Turkish-Bulgarian Relations: From Conflict and ...

Turkish-Bulgarian Relations: From Conflict and Distrust to Cooperation over Minority Issues and International Politics Michael B. Bishku

Mediterranean Quarterly, Volume 14, Number 2, Spring 2003, pp. 77-94 (Article) Published by Duke University Press

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Turkish-Bulgarian Relations: From Conflict and Distrust to Cooperation Michael B. Bishku

Turkish-Bulgarian relations since the latter part of the nineteenth century and throughout most of the twentieth have been shaped by political changes in the Balkans, affected in large part by the influences of the major powers and secondarily by the treatment of a sizable community of ethnic Turks in Bulgaria. Even before the nineteenth century, Turkey (or rather its predecessor state, the Ottoman Empire) and Bulgaria shared a long history. Following the Battle of Nicopolis (now Nikopol) in 1396, Bulgaria was absorbed into the Ottoman Empire and ethnic Turks began to settle there. The Ottoman government recognized the authority of the Greek Orthodox patriarch in Istanbul over all Christians within the empire as part of the millet system of confessional autonomy since the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. At the same time, the Balkans became the Ottoman Empire’s “center of gravity,” to use Bernard Lewis’s expression, as more political and military activities took place there than in the Middle East.1 By the nineteenth century, Christians in the Ottoman Empire, especially in the Balkans, were starting to be influenced by ethnic nationalism and were receiving varying degrees of support from the major European powers. The Ottoman Empire, which had lost territory around the Black Sea to the Russians in the previous century, was under pressure to introduce political reforms. The promotion of the concept of Osmanlilik (Ottomanism) by midnineteenth century governmental reformers, in order to establish a multi-

1. Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), 57. Michael B. Bishku is associate professor of history at Augusta State University, Georgia.

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Mediterranean Quarterly: Spring 2003

ethnic civic identity, failed to gain acceptance among the population of the empire. Perhaps the most prominent of those reformers, Midhat Pasha was governor of Bulgaria from 1864 to 1869. He invested a lot of money in the construction of roads and bridges and established agricultural cooperative banks for loans to the peasantry, and Bulgarian-populated areas were doing much better economically than other areas of the Ottoman Empire. However, as one noted authority on the Balkans points out, while Midhat “is still regarded among contemporary Bulgarian historians as a progressive influence, . . . their admiration is tempered by dismay at Midhat’s uncompromising suppression of any movement smacking of separatism.”2 In 1870, the Ottoman sultan Abdulaziz, obviously believing that such a concession was no threat to the state, issued a decree establishing an autonomous Bulgarian Orthodox exarchate separate from the Greek patriarchate. A nationalist challenge, however, soon came from Bulgarian intellectuals; in April 1876, there was an ill-conceived uprising brutally crushed by Ottoman irregular forces, which was reported with political passion in European newspapers. (There were probably exaggerations of the number of Christian deaths, while nothing was mentioned of the Muslim deaths, which may have been greater.)3 Liberals in Great Britain, a country that had encouraged the period of Ottoman reform known as the Tanzimat (1839 to 1876), were appalled, while Russia threatened to intervene in support of its Orthodox Slavic brethren. Abdulhamid II, meanwhile, became the Ottoman sultan in May 1876. The Russians made good on their threat in 1877, advancing to the outskirts of Istanbul and forcing the Ottomans to accept the Treaty of San Stefano in March 1878. Among other things, this treaty called for a Greater Bulgaria extending to the Aegean Sea. Alarmed by this development, Germany, Britain, and Austria-Hungary forced Russia to have the treaty revised at the Congress of Berlin a few months later. While the independence of Serbia, Montenegro and Romania was formally recognized, Bulgaria was made smaller and divided; an autonomous principality under nominal Ottoman 2. Misha Glenny, The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers, 1804–1999 (New York: Viking Penguin, 2000), 95. 3. Stanford J. Shaw and Ezal Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 162.

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suzerainty was established north and west of the Balkan mountains, while Eastern Rumelia, which was just to the south of the principality and was supposed to remain under Ottoman rule, got a Christian governor.4 In 1885, as Russian influence diminished in Bulgaria, the two territories were united with British support, and later, in the midst of the Young Turk revolution, Bulgaria’s independence was formally recognized in 1909.5 The Ottoman Empire regained control over Macedonia, but that territory was later divided among Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece as a result of the First Balkan War of 1912–13. Eventually, aside from a small amount of land in Bulgaria’s southwest, Serbia and Greece got the largest share of the spoils after the Second Balkan War of 1913. Bulgaria continued to covet Macedonia and other territories it lost during the latter war. At the same time, many of the Turks in Bulgaria, who in 1878 outnumbered ethnic Bulgarians in that country,6 chose to emigrate to Istanbul and other parts of the Ottoman Empire for political and/or economic reasons. Turkey and Bulgaria through the Two World Wars During the First World War, both the Ottoman Empire, which felt that neutrality would not insure its security, and Bulgaria, which sought revenge on Serbia, were members of the Central Powers led by Germany and AustriaHungary. They were forced as a result of the alliance’s defeat to relinquish control of certain territories and to abide by military restrictions imposed upon them in the respective Treaties of Neuilly (November 1919) and Sèvres (August 1920) by the victorious entente powers (Great Britain, France, Italy, and Greece, among others). Soon thereafter, Turkish nationalists led by Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) rejected not only the defeated Ottoman sultan’s rule but also certain provisions of the Treaty of Sèvres that they felt violated the territorial integrity of the soon to be created Republic of Turkey. In July 4. William Hale, Turkish Foreign Policy, 1774–2000 (London: Frank Cass, 2000), 28 –9. 5. Omer E. Lutem, “The Past and Present State of Turkish-Bulgarian Relations,” Dis Politika 23, nos. 1– 4 (1999): 2, at www.foreignpolicy.org.tr. 6. Glenn E. Curtis, Bulgaria: A Country Study (Washington, D.C.: Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress, 1992), 81.

