Assimilation policy toward Bulgarian Turks after 1945

The main aim for which this thesis has been written is to evaluate assimilation policy implemented during the communist era in Bulgaria. Difficulties faced by the Bulgarian Turks have been linked with the sistematic and intense assimilation policies of the Bulgarian government. While evaluating post 1945 years, treaties signed during the Ottoman era and in the early years following the creation of the Republic of Turkey were also used.In order to support arguments of this thesis wide range of documents have been analysed among which are written reports of the Bulgarian Communist Party meetings and Politburo summits. In light of these documents it has been defended that the infrastructure of the ?Awakening Process? which took place in 1984 begun to be created after 1945. Bulgarian, Turkish and English sources of information have been used in order to support these ideas.Bulgarian incosistent minority policy and Turkish reactions were evaluated in this work. Immigration waves in 1951, 1968 and 1989 were linked with the assimilationist policies of the Communist Party.Another issue which has been analysed as part of this work is the progress of the Bulgarian nationalism and its effect on the assimilation efforts. As a result of the comprehensive research it has been noted that the Communist Party tried to strengthen Bulgarian nationalism in order to enhance its legitimacy level. To create pure Bulgarian Communist Nation based on unique-Bulgarian ethnicity, an important name changing campaign has been launched on ethnic minorities and mainly Turks which aim was Bulgarization of all minority groups in Bulgaria.After the successful results of the assimilation campaigns towards Pomaks, Tatars and Gipsies the next step was Turkish minority. But the Turks could not accept the given Bulgarian names and mass protests took place against the name changing campaign of the Bulgarian Communist Party. These protests put the government in a trouble which after Turks were given the right first to travel-immmigrate to Turkey and second their Turkish names were turned immediately after the end of Jivkov era.Following the migration of Turks, Bulgaria entered into an economic crisis which marked the end of the communist rule and the creation of the democratic regime. Responsibles of the awakening process could not be find beacause the lack of proofs. There was some weak punishments toward perpetrators of the process like Todor Jivkov and his key staff.