Citizenship Formation in Bulgaria: Protected Minority or National Citizens?

Abstract

The paper analyzes citizenship formation in Bulgaria between the two world wars. The article approaches this process by studying the tension between national minority and citizenship rights in regard to Bulgaria's Muslim minority. In the interwar period this tension was framed by the emergent regime of minority protection following the Paris Peace Conference (1919) and the crisis of liberal democratic provisions for individual citizenship rights. I illustrate this tension by studying the conflict between Kemalists and Old Turks over leadership of the Muslim minority in Bulgaria. The conflict exposes how discourses of protection enabled a mode of national minority governance, which defined Muslims' rights in terms of reified religion and culture. This kind of definition, I argue, fostered the disempowerment of Muslims in the national public. On the other hand, the discontent with liberal democracy in interwar Bulgaria discloses the apprehension of citizenship among state authorities, Old Turks, and Kemalists as a practice of mediation; that is, acquiring the authority to mediate a particular conception of collectivity, which would be sustained by formal exercise of civil and political rights.