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1923, just three months before the new republic was established, Ataturk’s government signed the Treaty of Lausanne, which provided for better terms in its relationship with the Western powers. Ataturk, who was president until his death in 1938, developed a foreign policy that rejected pan-Turkism and sought good relations not only with the West but also with Turkey’s independent neighbors. However, the Kurds, who had been promised autonomy under the Treaty of Sèvres, were in a state of rebellion in Turkey’s east from 1925 to 1938. Bulgaria, on the other hand, faced greater domestic instability following the First World War, as political factionalism was rampant. Moreover, the Internal Macedonian Liberation Organization (IMRO), a terrorist group based in that country, also created problems with Greece and Yugoslavia, including the assassination of the latter country’s King Alexander in 1934. To Ataturk, who had been born in Salonika in what became Greek Macedonia and who had served as a military attaché in Bulgaria prior to the First World War, relations with the Balkan states were of great importance.7 Since 1923, despite the different political persuasions of the various governments over the years, Turkey has preferred, whenever possible, to pursue political and economic cooperation with its Balkan neighbors as a means to achieve stability in the region. However, because of the strong competing interests of the major powers in the Balkans — primarily Italy and France during the interwar years or the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War — Turkey has for periods of time found itself at odds politically with some of these neighboring states, especially Bulgaria. The latter country has had no territorial disputes with Turkey, but the Turkish minority in Bulgaria as well as other Muslims residing there, such as Slavic Pomaks and Roma, have complicated Turkish-Bulgarian relations. Turkey and Bulgaria signed a treaty of friendship in October 1925, the same month that Turkey concluded a similar agreement with Yugoslavia. (Two months later, another was signed with Albania.) At the same time, the Turks and Bulgarians concluded a convention of settlement, which allowed for a voluntary exchange of populations, although it was very much a one7. Vladimir I. Danilov, “Kemalism and World Peace,” in Ataturk: Founder of a Modern State, ed. Ali Kazancigil and Ergun Ozbudun (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1981), 120.


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sided problem, involving more than six hundred thousand ethnic Turks. (It should be noted that in accordance with the Treaty of Lausanne, Turkey and Greece had agreed to a compulsory exchange of populations, with the exception of 110,000 Greeks who lived in Istanbul and 120,000 Muslims who lived in the northeastern part of Greece.) Four years later, Turkey and Bulgaria signed a treaty of neutrality and conciliation, which called for remaining disputes to be referred to arbitration. The next year, Turkey did the same with Greece, thus stabilizing relations with its immediate neighbors.8 While Turkey renewed its treaty of friendship with Bulgaria in 1933—as it did with Yugoslavia, while signing new ones with Romania and Greece— it began to keep a wary eye on its neighbor. Turkey’s main goal was to promote political and economic stability as well as cooperation in the Balkans, but Bulgaria’s warm relations with Italy—Tsar Boris III was married to the daughter of the Italian king, Victor Emmanuel III—and especially its continuing claims to northern Macedonia, western Thrace, and southern Dobrudja antagonized Yugoslavia, Greece, and Romania, respectively. (At the same time, Albania was under strong Italian political and economic influence.) Yugoslavia, Greece, Romania, and Turkey signed the pact of Balkan Entente in Athens in February 1934, and the following month Turkey became the first country to ratify the agreement. The pact, which was received favorably by France and viewed negatively by Italy, committed Turkey, Greece, and Little Entente members Romania and Yugoslavia to guarantee mutually the security of all their Balkan frontiers, but in a separate protocol they stated that the pact “was not directed against any power.” (It should be noted that the Little Entente, which also included Czechoslovakia, was a French-supported alliance established in 1921. During the interwar years, it saw not only Bulgaria as a threat but also Hungary, another Italian ally that sought to revise its borders.) This arrangement did not impose military obligations but called for consultations on measures to be taken in the event

8. Tozun Bahcheli, Greek-Turkish Relations since 1955 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1990), 170; Bilal N. Simsir, The Turks of Bulgaria, 1878–1985 (London: K. Rustem and Brother, 1988), 95; Huey Louis Kostanick, “Turkish Resettlement of Refugees from Bulgaria, 1950 –1953,” Middle East Journal 9, no. 1 (1955): 42 – 3.

