Why Are Bulgarian Muslims Not Radicalizing?

Department of Middle Eastern Studies
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Student`s name: Kaloyan Konstantinov

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7AAJM004 Dissertation: MA Middle Eastern Studies
7AAJCR01 Dissertation: MA Conflict Resolution in

Divided Societies
7AAJPE01 Dissertation: MA Political Economy of the

Middle East
Dissertation title: Why are Bulgarian Muslims not radicalizing?

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DECLARATION BY STUDENT
I, Kaloyan Konstantinov hereby declare (a) that this Dissertation is my own original work and that all
source material used is acknowledged therein; (b) that it has been specially prepared for a degree of
King’s College London; and (c) that it does not contain any material that has been or will be submitted to
the Examiners of this or any other university, or any material that has been or will be submitted for any
other examination. I understand what is meant by plagiarism and that plagiarism is a serious
examinations offence that may result in disciplinary action being taken.
Signed:
Date: 21.08.2018
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List of Contents
1. Introduction...................................................................................... 6.
2. Research design and Methodology................................................... 8.
3. Radicalization theory........................................................................ 10.
- 3.1. Muslim radicalization in Europe.............................................. 12.
4. Perception of relative deprivation.................................................... 14.
5. Social movement theory................................................................... 17.
6. History of Islam in Bulgaria............................................................... 20.
- 6.1. Muslims in Bulgaria between 1878 and 1946.......................... 22.
- 6.2. The Big Excursion..................................................................... 23.
7. Folklore and education...................................................................... 26.
8. Fear and loathing in the media.......................................................... 29.
9. The far-right ingredient..................................................................... 31.
10. A social movement by the book........................................................ 33.
- 10.1. The long hand of the Chief Muftiate...................................... 35.
11. Internal conflicts................................................................................ 38.
- 11.1. Internal peace......................................................................... 42.
12. Conclusion.......................................................................................... 43.
13. Bibliography....................................................................................... 46.
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List of Tables
Table 1. A media monitoring of Islam and Christianity news representation.
List of Figures
Figure 1. The territorial religious distribution in Bulgaria, 2011.
Figure 2. GDP per capita in the biggest Bulgarian cities, 2016.
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List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
BNR Bulgarian National Radio

BNT Bulgarian National Television
Daesh Al-Dawlah al-Islamīyah fī al-ʻIrāq wa al-Shām
EU European Union
GDP Gross domestic product
HII Higher Islamic Institute
HMC Higher Muslim Council
IMRO Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization
ISIS Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
MENA Middle East and North Africa
MRF Movement for Rights and Freedoms
NFSB National Front for the Salvation of Bulgaria
NGO Non-Governmental Organisation
PPP Purchasing power parity
RD Relative Deprivation
RP Revival Process
SM Social Movement
SMT Social Movement Theory
TNFM Turkish National Freedom Movement
UK United Kingdom
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Acknowledgments
I would like to express my most sincere gratitude to Evgeniya Ivanova, Sonya Hinkova, Iskra
Baeva, Nadezhda Zhechkova, Evgeniya Kalinova, Tanya Blagova, Martin Minkov, Haralan
Alexandrov and Vedat Ahmed for agreeing to spare of their free time to meet and talk about
the topic of my research, contributing with precious insights and information without which
this dissertation would have been much worse. My special thanks go to my supervisor
Professor Jeroen Gunning for bravely enduring all questions I managed to come up with.
Last but not least, I want to thank my family for still loving me despite my grumpy
dissertation mood for the last months and to officially apologise to my nieces Liana and
Kaliya for refusing to play with them so many times.
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1. Introduction.
For the past more than 10 years the number of terrorist attacks in Europe has been
decreasing while the amount of jihadist attacks has been on the rise with 2015, 2016 and
2017 marking a sharp peak in Islamist violence (Europol 2018). Additionally, it is estimated
that between 3,922 and 4,294 European citizens went to fight in Syria and Iraq on the side of
Daesh. Over half of them, approximately 2,838, come from four countries: France, Germany,
the UK and Belgium, with respectively around 900, 720–760, 700–760 and 420–516 citizens
fighting for ISIS, and with militants proven to have come from most European countries with
the exception of Romania, Lithuania, Malta, Czechia and Bulgaria (Van Ginkel 2016). What
then makes Bulgaria interesting for the topic of this research and makes it stand out from
the rest of the European countries with a Christian majority population? The answer which
prompted me to dig into the matter is that Bulgaria has the biggest percentage of Muslim
minority among the total population in the EU (depending on whether or not one counts
Northern Cyprus as a part of the Republic of Cyprus which I am not doing) and second only
to Macedonia and Montenegro on the continent in general (Hackett 2017). Muslims in
Bulgaria comprise between 11,1 (Hackett 2017) and 15% (Sahgal 2017) of the whole
population, or over 1 million people; despite the results of the National Census that was
carried out in 2011 which states that just 7,8%, or 577,139 citizens, belong to the Muslim
faith (NSI 2011), a significant difference that would be explained later on. Yet, the country
has the same number of citizens fighting for Daesh as Romania (0.4% Muslim population),
Lithuania (0.1%), Malta (2.6%), Czechia (0.2%) – zero, while France (8.8%), Germany (6.1%),
the United Kingdom (6.3%) and Belgium (7.6%) (Hackett 2017) boost the forces of ISIS with
hundreds of soldiers.
And it is not as if Bulgaria is unknown to ISIS or other terrorist organizations. On 18 July 2012
a foreign suicide bomber killed 5 Israeli tourists, their Bulgarian bus driver, a Bulgarian
Muslim (Minkov 2018), and injured 32 other Israelis in the city of Burgas, with the
authorities linking the perpetrators to Hizbullah (BBC 2013) but later on dropping the
charges against the Lebanese organization (Yonah Jeremy Bob 2018). Bulgaria is also a
popular transit route for foreign fighters going to or coming back from Syria and Iraq
(Europol 2018), for 2017 the number of such detected individuals is 58 (State Agency NS
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2018), with the State Agency "National Security" reporting to have issued expulsion, a ban
on entry into the Republic and a withdrawal of right of residence for “31 persons involved in
terrorist activity” for 2017 (State Agency NS 2018), the same measures were taken against
22 people in 2016 (State Agency NS 2017) and 29 in 2015 (State Agency NS 2016). Moreover,
a number of sources confirmed that Daesh is using cars with Bulgarian registration plates
(Hristov 2015), and reports state that Bulgaria is the fifth largest supplier for weapons in
Syria and Iraq in the world after Hungary, Russia, Romania and the number one China, with
“more than 50% of the weapons documented in Syria and manufactured after 2000th
originated in Bulgaria” (CAR 2017). The Balkan state is also fifth in production of ammunition
used by ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and first in production of 40 mm rockets for Syria and 73 mm
rockets for Iraq (CAR 2017).
Despite the involvement of the government (it is debatable how most of the supplied
weapons found their way into the hands of the terrorists) into the recent wars in Syria and
Iraq, and the activity of foreign fighters, smugglers and supporters of Daesh and other
jihadist organizations in the country, so far there has been no reported terrorist activity
amongst the over one million Bulgarian Muslims, no signs of religious radicalization or
actions in support of international terrorism - all the involved individuals were foreign
citizens (State Agency NS 2018).
Moreover, Bulgaria has a history of discrimination against and repression of Muslims which
had been most starkly expressed in several waves of forced Christianization or change of
names from Turko-Arabic to Bulgarian/Christian for the past nearly a 150 years. This process
culminated during the 1980s when the Communist government, in a bid to assimilate the
Turkish, banned the performance of all Muslim rituals, including funerals, and gave new
names to 847,584 people in an act called the Revival Process (Bojkov 2004). The intense
backlash that followed led in 1989 to the expulsion of 370,000 Bulgarian Turks, or 43%
overall, into Turkey (Broun 2007). Although after the fall of Communism the new democratic
authorities reversed the policy and the situation for Muslims in Bulgaria significantly relaxed,
the trauma of the Revival Process remained and is still evoked every year by politicians. The
distrust of and hate towards Muslims and Turkish, deeply woven into Bulgarian history,
culture and society because of the 500-hundred year Ottoman hegemony over the Bulgarian
lands, is still clearly visible in national education, the media and politics with ultra-nationalist
parties being part of the ruling coalition even now. However, signs of ethnoreligious
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radicalization among Bulgarian Turks and Muslims in general have been and still are absent
with Muslims in the country vehemently disowning Islamic terrorism in all its forms (Evgenia
Ivanova 2017) and most of them denying to pledge allegiance to Turkey or in any other way
fuel suspicion of desire to repeat the events in Cyprus during the 1970s in some form (Bojkov
2004), or threaten the integrity of the state because of ethnoreligious reasons.
At first glance, it seems strange why are Bulgarian Muslims not radicalizing neither on
international nor on local level. On the other hand, a closer look at the three biggest Muslim
communities in the country – Turkish, Pomak and Roma – promises to reveal deeper and
older social mechanisms, interactions and traditions which prevent radicalization. Something
which is exactly the task of this dissertation, to try to uncover and analyse the unwritten
rules of multi-ethnic and interfaith coexistence which have been dominating, more or less,
the Bulgarian society in the past 30 years. By identifying those characteristics I hope to come
up with clues on how to improve ethnoreligious relations in Bulgaria and how could other
European states benefit from Sofia’s experience in avoiding scenarios like the horrendous
ethnoreligious Yugoslav wars and the growing radicalization of European Muslims.
2. Research design and Methodology.
I am doing that by first analysing the literature on three different but linked theories -
Radicalization, Relative deprivation and Social movement theory. The different radicalization
theories gained increased prominence after the 9/11 events and the recent wave of jihadist
attacks in Europe and flow of fighters towards the Middle East. Those theories could help
identify the main reasons behind the ideological radicalization of individuals and sometimes
communities and the way radical ideas develop into violent actions. While particularly useful
for tackling the psychology behind the lone wolf attacks and self-radicalisation, it often falls
short on explaining the radicalization and organization of big groups of people or whole
communities. This is where Social movement theory and its various branches like Resource
mobilization, Political opportunity and Frame-alignment come in handy because they can be
used not only to explain how a certain part of society is emancipated, mobilized and
eventually radicalized but how it can be used to counter or control this process, how the
existence of a strong and moderate social movement/structure is better than the absence of
one in the way that it could relieve the pressure felt by part of the society and prevent the
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emergence of a more radical SM (Bayat 1998). RDТ could explain both individual and group
radicalization and is also an important part of the previous two theories, thus being able to
demonstrate the connection between them and to, much like SMT, help explain not only the
occurrence of a phenomenon such as radicalization but its absence.
Because of Bulgaria’s specific history and relations with Islam and the Ottomans/Turks, the
dissertation takes a considerable amount of space to track and present the more than six
centuries (during five of which Christians were subjected) of continual and complicated
Muslim presence in the lands that constitute modern Bulgaria. I do that by using secondary
sources by Bulgarian and foreign scholars.
This is necessary in order to understand the contemporary dislike and even outright hate in a
substantial part of the Christian Bulgarian society towards Islam and more specifically the
Turkish. After establishing this broad historical basis – as a part of my original research - I
proceed to analyse the prejudice towards Muslims/Turkish in Bulgarian education, together
with the actions and discourse of nationalist political parties. I claim that the History and
Literature curriculums are inherently divisive and skewed towards a negative representation
of Islam and the Turkish people and history. Something which indoctrinates pupils from an
early age and contributes to the growing radicalization of Bulgarian Christian society which,
together with radical speeches from MPs and government actions, could provoke a
defensive stance and a self-imposed community segregation among Muslims. Moreover, I
have completed a two-month – May and June 2018 - media monitoring of the Bulgarian
National Television (BNT) and three of the most popular and influential national newspapers
(“Trud”, “24 Chasa” and “Standart”) and news websites (OFFNews.bg, Dnevnik.bg and
Vesti.bg) which are not tabloids. The purpose of this is to assess the representation of
Muslims and their faith in the media and to compare it to the representation of Christianity.
I argue that the biased news coverage further promotes intolerance towards Islam and
combined with all the other factors mentioned above creates an environment suitable for an
ethnoreligious radicalization on a local level or engagement in international jihadism.
The last part of my dissertation is trying to figure out how Muslims in Bulgaria are dealing
with the situation in the country and the aforementioned arguments that I make, together
with their stance on international Islamist terrorism and ethnoreligious conflicts inside the
country, to study their way of thinking, acting and reasoning. Given that there is not a single
homogenous Muslim community in Bulgaria but more like three: Turkish, Pomak and Roma -
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those groups themselves have various internal divisions and differences - and they live in
several regions of the country I decided that a thorough and objective research on the
ground in the Muslim majority regions, villages and neighbourhoods („махала“/“mahalla”)
would be beyond the scope of my time resources. Furthermore, it was decided that it may
not be the best idea to go around asking people why won’t they blow up churches when
they seemingly have every reason to do it. In other words, there were slight ethical
concerns. Instead, I chose to perform secondary-data analysis on reports by official
institutions like Europol, the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, Pew Research
Center, the Bulgarian State Agency “National Security” and a recent extensive survey done
by New Bulgarian University and the research agency “Alpha Research” on the attitudes of
the Muslims in the country. I conducted nine qualitative research interviews with the
program director of the Bulgarian National Radio (BNR), the chairman of the Higher Muslim
Council (HMC) and academics from the fields of social anthropology, ethnology, history and
political sciences who specialize in the study of minorities and Islam in Bulgaria. Relying on
their expertise in the topic, I decided to derive information from multiple diverse and
independent sources and cross-check it against one another. The almost complete
overlapping of facts and opinions gave me the confidence to trust the collected data for an
analysis of why are Bulgarian Muslims not radicalizing.
3. Radicalization theory.
But what do people mean by radicalization, or academics, or this dissertation? The short
answer is many things. Scholars still argue on the meaning of this phenomenon, why it
occurs and does it really poses such threat, more so than corruption or organized crime, for
example. One thing that most agree on is that “radicalization is the rejection of the status
quo” (Tiflati 2016) whether we mean by that political, social, economic, cultural or religious.
And in that sense, nonviolent radicalization is not something rare among communities and
people, in fact, it is quite common and in many cases healthy for society because it can
produce necessary reforms or challenge corrupt or backward governments and elites (Sarma
2017). The general public, and politicians for that matter, often mix the definition of
nonviolent and violent radicalization or simply disregard the former as something else, thus
immediately jumping to prejudiced and negative conclusions when they hear the word
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“radical” (Githens-Mazer 2012). Another thing that most people forget is that more often
than not defining someone as radical, or attributing radical characteristics to some actions or
words, is irredeemably politically influenced. One community’s hero could be – and very
often is – another one’s radical, no matter if he/she is nonviolent or violent, (Tiflati 2016).
Let us take for example the Bulgarian revolutionaries from the end of the 19th century who
were struggling for national liberation from the Ottoman Empire. A lot of Bulgarians back
then, and even more so nowadays, viewed them as a special kind of a hero
(“юнак”/“younak”), as liberators, but surely the Ottoman state considered them to be the
modern equivalent of radicals and even terrorists. But go ahead and try to convince anybody
in Bulgaria that Hristo Botev, one of the country’s most beloved and respected poets and
revolutionaries, has something even nominally in common with Osama bin Laden. Things
might get physical.
Regardless of how individuals are looked upon, the fact is that “terrorist violence is based on
radical beliefs but not all radical beliefs (cognitive radicalization) lead to violence
(behavioural radicalization)” (Verkuyten 2018). For the purpose of this dissertation, from
now on – unless stated otherwise - I will use “radical” and its derivatives in the sense of
violent radicalism and “radicalization” as the “process of increasing commitment to
becoming involved in political violence” (Sarma 2017) and will try to explain the paths that
lead to it. Although it is hard to say when a person with violent beliefs makes the next step
to violent behavior and why people with seemingly the same conditions of life and
background take on different paths (Michael Jensen 2018), we could try and make sense of it
by using Daniel Koehler’s suggestion that the chief theoretical schools of radicalization are:
psychological; social movement; sociological; empirical (Koehler 2014/2015). The first one
states that emotional instability, grievances with politics, identification with victims and lack
of moral scrupulous towards violence, among else, drive individuals to radicalization. The
second one proposes the idea that often radicalization is nurtured by “networks, group
dynamics, peer pressure and a constructed reality”. The sociological theorists insist that it is
the individual’s own sense of lost identity and hostile environment that drives him to radical
tactics. While the empiricists discern different types of extremist group members based on
their motivation – individual or socio-economic - to join a particular movement or act on
their own (Koehler 2014/2015).
It is often the case that radicalization occurs via not one but two or more of Koehler’s four
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schools, or to be more specific: via a mix of certain traits of these schools. One of the most
comprehensive summaries of the conceptual constructs that drive radicalization - the work
of M. Jensen, A. Seate and P. James - demonstrates this interlacing:
- Psychological Rewards: Significance restoration/Individual significance gain/Social

