Ethnopolitics in the New Europe, by John T. Ishiyama and Marijke Breuning

 

2. The Movements fror Rights and Freedoms in Bulgaria

 

The ouster of Todor Zhivkov in November 1989 marked the end of not only the Communist era in Bulgaria, but also a period of the most virulent form of ethnic repression in Eastern Europe. During the Zhivkov era, the existence of minority groups was officially denied, and thousands of non-Bulgarians were subjected to a series of “Bulgarization” campaigns in the 1980s. Ethnic Turks in Bulgaria were especially targeted for persecution, with hundreds of thousands forced by the authorities to Bulgarize their names, cease the use of the Turkish language in publications, and suspend the practice of Islam. Thousands fled from Bulgaria to Turkey from 1985 to 1987 and again with the resumption of assimilationist policies in 1989. The assimilation drive ended with Zhivkov’s ouster, but the political scars of this period left an indelible mark that has played an important role in shaping the politics of interethnic relations in post-Communist Bulgaria.

Despite the injuries committed against the Turkish minority in the period immediately prior to the collapse of Communist rule, injuries that might have been expected to heighten the grievances of the Turkish population, the primary post-Communist Turkish political organization in Bulgaria, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF), has not made extreme demands. Rather than agitating for political autonomy, the Turkish party has presented itself as an all-national party representing all Bulgarians and as a moderate political force in post-Communist Bulgarian politics. To be sure, the MRF has agitated for the protection of Turkish cultural rights, but the party’s leadership has portrayed this effort as beneficial to the Bulgarian population at large.

Why has the MRF made only moderate political demands, despite the enormous resentments that exist among Bulgaria’s Turkish population? To address this question, the following sections identify the historical, economic, demographic, and political pressures facing the MRF, as well as the political opportunities presented by the structural features of the post-Communist Bulgarian political system. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the internal fissures that have developed within the MRF, due largely to the moderate politics of the party’s leadership.

 

Historical Background

The Turks have long played an important role in Bulgarian history. Bulgaria became part of the Ottoman Empire in the late fourteenth century, and its history has been intimately connected with Turkey and Islam for more than 500 years. Bulgaria achieved independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1878, with Russian assistance, although its territories and full independence were curtailed by subsequent peace conferences. Bulgaria gained full independence from the Ottoman Empire only in 1908, after several popular uprisings led to the final expulsion of Turkish authority. From 1912 to 1913, Bulgaria engaged in two wars. In the first war, it combined with the other new Balkan states to drive the Turkish forces out of the region. In the second war, Bulgaria was defeated by the combined forces of Serbia and Greece and lost territories in Macedonia and Thrace. These territorial losses fueled Bulgarian irredentism, which led Bulgaria to align itself with the Central Powers during World War I. However, with the capitulation of Germany and Austria in 1918, Bulgaria was forced to accept a harsh peace and lost all access to the Aegean Sea. In World War II, Bulgaria again allied itself with Germany and temporarily regained territories in Macedonia and Thrace, although following the war, Sofia was forced to return these territories. Later, under the Communist regime, Bulgaria renounced its claims to Macedonia and Turkish and Greek Thrace. ₁

One of the most important legacies of the centuries of Ottoman rule was the large Turkish population left in Bulgaria. The Turks are by far the largest of Bulgaria’s minority populations (amounting to about 10 percent of the population) that also includes Gypsies, Pomaks (Bulgarian Muslims), Jews, Armenians, and Macedonians (see Table 2.1). For the most part, ethnic Turks live in agrarian areas, primarily in the tobacco-growing Kardzhali region in south-central Bulgaria and Razgrad-Shumen in northeastern Bulgaria. Most of the Turkish population live in the provinces of Ruse, Varna, and Shumen in the north and Burgas and Haskovo in the south and form a majority in eight “subprovinces,” four of which are in northern Bulgaria and four in the south. The four northern subprovinces are Omurtag, Kubrat, Isperih, and Dulovo, and the four southern subprovinces are Kardzhali, Momchilgrad, Krumovgrad, and Ardino.

Table 2.1 Ethnic Composition of Bulgaria, 1920–1992
	1920		1934		1965		1992
Ethnics Groups	Population	%	Population	%	Population	%	Population	%
Bulgarians and   Macedonians	4,041,276	83.4	4,585,620	86.8	7,239,376	88.0	7,206,062	85.1
Turks	542,904	11.2	618,268	10.2	740,000a	9.7	822,253	9.7
Roma (Gypsies)	61,555	1.3	80,532	1.3	150,000a	1.8	287,732	3.4
Pomaks (Bulgarian   Muslims)	—	—	—	—	—	—	65,546	0.8
Others	—	—	—	—	—	—	91,131	1.1
Total minorities	—	—	—	—	—	—	1,266,662	14.9
Sources: 1920, 1934, and 1965 figures from Rothschild, East Central Europe Between the Two World Wars, 328; 1992 figures from Bugajski, Ethnic Politics in Eastern Europe, 236. Note: a. Estimated in 1965.

Historically, the Turkish population in Bulgaria has been an object of animosity for xenophobic Bulgarian nationalists. Although the interwar Bulgarian regime had been reasonably tolerant of its minority populations (extending collective and cultural rights to the Bulgarian Turks), these cultural and collective rights were abolished under the Communists and about 150,000 ethnic Turks were pressured to emigrate. Nonetheless, the 1947 constitution continued to recognize the existence of national minorities in Bulgaria, and there was at least a nominal commitment in the first decades of Communist rule to provide for “instruction in Turkish” in schools with “ten or more Turkish students.” ₂

The adoption in 1971 of a new socialist constitution marked the beginning of a period of cultural intolerance and efforts at the forced assimilation of the Turks. Indeed, in the 1971 constitution, the mention of the existence of national minorities in Bulgaria simply disappeared, to be replaced by the term “non-Bulgarian.” In part, this was in keeping with a very strict interpretation of Marxism-Leninism, especially the nonrecognition of nationalist deviations. However, it was also in keeping with the traditional Bulgarian nationalist argument that the Bulgarian Turks were actually Slavs who had been forced to convert under Ottoman rule. In the mid-1980s, these two principles were used to justify an assault on Turkish minority rights and the Bulgarization of non-Bulgarian minorities. From 1984 to 1989, ethnic Turks were subjected to a series of government-sponsored campaigns that included the forced Bulgarization of family names and limitations placed on the use of Turkish language, to the extent that children were directed to inform the authorities of the crime of using Turkish in public. In addition, it was reported that widespread violence was employed against communities that resisted the forced name-changing campaign. Estimates of the number of ethnic Turks who were killed in 1984–1985 resisting the campaign range between 800 and 2,500. As a result of this period of cultural repression, an estimated 350,000 Turks left the country. ₃

During the period of liberalization that followed the ouster of Zhivkov in November 1989, the government reversed itself. In December 1989, the ruling Bulgarian Communist Party renounced the policy of forcible cultural assimilation and allowed ethnic Turks to revert to their old names, practice Islam, and speak Turkish in public. Further, Turks were allowed to establish their own political, social, and cultural organizations. ₄   Following the democratic changes in Bulgaria, an estimated 120,000 to 180,000 Turks returned to Bulgaria.

Despite these changes, anti-Turk sentiment has remained an important part of post-Communist politics. The Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), the successor to the Bulgarian Communist Party, has been particularly prone to capitalize on incipient anti-Turkish sentiment for electoral gain. ₅   However, bouts of anti-Turkish rhetoric were not limited to the BSP. For instance, the leader of the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) and prime minister in 1991, Dmitur Popov, remarked that Turks represented a threat to the Bulgarian nation, and in the regions of Bulgaria inhabited by ethnic Turks, Slavic Bulgarians were threatened with death. In particular, Popov warned against “Moslem aggression”: “In some way it must be blocked so that it does not invade Europe.” ₆

Nor is anti-Turkish sentiment limited to the political elite. Many Bulgarians still currently regard the ethnic Turkish minority as a potential Trojan horse and a Turkish “fifth column” on Bulgarian territory, a sentiment that is most powerful in the southeastern region of the country. In part, this is due to the proximity of Turkey, which has the most powerful military force in the region; with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, Bulgaria no longer has the means to defend itself against Turkey’s superior armed forces. This fear has been reflected in public opinion polls. In a 1991 Gallup poll, 48 percent of the respondents regarded Turkey as a threat to Bulgarian national security. ₇   Although the perception of the threat posed by Turkey has now declined somewhat, a similar poll conducted in December 1993 indicated that 34 percent of the respondents still considered Turkey a major threat to Bulgarian national security. In addition, the percentage of respondents declaring that ethnic groups and minorities in Bulgaria posed a serious threat to the nation’s security stood at 46 percent in 1992. ₈   Moreover, major barriers that divide Bulgarians and Turks continue to exist. Thus, in a nationwide survey conducted in 1994, respondents were asked whether they would be willing to accept a Turk or a Roma as a neighbor, a colleague at work, a close friend, or a member of their family by marriage. Fully 35 percent of the respondents said they would not accept Turks as neighbors (71 percent for Roma), 32 percent as colleagues at work (63 percent for Roma), 52 percent as a close friend (79 percent for Roma), and 77 percent as a relative by marriage (90.2 percent for Roma). ₉

Compounding this underlying distrust of the Turks, two additional issues continue to promote tensions between the Bulgarian and Turkish parts of the population. The first is the right to use the Turkish language. According to Article 3 of the 1991 constitution, Bulgarian was listed as the official language of the Bulgarian Republic, although Article 36 of the constitution guaranteed that “citizens whose mother tongue is not Bulgarian shall have the right to study and use their own language alongside the compulsory study of the Bulgarian language.” In January 1991, a special council was created to investigate whether the teaching of Turkish as part of the secondary school curriculum was consistent with the constitution. The commission concluded that it was, but it failed to endorse the adoption of Turkish as part of the official educational program. As a result, several thousand Turkish students went on strike in southeastern Bulgaria.

