by Krzysztof Popek, Ph.D
The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 is traditionally called the “Liberation War” by Bulgarians. The conflict led to gaining freedom from the “Turkish Yoke” and started creation process of the modern Bulgarian state. This way of presentation of these events can be illustrated by works by such historians as Konstatin Kosev, Stefan Doynov, Tsonko Genov, оr Georgi Georgiev, as well as by Russian authors (for example, Boris Nikolayevich Bilunov). The Turkish perspective (represented by Ömer Turan, Bilâl Şimşir, and Kemal Karpat, but also by the Western authors as Justin McCarthy and William Holt) on these events is significantly different. The War of 1877–1878 is remembered through the lens of the tragic experience of refugees (muhajirs) and the suffering of the Muslim civilians linked to the pogroms, emigration and exile. The difficulty of characterising the War stems from many contradictory relations about these events. It is not only related to the motivations of the Bulgarian and Turkish historians, who want to present their national visions of history, but to the source materials as well. In historiography and the sources, Bulgarians have presented Muslims as oppressors and Christians as victims, and Turks vice versa: Muslims are sufferers and Bulgarians are tormentors.
The conflict of 1877–1878 had a crucial impact on the population composition of the Bulgarian lands. The ethnic and religious map of Bulgaria, based on the balance of Christians and Muslims, was changed to the ratio of 3:1 in favour of the Bulgarians.The exodus of Muslims was the largest in the territories where the warfare was concentrated, e.g. in Western and Central Bulgaria. In the North-Eastern parts, which Russians did not occupy during the War, the largest Islamic community has remained until today. The importance of the war for Bulgarians is obvious in many different aspects. According to the Bulgarian historian Dimit″r Sazdov, the War resulted not only in the creation of the Bulgarian modern state, but was also a “bourgeois-democratic and agrarian revolution” linked to the liquidation of feudalism in that area. The Bulgarian geographer Anastas Ishirkov said that the “Liberation War” had been linked with the end of the Bulgarian attachment to family lands and fathers’ graves – it had started their dynamic migrations on an unprecedented scale.
The events of 1877–1878 were significant not only for the Bulgarian lands, but for the Ottoman Empire as well. It started crucial socio-political changes for the “sick man of Europe.”. Movements of people on an unprecedented scale and the transfer of goods led to the collapse of the traditional Ottoman system of power and social order. In a longer perspective, the circumstances created the basis for the development of new ideas among the society “uprooted” by the mass migrations and the experience of refuge. Pan-Islamism, nationalism, secularism, populism, and socialism contributed to the collapse of the monarchy and the birth of the national Turkish state at the beginning of the 20th century. Of course, before and after 1878, there were a series of crucial events for the Ottoman Muslims, but, due to Kemal Karpat, the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 was an important stage of that process. The percentage of Muslims in the Ottoman Empire increased by 75–80% after the conflict, which was linked to the territorial changes such as the loss of the lands dominated by Christians and Muslims’ migrations. Later, the muhajirs created the foundations of the Turkish society and state.
The paper will focus on the depiction of the fate of civilians during the conflict in contemporary Bulgarian and Turkish historiography, in which the topic is marked not only by the reliability of historical research, but also by the presence of stereotypes (as is the whole history of the 19th-century Christian-Muslim relations in Bulgaria).