At the intersection of Borders and Ethnicities: A Case Study Of Identity Formation Among The Pomaks in bulgaria, greece and turkey  “No Balkan Muslim identity is more contested, more wrapped in multiple intertwining twisted webs of myth and history than the Slavic-speaking Muslims or “Pomaks” of the Southern Balkan range” Mary Neuburger, 2000, p. 68. One of the biggest mysteries of my childhood was the secret language that my mother, aunt and grandmother spoke when they were talking about something that they did not want the children to hear. I remember being curious and impatient and yelling them: “Turkish please, Turkish!” I tried to learn to speak it but it was too difficult to remember the words and it did not have any written form.  The language was Pomak or “Pomakca” as we say in Turkish. My perplexity was not only due to inability of understanding the language but also due to the fact That my grandmother whose mother tongue was Pomak always insisted on being Turkish and when asked about she told that Pomaks was not good people. It was not even easy to understand who Pomaks were. There were Pomaks who came from Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania but they were none of these nationalities and perceived them as “others”. Yet, like my grandmothcaer, they talked about Pomaks as “others” as well. Most of them were talking about the places they left when immigrating to Turkey always with a great longing and they would return immediately if only there was not the bad memories of “gavurun zulmu” meaning “the cruelty of infidels”.  Years later, I started to make a research about Pomaks to solve this childhood puzzle but more importantly to understand who really the Pomaks were.  What many online inquires and trips to the library has proved was that this question was confusing for everyone else. Standing at the crossroads of language, ethnicity and religion, the identification of Pomaks as a minority has been highly controversial.  Throughout the Balkans, the case of Pomaks has not only challenged the nationalist versions of the history and assimilation campaigns but also the  established understanding of the notions such as ethnicity, identity, group boundaries, kin vs host-states within the scholarly debate surrounding them.  Despite the intellectual curiosity and perplexity that it creates among the scholars, even the use of the traditional name Pomak triggers a sharp criticism and a derogatory look in general public. They could only be “Muslim Bulgarians” for Bulgaria, “Slavic Speaking Greeks” for Greece and “Slavicized Turkish Brothers” for Turkey. Accepting their Pomakness without any ethnic, religious or linguistic hyphenation seems to be hardest of all for the Pomaks themselves as well as the nation-states surrounding them.  After all, Pomaks has never been a self-proclaimed nation or ethnic group with a solid distinct mass group consciousness.(Neuburger, 2000; Eminov, 1997; Omer, 2004) In the conflict-ridden politics of Balkans where the ethnicities, nationalities or identities seldom match the territories that confine them in nation-states, like any other minority Pomaks has always been treated as the “other within”. Many local discourses of co-existence have been dictated by contesting nationalisms, between which identities were defined and contrasted, primarily from the outside. In other words, official identities ascribed to Pomaks have been tied to seemingly solid classificatory boundaries; yet, these boundaries themselves created questions about Pomakness which itself could not easily be classified. The rigidity of ethnic classifications, initially questioned by Barth and Cohen is tested in this case as well. (Barth, 1969; Cohen, 1974) The manipulation of the ethnic boundaries employed by the nation-states in accordance with political considerations, foreign policy issues, and of course also economic interests as well as corresponding reactions of Pomaks in terms of shifting self-and group-identities demonstrate the porous and dynamic nature of ethnicity and identity. (Brunnbauer, 2001; Demetriou, 2004; Michail, 2003) This paper is an investigation aimed at discovering the political and sociological survival strategies that this minority group has developed under the heavy pressure of the nation-states enclosing them and the underlying the reasons that lead them to choose one comprehensive pattern of de-assimilation: “Turkification” regardless of the host-state that they reside in. The examination of Pomakness as a troubled identity helps to clarify the ways in which power, domination and state policy intersect with and limit the options available for self and group identification. The first section is aimed at briefing the reader about the history, geography and general attributes of the Pomak as a minority. The next section, section three portrays the case of Pomaks in the three states: Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey by examining the political and social developments over the last two centuries. The fourth section an attempt to map out the underlying reasons behind the Turkification by analyzing the relative cases of Pomaks in the previous section. The concluding section is discussion about the future of Pomaks under the newly emerging dynamics of EU membership in the area.