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of an actual threat.9 In June 1934, Turkey concluded separate military agreements with Yugoslavia and Romania, but at the same time it made it known that it would not be drawn into a Soviet-Romanian conflict.10 (It should be noted that the Soviet Union granted Turkey an $8 million loan that contributed to the launching of the latter’s first five-year economic plan in 1934.)11 As for the Turks of Bulgaria, during the 1930s many of their schools and newspapers were closed down, while the Turkish government did little more than act quietly through diplomatic channels to have Latin script reinstated as a medium of instruction in Turkish schools.12 At the same time, the Turkish press, which was heavily regulated by the government, railed against the Bulgarian government’s treatment of the Turkish minority.13 While the government of Turkey was concerned with the need for satisfying Turkish public opinion, it was more important to promote political and economic stability and cooperation in the Balkans and thus be better prepared to deal with the problems of outside interference in the region. While the pact of Balkan Entente proved a failure in providing military security for its members, it achieved even less in areas of economic cooperation. There was little possibility of creating a Balkans customs union, since the member states of the Balkan Entente exported mostly similar agricultural products and much of the capital in southeastern Europe was controlled by Western Europeans. In fact, in the mid-1930s, inter-Balkan commerce constituted a very small part of their respective foreign trade; for 9. See Robert Joseph Kerner and Harry Nicholas Howard, The Balkan Conferences and the Balkan Entente, 1930–1935 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1936; reprinted Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1970), 232 – 3; Theodore I. Geshkoff, Balkan Union (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940), 300 – 2; Mustafa Turkes, “The Balkan Pact and Its Immediate Implications for the Balkan States, 1930 – 34,” Middle Eastern Studies 30, no. 1 (1994), 123 – 44. Great Britain felt that the pact should have included Bulgaria. 10. Dilek Barlas, Statism and Diplomacy in Turkey (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 1998), 145; Hugh Seton-Watson, Eastern Europe between the Wars, 1918–1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1945, reprinted New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 373. 11. Ronald D. Robinson, The First Turkish Republic: A Case Study in National Development (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), 107– 8. 12. Simsir, 101– 25. 13. Edward Reginald Vere-Hodge, Turkish Foreign Policy, 1918–1948 (Ambilly-Annemasse: Imprimerie Franco-Suisse, 1950), 96; Kemal Karpat, “The Mass Media: Turkey,” in Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey, ed. Robert E. Ward and Dankwart A. Rustow (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), 273.


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Bulgaria it was 12 percent, while for Turkey it was a mere 5 percent. Although for Greece it was 24 percent, it was much less for other states in southeastern Europe: Albania, 11 percent; Yugoslavia, 8 percent; and Romania, 5 percent.14 As the war approached, Germany dominated commerce with the region, despite appeals by the Balkan countries to Great Britain and France to increase commercial ties. By 1939, Germany bought almost 68 percent of Bulgaria’s agricultural exports while it sold Bulgaria industrial products and arms for nonconvertible currency.15 In March 1941, Bulgaria joined the Axis; while that country had remained neutral for as long as it could, German troops had entered Romania, which was under the rule of a sympathetic Fascist dictatorship, in October 1940 and were poised to attack Greece through Bulgaria. In April 1941, Germany invaded both Greece and Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria was able to occupy, but not annex, Macedonia and eastern Thrace. (It had received southern Dobrudja from Romania in September 1940.) While Bulgaria declared war on the United States and Great Britain in December 1941, it maintained diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union throughout the Second World War. Unlike in the First World War, Bulgaria and Turkey did not find themselves in the same alliance. In February 1940, the permanent council of the Balkan Entente passed a resolution committing its members to a common policy of neutrality in the war, something that only Turkey was able to do, despite its signing of a treaty of alliance with Great Britain and France in October 1939. In June 1940, France capitulated. The Turkish government continued to point out its military inadequacy, and the British were in no position to force the Turks into the war, as they were having trouble meeting their own needs and were unsuccessful in defending Greece. Moreover, the Turks were almost certain to face Axis bombing, against which they had little defense. In November 1940, Hitler had told Bulgaria’s foreign minister that if Turkey acted militarily, “Constantinople [sic] would share the fate of Birmingham and Coventry.”16 Given the political situation in the Balkans, Turkey signed a treaty of 14. Kerner and Howard, 23 – 5. 15. Curtis, 40; and Glenny, 441– 2, 458. 16. Quoted in Selim Deringil, Turkish Foreign Policy during the Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 12.

