Word: ethnical
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...party leadership tendered the proposal published in its newspaper, Pravda, as its solution to the ethnic conflicts that threaten to rip apart the Soviet Union. More than 200 people have died in ethnic strife in the past 18 months, and groups in several of the 15 republics are calling for secession...
...there is little happiness in Kapikule as ethnic Turks continue to flee from a draconian assimilation campaign waged against them by the Bulgarian Communist regime to a homeland that is hard-pressed to give them asylum. Refugees tell of five grim years of escalating pressure -- their schools closed, their language outlawed, their music silenced and their names changed for Slavic ones. Worst of all, in their view, Muslim worship was banned, a repression extending literally from the cradle to the grave: circumcision was forbidden, and Turkish burial grounds closed...
...Bulgarian government claims that the country's 1 million ethnic Turks -- one-ninth of the total population -- are descendants of Slavs converted to Islam under the Ottomans, who ruled from the late 14th century to the late 19th century, and it wants them to revert to their origins. But the Turkish minority regards itself as a remnant of the Ottoman Empire. "Our ancestors settled in Bulgaria when it was the empire's Balkan province," explains Huseyin Hafizoglu, 60, a schoolteacher whose home was near Plovdiv. "My family has been there for more than a century. But our country is still...
...regime has switched tactics. Reversing years of heavy restriction on citizens' travel, the authorities in Sofia agreed to issue passports and exit visas to ethnic Turks with the aim of limiting further clashes by reducing the size of the Turkish minority, and the mass exodus began. By last week 238,000 had crossed the border. Officials in Ankara believe the total could reach...
With the cost of the relief operation mounting, Ankara has been pressing Bulgaria to allow ethnic Turks to dispose of their property before departing and to take their liquid assets with them. So far, the departing Turks have had to leave their homes and most of their belongings behind. According to their new Bulgarian passports, they are merely going on vacation. Not so, says Miemin Durmusev, whom the Bulgarians renamed Ana Ivanovna Dimitrova. "We're never going back...