A second area of controversy concerns the redress of property lost during the Turkish exodus of the Zhivkov period. A number of Bulgarians, particularly in the Razgrad-Shumen region of the northeast, profited immensely by purchasing property and goods at absurdly low prices and sold used cars and food for extortionate sums to Turks desperate to leave the country. ₁₀

The demands for the recognition of Turkish as an official language and for property redress have enraged xenophobic Bulgarian nationalists. In 1989, in Kardzhali—a city with a population of 60,000 where the ethnic Bulgarian and Turkish communities are roughly equal in size but situated in a rural area where Turks are estimated to outnumber Bulgarians by about four to one—local nationalists formed the Committee for the Defense of National Interests (CDNI) and campaigned against the government decision to restore minority language rights. In part, the reason for the backlash in Kardzhali derived from the fact that many of the ethnic Bulgarians in the area were descended from families driven out of Turkish and Greek Thrace in the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913. Hence there was a strong fear of Pan-Islamic resurgence in the area and traditional support for greater Bulgarian nationalism. Indeed, during the forced assimilation campaign of 1984–1985, at least 100 ethnic Turks were killed by local security forces in the region. ₁₁

 

The Movement for Rights and Freedoms

The principal political organization that has emerged to champion the cause of Turkish political and cultural rights in the post-Communist era has been the MRF. The origins of the ethnic Turkish MRF lie with the official policies of repression practiced by the Communist regime in Bulgaria. It was during the period from 1984 to 1989 that organized opposition to the regime’s efforts at Bulgarization began to appear, centered on the clandestine National Turkish Liberation Movement. This organization claimed to have been active in organizing the antigovernment protests in May 1989, which ultimately signaled the beginning of the end for the Zhivkov regime. In particular, Ahmed Dogan (born 1954), an academic with a Ph.D. in philosophy, was active in establishing organized resistance to the assimilationist policies of the state. ₁₂   He was arrested in June 1986 for “anti-state” activities and sentenced to ten years in prison.

While serving his term in prison, Dogan formulated the basis of a political program that, upon his release in 1989, became the centerpiece of the MRF’s political program, which was formally founded in the city of Shumen on February 25, 1990. ₁₃   A Constituent National Conference was held on March 26–27, 1990, in Sofia, which elected a Central Council of seven members, including Dogan as chairman and Osman Oktay, a close associate of Dogan, as general secretary. The early party program focused largely on demands for the freedom to use Turkic names and the Turkish language, the freedom to practice Islam openly, and the right to emigrate to Turkey.

However, the party later broadened its goals and emphasized that it was a party of all national minorities opposed to any “manifestation of national chauvinism, revenge, Islamic fundamentalism and religious fanaticism.” ₁₄   The party argued that its efforts were designed to contribute to “the unity of the Bulgarian people and to the full and unequivocal compliance with the rights of freedoms of mankind and of all ethnic, religious and cultural communities in Bulgaria.” ₁₅   Further, the party called for the promotion of measures designed to alleviate the economic problems facing minority populations in Bulgaria. ₁₆

By 1991, it was reported that the MRF had 140,000 members, up from the 100,000 members at its inception. ₁₇   The MRF’s organizational structure is comprised of three tiers: a Central Council at the top, district administrative bureaus in the country’s thirty-three major regions, and local committees in cities and villages around the country. The movement’s statutes stipulate that the Central Council convene at least once every two months; between meetings, a Central Administrative Bureau, composed of a seven-member executive committee and four regional coordinators, is responsible for the day-to-day administration of the party’s affairs. The highest authority belongs to the national congress, which is required by the statutes to meet at least once every three years and is to be attended by one delegate for every 500 members. In all, there are between 800 and 900 branches and twenty-two regional offices throughout the country.

The MRF’s attitude toward the major political forces in Bulgaria has generally been mixed. On the one hand, the BSP bore the responsibility for the “criminal assimilation policy” in the 1980s; Dogan himself in 1990 categorically “rejected any possibility of the MRF forming a coalition or conducting any other kind of cooperation with the BSP for either tactical considerations as well as for the consideration of principle.” ₁₈   On the other hand, the MRF’s attitude toward the UDF was not entirely positive either. Indeed, many figures in the UDF had opposed the MRF’s legalization as a party and had charged that the MRF was a militant “organization of the Turks in Bulgaria.” ₁₉

 

Structure of Incentives

In addition to the legacy of intergroup animosity mentioned above, other features of post-Communist Bulgaria would seem to provide considerable incentive for the emergence of extremist demands made on the part of the ethnic Turks and the principal party that represents them. The growing social and economic gap that separates the ethnic Turkish population from other Bulgarians would suggest that there is considerable pressure for the MRF to move in the direction of more extremist and particularistic demands. Yet these pressures have been mitigated somewhat by other factors, most notably, the impact of political structures and the related structure of political competition.

Social and Economic Pressures

The economic transition in Bulgaria has been fraught with much difficulty. Many of the current problems are the result of the legacy bequeathed by the ill-conceived economic policies of the previous Communist regime. In the early years after the Communist takeover in 1944, Bulgaria—more so than other Eastern European countries—followed a growth strategy that was closely modeled after the Soviet experience. Indeed, the first of a series of five-year plans witnessed the emphasis on investment in heavy industry and a growing reliance on raw materials imported from the Soviet Union. By the 1960s, heavy industry accounted for 48 percent of the net material product, as opposed to only 23 percent in 1948. As a result, as with all Soviet-style planned economies, after an initial expansion in industry and agriculture, production had stagnated by the late 1960s, and the need for economic reforms became increasingly clear to the Bulgarian Communist leadership. ₂₀

Two of the most important legacies left by the past Communist regime were the great degree of integration of the Bulgarian economy with the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), with its accompanying dependence on Eastern European markets and raw materials, and the amassing of one of the most crushing foreign debt burdens among the Communist states. Much of this debt, which was estimated to have reached $9.2 billion in 1989, had been incurred in order to purchase consumer goods and raw materials from Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, rather than capital equipment. In sum, the regime attempted to maintain levels of consumption, leading to less investment in production.

The economic dislocation caused by the collapse of the CMEA had a direct impact on the economic condition of the Turkish population in Bulgaria. As Table 2.2 indicates, as late as 1990, CMEA countries accounted for 75.9 percent of Bulgaria’s imports and purchased over 80 percent of the country’s exports (with the USSR alone accounting for 56.5 percent of imports and 64.4 percent of exports). Bulgaria was particularly reliant on the import of iron ore and timber from the USSR, which was priced below world market prices, and the Communist bloc was the primary market for Bulgarian industrial and agricultural products, particularly tobacco. With the collapse of the CMEA, and with the shift to international prices in 1991, the effects on Bulgaria were disastrous. The OECD estimated that the shift to international prices in 1991 led to a 27 percent loss in terms of trade, a 67 percent decline in exports to the former Soviet Union, and a 60 percent decline in import volumes, which produced a fall in real gross domestic product (GDP) of about one-third between 1989 and 1991. ₂₁   Coupled with the effects of adopting an International Monetary Fund– approved macroeconomic stabilization plan, the economy performed far worse than expected in 1991–1992.

Table 2.2 Macroeconomic Indicators and Degree of Regional Integration, Bulgaria, 1990–1994
	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995
Change in real GDP	-9.1	-11.7	-5.7	-4.2	-2.0
Gross industrial production	-12.5	-18.6	-11.2	-3.9	-4.0
Unemployment	-3.7	7.7	-13.8	-16.3	n.a.
Inflation	1.6	10.8	15.5	16.0	n.a.
Real industrial wages (1990 = 100)	100	100	60	51	61
Exports (% of total)    To EC/EUa	5.0	15.7	29.4	28.1	31.5
To Russia and Eastern Europe	80.2	57.7	39.2	35.4	34.5
Imports (% of total)    To EC/EUa	9.6	20.7	31.1	30.2	40.3
To Russia and Eastern Europe	75.9	48.5	36.3	42.9	28.2
Sources: Hardt and Kaufman, eds., East Central European Economies in Transition. Note: a. EC = European Community; EU = European Union.

