1989 expulsion of Turks from Bulgaria

The "Big Excursion" (Bulgarian: Голямата екскурзия, romanized: Golyamata Ekskurzia) was the 1989 forced migration (Turkish: 1989 Zorunlu Göç) of Bulgarian Muslims by the Communist government of the People's Republic of Bulgaria. In total, around 360,000 Bulgarian Muslims crossed the border into Turkey. In late December 1989, a month after the resignation of General Secretary Todor Zhivkov, the "Big Excursion" came to a genuine end, with the new government promising to restore the rights of Bulgarian Muslims. By the end of 1990, around 150,000 Bulgarian Muslims had returned from abroad.
The "Big Excursion" has been recognized as an ethnic cleansing, including by the democratic government of now-EU-member Bulgaria in 2012. Though the Excursion is not as widely remembered in the West as the expulsion (and subsequent return) of Kosovar Albanians in neighboring Yugoslavia, as of 1989 it was the largest instance of ethnic cleansing in Europe by number of victims since the expulsion of Germans living east of the Oder–Neisse line between 1944 and 1950.
The terminology used to refer to and describe the "Big Excursion" is controversial. While the Bulgarian forced migrations of 1989 are often viewed as amounting to "ethnic cleansing", that term is not always used to describe them.
Though modern use of the term "ethnic cleansing" dates back to the early 19th century, it is usually understood to have come into common usage with the breakup of Yugoslavia, which began in earnest in 1991, two years after the start of the "Big Excursion". In the years since Yugoslavia's dissolution, the term "ethnic cleansing" has gained scholarly acceptance in spite of its own originally euphemistic origin. The term "ethnic cleansing" is consequently not always associated with the 1989 forced migration in Bulgaria of two years prior. Instead, the event is usually referred to by the official (and likewise euphemistic) terms employed by the regime of Todor Zhivkov to describe the events.
The Bulgarian government described the forced migrations as the "Big Excursion" (Bulgarian: Голямата екскурзия, romanized: Goliamata Ekskurziya) because officially the border with Turkey was allegedly opened "to allow tourists to visit the neighboring country," and the regime in Sofia claimed that victims had only left temporarily to visit relatives abroad.
Some, however, have criticized the use of that official and highly ambiguous term. Polish academic Tomasz Kamusella describes continued use of the term "Big Excursion" as tantamount to acceptance of General Secretary Zhivkov's propaganda, and some Bulgarian Muslims take offense to use of the term "Big Excursion". Conversely, those who wish to belittle the memory of the forced migration of 1989 often do not capitalize the term "Big Excursion".
Bulgarian Turks constitute a substantial portion of both Bulgaria's Muslim population and the victims of the "Big Excursion". While Muslims of non-Turkish ethnicities (Pomaks, Muslim Roma, and Tatars among others) were also affected by the "Big Excursion", Pomaks were often referred to as "Turks" and vica versa. As a result, the precise identity of victims can be difficult to determine. Estimates of the ethnic composition of victims of the "Big Excursion" thus vary. For example, by one estimate around 90% of victims were Bulgarian Turks, but by another up to 111,000, approximately one third, of the victims of the "Big Excursion" were Pomaks despite official exclusion of Pomaks from the events. Since Pomaks and Turks traditionally lived in different parts of Bulgaria, authorities used individuals' place of origin to "impose a preferred ethnic category on a person."
In 1984, the authoritarian communist regime in Sofia increasingly leaned into Bulgarian nationalism and embarked on an assimilationist campaign known officially as the "Revival Process" (Bulgarian: Възродителен процес, romanized: Vazroditelen protses). While initially, the regime focused on heightened assimilationist policies, it eventually resolved towards ethnic cleansing. For example, on June 7, 1989 General Secretary Todor Zhivkov said the following of the necessity of the "Big Excursion":
In discourse, the "Big Excursion" is sometimes merged with the longstanding assimilationist policies of the Bulgarian state towards its Muslim minority or the "Revival Process" in particular. It is treated as an endpoint. In contrast to assimilation campaigns, however, the "Big Excursion" was unprecedented before 1989. Similarly, the Holocaust was of a distinct and unprecedented character from the series of pogroms and anti-semitic campaigns which preceded it and is treated as such by historians.
Passports were restricted in all Soviet bloc nations. Typically, passports were only issued to a select group and had to be relinquished to government authorities. Passports were also usually not issued to entire families for travel to capitalist countries to reduce defection. On May 19, however, Bulgaria substantially loosened its passport regime and allowed Bulgarian citizens to keep their travel documents at home. During May of 1989, Communist Bulgaria issued passports to all those it considered to be Turks.
