The ‘Bulgarian ethnic model’—reality or ideology?

Abstract

The notion of the ‘Bulgarian ethnic model’ has become part and parcel of the rhetoric of Bulgaria's political elite. While often used to acknowledge the political participation of the Turkish minority, which has played a stabilising role in post-communist Bulgaria, the notion of the ‘Bulgarian ethnic model’ conceals other important aspects of ethnic relations in Bulgaria. The article considers three factors that render the notion of the ‘Bulgarian ethnic model’ problematic: the existence of racism, discrimination and exclusion; the issue of minority rights; and the popularity of nationalist parties.

Notes

¹Krassimir Kunev, Chairperson, Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, interview with the author, Sofia, 5 April 2004.

²Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), 2003 Ordinary Session (Second Part), Report, Fifteenth Sitting, Thursday 3 April 2003 at 3 p.m., 2003 (Strasbourg, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe), available at: http://assembly.coe.int//Main.asp?link=http://assembly.coe.int/Sessions/2003/speeches/simeon.htm, accessed 8 July 2007.

⁴See footnote 3. Zhelyazkova was referring here mainly to everyday interactions in ethnically mixed regions, to people living in the ‘contact zones’.

³A. Zhelyazkova, ‘The Bulgarian Ethnic Model’, East European Constitutional Review, 10, 4, Fall, 2001, available at: http://www.law.nyu.edu/eecr/vol10num4/focus/zhelyazkova.html, accessed 8 July 2007.

⁵MRF, Electoral Programme, October 2001, available at: www.election.bg, accessed 28 October 2003.

⁶‘Ire over Award for Dogan’, Sofia Echo, 2 April 2004.

⁷Sergei Stanishev, ‘Address to the 6th National Conference of the MRF’, 1 April 2006, available at: http://www.bsp.bg/cgi-bin/e-cms/vis/vis.pl?s=001&p=0347&n=000001&g, accessed 4 April 2007.

⁸This was renamed the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in 1995.

⁹Human Rights Project, ‘Bulgaria: A Member of the Parliament Publishes an Inflammatory Article Against the Roma’, Press Release, 22 May 2003, available at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/balkanhr/message/5525, accessed 4 September 2003.

¹⁰‘Bulgarian Romany Leaders Criticize Lack of Acceptance’, RFE/RL Newsline, 7, 13, Part II, 22 January 2003.

¹¹‘Zakon za politicheskite partii’, Durzhaven vestnik, 29, 10 April 1990, Art. 3 (2); ‘Konstitutsiia na Republika Bulgariia, Adopted on 12 July 1991’, Durzhaven vestnik, 56, 13 July 1991.

¹²‘Konstitutsiia na Republika Bulgariia, Adopted on 12 July 1991’, Durzhaven vestnik, 56, 13 July 1991, Art. 11 (4).

¹³‘Konstitutsiia na Republika Bulgariia, Adopted on 12 July 1991’, Durzhaven vestnik, 56, 13 July 1991, Art. 151 (1).