The Perception of Muslims in Bulgaria and Greece: Between the 'Self' and the 'Other'

Abstract

This paper investigates the shifts in the perception of ethnic identity of Muslims in Bulgaria and Greece, focusing on ethnic Turks and Bulgarian Muslims (Pomaks) in Bulgaria, and considering the Greek case mainly for the sake of comparison. The emphasis is put on ofe cial dee nitions of the ethnic and national afe liation of Muslim populations in Bulgaria and Greece and their ‘academic’ substantiation. Related to this, the paper also considers the political consequences—as well as causes—of the various ways of perceiving Muslims in these two countries after their ‘liberation’ from Ottoman domination. Perceptions of Muslims were shifting with changes in internal policies as well as foreign relations. In terms of the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’, Muslim populations were placed on various points of this scale at different moments of time. Pomaks and Turks were, at a specie c moment, declared the ‘Self’, after having served as the ‘Other’, against whom consolidation of the nation had been aiming. These questions are related to the problem of ethnic and national identity. The policies of both the Bulgarian and the Greek nation-states intended to ascribe a e xed ethnic identity to the whole population aiming at making the administrative border coincide with the ethnic frontier. 2 The question was whether the boundaries of the constitutive ethnic group were drawn in a way that would allow the inclusion of Muslims in the nation, or instead would facilitate their exclusion. It was the task of intellectuals, especially of historians, ethnographers and human anthropologists, to create the ‘cultural stuff’ 3 within these boundaries in order to substantiate national identity. Politicians in their turn had to implement those concepts into actual policies.