Correspondents' Correspondence
KOMISAR, LUCY
orresnondents' orresponaence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS. 'Bulgarization' Sofia—Bulgaria's treatment of its Turkish...
...The\ recently "realized they were Bulgarians and that they .should change their names.' Asked about the bombings in Turkish communities, Zlatanov asserted that these were isolated incidents, the work of " young people thinking that by such terrorism they would become known and be heroes...
...The majority of ethnic Turks, I was told, work in agriculture, mining and construction...
...The document parroted the official line I hat the new names reflect "a renaissance" among I he descendants of Bulgarians who had been forcibly converted to Islam...
...In the spring, a West German television crew was denied permission to film a buffalo farm in one such region...
...How can they for months prevent anyone from entering the area and pretend nothing has happened...
...all Bulgarian [last] names and often Christian first names...
...Few possess a university degree, nor do many hold influential positions...
...Sincethe 1878 War of Liberation, heobserves, more than a million ethnic Turks have left the land of their birth...
...It also has further damaged this Soviet bloc nation's international image, already tarnished by charges of complicity in the 1981 attempt to murder Pope John Paul II, drug trafficking and supplying arms to terrorists...
...NoneareinthePolitburo, for example, and in the military they are said to be relegated to construction brigades...
...A Western diplomat here said that although he could not confirm talk of deaths and jailings, he is convinced the Bulgarians used violence against resist-ers, and that they in turn responded with counterviolence...
...Turkey claims that when the policy was first implemented in the fall of 1984, Bulgarian police surrounded traditionally Turkish villages and went from house to house distributing forms calling on residents to take new names...
...The stories are hard to verify because diplomats and journalists have only been allowed into ethnicTurkish regions under close supervision, if at all...
...Speaking Turkish in public, formerly discouraged by threats of dismissal from employment, is now illegal...
...The religious ceremony of circumcision, it says, is banned on health grounds (a prohibition that must also affect Bulgaria's 5,500 Jews...
...Those who refused to go along reportedly were arrested or are being denied necessities like medical care...
...And Voice of America correspondent Jolyon Naegele, picked up by the police as he got off a train in Momchilgrad, a largely Turkish town, was quickly sent back to the capital...
...Western observers suggest that the name changes are part of a "Bulgarization" drive...
...In such asmall country, where lines of communication are so short, one wonders why they did it and why they are handling it so clumsily...
...The circulars were signed with names like' Imam Christo...
...A lot of theni" had ancestors who w ere converted to Islam in the 14th century, lie says...
...It has indicated that it would willingly absorb any ethnic Turk who wants to leave Bulgaria, but the offer has been refused...
...Rumor has it, he adds, that the authorities embarked on their present course because they feared the high birth rate of the ethnic Turks, as compared with the zero rate of increase among Bulgarians.—Lucy Komisar...
...People just can't believe it...
...In addition, Ankara has protested that mosques are open only on Fridays, that importing or distributing theKoran is illegal, and that observant Moslems face reprisals...
...Upon coming to power after World War II, the Communists abolished Turkish community schools...
...Bulgarization' Sofia—Bulgaria's treatment of its Turkish minority, constituting more than 11 per cent of the total population of 9 million, has strained relations with Ankara...
...and Sofia contends that anyone who stayed put then is not a Turk...
...Last fall and winter most of thecoun-try's 1 million ethnic Turks, a legacy of Ihe500-year-long0ttoman domination I hat ended in 1878, were made to adopt Bulgarian names...
...An Agence France Presse reporter who wroteabout theincident and subsequently left the country was denied a visa when he wanted lo return...
...In 1959 they forbade all teaching in Turkish, except for language classes, stopped in 1974...
...Ahmed Ali thus became Ivan Boris, and so forth...
...The last batch of 120,000 departed from 1968-78...
...Having assimilated its Romanian and Macedonian minorities, numbering 100,000 and 300,000, respectively, Bulgaria has long been trying to do the same with the Turks...
...The Turkish government has told its neighbor that thecurrent state of affairs violates existing agreements between the two countries...
...Assail Zlatanov, another Foreign Ministry official, argues in effect thai many of the people targeted for Bulgarization were never really Turks...
...Dobri Dubrev, a counsel in the Foreign Ministry, insists, "We don't accept the Turks' claim that they have their people in Bulgaria...
...We consider their reaction interference in our internal affairs...
...Accused of violating human rights at meetings in Canada and Finland early in the summer marking the 10th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act, Sofia issued a letter July 26 signed by 39 intellectuals who had accepted the regime's edict—including I he one ct h n ic Tu rk among t he 200-odd members of the Communist Party's Central Committee...
...A Western European diplomat is surprised that Sofia " let this [Bulgarization drive] get so out of hand...
...The same diplomat notes that the regime' 'sent circulars to all embassies from imams, the Moslem religious leaders, saying the reported resistance is all propaganda and slander and Western-orchestrated fabrication...
Vol. 68 • September 1985 • No. 11