Of the various affected sectors, agricultural production was particularly hard hit. Although the decline in industrial production had begun to taper off by 1993–1994, agriculture continued to languish, with the largest single decline occurring in 1993 when gross agricultural production fell by 16.3 percent. To a large extent, this was due to the loss of important markets for Bulgarian products, particularly tobacco and wine. Moreover, the former product appears to have little opportunity to recover, particularly as Eastern European and Russian markets—the traditional consumers of Bulgarian tobacco—have become saturated with Western brands.

The effects of economic adjustment have been particularly injurious to the situation of the ethnic Turks. Most Turks worked in the tobacco industry, yet with the introduction of Western brands in Eastern Europe, the economic condition of the Turks declined dramatically. Many villages in the tobacco-producing regions of the southeast have been entirely abandoned, the residents leaving the fields unharvested. Many have left for Turkey, but emigration to Turkey has become difficult, particularly since Turkey has imposed unofficial visa restrictions to try to stem the flow. ₂₂

Given the continuing economic difficulties facing the Turkish portion of the Bulgarian population, despite the overall recovery of the economy, one might expect greater pressures for more radical solutions to the Turkish problem as the economic gap grows between the Turks and other Bulgarians. In fact, Dogan has admitted that there have been widening internal cleavages within the MRF, particularly over such issues as the growing socioeconomic gap and the problem of unemployment within the Turkish population. ₂₃   Furthermore, the emigration to Turkey has been largely made up of those Turks who could afford to emigrate, particularly the most educated and talented portion of the population, which in turn has siphoned off the political base of the MRF. Thus, since 1989, over 9,000 Turkish intellectuals have left Bulgaria for Turkey, which, according to Dogan, has seriously weakened the “intellectual potential” of local organizational cadres. Such emigration has consequently contributed to the radicalization of local party organizations and a growing gap between the party’s center and local organizations. ₂₄

Political Incentives

Political Structures. Two features of the post-Communist Bulgarian political system have had a great influence on the development and behavior of the MRF. The first has been the provision contained within the Bulgarian constitution that specifically bans parties based on race, religion, or ethnic origin from participating in the electoral process. Despite this ban, the MRF contended that it was a movement open to all Bulgarians, even though most of the party’s membership was Turkish. The Central Election Commission accepted this contention, and the MRF was allowed to participate in the 1990 election campaign for the constituent Grand National Assembly.

With the adoption of the new constitution in 1991, the question again arose as to whether the MRF should be allowed to participate in the October 1991 parliamentary elections. Anticipating such a confrontation in August 1991, fifty-five Bulgarian members of the MRF organized the Party for Rights and Freedoms (PRF) and elected Dogan, the chairman of the MRF, as its chair. The lower courts ruled, however, that the party could not register, and this decision was upheld by the Supreme Court on September 12, 1991. Nevertheless, the MRF maintained that it need not reregister because it had been placed on the official party registry in 1990. The Central Election Commission accepted this argument and on September 11, registered the MRF. ₂₅

The decision to ban the PRF but not the MRF was to set an important precedent for the future development of the MRF. By refusing to register the PRF on the grounds that it represented an ethnic party but allowing the MRF to remain a registered political movement, the courts and the Central Election Commission effectively anointed the MRF as the only political organization that could legally represent the ethnic Turkish population in Bulgaria. Thus, any other potential Turkish contenders who aspired to participate in the electoral process and who were dissatisfied with the MRF were effectively closed off from competing.

In addition to enjoying a quasi-official monopoly on the representation of the Turkish population, the political structures of the current post-Communist political system, primarily electoral law, have also provided opportunities for the MRF. Initially, the June 1990 election law pertaining to the unicameral constituent Grand National Assembly (named in remembrance of the first Grand National Assembly created by the Turnovo constitution in 1875) allowed for 400 members, with 200 seats filled by competition in single-member electoral districts of relatively equal population; it was agreed that district size could vary up to 20 percent from the average. The law also provided for twenty-eight multimember districts for the purposes of electing 200 deputies by the proportional representation formula. The election of the 200 deputies by a single-member mandate with a majority-vote requirement was to provide an opportunity to produce a governing majority. The election of another 200 by PR was to ensure that the voices of smaller parties would be heard. A 4 percent threshold on the national list vote was required for a political party to share in the proportional representation formula. This threshold was employed to eliminate destructive “splinter” parties.

However, following the 1990 elections, several political organizations, especially certain factions of the UDF and the independent trade union Podkrepa, charged that the election law had been manipulated to ensure a BSP majority, particularly because the BSP had benefited from the single-member constituencies in the rural areas where the Socialists enjoyed an organizational advantage over their rivals. To counter this bias, the UDF and Podkrepa proposed the adoption of an exclusively proportional representation with parties campaigning on party programs. The BSP, in contrast, wanted to maintain the mixed system used in the 1990 elections. Ultimately, the democratic opposition won out, and the 1991 election was conducted on a purely PR basis with a 4 percent threshold for parties to receive representation; the d’Hondt method was adopted to allocate seats at the national level. Once seats were allocated to the parties nationally, party strength in the thirty-one electoral regions determined precisely how many individuals on a given party’s regional list would be elected to Parliament.

The net result of the electoral law was to promote a large proportion of “wasted” votes in the elections of 1991 and the overrepresentation of the major parties. As indicated in Table 2.3, overrepresentation was most pronounced in the 1991 parliamentary election, where only three parties passed the 4 percent threshold to win seats in Parliament. Thus, the BSP won only 33.14 percent of the popular vote yet received 44.17 percent of the seats in Parliament. Similarly, the UDF, the party that won the most seats in Parliament (110) that year, won only 34.36 percent of the vote. Perhaps most noteworthy was the performance of the MRF, which won 7.55 percent of the vote but received 10 percent of the seats, making it the third major party in Bulgaria. More important, since neither the UDF nor the BSP had been able to win a majority of seats (unlike in 1990), the MRF became the central actor in coalition politics, giving it far more influence on the course of Bulgarian politics than it had enjoyed the year before.

Table 2.3 Parliamentary Election Results, Bulgaria, 1990–1997a
	1990 Parliamentary Election		1991 Parliamentary Election		1994 Parliamentary Election		1995 Municipal Election	1997 Parliamentary Election
Party	% Voteb	% Seats (No.)	% Vote	% Seats (No.)	% Vote	% Seats (No.)	% Vote	% Vote	% Seats (No.)
BSP	47.15	52.75 (211)	33.14	44.17 (106)	43.50	50.28 (125)	41.0	22.0	24.2 (58)
UDF	3784	36.00 (144)	34.36	45.83 (110)	24.23	28.75 (69)	24.7	52.2	57.1 (137)
MRFc	6.5	5.75 (23)	7.55	10.00 (24)	5.40	5.42 (13)	8.2	7.6	7.9 (19)
BAPUd	8.03	(16)	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
PUe (BAPU   and Democratic Party)f	—	—	—	—	6.25	7.5 (18)	12.3	—	—
Bulgarian Business   Bloc	—	—	—	—	4.76	5.41 (13)	5.0	4.9	5.0 (12)
Euroleft Coalition   (Social Democratic   defectors from BSP)	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	5.6	5.8 (14)
Sources: The October 13, 1991, Legislative and Municipal Elections in Bulgaria; Krause, “Elections Reveal Blue Cities amid Red Provinces.” Figures in parentheses are raw numbers of seats held. Notes: a. Includes only parties that passed the 4 percent threshold. b. Percentage of votes won according to party list vote. c. Ran in coalition with Monarchists in 1997. d. BAPU = Bulgarian Agrarian Peoples’ Union. e. PU = Peoples Union. f. Ran in coalition with UDF in 1997.

The Structure of Competition. An additional factor that has impacted the evolution and behavior of the MRF is the competition it has faced. In particular, the weakness of the MRF’s most vehement opponents provided opportunities for the political moderates to dominate the MRF and steer the party away from extremist demands.

Generally speaking, extreme Bulgarian nationalists targeted the Turkish population for many of Bulgaria’s past woes and insisted that the assimilationist policies of the past should be maintained. Essentially, ideologists for Bulgarian nationalist parties like the Fatherland Party of Labor (FPL) and the Bulgarian National Radical Party see Bulgaria as the primary battleground in the defense of “Europe against Islam.” ₂₆   Another group, the CDNI, has targeted the Turkish MRF as representing the primary threat to the integrity of the Bulgarian state, arguing that the MRF was a tool of Turkey in its desire to “Turkify” Bulgaria.

Although the public appeal of the nationalist parties remains relatively small, these parties have been quite vocal in organizing anti-Turkish spectacles. For instance, from April to June 1990, the CDNI was active in organizing strikes to protest the introduction of redress measures for Bulgarian Turks who had lost their property during the last assimilation campaign in 1989. In June 1990, the CDNI staged protests against the decision to allow the MRF to compete in the elections to the Grand Assembly; and in November 1990, it participated in the formation of the Association of Free Bulgarian Cities in the south of the country along with other nationalist groups that subsequently refused to recognize Sofia’s authority and elected its own alternative parliament.

