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The Turkish Minority in Bulgaria (1878-1908) by Omer Turan. Ankara: TOrk Tarih Kurumu, 1998. Pp.349.
The relationship between Turkey and the Turkish diaspora communities is one of those subjects that everybody is aware of as being of crucial importance, though less is written on it than one might expect. An historical analysis of the Turkish minority in Bulgaria published from Ankara is therefore likely to be of interest both for the material it provides and for the light it sheds on current Republican interpretations of their role. These expectations are amply fulfilled, though not quite in the way that might be first thought. Rather than being written specially for the occasion, as it were, The Turkish Minority in Bulgaria (1878-1908) is the verbatim publication of the author's doctoral dissertation presented to the University of Leuven, with a ten-page Turkish summary added as an appendix. This makes for a slightly unfortunate opening, in that the preface forces the reader into a vicarious participation with an intimate group of thesis advisors. Some things, one cannot help thinking, really should be hidden from public view until suitably disguised, and dissertations have a strong claim to be one of them.
In spite of this opening, the voice and tone of the work soon changes and broadens. The vivid press pictures of the Bulgarian Turkish minority flooding over the Turkish border during the late eighties, inspired by the welcome extended by Turget Ozal, are still fresh in many peoples' minds. The story of this exodus, and partial return has yet to be written, but it clearly has influenced Turan, who makes his feelings on the Communist regime quite clear. Indeed, the author is angry, indignant and convinced that the Turkish minority in Bulgaria have suffered terribly, particularly during the last part of the nineteenth century, but also in later times. He draws on his sources freely in support of this contention, employing contemporary reports in the Turkish press, the British foreign office records, the Turkish Prime Ministerial archives (themselves opened largely to the outside world by Ozal), and the Hoover Collection in America.
The result is a curious mix: the text is well researched, indisputably, and consequently has drawn together detailed information on the newspapers, administration, ethnic divisions, and religious...