Author: Vildan Bayryamova
In 1989, Jebel gave rise to the May riots against the so-called Revival Process.
The renaming has long been over. In Kardzhali, violence against the Turks began in the last week of 1984 and the Bulgarian Communist Party reported a successful end to the campaign at the beginning of the following year. But the reconciliation of the "converted" is only apparent, the wound has not healed and only Deutsche Welle, Free Europe, BBC and France Presse turn out to be outlets for people thirsting for justice. Otherwise, against them are the army, the police, the State Security, the regime of Todor Zhivkov and all the pressure machines. The mass expulsion of the Turks follows, cynically defined by the communist strategists as the "Great Excursion".
What happened on May 19, 1989?
Outside the archives of the State Security, documentary evidence is difficult to find. And no one talks about those troubled times - they are not in the focus of Bulgarian politicians, most of them do not even know anything, and few are born after 1989 who are interested in the facts. The true stories are told by witnesses and victims of the pogrom. But they are increasingly gone, the memory is fading, and in Bulgarian schools this part of the most modern history is not studied.
However, a few years ago, the former mayor of Jebel Bahri Yumer, who was also the organizer of the rebellion, told the DW about the events. "On May 18, Mestan Agata, a respected leader of the community, died in the Rhodope town; the funeral was supposed to be the next day. There was already a mood for protest demonstrations throughout the country demanding the return of our birth names, scheduled for May 22 - so that the celebrations of the Day of the Holy Brothers Cyril and Methodius would not be overshadowed, but we could not wait", says Yumer.
DS learned about the prepared protests, the local resistance leader Ismet Panishev-Panisha was beaten in the police custody in Jebel. At that time, over 100 people had been on hunger strike for a week. After the news of Mestan's death, Agata Bahri and his associates went from house to house all night and explained that everyone had to be at the funeral. And the ritual was just a pretext for gathering all the people in one place. So on May 19, over 10,000 people gathered in the town and this was the first peaceful mass protest of the Bulgarian Turks. The crowded procession passed through the "Izgrev" neighborhood on its way to the cemetery and stopped to give courage to the people who had joined the hunger strike.
"The police and the army have received orders to shoot at meat"
"Then we learned that the police and the army had received orders to shoot at meat, we warned everyone to go home, and the next day at 10 a.m. to come to the square again. That night, Jebel was blocked, men were taken out of every house with beatings, at the police station again there was beatings and blood, then they were simply thrown out into the street", recalls Bahri Yumer. Some of them had heart attacks, others were wrapped in fresh sheepskin to heal their wounds. Doctors were forbidden to provide first aid to the beaten, he says.
Protests broke out in many ethnically mixed areas in northeastern and southeastern Bulgaria, by the end of May alone 5,000 participants had been expelled from the country. And then Todor Zhivkov announced that Turkey had opened its borders and all who wished were "free" to leave. Emissaries from the State Security Service go from house to house and hand over applications for issuing passports for trips abroad to certain people.
"You can't forget, you can't swallow"
Mehmedali Ramadan from Momchilgrad is among the many who suffered the regime's blows. The story of his rebellion begins on December 26, 1984, when about 7,000 local opponents of the forced renaming gathered in the square and went to the Regional Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party to shout that they value their name, language and faith. "They lied to us that only those with mixed marriages would receive new names - there were such families, they started them back in 1982. When we went to the municipality, we were surrounded by tanks, police and fire engines, they shot at us, they shouted at us to get out. "Then they started taking us back to the station," says Mehmedali. He suspects that those in the front lines of the protest were filmed. These people were not carrying weapons, nor stones or sticks, they were just chanting that they did not want new state names. 16-year-old Mumun Ahad and Mustafa Ilyaz Ali were shot before his eyes. The army gave a command for all residents to lie down on the ground. And the soldiers started rushing towards those who had scattered, trampling on the sprawling bodies.