significance gain/Group prestige /Uncertainty relief/Heroism/Individual
recognition/Emotional rewards/Moral rewards;
- Material Rewards: Paradise/Status/Material reward;
- Personal Crisis: Economic crisis/Socio-cultural crisis/Personal crisis/Crisis-driven cognitive
opening/Emotional distress;
- Community Crisis: Collective crisis situation/External threat/Political crisis/Cognitive
opening/Imminent existential threat;
- Recruitment: Public-proximate/Public-mediated/Private-proximate/Private-mediated;
- Cognitive Frame Alignment: Frame alignment/Indoctrination/Authority of frame
articulator/Empirical evidence/Universal truth/Incremental learning/Individual
learning/Forming interpretive frames/Framework exclusivism/Rules directed redesigning;
- Psychological Vulnerability: Humiliation/Helplessness/Socially based significance
loss/Group boundaries/Uncertainty/Emotional distress/Cultural
disillusionment/Anomie/Broken family/Loose family/Lack of affection from parents/Loose
community relations/Dependent personality/Socio-cultural crisis;
- Physical Vulnerability: Physical distress/Material distress/Family
dysfunctionality/Community dysfunctionality/Economic crisis;
- Group Norms: Leadership prototypicality/Leadership importance/Leadership norms/Black
sheeping/Rule compliance /Leader legitimacy/Uncertainty relief;
- Group Biases: Group influence/Groupthink/External threat/Typicality threat/In-group or
out-group bias/Dehumanizing rhetoric/Diffusion of responsibility/Social
isolation/Interpretative frameworks. (Michael Jensen 2018)
3.1. Muslim radicalization in Europe.
Individuals that radicalize experience a variety of these 71 conceptual constructs at once or

