Bulgarians in Turkey

Bulgarian Christians are officially recognized as a minority by the Turkey-Bulgaria Friendship Treaty [tr] of 18 October 1925.

[13][14] The origin of the Pomaks has been debated,[15][16] but there is an academic consensus that they are descendants of native Bulgarians who converted to Islam during the Ottoman rule of the Balkans.

Bulgarians were sometimes taken captive during Byzantine raids and resettled in Asia Minor (modern Asian Turkey), but their traces are lost in the Middle Ages.

The so-called "Tsarigrad Bulgarians" (цариградски българи, tsarigradski balgari) were mostly craftsmen (e.g. leatherworkers) and merchants.

[21] Much more intense was the fate of the Bulgarian population of Eastern Thrace in the Ottoman Province (vilâyet) of Edirne.

The legal property rights of the expelled Thracian Bulgarians were recognized fully by the Republic of Turkey through the Treaty of Ankara, signed on October 18, 1925, but have been never denied or enforced yet.

[27] In a response the Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has underlined that Bulgaria has not filed any official claim and that any such demand needs to be viewed as a whole to also envisage the rights of the two million Turkish refugees from Bulgaria based on the Treaty of Ankara.