page_title: Bulgarian Turks
section_title: Movement for Rights and Freedoms
hierarchical_section_title: Bulgarian Turks / History / Turks in Post-Communist Bulgaria / Movement for Rights and Freedoms
caption_attribution_description: Български: Парламентарни избори в България през 2013: депутатски места по район
context_page_description: Bulgarian Turks are a Turkish ethnic group from Bulgaria. In 2011, there were 588,318 Bulgarians of Turkish descent, roughly 8.8% of the population, making them the country's largest ethnic minority. They primarily live in the southern province of Kardzhali and the northeastern provinces of Shumen, Silistra, Razgrad and Targovishte. There is also a diaspora outside Bulgaria in countries such as Turkey, Austria, Netherlands, Sweden, and Romania the most significant of which are the Bulgarian Turks in Turkey.
  Bulgarian Turks are the descendants of Turkish settlers who entered the region after the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, as well as Bulgarian converts to Islam who became Turkified during the centuries of Ottoman rule. However, it has also been suggested that some Turks living today in Bulgaria may be direct ethnic descendants of earlier medieval Pecheneg, Oğuz, and Cuman Turkic tribes. According to local tradition, following a resettlement policy Karamanid Turks were settled mainly in the Kardzhali area by the sultans Mehmed the Conqueror, Selim and Mahmud II.
context_section_description: At the end of 1984 an underground terrorist organization called the National Liberation Movement of the Turks in Bulgaria was formed in Bulgaria which headed the Turkish community's opposition movement and is responsible for several terrorist acts such as one at the train station at Bunovo which was targeted at a train killing 6 civilians and wounding 9. Three of the members were sentenced to death for the bombing and executed. On 4 January 1990 the activists of the movement, registered an organization with the legal name Movement for Rights and Freedom (MRF) (in Bulgarian: Движение за права и свободи: in Turkish: Hak ve Özgürlükler Hareketi) in Varna, headed by Ahmed Dogan, though a former Bulgarian communist agent himself, his main philosophy was against the communist regime. At the moment of registration it had 33 members, at present, according to the organization's website, 68000 members plus 24000 in the organization's youth wing.
  With 120,000 members, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) was the fourth largest political organization in Bulgaria in 1991, but it occupied a special place in the political process. The leader of the movement, Ahmed Dogan, was imprisoned in 1986. Founded in 1990 to represent the interests of the Turkish ethnic minority, the MRF gained twenty three seats in the first parliamentary election that year, giving it the fourth-largest parliamentary voting bloc. Its agenda precluded mass media coverage or building coalitions with other parties, because of the strong anti-Turkish element in Bulgaria's political culture. By mid-1991, the UDF had held only one joint demonstration with the MRF; their failure to reconcile differences was considered a major weakness in the opposition to the majority BSP. In early 1990, the MRF protested vigorously but unsuccessfully its exclusion from national round table discussions among the major Bulgarian parties.
  In 1991 the MRF broadened its platform to embrace all issues of civil rights in Bulgaria, aiming "to contribute to the unity of the Bulgarian people and to the full and unequivocal compliance with the rights and freedoms of mankind and of all ethnic, religious, and cultural communities in Bulgaria." The MRF took this step partly to avoid the constitutional prohibition of political parties based on ethnic or religious groups. The group's specific goals were ensuring that the new constitution protect ethnic minorities adequately; introducing Turkish as an optional school subject; and bringing to trial the leaders of the assimilation campaign in the 1980s. To calm Bulgarian concerns, the MRF categorically renounced Islamic fundamentalism, terrorism, and ambitions for autonomy within Bulgaria.
  In the first general elections in 1990 after the communist regime which the Muslims boycotted, the party won 6.0% of the popular vote and 24 out of 400 seats and became the fourth largest party in the parliament. In the parliamentary elections in 1991 it won 7.6% of the vote and remained with 24 seats in а 240-seat parliament. In the elections in 1994 it won 5.4% of the vote and its seats decreased to 15. In the elections in 1997 it won 7.6% of the vote and 19 out of 240 seats. It won in the elections in 2001 7.5% of the vote and 21 out of 240 seats. Subsequently, for the first time the party joined a coalition government, which was led by the winner of the elections (NDSV). Under the control of the party were 2 out of 17 Bulgarian ministries – the Ministry of Agriculture and Forests and the Minister without portfolio, the rest 15 remained under the control of NDSV.
  At the 2005 elections it increased to 12.8% of vote and 34 out of 240 seats and kept in power as a part of the coalition led by the BSP and NDSV party. The ministries under the control of the Movement of Rights and Freedoms increased to 3 out of 18. In the budget of 2008, MRF directed a large parts of the subsidies for agriculture to tobacco growers (which are predominantly Turks, Pomaks, and Romani) leaving staple crops, like wheat, without subsidies for buying the seed for sowing. This evoked protes
caption: Distribution of seats by constituency from the election
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