Escape From Repression

From time to time through the centuries, European roads have become clogged with refugees. Pushing carts and carriages, leaving behind homes, pets and memories, people have fled repression or genocide in one country or another as the continent’s map was drawn and redrawn by armies and national ambitions. Some may hope that such scenes belong to the past. Not so.

Since May, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Turks have been fleeing across Bulgaria’s southern border into Turkey. With the remnants of their former lives crammed in suitcases and car trunks, they are leaving towns and villages in southern and northwestern Bulgaria where they have lived for centuries. It is the largest flow of refugees seen in Europe since World War II.

The cause of their flight is a type of repression that one would wish was also a thing of the past. Since 1984, the Bulgarian government has been on a campaign to wipe out Turkish culture in Bulgaria. The authorities have forced ethnic Turks--who comprise 15% of the country’s population--to adopt Slavic names, forbidden circumcision and restricted Muslim religious services, including funerals.

Sadly, forced assimilation is an old Slavic habit. Since the time of the tzars, Russians have deflected international criticism of their treatment of ethnic minorities by simply claiming that such minorities do not exist. The authorities then forcibly “Russify” the groups, rewriting their history textbooks and changing their names. The Bulgarians are much like their Russian cousins. The Bulgarian government has for some time asserted that there are no Turks in Bulgaria, only “Bulgarian Muslims”--Bulgarians who were forcibly converted to Islam under the Ottoman empire. Human rights watchers say that there is no evidence to support the contention.

The reasons behind the government repression of the Turks are somewhat obscure. Some Bulgarian officials have hinted to Westerners that they are concerned about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Bulgaria. This excuse seems less a reflection of Bulgarian reality than a deliberate attempt to strike a chord of sympathy from those in the West who fear any growth of fundamentalist Islam. There is almost no chance of any such movement in Bulgaria.

The basic motivation behind the campaign is very simple: national chauvinism. The Slavs have a poor track record for tolerance of minorities and a long tradition of nationalist self-exertion. Luckily, Bulgaria’s influential cousin, the Soviet Union, has been most visible in urging them to repeal these policies and halt the flow of refugees. But it remains to be seen to what extent Bulgaria is willing to join the Soviet Union and the rest of a more tolerant Europe, or how tightly it will cling to old, and reprehensible, national habits. It must decide soon. Nearly one-third of Bulgaria’s Turks have already arrived in Turkey, crossing the border at the rate of 4,000 per day. International outrage is rising at the same brisk clip.