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The Turks of Bulgaria: Karpat's Excursion Into Nationalist Propaganda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Ivelin Sardamov
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Extract

In his recently published article, “The Turks of Bulgaria: The Struggle for National-Religious Survival of a Muslim Minority,” Kemal H. Karpat addresses an important and sensitive topic. The manner in which he undertakes to explore it, however, leaves much to be desired.

Type
A Reply
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , December 1996 , pp. 743 - 745
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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References

Notes

1. Nationalities Papers, Vol. 23, No. 4 (1995), pp. 725–749. All citations hereafter given only by page number refer to this article.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. P. 728.Google Scholar

3. P. 736.Google Scholar

4. Karpat initially declares that Western estimates have put the number of ethnic Turks killed at over 1,000, without citing any sources (p. 728). Later, he already speaks of thousands of Turks killed (p. 736). In fact, Western accounts have given rather fluctuating figures for the number of Turks killed or injured, ranging from 40 to 800. See Liliana Brisby, “Administrative Genocide in the Balkans?” The World Today, Vol. 41 (April 1985), pp. 69–70.Google Scholar

5. P. 742.Google Scholar

6. Natsionalen statistiche ski institut, Statistiche ski spravochnik (Sofia: Statistichesko izdatelstvo i pechatnitsa 1994), pp. 44, 51.Google Scholar

7. See Troxel, Luan, “Socialist Persistence in the Bulgarian elections of 1990–1991,” East European Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 4 (1992), pp. 407-30.Google Scholar

8. P. 740.Google Scholar

9. P. 725.Google Scholar

10. P. 727.Google Scholar

11. P. 725.Google Scholar

12. P. 734.Google Scholar

13. P. 728.Google Scholar

14. P. 730. Curiously, Karpat once tried to refute the notion of ethnic Turkish domination within the Ottoman empire before the second half of the nineteenth century. See Karpat, An Inquiry into the Social Foundations of Nationalism in the Ottoman State: from social estates to classes, from millets to Nations, research Monograph No. 39 (Princeton: Center of International Studies, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Studies, Princeton University, 1973). Karpat now emphasizes, speaking of the 1870s and 1880s, the Turkish character of the Ottoman empire in order to lay bare the presumed rogue character of the Bulgarian state established on part of its territory. He limits himself to claiming that Turkish rule was non-oppressive (p. 234) and that the Bulgarians never resisted it (p. 235). For a different view of the period of Turkish rule in Bulgaria, recommended by Karpat himself “despite its pro-Bulgarian bias” (p. 746, note 2), see Konstantin Jirecek, Geschichte der Bulgaren (Prague, 1876).Google Scholar

15. P. 736.Google Scholar

16. P. 729. See note 14 above.Google Scholar

17. P. 728.Google Scholar