1989 expulsion of Turks from Bulgaria
| 1989 expulsion of Turks from Bulgaria | |
|---|---|
| Part of the Revival Process | |
| Location | Bulgaria |
| Date | May – August or December 1989 |
| Target | Bulgarian Muslims and Bulgarian Turks |
Attack type | Persecution, Ethnic cleansing, Forced displacement |
| Victims | 310,000 – 400,000 |
| Perpetrators | People's Republic of Bulgaria, Bulgarian Communist Party |
| Motive | Anti-Muslim sentiment, Anti-Turkish sentiment, Anti-Turkism, Bulgarianisation |
The "Big Excursion" (Bulgarian: Голямата екскурзия, romanized: Golyamata Ekskurzia) was the 1989 forced migration (Turkish: 1989 Zorunlu Göç) of Turks and Bulgarian Muslims by the Communist government of the People's Republic of Bulgaria. In total, around 360,000 Turks and Bulgarian Muslims crossed the border into Turkey. In late December 1989, a month after the resignation of General Secretary Todor Zhivkov, the "Big Excursion" came to a genuine end, with the new government promising to restore the rights of Turks and Bulgarian Muslims. By the end of 1990, around 150,000 Turks and Bulgarian Muslimss had returned from abroad.
The "Big Excursion" has been recognized as an ethnic cleansing, including by the democratic government of now-EU-member Bulgaria in 2012. Though the Excursion is not as widely politicized in the West as the Bosnian genocide and expulsion (and subsequent return) of Kosovar Albanians in neighboring Yugoslavia, as of 1989 it was the largest instance of ethnic cleansing in Europe by number of victims since the expulsion of Germans living east of the Oder–Neisse line between 1944 and 1950.