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friendship and nonaggression with Germany in June 1941, just four days before the latter invaded the Soviet Union. Turkey later conveniently declared war on Germany in February 1945, which allowed it to become a founding member of the United Nations but did not commit Turkey to any military action. Turkey and Bulgaria during the Cold War By the latter half of 1944, the Soviets had signed an armistice with Romania and invaded Bulgaria, where communist republics were to be established officially in 1948 and 1947, respectively. By January 1946, Yugoslavia and Albania had adopted constitutions establishing communist governments, while Greece fought a civil war against the communists from 1944 to 1949. In March 1945, shortly before the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union denounced the pact of friendship and nonaggression that it had concluded with Turkey in 1925 and was due for renewal. The Soviet Union demanded territorial concessions, which were rejected. In March 1947, the United States enunciated the Truman Doctrine, which resulted in the enhancement of Turkey’s military capabilities. In July of the following year, an agreement was concluded for Turkish participation in the Marshall Plan, thus allowing Turkey to improve its economic situation. As for its position in the Balkans, given the politics of the early Cold War period, Turkey’s relations with its communist Balkan neighbors until the mid-1960s were rather limited. An exception was the case of Yugoslavia, with which Turkey and Greece established a short-lived Balkan defensive pact in 1954.17 Turkey’s relationship with Bulgaria, however, was quite tense during the early postwar years. When the communists came to power in Bulgaria, a large number of ethnic Turks sought to emigrate to Turkey, as their schools were nationalized and their farmlands were confiscated. It should be noted that with Bulgaria’s annexation of southern Dobrudja in 1940—recognized by the Soviet Union in 1947— Bulgaria acquired between 100,000 and 150,000 additional 17. See John O. Iatrides, Balkan Triangle (The Hague: Mouton, 1968), 187–9; Denise Folliot, ed., Documents on International Affairs, 1954 (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 197– 200.


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Turks. Thus the Turkish ethnic group in Bulgaria totaled about 750,000, more than 10 percent of that country’s population. Most likely as a result of collectivization efforts in agriculturally rich Dobrudja and as a way to hurt politically pro-Western Turkey, the Bulgarian government demanded in August 1950 that Turkey accept 250,000 Turks over three months time. A former Turkish ambassador to Bulgaria notes, “This haste could be explained by the fact that the Bulgarians were probably acting on behalf of the Soviets, who wished to ‘punish’ Turkey for its participation in the Korean War.”18 Turkish authorities could afford to take in only about thirty thousand immigrants to start with. They protested that the action by the Bulgarians would result in a mass expulsion and a flagrant violation of Turkey’s 1925 treaty with Bulgaria concerning the voluntary exchange of populations. Nevertheless, the Bulgarians sent Turks across the border without entry visas, and by October 1950, Turkey closed its frontier. In December the Bulgarian government accepted Turkish conditions that it wait for entry visas to be issued and that it allow illegal immigrants to be returned, but it sent Roma across the border using forged Turkish visas and refused to readmit them. Turkey was forced to close its frontier once again in November 1951; in retaliation, Bulgaria issued no more exit visas. Nevertheless, almost 155,000 Turks emigrated to Turkey over a two-year period.19 By February 1952, Turkey (and Greece) joined the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance, further straining relations with Bulgaria. Turkey’s resentment over American policy toward Cyprus in 1964 pushed it toward rapprochement with the Soviet Union.20 The Greeks had started an insurrection against the British in April 1955. Years of conflict between Turkey and Greece over the status of the island ensued. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson threatened Turkish prime minister Ismet Inonu with the removal of Turkey’s NATO protection if it did not call off a planned military intervention on the island. Turkey did not invade then, but it did turn toward the Soviet Union, and this turn led to improved relations with Bulgaria and Romania. The Turkish government accelerated its diversification of foreign 18. Lutem, 5. 19. Robert Lee Wolff, The Balkans in Our Time (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), 476 – 80; Kostanick, 43 – 6; and Simsir, 167– 81. 20. Kemal H. Karpat, Turkey’s Foreign Policy in Transition, 1950–1974 (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 89, 91.

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policy, something that had been developing especially since the military coup of 1960.21 A major aim of Turkey’s foreign policy was to break out of its diplomatic isolation caused by its previously total commitment during the 1950s to the United States and to gain international support for a solution to the Cyprus problem satisfactorily protecting the rights of that island’s Turkish population.22 Better relations with the communist countries of the Balkans were seen as a way to outflank Greece, its rival over Cyprus.23 Despite the bad feelings caused by the Johnson letter, Turkey realized the importance of its membership in NATO and expected the Soviet Union to accept that reality. The Soviets were eager to improve relations with Turkey, and within months, they expressed support for the Turkish position of having a federal arrangement of government on Cyprus. One Turkish professor of history explained at the time that while Turkey’s “active policy of opening-up” in the Balkans cannot be interpreted as a move towards a revival of the Balkan union of the 1930s, or in the direction of the Balkan Pact [of the 1950s], it must be realized that Ataturk’s basic concept of establishing an area of security in the Balkans is now being applied in a different manner due to the changed conditions of the region, and overall international relations.24 Indeed, Turkey exchanged ambassadors with isolationist Albania in 1966, five years before Greece did and by 1968—the same year Bulgarian Communist Party First Secretary Todor Zhivkov visited Ankara—reached an agreement with Bulgaria allowing for the reunion of families separated since the last transfer of ethnic Turks came to a halt in late 1951. From 1969 to 1978, about

