Daniel G. Bates - Ethnographic Fieldwork in Bulgaria

Since the collapse of communist rule in 1990 in Bulgaria, hitherto invisible minorities have formed political parties and actively worked to secure a place in the political landscape. The most prominent of the minorities whose separate cultural identity was long denied is the Turkish population, numbering approximately 10% of the national population. Bates has been studying local level politics within the Turkish minority population of Northeast Bulgaria since 1990. In this photo, the sometimes competing religious and secular sources for local leadership in the town of Shumen hold a joint news conference to press for Turkish language education.

Location of Shumen in Northeast Bulgaria [152K]