Turks in Bulgaria suffered terribly in the 1980s under the former communist regime. Here is one of their painful stories
On January 12, 1985, Ahmet Alpay, a 23-year-old student at Sofia’s Technical University, was detained by Bulgaria’s notorious secret police in a state under a communist rule that was part of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.
As a member of Bulgaria’s Turkish minority, Alpay was not charged for anything because he had never been put on trial, while being kept in different detention centres, including the infamous Belene concentration camp located on the Danube River, until September 25, 1985. “I was punished because I defended my natural human rights,” Alpay tells TRT World on a day, December 10, which is celebrated worldwide as Human Rights Day.
Under the autocratic leadership of Todor Zhivkov, Bulgaria’s communist state called its assimilation policy a ‘Process of Rebirth’, aiming to build a new Bulgarian identity without any Muslim and Turkish elements. “It’s based on an idea that there were and are no Turks in Bulgaria, rejecting the existence of the Turks in the country,” Alpay says.
Like many other Turks in Bulgaria, Alpay felt insulted by Sofia’s assimilation policies, organising Turkish youth and calling foreign embassies to let them know the state had violated its Muslim minority’s human rights, which angered the autocratic leadership.
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