Witness History: Witness Archive 2017 - Bulgaria's "Revival Process"

In the 1980s, Bulgaria's communist regime launched a brutal policy of forced assimilation against the country's ethnic Turkish minority. People's names were forcibly changed to sound more Slavic, the Turkish language was banned, cultural and religious practices outlawed. In 1989, Bulgaria's government issued passports to Bulgarian Turks, and hundreds of thousands fled the country to neighbouring Turkey.
We hear the account of one family caught up in the policy the Bulgarian government called "The Revival Process".
Photo: Bulgarian Turks joining a mass exodus to Turkey in 1989 (BBC)

Published on Monday, 24th April 2017.

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