in a period of time. There is no difference in the way a person or a group of people
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radicalizes anywhere around the world - meaning that it is a combination of one or more of
the aforementioned constructs - but the causes, the factors differ widely. An Italian Red
Brigades partisan and an American Ku Klux Klan member could follow the same path to
radicalization but for very different reasons. In the case of the Muslims in Europe, among the
main reasons has been Islamophobia. Ever since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the negative
prejudice and discrimination against Islam and its followers have been growing steadily
(d’Appollonia 2012) with both far-right Muslim and nationalist groups feeding off each other.
One of the first consequences of the events in 2001 and the “War on Terror” (John 2017)
was that in the eyes of many people and authorities Muslims were swiftly stripped off any
other identity but their religious one. Iraqis, Tunisians, Turkish, etc. around Europe lost their
historic, ethnic and cultural backgrounds while melting into one vast and quite Orientalist by
nature Muslim entity (Klandermans 2010). Branded by the worst qualities of a tiny fraction
religious extremists, Muslims or even people who look like ones became targets of growing
discrimination and aggression. Mosques and Islamic cultural centres were targeted too,
whether physically or by new restrictive legislation (d’Appollonia 2012), with some scholars
and politicians calling for shutting down of Islamic faith schools because they preach radical
ideologies, intolerance, incompatibility with democracy (Tiflati 2016). The hostility towards
Islam was and still is fueled by nationalist movements and parties that instil fear of jihadi
terrorism, Islamization of the continent, irreconcilable cultural differences (Marret 2011).
The media’s willingness to disseminate those messages does not help either. In fact,
newspapers, TV channels, radio stations and websites play a major role in turning society
against Islam and to radicalize European (both non-Muslim and Muslim) youth (Klandermans
2010). Studies have found (d’Appollonia 2012) that most media in Europe are not
deliberately Islamophobic but due to their nature and the constant struggle for rating and
viewership are driven to sensationalism, bombastic headlines and drama. News has to be
what journalists call “sexy”. The more shocking, the better. This often leads to an
unbalanced and biased representation of Muslims and Islamic terrorism, and of blowing a
certain problem or event out of proportion. Another feature of media coverage of Islam is
the mix between foreign and domestic Islam, of lumping together Saudi Arabian Wahhabism
and Islam preached in a Belgian suburb or a Turkish village, for example, thus again painting
one whole and diverse religion in black and white (d’Appollonia 2012). The development of
the mass media, especially the internet, also gave a boost to the idea of the ummah – a
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single community of Muslim believers all around the globe (Verkuyten 2018). The flow of
information about what is happening in Muslim countries that immigrants and their families
began receiving exponentially increased and an even stronger emotional bond between the
two groups developed based on shared grievances. European Muslims victims of
discrimination, marginalization and social isolation felt sympathetic to the sufferings of their
brothers and sisters in the MENA (Klandermans 2010). Sufferings which many of them feel –
justifiably or not – are caused or supported by the West, Europe included (Azzam 2007). The
idea of the Western anti-Muslim foreign policy is fueled by the war in Iraq (Hassan 2012), the
conflict in Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, poor Muslim prisoner treatment (d’Appollonia 2012)
and, among many others, the “unwavering support for Israel” (Azzam 2007).
Thus, not only Europeans began seeing Muslims as a single community, regardless of
ethnicity and nationality, but many Muslims – out of sympathy for their MENA compatriots,
or trying to distinguish themselves from the horrors committed/supported by the West, or
simply because they were rejected by their host community (Tiflati 2016) – felt like a part of
the ummah, with Islam their defining characteristic. Inside Europe, the scrutiny and
harassment Muslims were and continue to be put through galvanized many of them into
closed communities based on religious proximity. Around 1 in 2 Muslims in the EU report
that they have been victims of discrimination while applying for a job or housing, 1 in 3
experienced increased police checks and public abuse because they were wearing traditional
clothing and 1 in 4 was a target of harassment (EU Agency for Fundamental Rights 2017).
4. Perception of relative deprivation.
It is important to note that the statistics by various human rights organizations, government
and international agencies in many cases measure not facts but perceptions. As is the case
with the foregoing survey by the EU’s Agency for Fundamental Rights which catalogues what
Muslims felt was a discriminative or abusive attitude towards them based on their religion,
skin colour, names, clothing, not what was a proven fact in many cases. However, according
to the Thomas Theorem, this hardly matters because “if men define situations as real, they
are real in their consequences” (Merton 1995). Something does not need to have happened
as long as people believe it had. This is not to say that discrimination against Muslims in
Europe is a fruit of their imagination but much like the nationalist far-right groups cherry-
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pick stories and examples that fit their anti-Muslim narrative, so do Islamist fundamentalist
leaders who paint a vividly black and white picture of the West’s attitude and policy towards
Islam (Verkuyten 2018). With the two groups having a mutually beneficial relationship which
they love to hate.
Those perceived group grievances and injustices grow into a feeling of relative deprivation
(RD) which is essential to the radicalization process of both individuals and communities, and
of civil unrest and even uprisings (Taylor 2011). Simply put, relative deprivation occurs when
a person or group of people believe that they have been unfairly denied access to equal
economic, political and social opportunities while those same benefits are granted to others
who are by no means more deserving (Gurr 2011, 23-24). The size of the inequality gap does
not matter as much as the way it came to be and is it possible for things to improve (Huo
2014). If two neighbours have the same education and abilities but only one of them is given
access to job opportunities and is paid more, a feeling of RD occurs in the mind of the person
who fares worse because he thinks that he deserves the same as his neighbour but is
unfairly denied that. But if we take the same two people, only this time one of them is better
trained and capable and the other one is not, no matter how much more person number 1
gets paid than person number 2, the latter will likely conclude that the gap is just and won’t
start experiencing RD (it is also possible that the comparison may be made between
individual’s current state of affairs and past). This is why some people who are living in
objectively better conditions, like in Western Europe, albeit not at the upper social strata,
are affected by RD and are more inclined towards radicalization while whole populations of
significantly less developed countries and regions are not (Huo 2014). Moreover, studies
have confirmed (Stern 2016) that low gross domestic product per capita of the population is
not directly linked to an increased risk of religious radicalization. “For transnational
terrorism, there is a U-shaped curve: as per capita income increases from a very low level,
nationals become more likely to become perpetrators of transnational terrorism. But as
incomes increase further, it becomes more difficult to mobilize perpetrators of transnational
terrorism” (Stern 2016). But perceived inequality is a major radicalization factor.
There is also a difference in the consequences between individual-based RD and group-
based. The former’s outcome most often is self-blame, while the latter’s is anger and social
protest (Zomeren 2016). The more people view themselves as members of a group – as is
the case with Islamist cognitive radicals or European Muslims with an identity crisis who
15
have found safe haven in religious communities – the more the probability increases for
them to demonstrate a higher sensitivity towards intergroup differences (Huo 2014). They
would also be “less likely to attribute personal losses or gains to their unique personal
qualities, more likely to interpret the behaviour of out-group members as hostile or greedy,
and more likely to engage in collective action to remedy the in-group’s unfair disadvantage”
(Huo 2014).
The section of the European Muslim community that was most affected by the social
exclusion and discrimination in their host countries (and indeed homelands for many of
them) were young people. This is nothing new since youth everywhere is more sceptical of
authority and the democratic processes and is inclined towards radical thinking
(Klandermans 2010). Muslims, however, face additional difficulties due to a crisis of identity
they have been experiencing. Second and third generation Muslims can hardly identify with
the countries from where their parents came because they were born and raised in a very
different cultural, social and even linguistic environment which made it difficult for them to
feel like anything else but a citizen of France or the UK, for example (Azzam 2007).
Meanwhile, the discrimination they face and the fact that a substantial amount of the native
population does not consider them as one of their own because of skin color, name or
religion, although they were born and raised there, made them feel rejected and in turn
forced them to denounce their host society, thereby falling into a state of identity crisis
(Verkuyten 2018).
This is where religion comes in to fill the void. It offers those young men and women,
granted that most Islamist radicals are men, a sense of belonging, a huge national and
international community like the ummah which cares only if you are Muslim. Islam, and
especially Islamic fundamentalism, presents them not only with an identity and a like-
minded group of people but with a meaning to life, a value system to adhere to in a
perplexed Western world (Verkuyten 2018). It also provides a certain defence against
nationalist far-right groups, political and community discrimination (Hassan 2012). Some of
the individuals most prone to cognitive radicalization eventually make the transition to
behavioural radicalization influenced by a sense of vengeance, the belief that what they
were doing was just and the strong presence of a “culture of martyrdom” in Islamic
fundamentalism (d’Appollonia 2012). In some peculiar cases, the religious fundamentalism
leads to the development of a hyper-potent Islamic identity and radicalization out of pride,
16
not humiliation. “Instead of feeling marginalized, youth may claim being called as the chosen
ones to change the world” (Tiflati 2016), violence becomes a necessary engine, a virtue that
would serve the greater good.
5. Social movement theory.
In order for a group to develop a radical wing, first, it needs to go through the processes of
politicization and polarization. Politicization takes place once a community becomes aware
of its shared grievances and could point out to a single external enemy (a government,
another community) on which to put the blame on for its sense of RD. The next logical step
is for the group in question to take action aimed at changing the status quo via directly or
indirectly engaging the authorities/society politically or by protesting (Klandermans 2010).
Very often during bipolar conflicts – like the ones between nationalist right-wingers and
Muslims – the general public is viewed by the participating sides in the conflict as allies or
opponents. A “you're either with us or against us” (Bush 2001) logic is applied to force the
bystanders to take a side. “Both groups assert that what “we” stand for is threatened by
“them”, tribute is paid to the in-group’s symbols and values, and the out-group is derogated”
(Klandermans 2010).
While politicization and polarization, the harbingers of violent behaviour, are a product of
intergroup processes, radicalization is also often a result of intragroup dynamics. It is not
rare for moderate social movements to be internally fragmented along the lines of a
moderate wing, usually a sizeable majority, and a radical wing, a minority. More often than
not the outcome of such intra-movement tensions is the formation of splinter radical
groups. Thus the members of the radical groups engage in conflict both with the external
enemy and with their community which turns its back on them, resulting in a “double
marginalization” (Porta 2006, 107) for the radicals who continue to come in contact only
with like-minded individuals and develop even more radical ideas and behavior (Porta 2006,
57). “In this narrower, ideologically homogeneous network, worldviews are created largely
based on mediated experience, stereotypes, and prejudices shaping even more detached
imagined realities” (Klandermans 2010).
Shared grievances and emotions are an important ingredient in radicalization and the
formation of social movements/parties/groups but are not nearly enough for achieving
17
lasting effects and sustainable mass participation. This is a long and complex process which
requires structured leadership and various resources available. In recent years, researchers
are relying more and more on SMT to further explain the phenomenon of increasing Islamic
radicalization, cognitive and behavioural, among European Muslims.
One of the main contributions of SMT in the study of radicalization is the emphasis it puts on
the roles that radical Muslim leaders “play in the construction of the collective action frames
that give meaning to events, help form collective expectations, and guide actions” (Michael
Jensen 2018). In order to mobilize support, fundamentalist leaders use extensive framing to
create, arrange and disseminate ideas socially, to interpret the meaning of international,
national and community events regarding Muslims. “Group leaders, ideologues, and
propagandists use framing processes to create collective identities” (Paul Davis 2012),
identities which separate the world into “us” and “them” (Klandermans 2010). Those leaders
readily take on topics like the “War on Terror”, the EU’s immigration laws, etc. and frame
them as anti-Muslim policies. By framing the grievances of Muslims in Europe as something
produced by deep hate towards Islam and portraiting Muslims as victims and even martyrs,
they galvanize people into supporting them. Central to Islamist movements strategy is to
create meaning and identity (Meijer 2005) using a mixture of nationalism, tribal symbolism
and human rights framed through religion, thus demonstrating the importance of a logical
strategy in causing emotional responses and mobilizing support (Paul Davis 2012). Success is
achieved when movement leaders manage to accomplish “frame resonance”, to attune their
messages and interpretation of events and situations to the grievances of the people and
turn mobilization potential into real mobilization (Meijer 2005). Key to this process is the
role that mass media plays in order to get to as many people as possible and to serve as a
legitimate conveyor of reality (Pas 2014). Given the news coverage and representation of
Islam in the majority of European media, it is not hard for Islamist movement leaders to
frame it in a way that suits their own agenda by implying a sense of problem and urgency.
Although some scholars point out the lack of flexibility to Islamist fundamentalism, SM
theorists claim that in order to frame a variety of topics in the desired way Muslim radical
leaders, cognitive and behavioral, do not adhere strictly to a “rigid God-given principles”
(Meijer 2005) from a sacred scripture but demonstrate adaptability to social, economic and
political circumstances.
18
In that sense, political opportunity theory/structure, another branch of SMT, is helpful to
explain how and when SM leaders choose to frame their rhetoric according to the political
climate in a given country (Snow 2000). “Political opportunity structures represent the
opportunities and constraints group leaders face in promoting their movement” (Paul Davis
2012), they inform them when the time for a certain action is right. The right political
opportunity may be the lessening of the grip of a repressive state, or external/internal
political pressure and struggle, the alienation of people from authority by a series of ill-
conceived policies (Kurzman 1996), the political condition of the state (Minkoff 2004), the
existence of elite allies capable and inclined to support action against authority, the stability
of the elite alignments that are in favor of that same authority, the capacity of the coercive
apparatus and the will of the government to deploy it (Doug McAdam 1996). All those
political opportunity factors inform a movement’s tactics and its decisions such as:
“advancing particular claims rather than others”, “cultivating some alliances rather than
others”, “affecting mainstream institutional politics and policy” (Meyer 2004). Depending on
the political opportunity facing a SM, its leaders shape the way they frame themselves and
their rhetoric. It is very often that Islamist movements are both confronted by the state and
by hostile community elites which prevent them from evolving into political parties or
participating in politics and civil society in a significant way. This drives them mostly to the
fringes of political and public life and forces them to operate from the informal sector, often
increasing the probability of cognitive radicalization (Meijer 2005).
Still, there is one last crucial component – apart from existent grievances, effective framing
approach and a welcoming political environment - that needs to be present in order for a SM
to thrive: resource mobilization capacity; the means to carry out its communication
(Kurzman 1996) and increase group resources and organizational capacity (Paul Davis 2012).
Movements and their leaders execute strategies that are rational to gather members that
are psychologically driven (Garner 1997), if a SM does not have enough resources to work
with and the ability to gather them, it will fail to mobilize supporters even if the political
opportunity allows it and the framing is good enough (Wolff 1998). There are five types of
such resources: moral (understanding), cultural (experience), material (finances, meeting
places), social-organizational (strategy and social networks) and human (leaders and cadres)
(Bob Edwards 2004). SM could harness these resources by organizing into three resource
mobilization structures: formal political parties or legal institutions; legal NGOs, professional
19
associations, schools, charities and medical and other service centres; “the informal sector of
social networks and personal ties” (Meijer 2005).
Islamist movements are often forced by authorities to the third resource mobilization
structure, the informal sector. This is not uncommon in Europe too where many imams and
radicals utilize the often unregulated mosque networks (material resource) to convey radical
messages against decadent Western values and repression of Muslims, in some cases even
calling to violence (Azzam 2007). The examples are numerous: The Grand Mosque of
Brussels (Michael Birnbaum 2017), the Islamic Cultural Centre in Milan (Peter Neumann
2007), the Finsbury Park Mosque in London and the al-Quds in Hamburg (Azzam 2007). Only
in France not that long ago around 160 out of 1600 mosques and prayer halls were
considered to be controlled by radical Islamists (Azzam 2007). Mosques are convenient
because they are places where pious Muslims go not only for religious reasons but to
socialize in a safe and familiar environment, which if happens to be under the control of a
fundamentalist imam could expose a sensible amount of them to radical ideas (Verkuyten