21. Feroz Ahmad, The Turkish Experiment in Democracy, 1950–1975 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1977), 407–9. 22. Cyprus was granted independence by Great Britain in 1960, but its ethnic Greek president Archbishop Makarios threatened in late 1963 to amend the constitution, which guaranteed rights to ethnic Turks on the island. Despite a contingent of some six thousand UN peacekeepers being sent to Cyprus in spring 1964, the Turkish community, which had fled to enclaves for its protection, was under economic blockade, while Turkish Cypriot government officials were prevented from exercising their legal authority. See Michael B. Bishku, “Turkey, Greece and the Cyprus Conflict,” Journal of Third World Studies 8, no. 1 (1991): 165 –79. 23. Aurel Braun, Small-State Security in the Balkans (London: Macmillan, 1983), 140. 24. Fahir Armaoglu, “Recent Developments in Turkish Foreign Policy,” Dis Politika 1, no. 1 (1971): 89.


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130,000 Turks emigrated to Turkey.25 However, when Romania’s president Nicolae Ceausescu, with the support of Bulgaria, called for developing a Balkan “nuclear-free zone,” the Turkish government rejected the proposal as it remained firmly committed to NATO.26 Turkey’s relations with the Soviet Union and the communist regimes in the Balkans continued to develop bilaterally, especially after the imposition of the American arms embargo, which lasted four years, following the Turkish military intervention in Cyprus in 1974. In 1975, a year after the overthrow of the Greek military junta (which had been in power for seven years) and the establishment of the Helsinki Accords on human rights, the new prime minister of Greece, Constantine Karamanlis, toured the Balkan countries in order to improve relations in preparation for a conference to be hosted in Athens in January and February 1976. Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, and Yugoslavia attended, and while discussions focused on noncontroversial subjects such as agriculture, energy, the environment, public health, telecommunications, tourism, and transportation, little was accomplished, as Bulgaria proved to be an obstacle to cooperation. Turkey’s chief representative, Oguz Gokmen, made clear his country’s preference that Balkan relations would be better handled on a bilateral level, “as otherwise we would be projecting our problems, our difficulties or even worse our bilateral conflicts to a multilateral or international plane.”27 During the latter part of the 1970s, relations with the Soviet Union and the communist Balkan states—a Turkish Ostpolitik—came to center stage in Turkish foreign policy. In general, détente was the accepted policy of the Western powers; as early as 1967, the report of Belgian foreign minister Harmel titled “The Future Tasks of the Alliance” stated that “Each [NATO] ally should play its full part in promoting an improvement in relations with the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe, bearing in mind that the pursuit of détente must not be allowed to split the alliance.”28 While 25. Simsir, 245 – 64; J. F. Brown, in his Bulgaria under Communist Rule (New York: Praeger, 1970), 296, states that ten thousand to fifteen thousand ethnic Turks left Bulgaria during 1968. 26. Ferenc A. Váli, Bridge across the Bosphorus: The Foreign Policy of Turkey (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971), 205; Ilhan Uzgel, “The Balkans: Turkey’s Stabilizing Role,” in Turkey in World Politics: An Emerging Multiregional Power, ed. Barry Rubin and Kemal Kirisci (Boulder, Colo: Lynne Rienner, 2001). 27. Times (London), 27 January 1976, as quoted in Braun, 53. 28. Quoted in Ahmad, 409.

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Turkey remained loyal to NATO, the American arms embargo pushed the Turks to pursue the above policy to the fullest extent. In December 1975, Turkey and Bulgaria signed a Declaration of Principles of Good-Neighborliness and Cooperation, which included pledges of nonaggression and respect for their common frontier, assurances similar to the ones Bulgaria had given Greece a few months earlier. Also, between 1972 and 1976, Turkish-Bulgarian trade increased about 400 percent. Turkey’s relations with Romania developed even further; on a visit to that country in 1978, Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit noted that “even though both countries maintain their place within their alliance systems, both pay attention to the alliances moving away from the Bloc process more rapidly, and making larger contributions to Détente.”29 While Romania had the peculiar distinction of being a member of the Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact and of having an independent foreign policy, things were different with Bulgaria, the Soviets’ closest ally in the Balkans. Naturally, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, the Bulgarians were very supportive, while Turkey strongly condemned the action. Turkey’s political relations with the United States improved, facilitating the successful negotiation and the spring 1980 signing of the Defense and Economic Cooperation Agreement. (It should be noted that the American arms embargo against Turkey had been lifted in September 1978.) Following the Turkish military coup in September 1980, the Soviet media attacked the regime as being repressive and all too willing to collaborate with the United States; yet state-to-state relations remained correct and Turkish-Soviet trade increased. Turkish-Bulgarian relations were also business as usual; when Turkey was under military rule, there were mutual visits of Bulgarian president Todor Zhivkov and his Turkish counterpart, General Kenan Evren. With the return of civilian rule to Turkey in 1983 — Turgut Ozal was elected prime minister — relations with the Soviet Union were slowly to improve, becoming quite good when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985.30 Although Bulgarian foreign policy under the communists 29. Milliyet, 15 November 1978, as quoted in Michael M. Boll, “Turkey’s New National Security Concept: What It Means for NATO,” Orbis 23, no. 2 (1979): 625. 30. Galia Golan, Soviet Policies in the Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 256 –7; Daniel N. Nelson, Balkan Imbroglio: Politics and Security in Southeastern Europe (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1991), 95, 102.


