Slavka Karakusheva (MON Fellow, Oct ’22 – Jul ’23) will give a first talk on her research at CAS:

Population Politics and Nation Building: Migrations of Turkish and Muslim Populations from Bulgaria to Turkey (1925–1939)

on 12 January, 2023 (Thursday) at 16:30 h.

Moderated by Petar Dobrev.

The project aims to analyse migrations of Turkish and Muslim populations from Bulgaria to Turkey in the period between 1925 and 1939, interpreted through the prism of population politics and state- and nation-building processes. Employing the approaches of entangled histories and transnational history, the study investigates comparatively how Bulgaria and Turkey developed specific strategies to homogenise the previously demographically heterogeneous territories along ethnic, religious, and cultural lines. The project traces how migration flows and border crossings were affected by the redefinition of citizenship boundaries, identity categories, acceptance frameworks, and social hierarchies. By examining the historical dynamics of the Turkish and Muslim resettlements, the research situates population movements and displacements within the larger framework of the two nation states’ policies and practices of ethnic and demographic engineering. The focus is on the construction, negotiation, and transformation of nationhood and the different government strategies towards “desired” and “undesired” nationals, categorised in terms of a national majority and a minority and treated differently according to the different visions and expectations that the ruling elites had for their loyalty towards the national cause and integrity.