2018). Mosques are also good for hosting meetings between small fundamentalist groups
which via social bonding and peer pressure could develop their cognitive radical ideas even
further until they reach a condition of behavioural radicalization (Peter Neumann 2007).
Then “the Mosque is replaced by small personal - “backyard Mosque” - and virtual networks
on the Internet and social media - “virtual Mosque” (Verkuyten 2018). The radicalized
individuals drift further away from society and their own surrounding community/social
movement/group, ultimately getting caught up in the vicious circle of “double
marginalization” (Porta 2006, 107) which only strengthens their extreme convictions further.
6. History of Islam in Bulgaria.
The principles of radicalization are pretty much the same everywhere but with history,
culture and local politics playing important roles in preventing or encouraging it. Before we
could apply the above-mentioned theories to Bulgaria and its substantial Muslim
communities in order to examine why are Bulgarian Muslims not radicalizing, a historical
background of Islam in this part of the world is necessary. Both this section of the
dissertation and later on the analysis of my original research will focus predominantly on the
Turkish population because it is and continues to be the most significant Muslim community
20
in the country in terms of political, cultural and economic importance, by far outweighing
the Pomak and Roma communities.
Records of Muslim presence in the Balkans date back to the 10th century when a migration
wave of Muslims from the Middle East settled in the territories of the Byzantine Empire and
other parts of the peninsula, including Bulgaria (Bojkov 2004). Their numbers were very few
and did not have a significant importance until a series of successful Ottoman campaigns
between the middle of the 13th century and late 15th century brought down the existing
Christian states, with Bulgarian tsardoms in specific being conquered between 1345–1393
(Eminov 1997). Once the Ottomans had established a firm grip on Bulgaria they started a
strategic demographic restructuring in order to secure the stability of their rule and the
protection of key transport corridors for their supply lines and armies that continued their
march further into Europe. This included colonization with Turkish peasants, soldiers,
merchants and preachers who came from Asia Minor and Anatolia (Eminov 1997),
enslavement of the native Christian population and forced marriages between Muslim men
and local women (Mutafchieva 1995), mass conversion to Islam under the threat of death
and severe punishments (Nitzova 1994) - some of the converts did it voluntarily because of
economic, social and political reasons but the exact percentage is still a debate among
historians - mass deportations of Christian nobles and common folk to Asia Minor (Eminov
1997). A special place in the group memory of Bulgarians up until this day is the imposition
of the “devshirme”, also known as a “blood tax”, which was used to recruit men for the
janissary ranks. Established by Sultan Orhan I, at first the janissary corps was composed of
slaves or prisoners of war but later on a special practice was put in place that functioned
until the 18th century – Christian boys from the Balkans were taken from their homes and
trained to become elites soldiers or administrators in the empire (Mutafchieva 1995).
Between the very end of the 15th and the 18th century the Bulgarian population, through
force or by its own will, in the Rhodope Mountains in the southern part of today’s borders
adopted Islam and came to be known as Pomaks (Nitzova 1994). They were distinct at the
time, and still continue to be, with the exclusive use of Bulgarian language as most of them
did not know Turkish, let alone Arabic, and preferred to ethnically identify as Bulgarians
(Georgieva 2001). Some contemporary Turkish historians claim that Pomaks actually are
ethnic Turks who adopted the local language and customs but kept their original faith.
However, this theory does not hold water in the eyes of most scholars (Georgieva 2001).
21
Around this time the Roma population in the Balkans also adopted Islam. They came from
India to Persia in the 9th century and reached Europe by the 11th century and although all of
them is believed to have been baptised, when the Ottomans came they readily converted to
Islam because of the benefits that came with it (Crowe 2000). The new authority then
divided the Gipsy population into settled Christians and nomadic Muslims, and by the end of
the 19th century, most Roma people were Islamized (Crowe 2000).
Among the contributions to the Islamization of Bulgaria were the work of the Dervish orders
and the Sufi trend in Islam that had a strong presence in the Sunni Ottoman Empire. Their
approach towards religion was emotional and mystically ritualistic which corresponded well
with the common people and made them curious, unlike the usual dogmatic religious
practices and beliefs of Islam which were foreign to them and quite unattractive (Nitzova
1994). The Dervish practices had much in common with both folklore beliefs and
Christianity: “baptism of infants, veneration of saints, certain types of animal sacrifice”
(Eminov 1997). They even outright adopted some Christian items and thus made the
transition between Christianity and Islam much easier for Bulgarians. This was also a two-
way process which led to the preservation of some pre-Islamic religious customs in Bulgarian
Islam even among Turks (Eminov 1997). One such example is the existence of shrines shared
by both Muslims and Christians like the 16th century Demir Baba Tekke, an Alevi turbe near
the village of Sveshtari where Christians, Sunnis and Alevi visit up to this day (Nitzova 1994).
For a period of roughly 500 hundred years until the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878, these
processes drastically transformed the Bulgarian demography which on the eve of the war
consisted of between 1/3 (Eminov 1997) and 1/4 (Bojkov 2004) Muslims, with Muslims being
a majority in most cities and Bulgarians living predominantly in the villages.
6.1. Muslims in Bulgaria between 1878 and 1946.
In 1878 Bulgaria was liberated by Alexander II of Russia and his armies putting an end of
nearly 5 centuries of Ottoman rule. The war itself was prompted, among other political
reasons, by the bloody suppression of the April Uprising from 1876 by the Ottoman regular
army and irregular bashi-bazouk troops. The exact number of those killed is hard to estimate
with Ottoman figures showing a death toll of 3100, the British and American estimates are
between 12,000 and 15,000 (Charles Jelavich 1977, 139), and Bulgarian sources claiming that
22
30,000 (Hupchick 2002, 264) or even 100,000 Bulgarians were slaughtered as a response
(although the latter figure is most probably an overestimation). Regardless, the brutal mass
murders, rapes and looting of Christian Bulgarians caused an outcry in Europe with
particularly strong calls for action from individuals such as William Gladstone (Gladstone
1876), Charles Darwin, Oscar Wilde, Victor Hugo, Giuseppe Garibaldi (Embassy of Bulgaria,
Washington D.C. n.d.). The following military conflict forced a huge part of the Muslim
population to flee with the retreating Turkish army (Eminov 1997). Two big Muslim refugee
waves to the Ottoman empire also occurred during the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, scholars
estimate that about half of the Muslims in Bulgaria either died or left the country by the
start the First World War (Bojkov 2004).
Despite the turbulent times, Turks in Bulgaria did not experience mass state organized forms
of repression and enjoyed a significant religious freedom and autonomy (Broun 2007). The
same goes for the Muslim Roma population, 122,000 at the end of the 19th century, which
was largely left alone (Crowe 2000). The same cannot be said about Pomaks, however. They
became targets of government-led Christianization and assimilation campaigns in the 1910s,
1920s, and the 1930s (Bojkov 2004). The efforts of the authorities included a ban on clothing
associated with the Islamo-Turkish culture – like women’s feredzes, shalvari – change of
customs and worldviews: from religious to secular. These actions were part of the so-called
“Revival Process” (“Възродителен процес“/„Vuzroditelen proces”) which derived its name
from the idea that the Pomaks wanted to get back to their Christian Bulgarian roots
(Nahodilova 2010). The very term “Pomak” acquired negative connotation, burdened by a
sense of treachery towards Christianity and fellow Bulgarians, and a new one was coined –
“Bulgaromohamedani”, from the words “Bulgarian” and “Muhammed”. The idea was clear,
to emphasize their Bulgarian ancestry (Georgieva 2001).
6.2. The Big Excursion.
As repressive as they sound, the campaigns were not consecutive in their efforts and their
success was dubious, and most importantly they were not marked by severe violence and
coerce. However, the official establishment of communism in Bulgaria in 1946 (de jure, de
facto 1944) changed things drastically for the whole country. The new militant communist
atheism sought to all but erase religion from both Christian and Muslim communities
23
(Nitzova 1994). In this new ideology, Islam posed a particular threat because it was viewed
as a way for Turkey, a capitalist state on that, to influence Muslims in the socialist republic.
At first, the new government tried a soft approach: it restored the Turko-Arabic names of all
people that were forced to change them previously, recognized constitutionally the
existence of minorities in the country and pledged to protect their rights (Bojkov 2004),
funded the teaching of Turkish language and culture (Mutafchieva 1995). All those benefits,
however, had strings attached to them: the abandoning of Islam. The efforts of Bulgaria
were directed towards the emancipation of Muslim women and the formation of influential
secular elites (Broun 2007). This proved more difficult than with Orthodox Christians and
even seemed to have the opposite result: over 130,000 Gypsies and other ethnic groups
were identifying as Turks (Crowe 2000). The April plenum of the Central Committee of the
Bulgarian Communist Party in 1956 decided that its measures to attract the Muslim
population under the single banner of communism were insufficient and a firmer hand was
needed. The government began a series of campaigns to assimilate the ethnoreligious
minorities into the Christian/atheist Bulgarian ethnicity by a forced change of names, religion
and culture: Muslim Roma in the late 1950s, the Pomaks in 1973 and 1974 (Nahodilova
2010). The inhabitants of three Pomak villages - Kornitsa, Breznitsa and Luzhnitsa - decided
to put up a fight but were brutally repressed by the army: three people were killed and many
more tortured, abused, arrested, sentenced and resettled. The communist authorities even
reopened the concentration camp Belene where they sent the dissidents (Brooks 2002). This
episode would prove to be a major contribution to the identity crisis experienced by
Pomaks, with some choosing to identify as Bulgarians, Turkish or adopt a distinct Pomak
ethnicity (Apostolov 1996).
The policy towards the Turkish was no better. They were less and less viewed as possible
agents who would disseminate the communist ideology to their southern neighbour and
increasingly perceived as a fifth column for Ankara’s possible territorial desires (Brooks
2002). A mass closure of mosques („джамия“/“cami”) and eviction of imams and hocas
(„ходжа“, a religious teacher) followed, coupled with a propaganda campaign against Islam
among the Christian population and a scientific atheism among the Muslims (Eminov 1997) -
for the sake of historical accuracy, it should be acknowledged that Christianity was also
heavily repressed and corrupted by the communists. Although proving effective, the
secularization was not happening fast enough and the events in Cyprus in 1974 stoked the
24
fears of the government and prompted it to apply harsher methods (Bojkov 2004). As a
result, circumcisions were prohibited, fasting during Ramadan and celebrating the Festival of
Sacrifice (Kurban Bayram) were strongly discouraged, funerals were ordered to be carried
out only in Bulgarian and in a socialist manner, not Muslim (Eminov 1997).
The culmination occurred in the years between 1984-1989 with the so-called Revival
Process: a complete ban on each and every Muslim religious custom and involuntary
renaming of 847,584 Turks (Bojkov 2004). And not only the living ones, the dead too: any
inscription or name in Turkish or Arabic on the tombstones in the cemeteries were to be
defaced (Alexandrov 2018). Bearing the same name as previous assimilation attempts over
the Roma and Pomak communities, the explanation for the forced Bulgarisation was that the
Turks were actually Muslim Bulgarians who came to their senses and felt an urge to return to
their Christian Bulgarian roots. The whole policy is summarised by a sentence which is
believed to have been said by Todor Zhivkov, the dictator of the country: “There are no
Turks in Bulgaria” (Karpat 1995). This statement was proven wrong by the staunch resistance
thousands of Turks were putting up. The refusal of the communist government to back down
on its intentions led to the deaths of more than a 1000 people, including children. Thousands
were jailed and many interned in the Belene concentration camp (Karpat 1995). But the
protests were growing and putting the stability of the country at risk, several terrorist
attacks were also committed – however, some are believed to have been organised by the
communist secret police (E. Vasileva 2012). Surprisingly, on 29 May 1989 Todor Zhivkov
appeared on the National Television making his historic announcement:
“Dear comrades, beloved fellow citizens, as it was already reported in the press, in the last
several days in relation to the approved by the government laws regarding the passports and
Bulgarian citizenship among some parts of the population in some areas of the country –
incited by foreign powers – a tension occurred. In the Ludogorie area, in the Kardzhali area,
and in every other place where Muslims live miracles were made! A new way of life, new
cities, new peoples were made. This is absolutely natural because for the first time in history
under socialism man, liberated from the chains of slavery, became free and a true maker of
his own fate. After that, the scriptwriters of the anti-Bulgarian campaign launched the
question of emigration by announcing that Turkey is ready to accept all Bulgarian Muslims
who want to emigrate. On this occasion, I want to say on behalf of the Bulgarian Muslims
25
and myself to the responsible Turkish authorities: open the borders to all Bulgarian Muslims
who want to go to Turkey temporarily or to settle there." (Zhivkov 1989)
Note that the dictator does not even ones refer to the Muslims citizens of the country as
Turks, only as Bulgarian Muslims. Because of his choice of words and the open-ended
proposition to return or stay there, the event was dubbed The Big Excursion. After his
statement, the government opened the borders – something unprecedented for the last
nearly 50 years – and some 370,000 people poured into Turkey (Broun 2007). On the other
side of the border, Ankara immediately started giving Turkish passports to the Bulgarians.
However, shocked by the large exodus, Turkey eventually closed its borders (Bojkov 2004).
Several months later, on 10 November 1989, Todor Zhivkov was forced to resign and the
communist regime crumbled.
7. Folklore and education.
Of those who left, by 10 September 1990 154 937 Bulgarian Turks came back (D. Vasileva
1992) because of the change of the regime and a strong sense of nostalgia, after all, it is not
easy to abandon one’s ancestral homeland. But there was more to it than just emotion,
Turkey did not meet entirely the expectations of many “tourists” who failed to integrate.
Differences in the dialects and the fact that most Bulgarian Turks came from rural areas and
Ankara tried to settle them in urban districts made it hard for them to find jobs. There were
also cultural differences, communism succeeded in making Bulgarian Muslims more secular
than their southern kin. Turkish society was still much more patriarchal both at home and at
work and in the public life which for the emancipated Bulgarian Muslim women and their
men seemed strange. On the other hand, people in Turkey were considering Bulgarian Turks
to be bad Muslims who do not adhere to the religious duties of Islam (Ragaru 2001).
At the same time, the new authorities in Bulgaria denounced the Revival Process (Bojkov
2004), with the 1991 constitution enshrining freedom of belief and protection of the ethnic
and religious minorities, the Islamic schools and mosques reopened and an ethnic Turkish
party (although it is prohibited by law to form a political entity based on ethnicity and
religion, an exception was made) was founded in 1990, entering parliament the following
year with 24 out of 240 seats (Eminov 1997).
26
Albeit life for Muslims got much better, the anti-Turkish and anti-Islam sentiments at the
core of Bulgarian national identity remained strong. The thematics of Bulgarian classical
literature, music, cinema and art are overwhelmingly anti-Turkish. Children from the
smallest age are being raised with folklore stories where the archetypal villain is Turkish (or a
rich Bulgarian, known as „чорбаджия“/“corbaci”, usually a friend of the Turkish) and the
hero, the younak, is a Bulgarian Christian. One such example is the many stories of Hitar
Petar (Cunning Peter), a satirical character who always outwits his opponents. His most
notable adversary is Nasreddin Hoca, the famous Turkish wiseman. While the stories about
him are innocent and funny, the legends of Krali Marko, a Balkan ruler between 1371–1395
who is venerated as a semi-mythic national hero by Bulgarians, Serbs and Macedonians, are
much more bloody and grim. Like the “Krali Marko rescues three chains of slaves” where he
slays alone a whole regiment of Turkish janissary and liberates the enslaved Bulgarians or
the numerous stories where he defeats or kills not only the Turkish but the “black Arabs” as
well.
Anti-Turkish forms of art continue to dominate Bulgarian society and even seem to be on a
new rise. A 2009 national competition organised by the BNT that gave viewers the chance to
vote for the best Bulgarian novel of all times declared “Under the yoke” as the
unquestionable winner (Dnevnik 2009). The book is written in 1888 and tells the story of a
small town several months before the April Uprising of 1876. The runner-up was “Time of
Parting“ which tells the story of three Bulgarian villages from the Rhodope Mountain – a
nowaday Pomak region - in 1668 and their clash with a janissary regiment that came to
convert them to Islam. A similar contest held by the BNT in 2015 about the best Bulgarian
movie of all times yielded, quite literally, the same results. The winner was the movie
adaptation of “Time of Parting” (Mediapool 2015). The second place went to “The Goat
Horn”, a movie telling the story of a 17th-century Bulgarian family: after the mother is raped
and killed by the Turks the father decides to raise their daughter as a boy who then murders
her mother’s rapists.
The examples of both classical and modern Bulgarian books, movies, songs and visual art
about the Turkish Slavery, as the 5-century period of Bulgarian history is popularly known,
are abound. While everybody chooses what stories to tell their kids or movies to watch, the
school education is mandatory and the situation in the History and Literature curriculum is
no better. As early as fifth grade (11 years of age) pupils are obligated to study the poem
27
“Hayduti” by Hristo Botev about the Bulgarian armed resistance against the Turkish (Ministry
of Education of Republic of Bulgaria 2017), and in sixth grade, they start reading “Under the
yoke” for the first time. Pupils, regardless of their ethnicity, are even examined to know by
heart the poem “The volunteers of Shipka” by Ivan Vazov which tells the story of the
Bulgarian and Russian forces that held off the Turkish army at Shipka peak during the Russo-
Turkish war of 1877. Some of the verses that every Bulgarian citizen is supposed to know are
as follows:
The onslaught's ferocious! Again the dense hordes