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reflected that of the Soviet Union, such was not necessarily the case during Gorbachev’s rule, especially regarding bilateral ties with Turkey. Even as early as December 1984, months before Gorbachev came to power, Turkish-Bulgarian relations were deteriorating as a result of the Bulgarian government’s treatment of its Turkish population. Bulgaria began a campaign of forced assimilation of ethnic Turks, which included name changes, prohibition of Islamic religious customs, the closing of mosques, and the banning of Turkish music and traditional clothing as well as the use of the language in public. (The practice of using force on minorities to adopt Bulgarian names had been carried out against the Pomaks [Slavic Muslims] between 1972 and 1974 and against Turkish-speaking Roma between 1981 and 1983.) When news of the Bulgarian actions reached Turkey in early 1985, there were agitation in the Turkish media and public protests throughout the country. Bulgarian authorities attempted to deflect accusations made from Turkey by pointing to Turkish treatment of its Kurdish minority.31 In January 1985, Turkey’s foreign minister Vahit Halefoglu gave the following statement to the Turkish newspaper Milliyet: We are working on this subject [of the Bulgarian Turks] at the highest level. We are carefully following developments. We are making the necessary demarches. We are expressing the anxiety we feel on account of the news reaching us. We are saying that if the news is true, the events that are taking place will not have a positive impact upon bilateral relations. . . . If there are problems, we want them to be solved without allowing . . . bilateral relations to suffer from them.32 The Bulgarians refused to discuss the issue of their ethnic Turkish population with Turkey, as they regarded it as an internal matter. By August, Prime Minister Ozal declared in an interview broadcast on the Voice of America, “There is no difference between the situation in Bulgaria and the treatment of Turks there and the events that are taking place in South Africa.”33 While domestic resistance to the campaign of assimilation continued after

31. Hugh Poulton, The Balkans: Minorities and States in Conflict (London: Minority Rights Group, 1991), 129 – 51; Simsir, 264 –7, 274 – 6. 32. Milliyet, 26 January 1985, as quoted in Simsir, 278. 33. Cumhuriyet, 24 August 1985, as quoted in Simsir, 283.

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1985, it did not manifest itself again on a large scale until May 1989. Meanwhile, Turkish-Bulgarian relations improved somewhat during that time. Indeed, in February 1988, on the eve of a Balkan conference in Belgrade— the only such multilateral meeting since the one in Athens in 1976 and one which also had Albanian participation—the Turkish foreign minister Mesut Yilmaz and his Bulgarian counterpart, Petar Mladenov, signed a protocol on “good neighborliness, friendship and cooperation.” The agreement called for the establishment of joint committees: one to deal with economics, trade, tourism, technology, transport, communication, and culture and the other concerned with “humanitarian issues.” While the first made progress, the second was plagued by Bulgarian unwillingness to discuss the plight of its ethnic Turks.34 Also at the Belgrade conference, Turkey rejected Bulgarian, Romanian, and Greek calls for a nuclear- and chemical-weapons-free zone in the Balkans that had Yugoslav and Albanian support, as it felt that all European states had to be involved in such a decision.35 However, Turkey was favorable to attending subsequent multilateral meetings with its Balkan neighbors, especially regarding economic matters, since it was in the process of détente with Greece. In 1990, there was another conference of Balkan foreign ministers held in Tirana, Albania, but the breakup of Yugoslavia the following year brought an end to this so-called Balkan process.36 As for the plight of Bulgarian Turks and other Muslims, it would eventually take the ouster of Bulgaria’s president Todor Zhivkov in November 1989 and legislation the following year before they would be allowed to restore their names and to practice their faith and customs freely. Until then, Turkey brought up the issue of Bulgaria’s treatment of ethnic Turks at international conferences and in its diplomatic discussions with Western and Islamic countries as well as the Soviet Union. Such moves did bring some action prior to Zhivkov’s ouster; Azeris in the Soviet Union held demonstrations of sympathy for Bulgarian Turks, while the Soviets at the urging of Turkey

34. Lutem, 9. 35. Dietrich Schlegel, “Are the Balkan States Closing Ranks?” Aussenpolitik 39 (Hamburg) (fall 1988): 398 – 401. 36. Gareth M. Winrow, “Turkey and the Balkans: Regional Security and Ethnic Identity.” Paper presented at the Middle East Studies Association annual meeting, Research Triangle Park, N.C., 11–14 November 1993, 4.