From the investigator Dimitrov, who was seconded from Burgas, at the Momchilgrad police station, Mehmedali learned that according to the authorities, the protest was actually a declaration of an autonomous republic and that there was no idea of changing the names. "He pointed a gun at me and shouted, calling us terrorists, and I had heard about autonomy for the first time. But we had known for a long time what they were preparing for us, then the pogrom against us began, our Bulgarian friends were also angry about what was happening", Mehmedali recalls. Turkish flags appeared on the trees in some villages - the blame was thrown on the protesters. It was impossible for them to prove that they had nothing to do with it, but they endured threats and a bloody showdown. He and a group of detainees were sent to the Sixth Directorate of the State Security Service in Sofia, then to the camp in Belene.
Mehmedali still does not know why he had to endure hard labor in the camp - neither during his five court appearances in January 1985 did he find out, nor was there any record afterwards that he had been convicted. "You can't forget that past, you can't swallow it, even after so many years. The policemen who used to break my bones with their kicks are now retired and when I see them on the street, the images come back", he says.
After Belene - a passport to Austria
After the arrests, doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers and other participants in the protest were fired from their jobs and sent to corrective labor in the BKS - the communal economy at the time. Every Friday they were obliged to appear at the headquarters created for the "Renaissance Process", where they gave explanations and signed a declaration that they would not leave the city. The constant questions were whether they had already realized, if they met a fellow citizen - by what name they would address him, they were repeated the prohibition against speaking in "unintelligible language".
The forced "realization" continued until 1989. Mehmedali, then 26 years old and a car mechanic by profession, received a ready-made passport and an order to leave the country in two hours, to go to Austria with a suitcase of clothes, his wife and their two children. From Vienna he moved to Berlin, and then to Sweden - until the fall of Todor Zhivkov from power in November. Within these two hours he was obliged to transfer his property. The head of the Bulgarian Civil Service Commission received it, the man says. "We have our homeland, we could not put down roots in a foreign land. We returned in 1991 because we believed that democracy had come and our rights were guaranteed", he says.
Now, however, he is extremely disappointed by the rift in the MRF: "In those years, the attempt was to pit Bulgarians against Turks, now we are Turks against Turks, brother against brother. The same people are writing the script, but the entire people are hostages", he concludes.
Dzhebel, 36 years later
Yesterday, another rally was held in the town, which was supposed to pay tribute to the victims and heroes of the resistance against the "Renaissance Process". And if last year the rostrum was branded with the portraits of Delyan Peevski and Dzhevdet Chakarov, and between them the honorary chairman Ahmed Dogan, then yesterday only the "boy" was watching from there. While Mayor Nexmi Ali was presenting the report on the new beginning of the municipality with the projects for parks and streets, Dogan's faction was vacating the premises in the Sofia headquarters. The New Beginning parliamentary group lined up on the rostrum together with the Ambassador of Turkey Mehmet Uyanak and the Plovdiv Consul General Korhan Küngeryu. The leader Peevski was not present at the full square.
"Over the years, the charge of the memorable date has been replaced by the boredom of pathetic speeches and is celebrated as a city holiday. The real story is now politically obsessed by people who very much want to get their hands on the microphone and shine in some way," commented Veli Shakir. He lives in neighboring Momchilgrad, but every year on this date he arrives in Jebel. The sad thing, according to him, is that this day has become a platform for hollow speeches by current politicians, while the organizers and actual generators of those events are ignored.
At the height of the crime, called by the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party "Revival Process", Shakir lived in Tryavna and remembers the sinister tactics of the regime - then the trade union organizations were harnessed to hold meetings, at which the slogan was "Turks in Turkey, Bulgaria - to the Bulgarians".
"They forced us to change our birth names, and at the same time they hated us, this is so absurd - to take away a person's name with repression, to make him Bulgarian and to hate him. How do such people get involved, how bad do you have to be to participate in such a doomed cause?", Veli seeks logic. He believes that these commemorative rallies should not lose their meaning and content, but should recall history so that it is not forgotten and never repeated. But apparently this history is also traveling towards oblivion.