Along the ravine for the twelfth time are crawling
Where warm blood is flowing and bodies are sprawling.
Assault on assault! Swarm on swarm they advance!
Once more at the towering peak Suleiman the mad
is pointing: "Rush forward! Up there are the rayahs!"
Away race the hordes in a rage wild and dire,
A thunderous "Allah" re-echoes afar.
The summit replies with a rousing "Hurrah!",
A hail of fresh bullets and tree trunks and boulders;
Spattered with blood, our battalions boldly
Retaliate, every man in his own way
Striving to be in the front of the fray,
Each, like a hero, death bravely defying,
Determined to leave one more enemy dying.
Cannons are pounding. The Turks with a cry
Rush up the slope where they tumble and die;
The Literature and History curriculums are full of examples like the one above. By the time
boys and girls graduate from school, they are almost indoctrinated on a subconscious level
to distrust the Turkish and Islam in general. Even everyday language contains traces of such
tendencies with words like “janissary” („еничар“) – often used against the government and
the police as the destroyers of the country – and “to make something Turkish”
(“потурчване“) – to lose or destroy something.
28
According to Vedat Ahmed (2018), the chairman of the Higher Muslim Council of Bulgaria,
the educational system is a remnant of an old political agenda and needs to be reformed.
Furthermore, it is illegal because it fosters hate and discrimination towards a specific
ethnicity and religion, something which is explicitly forbidden by law:
“Muslims love to learn, even if they do not accept the poems of Vazov and Botev they will
learn to recite them. However, this creates hypocritical individuals which are an obstacle for
the creation of a tolerant society. Everyday life tolerance is a thing in Bulgaria but at certain
times it explodes. It is not easy to be pointed at in school for 12 years for being a Muslim,
this is a thing especially in the big cities, not so much in the smaller ones with Muslim
majorities where I believe that teachers tone things down. But anybody who tries to change
the curriculum is immediately called a traitor, an oppressor, a janissary.” (Ahmed 2018)
The social anthropologist Haralan Alexandrov points out (2018) that this is a biased
reflection of the Bulgarian collective memory which manifests itself every time it can but
omits vast parts of the bigger historical picture. He notes that it is very peculiar that for the
Bulgarians everything bad in this world came from Anatolia but at the same time the Turks
like the Bulgarians (and the people from the Balkans in general) because most good things
for the Ottomans came from there: “Ruschuk (modern Rousse) was the showcase of the
Ottoman Empire, much like Odessa was for the Russian Empire. Look how many Grand
Viziers, mothers of sultans, military and political elite members and innovations came from
the Balkans and Bulgaria, we should stop pretending that for 500 years there used to be a
black hole on the spot where we are” (Alexandrov 2018).
8. Fear and loathing in the media.
My two-month (May and June 2018) media monitoring of the BNT and three of the most
popular national newspapers and news website (Bakalov 2017) that are not tabloids yielded
the same results (Table 1).
Table 1: A media monitoring of Islam and Christianity news representation for May and June
2018.
29
BNT OFFNews.bg Dnevnik.bg Vesti.bg 24 chasa Trud Standart Overall
News about 126 negative 35 negative 138 negative 42 negative 279 negative 203 negative 63 negative 886
Islam in general:
4 positive 0 positive 2 positive 1 positive 6 positive 4 positive 3 positive 20

