By Krzysztof Popek , Ph.D
The period in Bulgarian history after the Liberation and the creation of the modern state in 1878 was linked to the ideas of Europeanization and de-Ottomanization. The Bulgarians tried to sever the ties with Eastern and Ottoman heritage and to become a part of the Western world. That concept had an important influence on Bulgarian cities: not only on their demographical shape, which was the effect of an emigration of Muslims, but on the architecture as well.
De-Ottomanization was usually interpreted by the Bulgarian elites as an act of retaliation for the Turkish policy towards cities after the conquest in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the Ottoman period, Bulgarians had become second-class citizens, Christian architecture was being eliminated from the public sphere. At that time, the idea of modernization of cities had many followers who assumed that the Ottoman model had become obsolete, unpractical, and just ugly-it was linked to the bygone, hated time of the “Turkish yoke.”
Only a small group of Bulgarian intellectuals protested against the erasure of Muslim architecture in cities and admitted that Ottoman heritage was an integral part of Bulgarian history. It was linked to the opposition to the “galloping Europeanization” which meant isolation from the Oriental elements of Bulgarian culture. The de-Ottomanization and Europeanization were not connected with a coherent vision-in practice they led to urban chaos and loss of the historical character of the towns. In the beginning of the twentieth century, Bulgaria was still full of the heritage of the 500 years of the Ottoman rule that was impossible to erase during the first decades of the new state’s existence.
On the other hand, Bulgarian policy towards the Islamic architecture at the turn of the twentieth century was not clearly negative – de-Ottomanization was not pushed constantly and uncompromisingly. In the places where there were too many mosques and no Muslims, temples were removed or converted; but in the areas where Mohammedans did not have any, the government offered financial support.