Balkan Reconquista and the end of Turkey-in-Europe: Massacre and migration, memory and forgetting (1877-1878

The long presence in the Balkans, and especially Bulgaria, was brought to a speedy and tragic end by the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78. While this war had geopolitical calculations, the idea of nationalism took center stage. A long imagined end to a Muslim presence in Southeastern Europe a la Spanish Reconquista was accomplished during the War. Intimidation devolved into widespread massacre and rape against the Muslim population of Bulgaria and news of such atrocities precipitated the flight of Muslims toward safety. in all, some 250,000-300,000 Muslim civilians died as a result of massacre or perilous flight, whereas another 500,000 ended up as refugees. The trauma of debacle was visible to the Istanbul elites as the refugees filled public spaces all over the Ottoman capital until they were finally resettled in Anatolia.;The scale and traumatic nature of the Muslim extermination and expulsion from Bulgaria is largely forgotten in Turkey today. Yet, by examining the sociopolitical conditions of the time, reasons for the forgetting of this trauma can be offered. An autocratic political milieu, low literacy, speedy resettlement and assimilation, and the creation of a new republic all contributed to the forgetting of these events.