Islam in Bulgaria:

Christianity in
general: 14 positive 3 positive 10 positive 2 positive 11 positive 17 positive 5 positive 63

Christianity in
Bulgaria:
Overall amount 1934, 3616 5386 2104 7056 6471 2153 29,720
of news without
produced: sport news
Although the articles that have something to do with religion account for only 5,2% of all
news produced for the duration of the research, the pattern is clear: 3,2% is about Islam,
with only 0,1% of them being positive/neutral and 3% negative. 1,9% of all the articles
represent Christianity in a positive/neutral way, while 0,1% of them are negative. By
negative I mean news that depict the Muslims and their faith in a way that constructs a bad
image of them. For example, the vast majority of the negative news is about religious
terrorism or Muslim immigrants. But they also include stories of cultural incompatibility and
backwardness, like the lifting of the ban on women drivers in Saudi Arabia which only
reinforced the image of Islam as sexist and rigid. The very few positive/neutral news were
about the Iftar hosted by Donald Trump and the so-called “Spider-man of Mali”. The
domestic coverage of Islam was limited to several articles about the Iftar hosted by the
Bulgarian president Rumen Radev, a church built by a Muslim and the rest were
predominantly about the Revival process commemorations. In the meantime, coverage of
foreign Christian (all denominations) news is almost non-existent, at the expense of that
domestic news about the Christian faith are abundant – celebrations, holidays, analyzes,
events, interviews, preaches.
30
This confirms the observations made by Ariane d'Appollonia that European media mixes
foreign and domestic Islam often showing the worst of Islam around the world and
neglecting the domestic reality (d’Appollonia 2012), thus creating a grotesque image of Islam
and fueling fears and resentment. I would add that the media does not do the same with
local Christianity which is fairly represented and is rarely mixed with Christianity abroad. The
only national media that seem to care for the needs of the Muslims in the country is the
BNR. Since there is not a single centralised programme but many regional ones it was
beyond my abilities to survey the contents of all radio stations. That is why I met with Martin
Minkov, the programme director of the BNR, and Tanya Blagova, chief editor of all
programmes in Turkish language. They told me that radio stations in the areas and cities
heavily populated with Turks – Kardzhali, Shumen, Razgrad, Turgovishte (Minkov 2018) -
broadcast every single day 3 hours in Turkish language, with one hour live broadcast with
Vedat Ahmed every Friday (Blagova 2018). The radio also uploads its contents on the
website so that every Turkish speaking person could access them and read about various
subjects from religion and culture to politics and agriculture (Blagova 2018).
While its efforts are certainly admirable, they are not meant to bridge the gap between
Muslims and Christians (or even non-Turkish speaking Muslims) but to cater to each
community separately, thus not contributing substantially to the Bulgarian people’s
understanding of Islam and their fellow Muslim citizens. Albeit Martin Minkov’s strong
opposition to the suggestion that the Bulgarian media, in general, is contributing to the anti-
Muslim moods in the country (Minkov 2018), my two-month survey and other papers
(Liakova 2012) prove otherwise (with the BNR possibly being the only exception). An opinion
shared by Vedat Ahmed: “One of our muftis once told me: “If we accept that every herd has
its black sheep, then we could say that the media has its white one” (Ahmed 2018).
9. The far-right ingredient.
Researches conclude (Bosakov 2006) that ethnoreligious stereotypes are best countered by
increasing the exchange of information between groups. With Muslims largely living in
compact communities across the country and rarely mingling with the majority of the
Bulgarian Christian population, people’s opinion of Islam and the Turks is to a great extent
moulded by a biased media, cultural and educational environment (E. Ivanova 2017). In that
31
sense, it is no surprise that between 2005-2018 three nationalist parties – Ataka, IMRO and
NFSB – were elected in parliament, with all of them being part of the current ruling coalition.
They rode the wave of public discontent with the political establishment (Antonina
Zhelyazkova 2007) by framing the widespread corruption issue into an ethnoreligious
problem focusing on the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MFR), the Turkish party
founded in 1990, which was elected in every parliament from 1991 onwards and took part
officially in three governments (Baeva 2018).
Among the repertoire of those nationalist parties is blaming the Turks for being disloyal to
Bulgaria (Arndt 2013), gathering signatures for silencing the mosque loudspeakers (Antonina
Zhelyazkova 2007), banning the 10-minute news segment in Turkish on the BNT (CSD 2015),
even attacking the mosque and Muslim believers in Sofia (Paunova 2011). All three parties
have their own TV channels and newspapers (CSD 2015). This led to the European
Commission Against Racism and Intolerance to declare IMRO and NFSB
“ultranationalist/fascist” parties (Ilieva, Country report on Non-Discrimination: Bulgaria
2015). Reports of the commission for 2015, 2016 and 2017 all underline the existence of an
increased danger of hate speech and violence against Turks, Muslims, Gypsies, Muslim
migrants (Ilieva, Country report on Non-Discrimination: Bulgaria 2017). Furthermore, in 2016
several vigilante groups and lone wolf “migrant hunters” started patrolling the borders for
illegal Muslim migrants who they would capture, abuse and harm. Those men were
presented in a flattering manner by the mainstream media and even the then (and current)
Prime Minister Boyko Borisov thanked them for the help (Ilieva, Country report on Non-
Discrimination: Bulgaria 2017). This is not the first controversial comment made by Borisov
regarding the Muslims, back in 2008 he said that the Revival Process was a good idea but
badly executed (Mediapool 2008). The very last event that sparked an outrage among the
Muslims in Bulgaria and caused parallels with the Revival Process (Kircaali Haber 2018) is
from 31 May 2018 when the city council in Stara Zagora voted for the renaming of 838
toponyms from Turko-Arabic to Bulgarian sounding names (Dnevnik 2018).
10. A social movement by the book.
Severe social traumas like the RP, discrimination and the constant lambasting of Muslims in
the media and society usually plays into the hands of the Islamists social movements
32
(Klandermans 2010) and Bulgaria is no different. The decades of repression of Islam, and
especially the events several years prior to the fall of the communist regime, led to the
creation of the MFR, unofficially but essentially a party of the Turkish and Muslim minority.
The decision of the Bulgarian authorities not to ban the party is by now recognised as key to
the ethnic stability in the country (Ganev 2004). It not only distinguished the new political
regime from the previous one – thus alleviating some of the grievances Muslims had – but
also set the moderate path for the Turks to follow. The MRF was an heir to the 1983 terrorist
group Turkish National Freedom Movement (TNFM), with its party leader Ahmed Dogan
having been jailed for participating in the TNFM (Capital 1997). Unlike most countries, the
Bulgarian authorities did not force its Muslim SM into the informal sector by preventing it
from participating in the mainstream political process, something which often boosts
cognitive and behavioural radicalization (Meijer 2005). On the contrary, by presenting a
suitable political opportunity they made it easier for the Turkish and Muslims to adapt
accordingly: to play by the rules of democracy (Meyer 2004). The unhampered participation
of the MRF in politics during the last more than 20 years allowed it to participate in every
parliament, even becoming part of the ruling coalition 4 times, to win the local elections in
30 out of the 270 municipalities (Arndt 2013) and to seize the mayor’s office in over 500
towns, villages and cities (Liakova 2012). Granted that the MRF candidates almost never win
elections in areas where Muslims are a minority, nevertheless, they give people in
Muslim/Turkish majority areas a feeling of political representation.
Another major factor in the lack of Islamist radicalization is that the Bulgarian Muslims
communities and the MRF cadres were and continue to be highly secular (Baeva 2018). Even
the TNFM was created as a response to the harsh communist measures for eradicating Islam
and the Turkish identity, it never held fundamentalist religious views. In that sense, even if
we accept that a radicalization of the Turkish community in Bulgaria is possible, it will be on
an ethnoreligious basis and not on an Islamist one. Still, experts all agree that the MRF will
never spark ethnic conflict intentionally (E. Ivanova 2018). Most of the cases when it plays
the so-called “ethnic card” is when it tries to mobilize political support from its electorate:
commemorating the Revival Process (Baeva 2018), reacting to the renaming of over 800
toponyms in Stara Zagora (E. Ivanova 2018) and responding to provocation from the
Bulgarian nationalist parties (Zhechkova 2018).
33
The party and its former leader Ahmed Dogan (only on paper, in practice he continues to
pull the strings from his Saray) are stated to be the main power guarding Muslims from the
encroachment of foreign radical Islam (Zhechkova 2018). The way this used to happen, with
some changes nowadays, could be illustrated by one example:
“During the 1990s Bulgaria was an “open yard”, everybody could come and do whatever
they want. One day some fellows with beards and dressed in bed sheets came to the village
of Breznitsa and funded the repairs of the mosque, paid for several Bayrams and everybody
liked them. Until they started showing their true identity: they became arrogant, started
criticizing the people, covered their hands with their clothes before shaking women’s hands
because it is haram to touch a woman. Everything ended with a quick intervention by the
MRF which invited the Turkish consul to the village. He came, sat down in the local pub, they
tried to talk to him but he did not even look at them. The next day nobody in the village was
talking to them.” (Alexandrov 2018)
The examples like that one are many with either the local elites of the MRF representatives
acting to expel the foreign preachers of Salafi Islam. Perhaps partly due to such unsuccessful
endeavours, the money flow from places like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in
recent years significantly dried out (Zhechkova 2018). Turkey kept its strong influence over
Bulgarian Muslims, it even sponsors with several million BGN a year the three secondary
Islamic schools in the country (Baeva 2018) located in Shumen, Momchilgrad and Rousse
(CSD 2015). However, fears that Ankara may use the Bulgarian Turks and the MRF are
groundless, for now (Arndt 2013). First, for years the Kemalist policy of Turkey kept Bulgaria
safe from any attempts of provoking religious or ethnoreligious radicalization. Now, when
that era is gone and Erdogan’s Islamist and neo-Ottoman approach is gaining speed, the
Balkan state is lucky to have good political and economic relations with its southern
neighbour (Alexandrov 2018). Despite recent speeches by Erdogan claiming that Kardzhali is
“part of our spiritual boundaries” (Gotev 2018) that caused a political scandal, there is
nothing to be scared of: “If Turkey was really aggressive and unfriendly towards Bulgaria, it
would be impossible for the country to withstand. We must go to sleep and wake up with
words of gratitude towards Turkey because it does not have such intentions.” (Ahmed 2018)
The MRF also did not respond well to the Turkish president’s words and its current leader
34
Mustafa Karadayi “never misses the chance to emphasize “my homeland Bulgaria”, “our
borders” (Kalinova 2018) as to calm people down. Furthermore, most of the Bulgarian Turks
do not support Erdogan and his Islamist agenda, something which is visible from the polling
results after the recent presidential elections and the 2017 referendum. Only 25% of them
voted for Erdogan while 58% voted for his opponent Muharrem Ince (OFFNews 2018), and
71% voted against the constitutional changes (Kanal 3 2017) that made Turkey a presidential
republic.
The dangers of radicalization may come if one day Ankara decides to change its stance
towards Bulgaria but also if a dramatic change of leadership occurs in the MRF. “For now it is
impossible a spiritual or a political leader to appear that could topple Dogan” (Zhechkova
2018). But the danger is always there because in their bid to attract followers and distinguish
themselves from the status quo the younger political contenders always radicalize the
discourse (Alexandrov 2018). But experts claim (Hinkova 2018) that the new generation of
party cadres had already been raised and indoctrinated by Dogan and will follow his
philosophy even after he is gone.
The experience of the MRF proves the theory that successful SM/parties could encourage
but more importantly obstruct the emergence of new ones, possibly radical, by
