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History, Historicity, Historiography: Externalizing Alevism from the Bulgarian Turkish Group

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History, Historicity, Historiography: Externalizing Alevism from the Bulgarian Turkish Group chapter 4 History, Historicity, Historiography: Externalizing Alevism from the Bulgarian Turkish Group Alevi Bulgarian Turks’ current invisibilities are closely linked to their historical invisibilities. Historical developments mark the lives of all Bulgarian Turks but have led to different trajectories for Alevis and Sunnis: the Bulgarian Turkish group identity has been identified with Sunni Islam, rendering Alevi Bulgarian Turks structurally invisible. Furthermore, academic literature has contributed to Alevi Bulgarian Turks’ invisibilities.1 Bulgarian and Turkish academic lit- erature often hold conflicting opinions on Bulgarian Turks while they cohere in actively excluding Alevis from the Bulgarian Turkish community. More strikingly, Bulgarian Turks’ themselves reproduced the Alevi Bulgarian Turks’ invisibilities in their written work such as family histories, memoirs and vil- lage histories in different ways. Sunni authors refuse to associate Alevism with Bulgarian Turkish identity, even if they recognize the presence of Alevis in the community. Alevi authors, for their part, do not explicitly mention Alevis and Alevism when they hint at their Alevi identity to insiders, which is consistent with dissimulation practices. History Historical border formation processes between the Bulgarian state and the Ottoman Empire and Turkish Republic led to the transformation of eth- nic Turks into a distinct community in both countries: the Bulgarian Turks. Bulgarian Turks remained a disfavored minority in Bulgaria as remnants from Ottoman rule, and a distant “kin-nation” to Turkey (Poulton 1997). Following 1 Invisibility of Alevi Bulgarian Turks does not simply mean the absence of information about Alevis. Literature from Bulgaria and Turkey has engaged with Alevi Bulgarian Turks in mul- tiple ways and underrepresentation is one of them. As I discuss in the historiography section of the chapter, Alevi Bulgarian Turks are under/mis/represented in various ways, depending on particular national historical contexts in both settings. A common point in all these (mis/ under) representation is the Alevi community’s invisibility within the Bulgarian Turkish community. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi ��.��63/9789004�79�93_��5 70 chapter 4 waves of mass migrations, the Bulgarian Turks were seen as “migrants” and even as “Bulgarians” in Turkey (Parla 2006). Despite these externally-defined homogenizations, Bulgarian Turks are divided into Alevis and Sunnis. This internal differentiation among Bulgarian Turks has been subsumed by larger majority-minority tensions, mainly those between Bulgarians and Turks in Bulgaria and between locals and migrants in Turkey. Alevi Bulgarian Turks thereby become doubly-marginalized and remain so today; they are a disad- vantaged minority within a minority in Bulgaria, and an invisible segment of a migrant community in Turkey. Five periods of major political change in Bulgaria and Turkey have influenced policies and practices regarding Bulgarian Turks. These changes did not influence Bulgarian Turks uniformly. On the contrary they led to differentiated experiences and status of Sunni and Alevi Bulgarian Turks in both countries. Principality in Bulgaria, Monarchy in the Ottoman Empire (1878–1908) In 1878, the Ottoman-Russia War led to the formation of an autonomous Bulgarian Principality and a semi-autonomous Eastern Rumelian State. The political and economic power in these territories shifted suddenly from Muslims to Orthodox Christian Bulgarians. Initial changes were symbolic, such as destruction or transformation of Ottoman administrative buildings and Muslim religious sites, the renaming of streets, villages, and towns, and annulling the legal significance of neighborhoods based on ethno-religious affiliation (Crampton 1997, 45–47). The Principality and the Empire’s “concep- tual and administrative entanglement” persisted due to the presence of a large number of Turks in the territory of the Principality (Neuburger 2004, 35). Turks for their part were still displaying loyalty to the Empire, by identifying them- selves as “Ottoman citizens” in the 1880 census (Crampton 1997; 2005) resist- ing learning Bulgarian, and using the Turkish language in official documents (B. N. Şimşir 1986, 46). Only after 1885, with the unification of the Principality and Eastern Rumelia, were Bulgarian regulations to sever the ties between the Empire and Turks in Bulgaria enforced (Crampton 2005). Bulgarian Turks’ rights were defined within the context of the tensions between the Bulgarian national state and the Ottoman Empire. The minority regime for Turks was dominated by Sunnis, as was the Empire, and led the affiliation of Bulgarian Turkish group identity with Sunni Islam. This led to the structural invisibility and exclusion of Alevi Bulgarian Turks. In the meantime, the successful uprisings in the Balkans led to a shift in Ottoman state policy to Islamism (K. H. Karpat 2002, 140), meaning that Islamic identity was projected as the binding force for Muslims from Ottoman .
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