Despite such spectacles, Bulgarian nationalists have had only a marginal impact on the political process because the major political parties have attempted to distance themselves from the extreme nationalist and assimilationist policies of the past Zhivkov regime and have avoided putting too strong an emphasis on patriotic sentiments. Indeed, during the formative period of the opposition parties, “breaking with the expression of extreme nationalism became part of the political identity of the opposition parties and even the slowly reforming communist party. Subsequently, all major parties officially adhered to the idea of ethnic pluralism and supported the view that rights of minorities must be safeguarded by law.” ₂₇

Since many Bulgarians are disoriented about the old ideological approaches to nationality issues, attitudes about nationalism are susceptible to the influence of Western perceptions. It is widely understood that Western political and economic support is likely to depend on Bulgarian policies toward minority groups. As a result, the major political parties are quite cognizant of the fact that any overt anti-Turkish statements will be interpreted as an attack on national minority rights, and no party wants to be responsible for the interruption of potential political and economic support from the West.

Yet the apparent political weakness of the overtly nationalist parties in Bulgaria belies a more ominous connection between nationalism and the opportunistic post-Communist Bulgarian Socialist Party. By tapping into the underlying suspicions concerning the ethnic Turks and by capitalizing on Article 44 of the 1991 constitution that explicitly forbids organizations purporting an ethnic agenda, the BSP initially attacked the MRF in an attempt, as one nationalist leader put it, to gain “a monopoly on the national cause.” ₂₈   Throughout 1991, the BSP daily newspaper Duma ran articles that attacked the MRF as an organization having affiliations with terrorist groups and seeking to create a “political monopoly” in areas inhabited by Turks. In particular, in the fall of 1991, the BSP stepped up its attacks on the MRF, opposing the participation of the latter in the elections of 1991 on the grounds that it would violate “the norms of the new constitution” and that the “neglect of constitutional principles and the national interest of the Bulgarian people... could have serious repercussions for the transition to Democracy.” ₂₉   Andrey Lukanov, former prime minister and at that time a member of the BSP’s Supreme Council, summarized the BSP’s objections to the MRF participation as follows:

Today we see that this is an organization established along ethnic and religious lines—this I no longer call into question. Second we see that in those regions where the MRF dominates, there are no other parties—no democracy exists. People have no freedom of choice there. Third we see that the MRF is defended from abroad. ₃₀

Having been unsuccessful in opposing the participation of the MRF in the October 1991 parliamentary election, the BSP concentrated its attacks on the MRF instead of the UDF opposition, particularly in areas where there was a mixed Bulgarian-Turkish population. This strategy seemingly had two effects. First, by placing the MRF under constant fire, the BSP succeeded in attracting nationalist voters to its banners. Second, by focusing attention on the “threat” posed by the MRF, the BSP inadvertently compelled Turkish voters to rally around the MRF’s banner, boosting its electoral support. The MRF increased its share of seats from 5.75 percent in 1990 to 10.0 percent in 1991, despite a Parliament whose size was much decreased—from 400 in 1990 to 240 in 1991.

Although the BSP was the principal antagonist facing the MRF from 1990 to 1991, the erstwhile democratic UDF was not overly eager to embrace the MRF either. Despite the poor showing of the UDF in ethnically mixed regions of the country (see Table 2.4), the UDF was able to emerge from the election of 1991 as the single largest party in the Bulgarian Parliament, having received 34.36 percent of the vote and 110 of the 240 seats. Although coalition logic dictated that the UDF form a partnership with the MRF, which was not positively disposed toward the BSP anyway, the UDF leadership decided on October 28, 1991, to set up a minority government, excluding the MRF. To a large extent, this decision was seen as a move to placate nationalists both outside of the UDF and within the party. ₃₁   Indeed, several leading figures in the UDF had been quite outspoken in their opposition to the MRF. Some UDF members had even supported the BSP-sponsored effort to ban the MRF’s participation in the 1991 elections.

Table 2.4 Percentage of National Vote in Select Regions, Bulgaria, 1991 and 1994
		1991			1994
Region	BSP	MRF	UDF	BSP	MRF	UDF
Kardzhali	16.9	65.8	5.6	25.0	50.5	6.4
Razgrad	24.3	43.9	6.5	36.5	34.3	6.8
Targosvishte	34.6	27.1	10.7	46.7	20.6	10.0
Shumen	22.8	24.3	15.2	43.7	18.1	11.7
Silistra	33.8	27.5	13.7	45.4	18.2	10.6
Nationwide	33.1	7.6	34.4	43.5	5.4	24.23
Sources: Engelbrekt, “Nationalism Reviving,” 4; The October 13, 1991, Legislative and Municipal Elections in Bulgaria; Krause, “Elections Reveal Blue Cities amid Red Provinces”; Durzhaven Vestnik, December 10, 1994, 9-13, in FBIS-EEU, March 22, 1995, 7-16

 

The Evolution of the MRF

From the above review of post-Communist Bulgarian politics, it is clear that there have been pressures that should have compelled the MRF to adopt more extreme political demands. Specifically, that it represented a population whose economic status had deteriorated significantly, that lingering anti-Turkish popular sentiments persisted, and that it was confronted by politically hostile forces are all reasons that would have warranted the MRF to seek more radical political solutions. Yet the MRF has thus far remained committed to making only relatively moderate political demands without calling for the restructuring of the post-Communist Bulgarian polity. What accounts for the persistence of moderate demands made by the MRF? To a great extent, the evolution of the party in the early years after the collapse of Communist rule conditioned the party’s continued commitment to moderation.

The MRF had initially emerged in 1990 as a broad-based movement the primary goal of which was to rectify as quickly as possible the injuries committed by the previous regime on the ethnic Turks. However, as noted earlier, the MRF categorically denied that it was an ethnic party, claiming that its goals were designed to protect “rights of all ethnic groups in Bulgaria, not simply of Turks,” ₃₂   and Dogan consistently refuted the charge that the MRF harbored “separatist or autonomist ambitions.” ₃₃   Moreover, the MRF has stated that it stands for peaceful coexistence, and that “the movement is doing its utmost to avoid extremism, irrespective of who the instigators might be.” ₃₄   Other leaders, such as Yunal Lyufti, the MRF’s parliamentary caucus chair, also have condemned any “manifestation of Turkish nationalism,” as well as Bulgarian nationalist chauvinism. ₃₅

’Yet despite the claims that the party is committed to the general protection of all minority groups, over 90 percent of the party’s membership remains Turkish, ₃₆   and the bulk of the MRF statutes in 1991 were focused on the specific problems facing the Bulgarian Turks: (1) the return of property seized from Turks who fled Bulgaria in 1989; (2) the restoration of mosques, the lifting of the ban on publishing Islamic literature, including the Quran, and the lifting of the ban on religious rites; and (3) the reform of the educational system, particularly via the introduction of optional teaching of Turkish to ethnic Turkish students and the optional teaching of Islamic theology in Bulgarian schools to ethnic Turk pupils.

Even with opposition from both ends of the Bulgarian political spectrum, the MRF secured a solid third-place finish in the 1991 election and became the primary balancing force between the BSP and the UDF, winning twenty-four parliamentary seats with 7.55 percent of the popular vote. Moreover, the party fared well in the local elections, winning over 1,000 local council seats and 650 village and twenty-five district mayoralties.

The MRF’s ability to influence the course of Bulgarian politics was evidenced in the aftermath of the October 1991 elections. Although the MRF had declared prior to the election that it did not aim for ministerial posts and that it agreed with the UDF (which had won the 1991 election) on most basic issues, ₃₇   the UDF minority government of Fillip Dimitrov governed with only the tacit support of the MRF. The UDF-MRF informal coalition remained quite fragile, and as time passed, the relations between the two parties grew increasingly worse, particularly over measures concerning the reform of the agricultural sector and state support for the tobacco industry. On July 24, 1992, a vote of no-confidence, initiated by the opposition BSP, was defeated in a vote of 130 to 104. Most of the MRF deputies had voted with the government, except MRF chairman Ahmed Dogan, who had voted for the measure. Dogan contended that he had supported the vote of no-confidence because of the “government’s unscrupulous anti–trade union policy” and its failure to accelerate market reform, particularly the decentralization of the tobacco industry. His vote was also a “signal... to save the government and warn it that it must begin a dialogue” with the MRF. ₃₈   Other members of the MRF parliamentary group, such as deputy Mehmed Hodzha, who had voted for the Dimitrov government, stated that the party’s support was conditional and motivated not as much by support for the government’s policies as by the fact that the MRF would never join a coalition with the BSP. ₃₉

By the fall of 1992, however, the MRF had become fully disenchanted with the Dimitrov government. Many of the party’s leaders complained that the UDF had “forgotten” the informal UDF-MRF coalition and had consistently ignored MRF-sponsored proposals, especially those regarding reforms in the agricultural sector. ₄₀   Further, the MRF wanted a greater and more prominent role in the government, particularly by acquiring cabinet portfolios. ₄₁   On September 23, the MRF itself introduced a no-confidence vote, but last-minute negotiations between the UDF and the MRF postponed the vote. ₄₂   Finally, on October 28, the MRF sponsored a vote of no-confidence, a measure supported by the BSP, that brought down the Dimitrov government by a vote of 120 to 111.