“undermining opportunities for the late comers” (Bayat 2005) or actively seeking to stop
them. This is in a direct correspondence with Asef Bayat’s idea that allowing the existence
and political participation of a moderate Muslim SM/party is better than banning it because
this may lead to the emergence later on of a much more radical SM or consequences (Bayat
1998).
10.1. The long hand of the Chief Muftiate.
In recent years of special concern to society and the authorities are the students and Imams
that graduated abroad, mostly in Saudi Arabia and Jordan (E. Ivanova 2018). Predominantly
Pomak, because of their identity crisis – Bulgarians look at them as Muslims and Turks
consider them Bulgarian – they feel rejected by most parts of society and find a welcoming
environment abroad where the only thing that matters is their faith. Some of them decide to
pursue further Islamic education in the most prestigious universities in the Arab world
(Hinkova 2018). Their number between 1990 and 2018 is around 100 people (Ahmed 2018):
35
30 graduates from Saudi Arabia, 30 from Jordan, 30 from Egypt and the rest from other Arab
states (CSD 2015). Vedat Ahmed admits that most of those men came back with a solid
Salafi education and a desire to preach but were faced with two obstacles – the Muslim
community itself with its traditions and view of religion resisted this foreign and dogmatic
Islam; and the structure of the Chief Muftiate (Ahmed 2018):
“We did not reject those people but tried to integrate them in the system. This was a two-
way process: on the one hand, the institution demonstrated flexibility, on the other hand,
those people left behind some of their views. And if they do not want to do that, we won’t
let them preach. So even if they are radicalized, they are not given the chance to influence
other people.” (Ahmed 2018)
What the chairman of the HMC refers to is the hierarchy of the Chief Muftiate and the
structures of the Muslim denomination in the country. The Grand Mufti is the head of the
Muslim denomination in Bulgaria, he is elected once every 5 years by a National Muslim
Conference which also elects the members of the HMC. He then appoints or fires the
Regional Mufties and the principals of the secondary Islamic schools and the semi-higher
Higher Islamic Institute. Next, the Regional Mufties themselves have the power to hire or fire
people on a number of positions among which the Imams. Members of these and several
other religious organs need to fulfil certain requirements like having an Islamic education, a
good social standing, to have never been convicted, etc. (National Muslim Conference 2016).
Therefore it is very hard for radical Imams to become part of the system and preach.
The Chief Muftiate also points to the beneficial role of its three secondary Islamic schools
and the HII which are accredited by the Ministry of Education and Science and teach Islam,
Arabic and Turkish (CSD 2015) in addition to the approved by the state national curriculum
which accounts for around 2/3 of the subjects taught (E. Ivanova 2017). For the last 30 years,
approximately 2000 boys and girls graduated from the Islamic schools, as well as 300 from
the HII and another 200 have completed short courses for Imams (Ahmed 2018). The
language used in all of the Islamic educational institutions is mostly Turkish which adds
another explanation as to why most Bulgarian graduates in the Arab world are from the
Pomak community which does not speak Turkish (CSD 2015).
According to Vedat Ahmed (2018), the lack of a centralised institution like the Chief Muftiate
36
in West European countries which is tasked with the education, adaptation and control of
the Imams and other homegrown or foreign officials is one of the main reasons for the
relatively high levels of cognitive and behavioural radicalization among Muslims there.
Indeed, all of the experts that I spoke to agree that the Bulgarian Muslims – Gypsies and
Pomaks mainly - are under a threat of radicalization not from the Arab World or Turkey but
from Western Europe where a failed multiculturalism turned into a breeding ground for
radicalization (E. Ivanova 2018):
“Our migrants in Western Europe integrate through working in the local Muslim
communities. Whole Pomak or Roma families go and stay there for years living in the Muslim
ghettos, no one knows what they or especially their kids might adopt. Among the Gypsies, it
is common to convert to a specific kind of Islam and come back here to preach... The
communities in Germany, Great Britain or France are much more radical than ours because
they are not integrated. Our Muslims are a native population, they do not live in highly
segregated areas like in the West. But currently a global umma based in Europe is in the
making and with the increasing economic migration - in 2016 10% of the Muslims in Bulgaria
said that they receive money from abroad (Evgenia Ivanova 2017) - some of our Muslims
might become part of it and I am not ready to predict what will happen in 20 years time
either there or here (Hinkova 2018).”
Ahmed Musa, the only Bulgarian sentenced to prison for preaching some form of radical
Islam and prosecuted in 2004, 2012 and 2015 for propagating anti-democratic ideas,
religious hatred and incitement of war (CSD 2015) is a Roma who converted to Islam in the
1990s while working at a construction site in Austria (E. Ivanova 2018). Between 2012 and
2015 there was a spectacular lawsuit against him and 12 other Imams from Pazardzhik for
preaching radical Islam and having ISIS affiliations. As a result, Musa received 1 year in prison
which he did not serve and the rest were fined between 1500 and 2000 BGN, around 750
and 1000 euros (News 2018). “A sentence which only proves how insubstantial the
indictment was, by law they should have been sentenced from 5 to 12 years if they were
really guilty but they were preaching Salafi Islam not radical one” (E. Ivanova 2018).
11. Internal conflicts.
37
Pomaks especially are considered a group under risk of adopting Salafi Islam and
subsequently radical views abroad because of their double marginalization: Bulgarians look
down on them because they are Muslim and the Turks take care only for their own political
interests and language preferences (Ghodsee 2010), something which was already
demonstrated with the Islamic schools and the HII. From there in recent years the idea of a
distinct Pomak ethnicity evolved: Bulgarians claim that they are something of a second-hand
Bulgarians, Ankara considers them Turkish and Greece (which also hosts a Pomak
community) tries to promote the idea of their own ethnicity (Kalinova 2018). Therefore,
their only stable pillar of identity is Islam (E. Ivanova 2018).
The case of the Gypsies is very different. Their main reasons for adopting Islam are finances
(Zhechkova 2018) and social status (Rositsa Gradeva 2001). It is well documented how
throughout the 1990s tens of thousands of Gypsies converted to Christianity under the
influence and financial/material stimulation of the Evangelical churches with many of them
later on converting to Islam for the same reasons (Broun 2007). Right now the most pious of
the Muslim communities in Bulgaria are the Roma, especially in Pazardzhik. “Religion gives
them a prestigious identity which negates to a certain degree the social stigma of being a
Gypsy. It is not impossible that this devotion is only declared by them, it is also possible that
they are being paid in some way to demonstrate it” (E. Ivanova 2018). According to Vedat
Ahmed (2018), the process of Gypsy Islamization will most probably cease in several years
because they will find out that no matter how pious they become the majority of Turks will
never accept them as one of their own. “Just like they understood that the Bulgarians won’t
embrace them only because they converted to Christianity” (Ahmed 2018). In that sense, it
is very hard for the Roma to advance to a stage of Islamic radicalism because most of them
do not truly believe in any religion, rather they demonstrate an absence of religious culture
and a preference to superstitions (Zhelyazkova 2001). The greater risk of ghettoisation and
radicalization of the Roma mahallas stems from social and economic marginalization and
increased criminality, and it has nothing to do with religion (Alexandrov 2018).
Another obstacle in the possible way to politicization, one of the necessary prerequisites for
community radicalization (Klandermans 2010), is the lack of shared grievances not only
between the three big Muslim communities – Turks, Pomaks and Gypsies – but inside them
as well. Apart from the process of politicization that the Turks experienced in the 1980s and
38
1990s, it would be very hard for the Pomaks and Roma to unite against a common political
or social foe/cause. First of all, nobody knows the exact number of either Turks or Pomaks,
or Roma. The last census in 2011 shows that 588 000 people consider themselves Turkish,
while around 250 000 say they are Pomaks, and around 325 000 identify as Roma (NSI 2011).
Other surveys claim that the real number of the Gypsies is over 800 000 (Kyuchukov 2006)
which seems much more accurate to the experts, as many Roma said during the census that
they are either Bulgarian or Turkish. Yet, even if we accept that Gypsies are 800 000 there is
no way of telling, given their frequent swap of faiths, how many are Muslim. It is agreed that
they are between 350 000 and 400 000 (Kyuchukov 2006). Most of those Muslim Roma
speak Turkish and even ethnically identify as such but the real Turks do not agree with that
and discriminate against them. Gypsies, on their part, act arrogantly towards the Pomaks
because the former ones consider the latter as bad Muslims because they eat pork, drink
and so on (Hinkova 2018). Bulgarians look down on everybody else but most of all the
Gypsies. But not as much as the Protestant Gypsies who “hate mindlessly” (E. Ivanova 2018)
the Muslim Gypsies. The situation with the Pomaks is similar, most identify as Bulgarian, but
some say that they are Turkish, others hold onto the idea of the Pomak ethnicity: “Two
neighbouring villages are not the same with each other. In the Rhodope every kilometre the
social landscape changes. And don’t even get me started on the internal layering of those
villages” (Hinkova 2018).
The geographic distribution also plays a part in the obstruction of the formation of strong
social movements and initiatives by separating the Muslim communities (Hinkova 2018). If
we take a look at Figure 1, we could see the lower left green areas (Western Rhodope) which
are populated primarily with Pomaks.
39
Figure 1. The territorial religious distribution in Bulgaria. Elaboration of data from the 2011
census (NSI 2011).
On the right are the Turkish East Rhodope Mountains, the Gypsy mahallas are spread all over
the country, including the Christian-dominated municipalities, the rest of the green areas are
also inhabited by Turks. The economic development of the Muslim majority regions also
varies, Figure 2 gives us a glimpse of the living standard in 28 Bulgarian cities. Sofia, the
capital, is the most advanced one with development level comparable to the one of an
average EU city. Kardzhali, in the East Rhodope, is at the bottom of the chart but it is
accompanied there by Silistra, Vidin, Sliven and Pernik which are not Muslim majority areas,
and Pernik is even 35 km away from Sofia. Other cities with a strong Muslim presence like
Shumen, Razgrad, Turgovishte and Smolyan (in the Pomak East Rhodope) score an average
result for the standards of the country, although objectively being very poor (Institute for
Market Economy 2016). In short, we could say that despite the poor living conditions
Muslims do not develop a feeling of relative deprivation because their bad economic
situation is not exclusive to them and is a result of a mix of geographic, economic and
40
demographic variables, not religious or ethnic.
Figure 2. GDP per capita (EU=100, PPP) in the biggest Bulgarian cities for 2016. Elaboration
of data from the Institute for Market Economy (2016).
Furthermore, in the municipalities where Islam is the predominant faith, there still are large
Bulgarian Christian minorities and their life is no better than that of the Muslims. Experts
note (E. Ivanova 2018) that despite the high level of anti-Turkish and anti-Muslim rhetoric,
Bulgarians, especially the ones living in mixed communities, do not treat the Muslims as
second-hand citizens unlike Western Europe where behind the facade of political
correctness lies true discrimination:
“In the last 10-15 years, Bulgarians began to realize that we are deeply and fundamentally
one and the same culture with the European parts of Turkey. The Turkish Slavery is the
border which still stops many from admitting it. The Bulgarian culture is much more direct
and cynical, the political correctness is non-existent here, it is perfectly natural to joke in the
41
most gruesome way or to say mean things about your neighbour but at the same time to live
peacefully together. In that sense, the political correctness might be viewed as a shield
against the deep unrest and hostility that slumbers in the West, and which could pose a
much bigger threat if removed suddenly.” (Alexandrov 2018)
11.1. Internal peace.
An unexpected contribution to the realization that Bulgarians and the Turks/Pomak/Roma

