Some Observations on the Turkish Language Policy of the Ottoman Empire in Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia after the Berlin Treaty of 1878

The Ottoman-Russian War of 1877-1878 caused great political and social fractures in Eastern Europe and Rumelia, especially on the western borders of the Ottoman Empire. After this war, The Ottoman State lost a great large part of Bulgarian terri-tories after the signing of the treaty of Yeşilköy (3 March 1878) and the Treaty of Berlin (13 July 1878), which was added as an amended version of that treaty mentioned above. In accordance with the provisions of the Berlin Treaty, an autonomous Bulgarian Principality was established in the Bulgarian borders, which was filiated to the Ottoman Empire, a three-part political structure emerged in the region, together with the newly established Eastern Rumelia Province and its administration, and the Macedonia belonging to the Ottoman Empire. However, the problems of the region's geography were not resolved with this treaty, on the contrary, with the increasing influence of the idea of nationalism among different religious and ethnic groupsthat have lived together for centuries under Ottoman rule in the Bulgarian geography, the wick of great social events that will continue for a long time has been ignited. Because there is no exact overlap between the newly formed political borders and the existing socio / cultural borders, the Muslim-Turkish population densely living in the Bulgarian geography faced a number of problems. The Ottoman State forced all political and diplomatic channels to prevent the Muslim-Turkish population living in the Bulgarian region from being minority and assimilation against the rising Bulgarian nationalism. One of the bearing elements of this policy of the Ottoman State is the Turkish language, and the Ottoman State has laid the historical foundations of the Turkish language in the Bulgarian geography with the measures taken to protect the “Lisan-ı Osmani”. In this study, some determinations and evaluations on the Turkish language policy of the Ottoman Empire in the geography of Bulgaria are made based on the archive documents.