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attempted to reconcile matters between it and Bulgaria, obviously deciding in the process that Zhivkov had to be removed. Prior to the Bulgarian leader’s ouster, in May 1989, he expelled some two thousand Bulgarian Turk activists and demanded that Turkey open its border; when Ozal did so, about 310,000 Turks entered Turkey until August, when Turkey reestablished visa requirements and, in effect, closed its frontier. As it was difficult to provide shelter for the masses of immigrants, Turkey desired an agreement that would regulate their numbers. By January 1990, with a changed political climate, some 130,000 of the immigrants returned to Bulgaria.37 Turkey and Bulgaria since the End of the Cold War Over the past decade, the ethnic Turkish population of Bulgaria, which resides mostly in that country’s southeast and northeast, has been estimated to be around 1 million out of Bulgaria’s more than 8 million inhabitants. In addition, there are Bulgarian Muslims of Slavic (Pomak) and Roma ethnicity.38 Since 1990, their interests have been represented by the Movement for Rights and Freedom (MRF), a political party that includes some ethnic Bulgarians and has been led by Ahmet Dogan, who had been imprisoned in 1986 for opposing Zhivkov’s policy of assimilation.39 In the country’s first democratic national elections, in October 1991, the MRF got 7.5 percent of the vote, becoming the third-largest party in parliament, behind the Union of Democratic Forces and the Socialists (the renamed former Communist Party), and a pivotal force in Bulgarian politics during the 1990s.40 (In the last parliamentary elections, in June 2001, they fell to fourth with the overwhelming victory of former King Simeon II’s National Movement.)41 As a result, conditions have improved much for Bulgaria’s Turks and other Mus-

37. Andrew Mango, “Turkish Exodus from Bulgaria,” World Today 45, no. 10 (1989): 166 –7; “Prime Minister Ozal Opens Turkish Borders to Minority Turkish Population Expelled from Bulgaria,” Turkey Today, no. 114, May 1989, 1– 2; Poulton, 155 – 61; and Nelson, 99 –100. 38. Uzgel, 56; and “Turks and Bulgars Make Up,” Economist, 27 February 1999, 46. 39. Curtis, 206. 40. Gareth Winrow, Where East Meets West: Turkey and the Balkans (Exeter, U.K.: Institute for European Defense and Strategic Studies, 1993), 23 – 4; Lutem, 11– 2. 41. Veselin Toshkov, “Former Bulgarian King Leads Party to Election Win,” Herald-Sun (Durham, N.C.), A4. Simeon II, who ruled Bulgaria from 1943 to 1946, is the son of Tsar Boris III.

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lims; indeed, Bulgarian president Petar Stoyanov visited the Turkish parliament in 1997 and apologized for Bulgaria’s treatment of its Turkish minority under communism.42 Also, over the past decade Turkey and Bulgaria have engaged in projects of political, economic, and military cooperation. During the 1980s, the Yugoslavian government had given Turkey diplomatic support during Bulgaria’s attempt to forcibly assimilate its Turkish and Muslim populations. Also, Yugoslavia was Turkey’s link in overland trade and transportation with Western Europe. Thus, the Turkish government viewed with great concern that country’s breakup in 1991; it did not want to be flooded with additional Muslim refugees from Yugoslavia, which it felt would create economic, social, and political problems.43 However, with the wars over Bosnia (1992–95) and Kosovo (1999), Turkey accepted its fair share of refugees from these regions and was a strong supporter of NATO’s policies. When the European Union recognized Slovenia and Croatia’s independence on 15 January 1992, Bulgaria went a step further and also recognized “Macedonia” and Bosnia’s independence; Turkey did the same with the latter two countries a few weeks later.44 Meanwhile, Greece, which strongly opposed an independent Macedonia, maintained close ties with the Serb-dominated Yugoslavia. Thus, due to common political concerns and/or religious affiliations—the Serbs, who are also Orthodox Christians, had the support of Russia — two axes were formed in the Balkans during the early 1990s; the one led by Turkey included Albania and Macedonia.45 Bulgaria and Romania, while being wary of Serbia’s intentions, have sought cooperation with both Turkey and Greece. In May 1992, Bulgaria signed a friendship, good-neighborliness, and security agreement with Turkey, five months after it had done the same with Greece. Also during that year, the Turkish government first expressed its support for Bulgaria’s membership in NATO. In 1994, Bulgaria joined the 42. “Turks and Bulgars Make Up,” 46. 43. Saban Calis, “Turkey’s Balkan Policy in the Early 1990s,” Turkish Studies 2, no. 1 (2001): 137. 44. Sule Kut, “Turkish Diplomatic Initiatives for Bosnia-Hercegovina,” in Balkans: A Mirror of the New International Order, ed. Gunay Goksu Ozdogan and Kemali Saybasili (Istanbul: Eren, 1995), 297– 8. 45. Constantine P. Danopoulos, “Turkey and the Balkans: Searching for Stability,” in Crises in the Balkans: Views from the Participants, ed. Constantine P. Danopoulos and Kostas G. Messas (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1997), 215.