Following on from the simmering tensions between the Communist regime and Bulgaria's Muslim population, the Bulgarian state increasingly cracked down, arresting many. The first 170 of the most "'problematic'" dissidents were deported soon after May 20th, 1989, followed by another 4,000–10,000 Muslims. The first 1,000 "ringleaders" of anti-regime protests were deported to Austria, Yugoslavia, and Sweden.
The state also threatened individual Muslims. For instance, one Bulgarian Turk, Rasim Ozgur, recalled that in early May 1989, communist state militiamen told him that they would kill him if he was seen conversing with "'reported people,'" and they also told him that he "was about to emigrate." He thus prepared to leave Bulgaria and did so once the border with Turkey was opened later that month. Others who did not leave expediently enough were intimidated by agents of the Communist State Security organ known as the DS. Some DS officers directly commanded some Bulgarian Muslims to leave the country in fewer than two hours. The DS also ensured that expellees were allowed to take no more than 300 Bulgarian levs (around $40 in 1989 United States Dollars) per person with them.
On May 29, 1989, General Secretary Todor Zhivkov announced the opening of the border with Turkey, ostensibly "to allow tourists to visit the neighboring country," for three months at most. Large numbers of Muslims, many of whom, like Rasim Ozgur, had already prepared to leave the country in the face of state intimidation, surged to the Turkish border. Turkey in-turn issued 90-day visas on request to any holder of a Bulgarian passport. Turkey fully opened the Kapıkule border crossing near the Bulgarian town of Kapitan Andreevo on June 3 even to those without a visa. All expellees had to cross into Turkey via this single border crossing. This checkpoint is sometimes referred to as "Checkpoint Ali".
In response to international backlash, particularly from Turkey with the support of the United States, the Communist Bulgarian regime insisted that the victims of the "Big Excursion" had left voluntarily on tourist visas and thus could not be properly referred to as deportees. It further insisted that the flow of such people was the result of the relaxation of Bulgarian passport laws – the very same laws that Turkey had often wished for Bulgaria to relax – and that Bulgarian actions were simply in keeping with the Helsinki Accords.
Though it sought an agreement with Bulgaria regarding the migration of Bulgarian Turks from the start, towards the beginning of the "Big Excursion" Turkey vowed to accept the entire estimated population of Bulgarian Turks if necessary and suggested it would be able to integrate the expellees. However, Turkey soon experienced difficulties coping with the inflow of expellees from Bulgaria. For instance, this inflow caused an up-to 100% increase in rental prices in European Turkey.
Turkey directly addressed Bulgarian rhetoric around the Cyprus problem, attempting to allay concerns that Turkey posed a threat to Bulgaria. Soon thereafter, however, a crowd of over 100,000 fueled by false rumors of Soviet military actions against Bulgarian Turks and Muslims gathered in Istanbul's Taksim Square shouting anti-Bulgarian slogans. The Turkish ultranationalist organization known as the "Grey Wolves" openly called for an invasion of Bulgaria. These (often warmongering) demonstrations and statements served to fuel the Bulgarian regime's anti-Turkish propaganda.
By late August, over 300,000 Muslims had crossed the Bulgarian-Turkish border, leading to a refugee crisis in Turkey. The Turkish and Bulgarian foreign ministers repeatedly planned to meet in Kuwait for talks regarding the crisis, but they failed to do so.
With no meeting set to materialize, on August 21, Turkey reinstated the visa requirement for Bulgarian passport holders, and a mere day later Turkey officially closed its border with Bulgaria to stop the flow of "Bulgarian citizens without a Turkish visa". As a result, the number of Muslims crossing into Turkey dropped dramatically, though some Bulgarian expellees did obtain Turkish visas thereafter and subsequently cross the border. Indeed, some Bulgarian Muslims who had already packed to leave the country were unable to do so because of the closure. Around 25,000 were unable to cross into Turkey as a result of the closure.
Bulgaria did not attempt to more directly expel its Muslim population in large numbers following the closure, even after Turkey re-opened its border with Bulgaria for Turks and Muslims with a valid Turkish visa a mere two weeks later on September 3. However, the repression of Muslims by Communist Bulgaria continued until on December 29, 1989, exactly seven months since Zhivkov announced the opening of the Turkish border and just over one month after Zhivkov's resignation, when the government of Petar Mladenov announced that the rights of Muslims would be restored, though it would take two years for that promise to be fully fulfilled.
Even after closing its shared border with Bulgaria, Turkey continued to reiterate its desire for a diplomatic agreement to address the refugee crisis caused by the "Big Excursion". A diplomatic summit between Bulgaria and Turkey in Kuwait was eventually held in October of 1989 and a follow-up meeting was held months after the fall of Zhivkov in January of 1990.
