Are the current relations with ethnic Bulgarians tense? Is the past still alive?
Any prognosis? The Turkish community make up approximately eight to ten percent of the population and as such remains the biggest minority group. It makes important efforts towards gradual integration in Bulgarian society by focusing on surmounting the negative consequences of the “revival process” on the legislative, economic, political and psychological levels. The Bulgarian parliament has voted through a series of laws for the restoration of Turk-Arab names through an easy administrative procedure. In 1998, at the MRF’s insistence, parliament approved the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. Despite the MRF becoming the third national political entity, with an outstanding organizational presence, the nationalist prejudices of the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) and the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) prevented the establishment of a real partnership with the party of the ethnic Turks. So, the post-Communist bipolar system based on confrontation marginaliz
