Ahmed Nuri (BG-Swiss Fellowships for Bulgarian Junior Scholars, Oct ‘24 – Jul ‘25) will present his research on:

The Majority of the Minority: Turkish Literature in Bulgaria’s Communist Semiosphere, 1944-1969

16 January 2025 (Thursday), at 16:30.

Abstract: In this presentation, I will share the initial findings of my archival research, which aims to comprehensively examine the overlooked and forgotten Turkish literature produced in Bulgaria during the Communist period between 1944 and 1969. Despite comprising more than one hundred literary works—including poetry collections, stories, novels, plays, and other materials—these Turkish texts have been largely neglected by scholars in Bulgaria, Turkey, and elsewhere, with only a few exceptions. They remain either obscure bibliographic entries or incomplete short lists.

First, I will present a comprehensive catalog of these publications that I have compiled, most of which were produced by the state-sponsored publishing house Narodna Prosveta. I will also provide preliminary insights into the Turkish literary print culture of the era, particularly focusing on journals and newspapers related to the subject. Second, I will situate these literary works within the broader sociohistorical and ideological contexts of the Cold War, analyzing key themes such as Turkishness, Muslimness/Islam, socialism (including the image of the “Socialist Turk”), peasantism, and the idea of homeland. I will illustrate how these themes were shaped and presented within a unique literary framework, where Turkish, Bulgarian, Russian, and even Azerbaijani literary cultures intersected amidst the ideological tensions of the Cold War.

Moderated by: Konstantin Georgiev