Bulgarians in Turkey
Ethnic group in Turkey / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Bulgarians in Turkey?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
Bulgarians in Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye'deki Bulgarlar, Bulgarian: Българи в Турция) form a minority of Turkey. They are Bulgarian expatriates in Turkey or Turkish citizens was born there of full or partially Bulgarian descent. People of Bulgarian ancestry include a large number from the Pomak and a very small number of Orthodox of ethnic Bulgarian origin. Bulgarian Christians are officially recognized as a minority by the Turkey-Bulgaria Friendship Treaty [tr] of 18 October 1925.[1][2][3][4]
Prior to the ethnic cleansing of Thracian Bulgarians in 1913, the Christian Bulgarians had been more than the Pomaks,[5][6] afterwards Pomak refugees arrived from Greece and Bulgaria. Pomaks are also Muslim and speak a Bulgarian dialect.[7][8][9][10][11] According to Ethnologue at present 300,000 Pomaks in European Turkey speak Bulgarian as their mother tongue.[12] It is very hard to estimate the number of Pomaks along with the Turkified Pomaks who live in Turkey, as they have blended into the Turkish society and have been often linguistically and culturally dissimilated.[13] According to Milliyet and Turkish Daily News reports, the number of the Pomaks is 600,000.[13][14] The origin of the Pomaks has been debated,[15][16] but there is an academic consensus that they are descendants of native Bulgarians who converted to Islam during the Ottoman rule of the Balkans;[9][10][11][17][18]
As of 2019, there were only 500 Christian Bulgarians in Turkey.[4]