Cruel Tormentor or Good Neighbour? Stereotype of the Turk and Bulgarian State Policy towards the Muslim Minority in 1878-1912

The paper presents the problem of the influence of positive and negative stereotypes of the Turk on the Bulgarian state’s policy towards the Muslim minority in 1878–1912. The first part of the text analyses the evolution of the negative stereotype of the Turk as the “cruel tormentor” and the positive one of the “good neighbor” in Bulgarian culture from the beginning of the Ottoman period to the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The second part focuses on the discriminative aspects of Bulgarian minority policy towards the Muslim population that was mostly implemented at the end of the 1870s and the beginning of the 1880s. Part three presents examples of the tolerant attitude by Bulgarian authorities that dominated Sofia’s policy towards the Muslims from the Union from 1885 to the outbreak of the Balkan Wars.