TORMENT OF BULGARIA'S TURKS DESCRIBED

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90B01390R000100080043-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 9, 2010
• Sequence Number: 43
• Publication Date: August 4, 1986
• Content Type: MEMO

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/12/09: CIA-RDP90B01390R000100080043-4
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/12/09: CIA-RDP90B01390R000100080043-4
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/12/09: CIA-RDP90B01390R000100080043-4
HE WASHINGTON POST
U, 2,I1?6 (21.E14
JACK ANDERSON and JOSEPH SPEAR
Torment of Bulgaria's Turks Described
nurses forced people to sign." She quoted the
authorities as telling the victims, "You are Turks no
longer .... You cannot speak Turkish anymore."
Almost breaking down at one point, Gungordu
cried out: "We cannot get letters. We cannot
telephone. Our old people die calling out our names!
They [government officials] even removed
tombstones from the graves to change names."
^ A woman named Urtun recalled her 1983 visit to
her family in Bulgaria. "My 63-year-old father [was]
not served in stores because he does not speak
Bulgarian. People [were] tied with ropes and pulled
by trucks for refusing to change their names.
People [were] being beaten with guns and sticks for
resisting the name-change campaign." She said she
could "stand it only for one week."
^ A man named Bilaloglu, also from a village in
Kurdzhali, said the anti-Turkish campaign began in
"
1984.
There was genocide," he said. "There was
torture." He recounted one chilling incident:
Soldiers and dogs once surrounded my village.
Then the soldiers, in teams of two or three, went to
each house, forcing us to sign a document changing
our names"
Bilaloglu, who later escaped into Greece, said
that every one of the Turks' religious customs
were outlawed and that special signs were posted
at bus stops forbidding the use of the Turkish
language.
Bilaloglu said his children were taken away by
the Bulgarian government. "I have been told they
will be returned in 10 years," he said, "but I do not
know the situation now. I do not know what is
happening."
[documents implementing the name changes]"
Old people were beaten, including an
85-year-old, she testified, and when wounded
ethnic Turks were taken to hospitals, "doctors and
T he barbaric treatment of Bulgaria's large
Turkish minority by the communist
government in Sofia is designed with one goal
in mind: to root out every vestige of Turkish
culture, including language, characteristic names
and the Moslem religion.
A classified State Department cable last month
recounted the emotional testimony of ethnic
Turkish eyewitnesses describing the horrors of life
in Bulgaria to a committee of the Council of Europe
meeting in Istanbul. The cable notes that some of
the witnesses were "at times near hysteria" as they
told of the primitive brutality practiced on their
relatives and friends in the Turkish communities of
Bulgaria.
Our associate Lucette Lagnado has seen the
cable' with the harrowing descriptions by the
witnesses. Here are excerpts:
^ A woman named Gungordu, who was born in
Bulgaria and left in 1978, returned in 1984 to visit
her parents and other relatives. Her stay, in a hotel
tightly controlled by Bulgarian police, was limited
to seven.days. It was more than enough.
Gungordu said her native province of Kurdzhali,
which is 75 percent Turkish, seemed to be in
mourning. "Names had been violently changed," she
said. "They were beating people. They were
wounding people. They. were holding people by the
neck on the ground, forcing them to sign
164_~ 61~-~
3,f 'I;ZI4-
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/12/09: CIA-RDP90BO1390R000100080043-4
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/12/09: CIA-RDP90B01390R000100080043-4
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/12/09: CIA-RDP90B01390R000100080043-4