No armed conflict between countries broke out over the "Big Excursion". As the Bulgaria was a member of the Warsaw Pact and Turkey was a member of NATO, such conflict over the "Big Excursion" had the potential to draw in the United States and Soviet Union, the two principal nuclear-armed superpowers of the era. However, because records in both Russia and the United States remain sealed and the topic has received little scholarly attention, the precise role that the "Big Excursion" played in the larger context of the then-waning Cold War cannot be confirmed.
The United States Senate officially condemned the "Big Excursion" and an international fact-finding mission was organized, albeit without participation from any Soviet Bloc nation. The Soviet Union, however, refused to mediate between Bulgaria and Turkey.
The Zhivkov regime consistently falsified economic data. Following Zhivkov's fall from power, it became known that economic data was far less favorable than previously thought. In line with the actual data, living conditions in Bulgaria worsened towards the end of the Communist era.
In addition to the general economic malaise, the "Big Excursion" itself contributed to popular economic hardship. Bulgarian Turks were themselves largely employed in the agricultural sector and the expulsions of the "Big Excursion" came about at the same time as the annual harvest. As a consequence of the "Excursion" and the generally poor situation, Bulgaria experienced poor harvests leading to food rationing throughout the country, including in Sofia.
Even before the ultimate end of the Excursion, large numbers of expellees returned to Bulgaria, For some, the decision to return to Bulgaria was motivated by hard living conditions in Turkish refugee camps and difficulties adjusting to life in Turkey. The number of returnees accelerated after the end of the "Big Excursion". By the end of 1990, Communist rule had come to an end, with the People's Republic of Bulgaria transformed into simply the Bulgarian Republic, and around 150,000 Muslims had returned. By the end of 1991, as many as 200,000 had returned.
The return of such a large number of recent expellees is attributed to Bulgaria's successful transition to democracy following the end of the exodus as well as moderation by both the democratic Bulgarian government and the Bulgarian Turkish community itself. For example, Bulgaria's first democratically-elected president, Zhelyu Zhelev, treated the Turkish political movement as political allies. Zhelev even worked to defend the then-nascent Movement for Rights and Freedoms against a legal challenge from nationalists and the post-communist Bulgarian Socialist Party which could have led to the MRF's dissolution. In less than two years after the fall of Zhivkov, religious and Turkish-language schools were re-opened across Bulgaria, a new national constitution was adopted guaranteeing freedom of religion, and the state began to officially restore the previous names of Muslims which had been forcibly Bulgarianized throughout the Revival Process. Similarly, MRF leader Ahmed Dogan worked to marginalize ultra-nationalist elements within the Turkish community and refrained from calling for autonomy or independence.
The "Big Excursion" is less well-known than many of the other late-20th century ethnic cleansings in the Balkans. Even after the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, media organizations largely failed to report on the "Big Excursion". Even within Bulgaria, the events of 1989 are not particularly well known. Academic Tomasz Kamusella writes that "The generations of Bulgarians born after 1989 know next to nothing about the Revival Process and the 1989 ethnic cleansing."
While the events of 1989 were not front-page news in the West, the allure and moderating influence of potential European Union (EU) membership contributed to the subsequent re-integration of expellees into Bulgarian society. For instance, in 2000 the EU promulgated the "Race Equality Directive" and later formally requested Bulgaria's compliance with the directive. Bulgaria ultimately acceded to the European Union in 2007.
In 2012, the Bulgarian government (then governed by a coalition headed by the center-right GERB party) officially recognized the "Big Excursion" as ethnic cleansing, and called for the prosecution of those responsible. However, that recognition was largely ignored by scholars, and to date Bulgaria does not officially commemorate the ethnic cleansing and the state has not brought criminal charges against any individual involved in carrying out the "Big Excursion". Indeed, Bulgaria has even frequently commemorated the now-deceased Todor Zhivkov on the anniversary of his birth, with former prime minister Boyko Borisov even referring to Zhivkov as the "Great Daddy of the Bulgarian Nation."
Less than a week after the 2012 recognition of the event as ethnic cleansing by the Bulgarian Parliament, the far-right ultranationalist political party, Ataka, introduced a new bill officially contesting the declaration. According to the bill's authors the declaration and recognition of the 1989 ethnic cleansing would represent a "boost" for "'separatists'", presumably in reference to the nation's Turks and Muslims. This reasoning is in-line with that of Bulgarian nationalists more generally, who often cast the Turkish and Muslim minority in the "role of perennial anti-Bulgarian separatists."
In support of the viewpoint of Bulgarian nationalists, the migration of Bulgarians of all ethnicities seeking economic opportunity to Turkey following the fall of Communism blurred together with the "Big Excursion" in the eyes of many and bolstered the argument that the exodus had been voluntary.
Even in Turkey, few accounts of excursion have been published. What books have been produced primarily regard the individual accounts of expellees, which have typically been printed in limited runs.
However, the 2012 declaration condemning the events of 1989 by the Bulgarian parliament was widely praised in Turkish media.