Following the vote of no-confidence, the MRF continued to negotiate with the UDF to form a new and “genuine” coalition government that would include the MRF receiving several cabinet portfolios. ₄₃   In the meantime, the MRF had established contacts with the BSP and began moves to sponsor an alternative BSP-nominated candidate. On November 30, the MRF leadership announced support for the head of the National Statistical Institute, economics professor Zahari Karamfilov, as prime minister. Karamfilov declined the nomination on the grounds that he would be unable to marshal enough support from the UDF to form a “government of national accord.” ₄₄   Following the rejection of another BSP nominee, President Zhelev asked the MRF itself to try to form a government, which then proceeded to nominate Lyuben Berov, a nonparty candidate and former adviser to President Zhelev. The MRF was able to recruit enough support from the BSP and the UDF breakaway factions to confirm Berov as prime minister on December 30.

Thus the opportunity to act as the political kingpin had proven to be too great a temptation for the MRF leadership. As one observer noted, the MRF leadership not only played the “balancing role in the parliament, but also fully mastered this role.” ₄₅   However, the MRF’s newfound political influence was not without costs. Having turned on the UDF, the latter began a campaign directed against the MRF, charging in early 1993 that the party was engaged in the forced Turkification of the Bulgarian Muhammadans (Pomaks). ₄₆   Moreover, the relationship with the BSP was tenuous at best; some members of the BSP leadership continued to publicly claim that the Turks were arming themselves and that the MRF had secret plans to promote a secessionist movement in Bulgaria similar to the “Bosnia scenario.” Within less than a year, the MRF had also become dissatisfied with the Berov cabinet and especially with its Socialist partners, who had effectively excluded the MRF from important decisions and continued “to govern in a dictatorial fashion.” ₄₇   Support for the Berov government had also not reaped any benefits for the Turkish minority population, particularly regarding the tobacco industry and unemployment, issues crucial for the ethnic Turkish population. ₄₈

Perhaps the greatest negative consequence of the MRF’s political flip-flop was the rise of dissent within the MRF itself. Such dissent had been brewing for some time, particularly over Chairman Dogan’s propensity to rule the MRF in an authoritarian fashion and to surround himself with political cronies. Just prior to the October 1991 election, an ethnic Bulgarian deputy, Miroslav Durmov, openly criticized Dogan and the MRF leadership for abandoning the party’s original multiethnic principles and accused Dogan of moving the party toward “ethnic isolation.” ₄₉   Durmov, along with another Turkish parliamentarian, Husayn Yumer, further accused Dogan of being a prima donna and his close associates Yunal Lyutviev and Member of Parliament (MP) Ibrahim Tartarlu as being corrupt. ₅₀   Durmov later broke with the MRF and formed his own political organization, the Constitutional Rights and Freedoms political club, on August 29, 1991, which ran in the October 1991 election as a partner of the Bulgarian Socialists. ₅₁

A more serious challenge to the leadership of the MRF emerged after the MRF’s decision to collaborate with the BSP in late 1992. At the root of the movement’s troubles lay the credibility crisis caused when the party switched sides in Parliament and joined the BSP in forming a coalition government, abandoning its informal alliance with the UDF. Since the 1984–1989 forced assimilation campaign, most Turks had regarded the BSP as the chief antagonist on minority rights issues, and many were upset with the new alliance. Dogan himself had earlier affixed the principal responsibility for the assimilation campaign squarely on the Bulgarian Socialists. ₅₂   However, the MRF was now openly cooperating with “the devil” to the extent that Dogan publicly lunched with the retired architect of assimilation, Todor Zhivkov.

Protest to this volte-face came in the form of the establishment of an alternative ethnic Turkish party, the so-called Turkish Democratic Party (TDP), at the end of November 1992 by former MRF parliamentary deputy Adem Kenan. ₅₃   The party’s opening congress on December 12, 1992, held in Razgrad, included eighty delegates who proceeded to formulate a program that advocated national self-determination and demanded the “recognition of a Turkish national minority and [the establishment of] cultural administrative communities.” ₅₄   The TDP also accused Dogan of being a traitor who “played the games of the communists” and had been in league with the former state security agency during the Zhivkov years. ₅₅

In response to this challenge, Dogan and the MRF leadership denounced the formation of the TDP as detracting from the Turkish cause and categorically refused to cooperate with what they depicted as an overtly ethnic separatist party. ₅₆   The MRF leadership moved quickly to distance itself from the TDP and to reaffirm its proclaimed identity as a nonethnic party. Thus Ivan Palchev, an ethnic Bulgarian spokesperson for the MRF, accused the TDP of contributing to the penetration of “certain Islamic states” that, according to him, established contacts with the TDP in order to foment “Islamic expansionism.” ₅₇

At the same time, however, the MRF reaffirmed its self-proclaimed role as the primary champion of minority rights. Indeed, the existence of the TDP had been of some help to the MRF, which was now able to portray itself as a force of moderation and reason, as opposed to the separatist TDP. In an interview with Trud in January 1993, Dogan proclaimed that although the MRF was an ethnic party, it was in the best position to serve the national interest. Defending the interests of a particular group was “not paradoxical” because “a party which started out from the ethnic issue and assumed the task of defending the rights of citizens of a given ethnic group against a policy of ethnic-cultural genocide and state terrorism... should adopt the defense of human communities. These principles lead logically to the realization and implementation of a policy which should be exclusively of overriding nationwide interest.” ₅₈   Further, Dogan and the MRF leadership denounced charges made by some members of their coalition partner, the Bulgarian Socialist Party, that the MRF was in actuality a conduit for Turkish influence; at the same time, they defended the party leadership’s decision to form a governing coalition with the BSP. In fact, Dogan contended that the best way to serve the national interest was for both Bulgarians and Turks to support the MRF since the continued stability of the MRF was “the only way to exclude the possibility of any pro-Turkish or other partisan policy being imposed that runs counter to the national interest.” ₅₉

In the end, the TDP was prohibited from registering as a political party in early 1993 because of its overtly ethnic program, and the crisis was averted. To a large extent, this was due to the successful polemic waged by the MRF against the TDP. Although the challenge to the MRF leadership had been quite serious, Dogan himself dismissed the actions of the previous year as merely reflective of the growing pangs of any political party, and he claimed that such differences of opinion were “natural.” Certainly, since the “bulk of the main issues of [the party’s] election program,” such as “language study, the names and equality of all Bulgarian citizens,” had been fulfilled, it was only natural that differences should emerge over practical issues, such as the economy and the rate of unemployment. He defended the party’s record, even the collaboration with the BSP, as being necessary to promote “human and community rights” and to avoid “bloodshed of the Bosnian type in Bulgaria.” ₆₀

Nonetheless, despite Dogan’s skillful leadership, which temporarily postponed the crisis for more than a year, by late 1993, discontent over the BSP-MRF alliance was again burgeoning in the party ranks. At the second national conference of the MRF held in Sofia on November 27–28, 1993, Dogan’s leadership was strongly criticized by the MRF deputy from Kardzhali, Mehmed Hodzha, who said that the decision made in 1992 to back the BSP government and thereby join an informal alliance with the BSP had been a major tactical error. After alleging that several top MRF members were former state security agents, Hodzha and the other Kardzhali delegates staged a walkout. ₆₁   At the MRF party conference of February 1994, two MRF parliamentary deputies, Hodzha and Redzheb Chinar, also from Kardzhali, accused Dogan, Osman Oktay, and parliamentary caucus leader Yunal Lyufti of corruption and announced that they, along with two other deputies, were leaving the party. Although ostensibly these deputies left because of Dogan’s alleged “totalitarian” methods and the overt corruption of other members of the MRF leadership, ₆₂   the primary reason was the MRF’s cooperation with the much-despised BSP. ₆₃   Later, Hodzha, Ismail Ismail, and a former leader of the defunct TDP, Sabir Hussein, joined together to form an alternative party in May 1994, the Party for Democratic Changes, which declared itself to be “non-nationalist” and “on the right” of the political spectrum. The new party declared that it would seek an alliance with all noncommunist forces and rejected any cooperation with the BSP. Although the new party categorically dissociated itself “from the manifestations of nationalism and separatism,” Yunal Lyufti of the MRF described it as an exclusively ethnic party and an “outside-inspired” attempt to split the MRF. ₆₄   He predicted that it would suffer the same fate as did the defunct and illegal TDP.