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Partnership for Peace program, a cooperative arrangement sponsored by the Western alliance.46 Over the years, Turkey has continued to push for NATO’s enlargement, especially into the Balkans. Indeed, at a meeting in Sofia following the 11 September terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., Turkish foreign minister Ismail Cem called such action “urgent.”47 While Kurdish cultural and educational centers had been allowed to operate during the 1990s in Bulgaria (as they had been in Romania and other countries in Europe) and were regarded by the Turkish government as covers for the activities of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), Turkey and Bulgaria signed a protocol to fight against terrorist organizations in February 2001. The Bulgarians had previously given the Turks assurances that PKK activities would not be tolerated on their territory.48 In addition, in January 1999, Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Albania, and Slovenia agreed to establish a Balkan peacekeeping force, supported by Italy and the United States, headquartered for the first four years in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.49 Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, and Romania went ahead with these plans and in August 2001 transferred command of the force from a Turkish to a Greek general, after the former had completed his two-year term. After four-year intervals, the headquarters of the force will transfer to Romania, Turkey, and Greece, in rotation.50 As for economic relations, in June 1992, Bulgaria (along with Greece, Albania, Romania, Russia, and five former Soviet republics) joined the Turkish-inspired Black Sea Economic Cooperation organization, which is designed to promote trade and business links.51 In 1998, this eleven-member group established the Black Sea Trade and Development Bank, based in 46. Uzgel, 57, 67. 47. “Cem: NATO Expansion Has Urgency,” Turkish Daily News (Ankara), 6 October 2001. 48. “Bulgaria and Turkey Signed a Protocol for the Fight against Terrorism,” news.bg online, 10 February 2001, at www.news.bg; Uzgel, 58. 49. “Bulgaria to Host the Multinational Peacekeeping Forces in the First Four Years after Their Establishment,” news.bg online, 11 January 1999. 50. “Cakmakoglu Headed for Bulgaria,” Turkish Daily News, 31 August 2001; “The Headquarters of the Multinational Forces of Southeastern Europe to Be Located Initially in Plovdiv,” news.bg_online, 24 November 1998. 51. The former Soviet republics that are members include Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The organization was suggested by a former Turkish ambassador to the United States, Sukru Elekdag, in 1989. See Nezavisimaya gazeta, 5 June 1998, 1, in the Current Digest of the PostSoviet Press, 8 July 1998, 21.

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Salonika, in which Turkey and Bulgaria are 16.5 percent and 13.5 percent shareholders, respectively.52 In 2000, trade volume between Turkey and Bulgaria was $646 million, with the value of Turkish imports—mostly electricity generated from the Gorna Arda hydropower facility and transfers of natural gas from Russia — being more than twice as much as its exports, which included cars, textiles, and chemicals. Furthermore, some 675 Turkish companies were active in Bulgaria, in manufacturing and banking, investing over $114 million, ranking it second among countries in the Balkans where Turkey has invested.53 (In terms of all international investment in Bulgaria, Turkey was among the ten biggest investors in that country.)54 While Turkey, Bulgaria, and Romania agreed to establish a free trade zone in March 1999—Bulgaria previously had had separate bilateral agreements with each of its neighbors — their ultimate goal is membership in the EU, for which all three countries are candidates.55 However, Turkey has not implemented enough economic and political reforms, especially with regard to the rights of Islamists and Kurds, to begin accession negotiations.56 With the end of the Cold War, Turkey and Bulgaria have been able to cooperate politically, economically, and militarily. At the same time, however, the breakup of Yugoslavia has created instability in the Balkans that may soon be fully remedied. Hopefully after the last couple of centuries of foreign interference, conflict, and distrust that have divided the region, the Balkan states, including Turkey, can join in cooperative arrangements with the rest of Europe.

52. Ertan Keskinsoy, “Black Sea Trade and Development Bank Encourages Black Sea Prosperity,” Turkish Daily News, 22 September 2001. Greece and Russia are the other two biggest shareholders, with 16.5 percent each; Romania and Ukraine each have 13.5 percent shares, while Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Moldova each have 2 percent shares. 53. “Bulgarian Economy Minister Comes to Turkey Today,” Turkish Daily News, 25 August 2001; “Turkey Will Invest USD 1bn in Our Country,” news.bg_online, 20 January 2000. 54. “Demir Bank Opens a Branch in Bulgaria,” news.bg_online, 26 November 1998. 55. “The Free Trade between Bulgaria, Turkey and Romania Will Continue to the Year 2001,” news.bg_online, 15 March 1999. Turkey’s free-trade-zone agreement with Bulgaria took effect 1 January 1999. 56. Bulgaria, which abolished the death penalty in December 1998 (Turkey did not do so until 2002), began accession negotiations with the EU, along with Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, and Slovakia, in 1999.