-1, E-225, L-261: 1974).

197

M

.

NEUBURGER

65. PDA (F-959k, O-1, E-226, L-37: 1974).
66. PDA (F-959k, O-1, E-226, L-37: 1974).
67. PDA (F-959k, O-1, E-226, L-40: 1974).
68. See, for example, K. Karpat, ed., The Turks of Bulgaria: The History, Culture, and Political

Fate of a Minority (

Istanbul: ISIS Press, 1990).

69. According to an article in Sega, Pomaks have reverted to Bulgarian names especially since

1993 in search of employment opportunities both in Bulgaria and in Germany, for example,
where their Turkish names purportedly were a barrier to obtaining employment. Sega, 1–7
February 1996, p. 22.

198