In response to the renewed challenges within the MRF, the Dogan leadership pushed for measures to promote greater “coordination” and internal party discipline. The party conference officially denounced the defection of MPs Hodzha and Ismail and adopted a number of measures that were designed to promote the “synchrony” between the MRF Central Council and the MRF parliamentary group. ₆₅   Dogan continued to defend the MRF’s participation in the BSP-led government as the best way to defend the interests and cultural rights of the Turkish population, and he denounced as “absurd” the idea that “nationalism and chauvinism of any individual ethnic group” should become the dominant factor in the MRF. ₆₆

By early 1994, the previous year’s defections had seriously reduced the MRF’s influence; more alarming, opinion polls suggested that the previous year’s flip-flops had seriously undermined the MRF’s appeal among voters, with some suggesting that the MRF would even fail to surpass the 4 percent threshold in the scheduled December 1994 election. ₆₇   To repair the damage, the party’s leadership proceeded along two lines. First, Dogan began to make concerted overtures to the MRF’s former coalition partner, the UDF. In a letter to the UDF parliamentary caucus on February 22, 1994, Dogan proposed a resurrection of the previous alliance between the parties, citing his concern over the progress of economic and political reforms and the “recommunization” of Bulgarian society. However, the UDF was lukewarm in its response, and its chairman, Fillip Dimitrov, initially rebuffed these efforts and ruled out any form of dialogue until after the December election. ₆₈   Second, the MRF leadership began to sharpen its demands for Turkish language rights, particularly in the military. In July, Dogan called for the use of Turkish in Bulgarian military units in which ethnic Turks served. More ominously, he was reported as stating that ethnic Turks should disobey orders in the event that Bulgarian was made the exclusive and compulsory language of the military. ₆₉

Despite these attempts to recoup the losses of the previous year, the parliamentary elections of December 1994 were an unqualified disaster for the MRF. Voter dissatisfaction with the MRF’s reversals was evident when the party received only 5.4 percent of the vote, down from 7.5 percent three years earlier, and only thirteen seats, eleven fewer than in 1991. ₇₀   More important, the MRF lost its crucial position as the balancer in the Bulgarian Parliament. The BSP won an absolute majority of seats in the National Assembly and was now free to govern alone. The MRF also lost its strategic position as the third-largest party in the Bulgarian Parliament to the electoral alliance the Peoples Union (PU; a coalition that included the Bulgarian Agrarian Peoples’ Union [BAPU] and the Democratic Party, both of which had been shut out in the 1991 election). Notably, as Table 2.4 indicates, the MRF lost considerable support in regions where there was a large concentration of ethnic Turkish voters. The largest single decline was in the strategic Kardzhali region, where the MRF had won 65.8 percent of the vote in 1991 but barely mustered half the vote in 1994 (50.5 percent).

Following the Socialist victory, the new government of Zhan Videnov made several ministerial appointments that were considered by several within the MRF as evidence of a renewed effort at assimilating the Bulgarian Turks. In particular, the appointment of Ilcho Dimitrov as educational minister in January 1995 was considered a direct affront to the MRF. Dimitrov, a historian, had been the head of the so-called Coordinating Council of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, which had been directly involved in the assimilation campaigns under Zhivkov. Moreover, he had never denounced the assimilation campaign. Although Dimitrov claimed that he had not taken an active part in the forceful Bulgarization campaigns, he had previously attacked the MRF as unconstitutional and harmful to the national interest. The appointment, from the perspective of the MRF leadership, was indicative of the BSP’s continuing hostility toward the ethnic minorities and an attempt to further restrict Turkish language and cultural rights. ₇₁

The losses of 1994 and the inability to prevent the appointment of anti-Turkish ministers in the BSP government led to ever-growing dissatisfaction with the MRF leadership and particularly with Chairman Dogan himself. The leadership of the MRF met on July 22, 1995, to discuss holding an extraordinary party conference; some local leaders wanted to remove MRF Deputy Chairman Osman Oktay and Yunal Lyufti and demanded structural changes that would give localities greater voice in candidate selection. Sixteen of the twenty-two regional council chairmen urged that the conference take place in order to discuss such changes, but Dogan refused. Instead, he submitted the resignation of the entire leadership, including himself, arguing that since they had been elected collectively at the party’s second conference in 1993, they could only resign collectively. The internal opposition had to back down because if the entire leadership resigned, the MRF would have to reregister as a party, and in all likelihood (given the BSP’s control of the registration process), the party would be unable to take part in the fall local elections if registration were delayed for any reason. ₇₂

Having skillfully survived the crisis, Dogan set out to rebuild the political stature of the MRF. First, the party approached the other opposition parties. Initially, the UDF had been somewhat reluctant to cooperate with the MRF since it had already come to an agreement with the PU to jointly nominate candidates for county and city mayoralties and to coordinate their national campaigns. Finally, the UDF, the PU, and the MRF agreed to sign a memorandum on joint action in the fall 1995 local elections. The agreement allowed local opposition organizations to jointly nominate candidates for mayoral elections, although the UDF leadership said it would not sign an agreement with the MRF for cooperation at the national level. ₇₃   However, following the first round of voting on October 29, 1995, talks began among the leaders of the UDF, the PU, and the MRF to discuss a nationwide agreement concerning cooperation in the second round of voting. In Sofia the PU withdrew its candidates in favor of the UDF candidates. In the ethnically mixed regions of the northeast and the southeast, the UDF supported MRF candidates. ₇₄

The results of the local elections showed some improvement in the fortunes of the MRF when compared to the December 1994 parliamentary election. The percentage of the popular vote the MRF received increased from about 5.4 percent in 1994 to 8.2 percent of the vote in the municipal legislative elections of October 1995. Moreover, the MRF actually increased the number of county mayoral seats it won, from twenty-five to twenty-six (see Table 2.5). Thus the strategy of cooperation with the other opposition parties had benefited the MRF. However, the electoral campaign illustrated the increased pressures on the MRF to move vigorously to defend itself and the Turkish community from the BSP onslaught. This, in turn, caused the MRF to adopt harsher and more ethnocentric rhetoric, a far cry from its earlier denials that it was an ethnic party. This was demonstrated quite clearly in the mayoral election campaign in the city of Kardzhali.

Table 2.5 Mayoralties of County Seats, Bulgaria, 1991 and 1995
Party	1991 % (No.)	1995 % (No.)
BSP	47.24 (120)	76.47 (195)
UDF	37.0 (94)	6.27a (16)
MRF	9.84 (25)	10.20 (26)
Othersb	5.91 (15)	7.06 (18)
Sources: The October 13, 1991, Legislative and Municipal Elections in Bulgaria; Krause, “Elections Reveal Blue Cities amid Red Provinces.” Notes: a. The UDF and the PU combined forces to sponsor several joint candidates. Figure combines UDF and PU candidates. b. Other parties in the 1991 local elections included the Bulgarian Agarian Peoples’ Union–Ekoglasnost or BAPU-E (10 seats), the Bulgarian Agrarian Peoples’ Union–Nikolai Petkov or BAPU-NP (4), and the UDF Center (1).

Kardzhali is the center of one of the two areas with a compact ethnic Turkish population in Bulgaria, although the town itself is almost equally populated by ethnic Bulgarians and ethnic Turks. In 1991, the MRF candidate from the region had won the mayoral election. Keeping the seat was considered vitally important for MRF chair Dogan, who considered the Kardzhali seat a key to the MRF’s reconstruction after the 1994 debacle. The BSP, for its part, wanted to take the town for itself.

The campaign was marked by a great degree of controversy. The MRF continually accused the local security authorities, who answered directly to the BSP-appointed ultranationalist Bulgarian governor of the Haskoy region, Angel Nayedonov, of systematically threatening local Turkish voters, warning them not to be “too active” in the local campaign. ₇₅   On the other side, the BSP charged that the MRF had bought off Turkish voters, and local nationalist parties, including the FPL, called on all Bulgarian voters in the city to vote to prevent the election of an ethnic Turkish mayor.

Two figures emerged from the first round of the election as the leading candidates; the MRF’s Rasim Musa (46.1 percent) and the BSP’s Georgi Georgiev (33.2 percent). In the November 12 runoff, the smaller Bulgarian nationalist parties threw their support behind Georgiev, and the UDF decided to support Musa. Musa won the second round of the election by a scant 658 votes. On November 17, the BSP petitioned the Kardzhali city court to invalidate the election on the grounds that 731 people had been imported from constituencies outside of Kardzhali and had illegally voted for Musa. ₇₆   Although the municipal electoral commission declared the elections valid and the regional court in Kardzhali rejected the BSP petition, Nayedonov refused to confirm Musa’s election or to convene a meeting of the city council. ₇₇   At the end of January 1996, the BSP-led government declared the election in Kardzhali annulled, which led to several demonstrations in protest of the action. ₇₈

The election in Kardzhali served to sharpen the MRF’s campaign rhetoric. Dogan, for instance, had threatened that he would turn the MRF into a purely ethnic Turkish party (in direct challenge to the constitution) if the Bulgarian parties united against the MRF candidate in Kardzhali. Following the election, the MRF again made several thinly veiled threats. An MRF statement accused the BSP of trying to create tension in the ethnically mixed region and argued that “any attempt to invalidate the election results in Kardzhali in a Balkan manner will return like a boomerang on Bulgaria and its people.” ₇₉