share many common traits was the migration wave. This is especially true in the mixed
border areas where the Muslim refugee/immigrants entered and were not well accepted by
the Bulgarian population which suddenly appreciated “our Muslims” (Zhechkova 2018): “The
first wave, as they call it, consisted of Syrian families and the locals keep warm memories of
them. But then, I cannot pinpoint the exact moment, came many more, over 80% men
between the age of 20-40, who did not even had the anthropological resemblance of Syrians
and acted much more unpleasant towards locals, especially women” (Zhechkova 2018). This
led to the sudden appreciation of the peaceful Bulgarian Muslims with “the old hocas and
pagan rituals” (E. Ivanova 2018). Interestingly, Bulgarian Turks/Pomaks/Gypsies share the
same opinion (Zhechkova 2018). A 2016 survey showed that 38,5% of Muslims in Bulgaria
are against letting in even a single refugee. Another 22,6% would agree for the country to
take care of a limited amount of refugees, 16,7% say that the government should comply
with the EU refugee quotas. Only 4,7% are in favour of accepting all the refugees that come
to our borders and the rest 17,5% cannot decide (Evgenia Ivanova 2017). One of the reasons
for this is that Muslims are very careful not to disturb the ethnoreligious balance established
throughout the centuries both between communities and inside them (Alexandrov 2018).
Their inherently peaceful and syncretic “frontier Islam” (Ghodsee 2010) contributed to the
astonishingly patient and non-aggressive culture and mindset that they possess, to their
unique philosophy of “outsuffering” („претърпяване“): pain and unfortunate are brought to
them by Allah and they need to endure it, to outsuffer it (E. Ivanova 2018). The starkest
example was the Revival Process which they desperately tried not to escalate and radicalize
(Ahmed 2018):
42
“In Dobromirtsi, a village near Kardzhali, there is an institution called Kaba Sakal or the Fluffy
Beards which consists of the village elders who gather to discuss everything important in the
community. There used to be a person, Yakub Efendi, who was extremely wise, I suspect he
was a Dervish. During the RP things went out of hand there: the authorities abused the
people, shot at them, even dug out the graves. Naturally, the younger Turks took up arms
but Yakub Efendi summoned them and said: “Look, what is happening now is clearly Satan’s
doing and no evil comes outside of Allah’s jurisdiction. If it comes from the state, it comes
from God. If He is sending us such trial, let us behave like proper Muslims and Allah will
make them see reason. And indeed, the Bulgarian authorities changed their minds for
political reasons but the Muslims saw the hand of Allah in that. You see how they managed
internally – using traditional and premodern mechanism - to deal with a critical situation
that gave them every right to radicalize. I am sure that this is still happening one way or
another.” (Alexandrov 2018)
This ability of the Muslim community to absorb crises and deal with internal conflicts
together with the vigilant control of the MRF and the Chief Muftiate keep to a minimum the
possibility of radicalization of the anyway peaceful and syncretic Bulgarian Islam. The
uninterested but tolerant attitude of the state also allows the Muslims communities to
exercise a healthy degree of religious self-regulation and freedom which does not hurt, on
the contrary. Albeit pretty vocal about their dislike of Islam, most Bulgarians do not act on it
and when confronted with Muslims in person usually get along just fine (Evgenia Ivanova
2017). Something of which Muslims are well aware of and most of the time do not take
personally or seriously the blabbering on the media and from the parliamentary tribune
(Alexandrov 2018).
12. Conclusion.
This dissertation examined why are Bulgarian Muslims not radicalizing in the context of
increasing cognitive and behavioural radicalization among Muslims in Europe. The literature
review of different radicalization theories, SMT and RDT established the broad theoretical
framework for the research which was narrowed down to explaining the radicalization
43
process of Muslims in Europe. Each individual might reach a radical state of mind and adopt
radical ideas by an almost incalculable combination of 71 psychological, material, personal
and community conceptual constructs. The literature, however, suggests that for European
Muslims most often the pathway leading to those conceptual constructs is the experience of
various forms of discrimination. Young men, especially second and third generation
immigrants, are particularly sensitive to discrimination and are likely to develop a feeling of
relative deprivation and disenchantment from the general society and host country often
resulting in an identity crisis. Radical Islamists leaders take advantage of this process and
through frame-alignment techniques and resource mobilization strategies intensify the
grievances and gather support. After a substantial amount of people is politicized usually a
polarization occurs and a behavioural radical groups branch out of the main cognitive radical
body of the SM/group.
One of the main differences between Bulgarian and West European Muslims is that the
Bulgarian Muslim communities are autochthonous, not migrant. This changes the nature of
coexistence between the various major ethnoreligious groups in the Balkan state – Christian
Bulgarians, Muslim Bulgarians, Turkish, Christian Roma and Muslim Roma. Centuries of
violent history has left its mark on the inhabitants of both religious denominations, with
Christian Bulgarians insistently keeping the memory of 5 centuries Ottoman rule over them
alive in the culture, education, politics and media – thus reinforcing the foundations of their
national self-identification. On their part, Muslims and the Turks in particular still remember
the very recent traumatic events of the Revival Process that led to the permanent exodus of
about 220,000 of their kin to Turkey and years of humiliation and government repressions.
However, communities and their elites on both sides have reached an unofficial - and quite
possibly subconscious to a certain degree - consensus and made some compromises. The
Muslims adopted a very peaceful, patient and Christian-like kind of Islam and together with
the Christian part of the population carry their faith more as an identifying cultural symbol
rather than a dividing and dogmatic creed. The Bulgarians kept their painful historic memory
on a high pedestal but dropped the vindictive policies and allowed the Muslims an
ethnoreligious political representation in contradiction to the law, and a fairly independent
religious autonomy and power. In return, the structures of the MRF and the Chief Muftiate
have taken care of controlling and eliminating foreign religious and political influences that
pose a threat of radicalizing the Bulgarian Muslim communities.
44
These processes have taken hundreds of years to develop and the last ethnoreligious clash
was only about 30 years ago but still Bulgaria managed to avoid the nightmarish Yugoslavian
wars and the increasing radicalization of Muslim youth in Europe, for now. That is why I
suggest that European states could inform their policies on Islam and Muslim minorities
from their Balkan neighbour. First, they might do well to try and establish similar to the Chief
Muftiate institutions that would put under a strict control all mosques and educate its own
Muslim clergy rather than import it. A breaking down of the Muslim ghettoisation and
opening up of the general society to the Muslims is paramount but it needs to be a joint
effort. Muslims, on their part, need to adopt more of the local customs and make their
religious preferences less salient as is the cultural norm for secular societies across Europe. A
strategy of partial religio-cultural assimilation of the Muslims and increase of tolerance
towards Islam may very well be the political alternative of the failed multiculturalism.
This does not mean that Bulgaria has nothing to learn from its own past, on the contrary.
While the country should certainly not forget its history it could adopt a more flexible
approach to it. Dropping down of the dogmatic historio-cultural tradition might finally
unlock the cultural, social and political potential of the whole society – Muslim and Christian
– and ease tensions up. Both nationalist and MRF politicians utilize divisive rhetorics to
mobilize their contingents and draw attention away from the widespread government
inefficiency and corruption which are devastating the country.
Moreover, keeping ethnoreligious tensions artificially alive poses a threat of things quickly
getting out of hand in case of foreign interference or other force majeure circumstances. In
that sense, the government needs to start paying more attention to the needs of the Chief
Muftiate and the Islamic education in the country by providing the money to fund the
Islamic schools - not leave that to Turkey - and promote the HII into a higher education
institution attractive to both Turkish and Bulgarian-speaking Muslims, why not even to
foreigners. Last but not least, if the strong anti-Turkish and anti-Muslim political, media and
social rhetoric continues to grow it might lead to a further capsulation of Muslim
communities and radicalization of the Bulgarian which could spell trouble in the future. A
deliberate and conscious efforts by the authorities are needed to breach the gaps in public
knowledge of the different ethno-religious communities and to diminish negative and
harmful stereotypes.
45
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Why Are Bulgarian Muslims Not Radicalizing?

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Dissertation Cover Sheet and Student Declaration

Student`s name: Kaloyan Konstantinov

7AAJM004 Dissertation: MA Middle Eastern Studies

7AAJCR01 Dissertation: MA Conflict Resolution in

7AAJPE01 Dissertation: MA Political Economy of the

Dissertation title: Why are Bulgarian Muslims not radicalizing?

First marker’s comments:

Second marker’s comments:

Table 1. A media monitoring of Islam and Christianity news representation.

Figure 1. The territorial religious distribution in Bulgaria, 2011.

Figure 2. GDP per capita in the biggest Bulgarian cities, 2016.

BNR Bulgarian National Radio

2. Research design and Methodology.

- Psychological Rewards: Significance restoration/Individual significance gain/Social

3.1. Muslim radicalization in Europe.

Individuals that radicalize experience a variety of these 71 conceptual constructs at once or

4. Perception of relative deprivation.

5. Social movement theory.

6. History of Islam in Bulgaria.

6.1. Muslims in Bulgaria between 1878 and 1946.

6.2. The Big Excursion.

7. Folklore and education.

The onslaught's ferocious! Again the dense hordes

8. Fear and loathing in the media.

News about 5 negative 10 negative 5 negative 1 negative 4 negative 6 negative 0 negative 26

News about 1 negative 2 negative 2 negative 2 negative 6 negative 8 negative 0 negative 16

News about 0 negative 1 negative 2 negative 2 negative 5 negative 5 negative 3 negative 18

9. The far-right ingredient.

10. A social movement by the book.

10.1. The long hand of the Chief Muftiate.

11. Internal conflicts.

11.1. Internal peace.

An unexpected contribution to the realization that Bulgarians and the Turks/Pomak/Roma

Arndt, Marco. 2013. "Muslims in Bulgaria." Kas International Reports 7: 6-20.

Kircaali Haber. 2018. Declaration of the Muslim Denomination Office [Декларация на

Kurzman, Charles. 1996. "Structural Opportunity and Perceived Opportunity in Social-Movement

Liakova, Marina. 2012. "The Turkish minority in Bulgaria." Euxeinos 8: 12-18.

NSI. 2011. Census. Census Report, Sofia: National Statistical Institute.

Ragaru, Nadege. 2001. "Islam in post-communist Bulgaria: An aborted "clash of civilizations"?"

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