Aromanians in Bulgaria

More precisely, the Aromanians of Bulgaria are concentrated in the villages of Anton and Dorkovo and on the cities and towns of Blagoevgrad, Dupnitsa, Peshtera, Rakitovo, Samokov, Sofia and Velingrad, as well as on parts of the aforementioned provinces located in the Balkan Mountains.

[1] Some also live on the towns of Bratsigovo and Pirdop and on the cities of Plovdiv and Pazardjik, as well as on the Rila mountain range.

The Greek authorities would later also join in this persecution during the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, and so did the Bulgarian ones, which began to seize Aromanian churches and hand them over to Bulgarian-speaking congregations.

All this violence and instability prompted some Aromanians to emigrate to Romania, which was attempting to portray itself as a "homeland" for this ethnic group at the time.

This region had a large ethnically Bulgarian (and also Turkish) population that was hostile to Romanian rule.

[5][6] The Romanian authorities also proposed the exchange of minorities from outside of Dobruja to their respective countries, which would have meant that all the Aromanians of Bulgaria would have been taken to Romania.

Both employ the Romanian Orthodox church in Sofia for ethnic activities[3] and there are several cultural and folkloric similarities between the two.

[10] Another group with which the Aromanians of Bulgaria have a high degree of relationship is with the Sarakatsani (or Karakachans), a transhumant Greek subgroup.