Following the annulment of the election results, the situation grew worse. At a press conference on December 5, Dogan said the Kardzhali crisis demonstrated that the BSP was “prepared to play the nationalist card” and was exploiting nationalist fears to achieve political ends. However, despite the heightening of tensions that resulted from the Kardzhali crisis, Dogan was quite careful to not paint the situation solely in interethnic terms, preferring to depict the crisis as injurious to the whole of Bulgaria. Thus, at a rally of 6,000 ethnic Turks on February 17 in Kardzhali protesting the annulment of the local election of the city council and mayor after the elections, Dogan warned, “If this house catches fire, everything will burn down.” ₈₀

Eventually, the Kardzhali crisis passed, as the ability of the MRF to sustain protests waned. However, events provided new opportunities for the MRF. Bolstered by electoral victory of the UDF presidential candidate Petar Stoyanov in the fall of 1996, mass demonstrations were mounted by the opposition in the winter of 1996–1997 to protest the disastrous economic policies of the Videnov government. Ultimately, the government was forced to grant early elections in April 1997. To prepare for the campaign, Dogan and the new leader of the UDF, Ivan Kostov, agreed on March 10 to cooperate following the elections, and Dogan insisted on running separate electoral lists for the 1997 elections. Although willing to cooperate with the UDF in opposition to the Bulgarian Socialists, Dogan still sought to steer the MRF between the BSP and UDF camps. Indeed, Dogan argued that one of the reasons for not running a joint list with the UDF was his desire to not see the UDF win an absolute majority in the new Parliament lest it become intoxicated with its success and suffer the same fate as the Socialists. ₈₁   Moreover, Dogan suggested that both the BSP and the UDF were behind police raids in Kardzhali conducted against ethnic Turkish businesspeople. So throughout the campaign, Dogan adopted the strategy used in earlier campaigns, trying to chart a middle course between the BSP and the UDF while distancing the MRF from both. ₈₂   In the end, the MRF formed an unlikely union with a group of Monarchists called the Union for National Salvation, which supported Tsar Simeon as the heir to the Bulgarian throne.

Dogan’s reluctance to cooperate with the UDF against the despised BSP again sparked internal protest within the ranks of the MRF. In March, MRF chapters in the northern parts of Bulgaria met in Razgrad and voted to support a move sponsored by parliamentarian Giuner Tahir to independently form a Turkish organization that would fall under the UDF umbrella. This group, the Initiative Committee for Renewal, condemned Dogan’s refusal to merge with the UDF. ₈₃   Yet again, despite challenges to his leadership, Dogan survived, and the MRF did remarkably well in the April election, winning 7.6 percent of the vote, as well as nineteen seats.

Thus, despite considerable pressures built up against it, the MRF has survived four national parliamentary elections and has recovered from its losses in 1994. Moreover, Ahmed Dogan’s position (at the time of this writing) appears to be relatively secure. To a large extent, the MRF has become a permanent part of the Bulgarian party system and will likely remain an important political force in Bulgarian politics for the foreseeable future.

 

Discussion and Conclusion

The evolution of the MRF in Bulgaria since the collapse of the Communist regime represents a case of an ethnopolitical party that largely follows an accommodationist course, making every effort to present itself as a nonethnic party designed to serve all national ethnic groups, even though the overwhelming majority of its leadership and membership is made up of a specific ethnicity. Moreover, the MRF has thus far been primarily concerned with expanding the Bulgarian Turkish community’s share of government outputs (as with any output-oriented party), rather than with replacing the existing authorities or reconfiguring the political system. Indeed, the MRF has made great efforts to cooperate with whoever is in power, even to the extent of cooperating with the political descendants of the much-hated Zhivkov regime. However, although the MRF leadership has publicly renounced violence and constantly points to Bosnia as an example of what can happen when arms are taken up in defense of minorities, the party has become increasingly willing to stage mass demonstrations to protest the actions of the current Socialist government, rather than to rely wholly on parliamentary means to advance its cause.

Nonetheless, as stated above, the MRF represents a classic case of an accommodationist ethnopolitical party. And this is so despite the fact that there was a considerable amount of pent-up frustration over the previous Zhivkov regime on the part of the Bulgarian Turkish population (contrary to Expectation 1 in Chapter 1) and despite the economic hardship encountered in the post-Communist era by the largely agrarian Bulgarian Turkish population, which was most affected by the severance of Bulgaria’s economic ties with the CMEA (contrary to Expectations 2a and 2b). Moreover, despite the fact that Bulgaria has suffered more than any other East European state as a result of the termination of the CMEA, this has not led to the rise of extremist behavior on the part of the MRF (contrary to Expectation 3).

Yet the above review of the Bulgarian case does suggest that the scope of representation (Expectation 4a) and the structure of competition (Expectation 5) affected the behavior of the MRF. In particular, the fact that the MRF not only was able to gain a significant amount of representation in Parliament, but that it also played the pivotal role as the major balancing force between the BSP and the UDF afforded the leadership of the MRF much greater influence on policy than had been expected. This influence was also strengthened by the MRF facing little competition for the allegiance of the Turkish population (largely due to the law that forbade the participation of ethnic parties, which the MRF cleverly circumvented) and by the weak (albeit quite vocal) representation in government of the anti-Turkish Bulgarian nationalists. Taken together, these conditions allowed the MRF leadership to pursue a moderate and accommodationist approach to the BSP and the UDF (both of which needed the MRF in order to govern); from 1990 to 1994 the party had little to fear from either anti-Turkish parties or potential competitors for Turkish votes.

Another explanation for the relatively moderate strategy adopted by the MRF is that it remains one of the more internally diverse ethnopolitical parties in Eastern Europe. Although the party is heavily Turkish, represented within the MRF leadership are not only ethnic Turks, but Pomaks and Bulgarians as well. Further, especially until 1994, the MRF represented a broad coalition of Bulgarian Turkish politicians, ranging from those who favored some form of national-cultural autonomy to those who wished to maintain the commitment to “multiethnic” principles, a heterogeneity that in part was due to the fact that the MRF was the only party representing ethnic Turks that could legally exist. To placate the various groups within the MRF, the leadership under Dogan has skillfully charted a middle course, making relatively more forceful demands on the cultural front (particularly over language issues) while categorically rejecting any demands for cultural or political autonomy and distancing itself from more “radical” politicians.

Yet despite the relatively moderate course initially charted by the MRF leadership, since the parliamentary election of 1994, the party under Dogan has moved toward a more confrontational position vis-à-vis the BSP-led government. In particular, the loss of the role as balancer between the UDF and the BSP reduced the influence of the MRF on the course of Bulgarian politics. Moreover, the outright victory of the BSP in 1994 meant that the MRF could no longer dictate the course of governmental policy regarding minority populations, nor could it prevent a renewed assault on the Turkish community and Turkish language rights that was expected under the BSP-led government. Indeed, the appointment of key officials in the Videnov cabinet who had been associated with the Zhivkov policies of the past, coupled with the Kardzhali incident in 1996 following the local elections, signaled the weakness of the position of the MRF. It also signaled the beginning of a new effort to redefine the organization as the primary party defending the rights of the Turkish community in Bulgaria.

 

---

Endnotes

Note 1: Crampton, A Short History of Modern Bulgaria; McIntyre, Bulgaria; Bell, The Bulgarian Communist Party; Simsir, The Turks. Back.

Note 2: Simsir, The Turks, 208.  Back.

Note 3: Ibid. Back.

Note 4: Ashley, “Ethnic Unrest,” 4–11. Back.

Note 5: Engelbrekt, “The Movement for Rights and Freedoms,” 5. Back.

Note 6: Quoted in Perry, “The New Prime Minister,” 9–10. Back.

Note 7: Bulgarian Telegraphic Agency (hereafter referred to as BTA), September 23, 1991. Back.

Note 8: Rose and Haerpfer, Adapting to Transformation in Eastern Europe, question 28; Rose and Haerpfer, New Democracies Barometer III, question 69. Back.

Note 9: Gradev, “Bulgaria,” 56–67.  Back.

Note 10: Ashley, “Ethnic Unrest,” 8; Nikolaev, “Property of Bulgarian Turks.” Back.

Note 11: Ashley, “Ethnic Unrest,” 7. Back.

Note 12: Koi Kak’ve, 74–75. Back.

Note 13: Engelbrekt, “The Movement for Rights and Freedoms,” 5.  Back.

Note 14: Koi Kak’ve, 75. Back.

Note 15: Engelbrekt, “The Movement for Rights and Freedoms,” 5–6. Back.

Note 16: “Turkish Party ‘Balancing Centrist Factor,’” BTA in Foreign Broadcast Information Service–Eastern Europe (hereafter referred to as FBIS-EEU), June 6, 1990. Back.

Note 17: In April 1991, in an interview with Oktay, Kjell Engelbrekt reports that Oktay claimed that the MRF’s registered membership was about 120,000 (Engelbrekt, “The Movement for Rights and Freedoms,” 6). Back.

Note 18: Ibid. Back.

Note 19: Ibid.  Back.

Note 20: Wyzan, “Bulgaria,” 532–533; Lampe, The Bulgarian Economy, 139–155. Back.

Note 21: OECD, Bulgaria, 99–101. Back.

