BULGARİSTAN TÜRKLERİNİN TÜRKİYE’YE GÖÇ HAREKETİ (1950-1951)

In the last century, the Turkish Republic was one of the countries, where migration movements occur to a large degree. Migration wave began in the 19th century after the Crimean War. The Rumelian Turks, who suffered by the ethnic cleansing campaign of Bulgarian guerillas after the Ottoman-Russian War in the years 1877?1878, had to abandon their homes. Migrations from Rumelia started again after the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913. These migration movements continued on and off during the First World War and early years of the Turkish Republic and occasionally caused difficult political, social and economic troubles to solve for the young Republic. The experiences of the Bulgarian Turks were a long migration history. Forcing these Turkish people, who once had migrated from Anatolia to Rumelian soil and had lived there for many years, to migrate back to their mother soil due to changed conditions, has continued to be a bleeding wound from 19th century to our present time. These migration activities of the Bulgarian Turks were sometimes increased and sometimes decreased, but never ceased to exist. The second biggest mass migration movement of the Bulgarian Turks during the 20th century occurred in the years of 1950?1951. The Turks were the largest minority group in Bulgaria and the Bulgarian government saw them as an obstacle to their “creation of one nation” policy and forced approximately 200.000 Turkish citizens to migrate. In this study, factors which caused the 1950?1951 migration, policy of the Turkish Republic during this migration and problems emerged, problems of immigrant citizens will be discussed.