Brown Bag: Migrations of the Turks from Bulgaria to Turkey: Ethnic and Demographic Engineering of the Nation States

The presentation analyses population politics as integral part of nation building. It attempts to answer how and why Bulgaria and Turkey developed specific population policies in order to homogenize the previously demographically heterogeneous territories along ethnic, religious and cultural lines. By studying the historical dynamics of the migrations of the Turks from Bulgaria to Turkey, the presentation situates population movements and displacements within the larger framework of the two nation states’ policies and practices of ethnic and demographic engineering. The focus is on the construction and negotiation of nationhood in relation to different government strategies towards “desired” and “undesired” nationals. The presentation further traces their transformations into national majority and minority and demonstrates the ways these categories were instrumentalized in different visions of national integrity.