Note 22: Phillipa Fletcher, “Bulgarian Party Rallies Ethnic Turkish Electorate,” Reuters News Service, December 15, 1995; Kjell Engelbrekt, “Bulgarian Turks Leave,” RFE/RL Daily Report, July 23, 1992. Back.

Note 23: Interview with Dogan reported in Prava I Svobodi, no. 41 (October 14, 1993): 1–2. Back.

Note 24: “Dogan: Civil War If BSP Assumes Power,” 1993, 2, in FBIS-EEU, March 24, 1993, 4–5.  Back.

Note 25: Engelbrekt, “Movement for Rights and Freedoms to Compete in Elections,” 1–5. Back.

Note 26: Interview with FPL chair Popov in Duma, May 20, 1992, 2; see also interview with Bulgarian National Radical Party chair Georgiev, “We Are Struggling for Christian Values Against the Offensives of Islam,” Ostchestven Vestnik, February 4, 1993, in FBIS-EEU, February 10, 1993, 10. Back.

Note 27: Engelbrekt, “Nationalism Reviving,” 2. Back.

Note 28: BTA, October 24, 1991. Back.

Note 29: Quoted in Engelbrekt, “Movement for Rights and Freedoms to Compete in Elections,” 2. Back.

Note 30: Ibid., 5. Back.

Note 31: Engelbrekt, “Nationalism Reviving,” 6. Back.

Note 32: BTA in FBIS-EEU, October 20, 1990. Back.

Note 33: “Turkish Party ‘Balancing Centrist Factor,’” in FBIS-EEU, June 7, 1990, 6–7; “Dogan Advocates Peaceful Ethnic Coexistence,” BTA, November 5, 1990, in FBIS-EEU, November 6, 1990, 6. Back.

Note 34: BTA, November 5, 1990, in FBIS-EEU, November 6, 1990, 6. Back.

Note 35: “Ethnic Turk Movement States Position in Assembly,” in FBIS-EEU, October 1, 1990, 22. Back.

Note 36: Bugajski, Ethnic Politics in Eastern Europe, 250. Back.

Note 37: Nikolaev, “The New Noncommunist Government,” 2. Back.

Note 38: “MRF Leader Explains Anti-Government Vote,” in Trud, July 25, 1992, 1–2, in FBIS-EEU, July 31, 1992, 31. Back.

Note 39: Kjell Engelbrekt “Bulgarian Cabinet Fends Off No-Confidence Vote,” RFE/RL Daily Report, July 27, 1992. Back.

Note 40: Duncan Perry, “Bulgarian Parliamentary Troubles,” RFE/RL Daily Report, September 24, 1992. Back.

Note 41: Kjell Engelbrekt, “Pressure Increasing on Bulgarian Government,” RFE/RL Daily Report, October 4, 1992. Back.

Note 42: BTA, September 21, 1992.  Back.

Note 43: Kjell Engelbrekt, “Bulgarian Turks Suggest Coalition Cabinet,” RFE/RL Daily Report, November 12, 1992; Kjell Engelbrekt, “MRF Demands Posts in New Bulgarian Cabinet,” RFE/RL Daily Report, November 16, 1992. Back.

Note 44: Kjell Engelbrekt, “BSP Candidate Declines Offer to Form Cabinet,” RFE/RL Daily Report, December 2, 1992. Back.

Note 45: Konstantinov, “Gift for Mr. Dogan,” 6. Back.

Note 46: Demokratsiya, March 20, 1993, 1; Demokratsiya, March 22, 1993, 1. Back.

Note 47: Kjell Engelbrekt, “Minority Leader Critical of Bulgarian Socialist Party,” RFE/RL Daily Report, September 10, 1993. Back.

Note 48: Kjell Engelbrekt, “Bulgaria’s MRF Party Dissatisfied with Cabinet,” RFE/RL Daily Report, February 16, 1994. Back.

Note 49: “Ethnic Isolation Tendencies in MRF Assessed,” in Faks, June 24, 1991, 1–2, in FBIS-EEU, June 28, 1991, 4. Back.

Note 50: Ibid., 4–5. Back.

Note 51: “Official Register of Political Parties Detailed,” in FBIS-EEU, July 31, 1992, 3–6. Back.

Note 52: “Turkish Minority to Back Opposition in Elections,” in FBIS-EEU, June 7, 1990, 7. Back.

Note 53: Duma, November 23, 1992, 1. Back.

Note 54: “Establishment of Turkish Democratic Party Detailed,” 24 Chasa, December 14, 1992, 2. Back.

Note 55: “New Turkish Party Seen Helping MRF Image,” in Kontinent, December 14, 1992, 6, in FBIS-EEU, December 16, 1992, 11. Back.

Note 56: “Ethnic Turkish Parties Reportedly Proliferate,” BTA, January 12, 1993, in FBIS-EEU, January 13, 1993, 18–19. Back.

Note 57: “MRF Spokesman Warns of Islamic Expansion,” BTA, February 24, 1993, in FBIS-EEU, February 24, 1993, 3 Back.

Note 58: “Ahmed Dogan Discusses MRF Priorities,” in Trud, January 5, 1993, 1–3, in FBIS-EEU, January 12, 1993, 14–16. Back.

Note 59: Interview with Dogan in Trud, in FBIS-EEU, January 13, 1993, 17–18. Back.

Note 60: Interview with Dogan by Radio Free Europe, in Prava I Svobodi, no. 41 (October 14, 1993): 1–2. Back.

Note 61: Kjell Engelbrekt, “Dogan Reaffirmed as MRF Leader,” RFE/RL Daily Report, November 29, 1993; Kjell Engelbrekt, “Former Bulgarian Intelligence Official Says Dogan Ex-Agent,” RFE/RL Daily Report, November 5, 1992. Back.

Note 62: In particular, parliamentary spokesperson Sherife Mustafa and Deputy Chairman Osman Oktay were both accused of accepting bribes. Dogan, as well, was accused of receiving moneys from the Kameya company, which had provided transport for criminals who had committed acts of “barbarism” during the Bulgarization campaign of the 1980s. Back.

Note 63: “Mehmed Hodzha Discusses MRF Leadership,” in Kontinent, August 15, 1994, in FBIS-EEU, August 17, 1994, 3; Kjell Engelbrekt, “Bulgaria’s MRF Party Dissatisfied with Cabinet,” RFE/RL Daily Report, February 16, 1994. Back.

Note 64: “Former MRF Deputies Form New Party,” in Kontinent, March 30, 1994, 1, in FBIS-EEU, April 2, 1994, 4–5. Back.

Note 65: “MRF Council to Continue Support of Cabinet,” in FBIS-EEU, February 13, 1994, 7–8. Back.

Note 66: “MRF Official Explains Party Views,” Standart News, October 24, 1994, 23. Back.

Note 67: Konstantin Subev, “Each to His Own People,” in Kontinent, August 15, 1994, 4, in FBIS-EEU, August 17, 1994, 3. Back.

Note 68: Kjell Engelbrekt, “Bulgaria: UDF ‘Postpones’ Dialogue with Ethnic Turkish Party,” RFE/RL Daily Report, March 2, 1994. Back.

Note 69: BTA, July 5, 1994. Back.

Note 70: Englebrekt, “Political Turmoil,” 19–22. Back.

Note 71: Stephen Krause, “Bulgarian Education Minister Still Under Fire,” OMRI Daily Digest, January 31, 1995. Back.

Note 72: Stephen Krause, “Leaders of Bulgarian Ethnic Turkish Party Meet,” OMRI Daily Digest, July 24, 1995. Back.

Note 73: Stephen Krause, “Bulgarian Opposition Agrees to Sign Election Memorandum,” OMRI Daily Digest, June 16, 1995. Back.

Note 74: Stephen Krause, “Bulgarian Opposition Prepares for Cooperation in Local Elections,” OMRI Daily Digest, November 1, 1995.  Back.

Note 75: Stephen Krause, “Ethnic Turkish Party in Bulgaria Claims Police Threatened Its Voters,” OMRI Daily Digest, November 8, 1995. Back.

Note 76: Stephen Krause, “Bulgarian Socialists Want to Invalidate Mayoral Election,” OMRI Daily Digest, November 20, 1995. Back.

Note 77: Stephen Krause, “Bulgarian Ethnic Turkish Party Asks President for Help,” OMRI Daily Digest, November 29, 1995. Back.

Note 78: Stephen Krause, “Bulgarian Ethnic Turks Protest Annulment of Kardzhali Elections,” OMRI Daily Digest, February 19, 1996. Back.

Note 79: Krause, “Bulgarian Socialists Want to Invalidate Mayoral Election”; Krause, “Bulgarian Ethnic Turkish Party Asks President for Help.” Back.

Note 80: Quoted in Krause “Bulgarian Ethnic Turks Protest Annulment of Kardzhali Elections.” Back.

Note 81: “Separate Electoral Lists for Bulgarian Parties,” OMRI Daily Digest, March 15, 1997. Back.

Note 82: “Bulgarian Election Update,” RFE/RL Newsline, April 15, 1997. Back.

Note 83: “Bulgarian Election News,” RFE/RL Newsline, April 8, 1997. Back.

Ethnopolitics in the New Europe