 

 

As the introduction reveals, Pomakness is a highly contested identity which leads to very subjective historical, geographical and anthropological documentation biased by the competing nationalist projects.  Nonetheless, a careful meta-analysis of the existing resources and crossreferencing is likely to reveal highly reliable information. What an initial research reveals is that “Pomak” is an external marker of identity that is actually used by non-Pomaks. It is rarely employed as a practical self-identification by the members of the community, at least until the end of 1990s.( Neuburger, 2000; Demetriou, 2004; Eminov, 1997))  Moreover, there never has been a significant mass movement or tendency on the part of Pomaks to express or pursue rights based on their “Pomakness”.( Neuburger, 2000; Omer, 2004; Poulton, 1994) In a very general sense, Pomak is used for describing the Muslim, non-Roma populations who speak a Slavic dialect and, hence, do not precisely fit into the category of Greek, Macedonian, or Albanian, and not to mention Bulgarian or Turk. (Brunnbauer, 1999; Poulton, 1994) Therefore, as Neuburger neatly points, Pomakness describes“inbetweenness”, rather than an affiliation with the classic concepts of nationality in Southeast Europe. (Neuburger, 2000) The etymological debate around the term "Pomak" is as heated as the debate around their identities as well. Bulgarian resources argue that the name is derive either from pomagach (помагач), which means "helper"  in reference to role of Pomaks as the auxiliary units of the Ottoman army. (Poulton, 1997; Ortakovski, 2000; Demetriou, 2004).  Some other Bulgarian sources also relate the word to an alleged forced conversion to Islam by Ottomans and asserts that the term is derived from the word pomăka  (по мъка), which means "by pain". (Todorova, 1998; Georgieva, 2001) On the other hand, Greek sources claim that name Pomak comes from the Greek word pomax, which means “drinker” by referring to the historical claim that Pomaks came from a wine producer tribe in Greece. (Demetriou, 2004; Seypel, 1989;  Ortakovski, 2000)The last but not the least, Turkish scholars also claim that the name comes from word pomagach but argue that it is a word belonging to Kuman Turks of the region who are ancseters of the current Pomaks. (Cavusoglu,1993;  Huseyinoglu,1974;Kucukcan, 1989) Communities cultivate their identities within history and construct them by interpreting their histories. Throughout the centuries, Pomaks has been subject to many different influences and pressures triggered by diverse political, social and cultural and economic changes. They became Muslims, interacted with the communities around them, evicted from their land, tried to be assimilated into the nationalities surrounding them. Thus, they have very complex and challenging history which makes the question of search for an identity harder. It is quite demanding to pinpoint their roots in the area with a historical accuracy.  Fundamentally, the mutual agreement between the scholars is that Pomaks are a religious minority. They are of a minority who speak a dialect belonging to the Eastern South Slavic diasystem as their mother tongue, but whose religion and customs are Islamic. (Poulton, 1997; Brunnbauer, 1999;Neuburger, 2000, Michail, 2004, Mancheva, 2001) Nonetheless, there is no agreement related to their origins. The most frequent assertion is that they are of Slavic origin that had inhabited the lands since the early ages.  (Georgieva, 2001; Tsvetkova 1963; Dimitrov & Stoykov 1963; Demetriou, 2003)), this version is always challenged by the competing thesis that Pomaks have actually immigrated into Southeast Europe in the 11th  century with many other accompanying Turkic tribes from Siberia and Ukraine and have been assimilated into the Slavic majority of the land. (Omer, 2004; Memisoglu, 1991; Cavusoglu, 1993; Kucukcan, 1999)  The Pomaks are originally a mountainous community residing in the mountain ranges of the Balkan Peninsula from the Eastern Rhodope to the Northern Albanian Mountains. Majority of the population is concentrated in the Rhodope, but with important settlements in Eastern lands of Macedonia and around the Danube districts. Currently, they are living under the borders of different Balkan countries including Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Albania and Turkey. The actual numbers of Pomaks are difficult to assess because they are not documented as separate minorities in censuses, besides, many would refuse to declare themselves officially as Pomaks. (Neuburger, 2004, Poulton, 1994, Georgieva, 2001, Mancheva, 2001) The approximate estimates are as follows: There are about 750,000 Pomaks in total : around 100,000 in Albania; around 40,000 to 45,000 in Greece and Macedonia; and between 250,000 and 300,000 in Bulgaria and around 300,000 in Turkey. (Poulton, 1997, Cavusoglu, 1991, Michail, 2004, Manka, 1995) What is even harder to estimate is the number of Pomaks in the past due to lack of reliable sources as well as continuously shifting borders and migrating populations of Balkans. The earliest evidence of settlements appears in the Ottoman tax registers from 1499–1502. What these documents reveal is that inhabitants had a mixture of Bulgarian and Turkish-Islamic names.  The registar includes names such as Ali, son of Vladislav, Elias (Ilyas), son of Ismail, and Bahader, son of Georgi, as the residents of the still-existing Teplen village in the Western Rhodopes (Dimitrov & Stoykov 1963). The number of Slavic speaking Muslims in the Rhodope, recorded by various Ottoman documents, grew steadily after the sixteenth century. An extensive study by Kiel, based on several Ottoman registers dating from 1516 to 1865, traces this gradual increase in population.  Under the Ottoman rule, Pomaks have benefited from a considerable amount of autonomy, with an Agha as a community leader who was in charge of domestic affairs of the community . (Kiel, 1998) Besides what has been found in the Ottoman archives, information about the Pomaks is rather limited. Tsvetkova mentions Paul Lucas, a celebrated French traveler of 18th  century, who describes Slavic speaking Muslims in the Rhodope Mountains in 1706 in his notes. Crossing the mountains from Plovdiv to Drama, he writes about the communities he encounters:

 

“ And when we had covered a distance of seven miles in those
same mountains and along very arduous paths, we passed through the
village called Pashmakli. It is populated by Turks only, but they do not
speak their language. Their dialect is, rather, distorted Slavonic mixed
with Greek and Bulgarian’’ (Tsvetkova, 1963).

Traditionally, Pomaks pursued a very isolated way of life. The specific features of the Rhodope region were rocky and infertile terrain and a lack of substantial transportation systems, which curtailed the economic and cultural communication with the rest of the country. The geography limits their farming opportunities into potato growing, rearing livestock and timber production. (Georgieva, 2001; Poulton, 1997, Kucukcan, 1999) After the First World War, the areas have also been introduced to cultivation of silkworm and tobacco which has became predominant form of agricultural production over the years.( Mancheva, 2001) Some of the male adult population also works in mines in which wages are low and work conditions are very poor. The villages are generally dispersed in the mountains and far away from the centers of trade and commerce. There is only a limited Pomak cohesion in terms of shared territory, with the largest concentration being in the Central Rhodope, nonetheless, in general, the geographic distribution of Pomaks is rather scattered due to both instability of borders in the last two centuries and the isolating effect of the mountain terrain.  All that really unites Pomaks is their adherence to Islam and their use of South Slavic dialects which may vary slightly based on region as well. (Neuburger, 2000) Hence, their lifestyle was shaped by Islamic belief and common law as well as their reliance on the village community and kinship solidarity.(Poulton, 1997, Cavusoglu, 1993; Georgieva, 2001, Brunnbauer 1999, ). This disconnection between the different settlements can also be accounted as an explanation of lack of cohesive identity. Especially in Bulgaria and Greece, even during intense political and social change; Pomaks were able to keep their specific social features. The main reason for this was that they did not take part in the migratory movements into towns and new industrial centers, but tried to remain in their villages. Pomaks were rather reluctant to work in urban centers, and to disperse in the cities, but rather lived at a certain distance from the majority society. (Mancheva, 2001, Brunnbauer, 1999, Omer, 2004). In Greece, it was the deliberate policy of the government to keep Pomaks to their traditional economic activities, to their old settlements, and their traditional lifestyles by confining to a restricted zone. However, in the last three decades Pomak communities have been opening more towards the outside world, as infrastructure development and emigration into towns began to have an impact. Brunnbauer,1999) Aftermath of the Ottoman retreat from Balkans has proved to be much more chaotic, conflict-ridden than the rest of the Pomak history. Pomaks, all of a sudden, were caught in the middle of the conflict about borders between competing nationalisms. They were the most complicated part of the question about how land and people should be demarcated into nations and states. Not surprisingly, all of the emerging nation-states claimed Pomaks as their own and at the same time accused them of being a traitor, man of the Other. Therefore, during the Balkan wars, they have been both persecuted and welcomed in different periods and under different governments. The fluctuation of borders only added to their misery by the loss of much needed farming lands or forestation areas, leading to even starvation. (Ortavski, 2000; Todorova, 1996) The later emergence of the nation states at the end of the First World War by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire has led to many different versions of the Pomak history under each nation-state. Pomaks had converted to Islam under Ottoman duress (according to Bulgarians, Macedonians, Greeks), or lost their original language due to (admittedly voluntary) linguistic assimilation (according to Turks, Albanians), or both their language and religion through these processes (the Greeks). (Apostolov, 1996) For all these nations, the inclination to claim the Pomaks had less to do with any real sympathy for Pomaks as a kindred population and more to do with their strategic value in ethnographic battles over the disputed territories. (Neuburger, 2004) This biased, nationalist approach to local history of Pomaks dominated Balkan writings. All those aspects of Pomaks’ culture that coincided with majority customs were embraced as “native” proofs of ethnic/national religious brotherhood, while disparities were ascribed to “foreign” influences that had been imposed under different occupation periods. The policies geared towards handling the Pomaks, in general, oscillated between two extremes: either complete assimilation or complete ignorance and isolation between different states as well as between different regimes in the same state. (Koksal, 2004)As much as there has been similar policies and reactions, local realities of Pomak history has been shaped by many different dynamics exclusive to their own experiences. Hence, I believe, it is still an obligation for us to closely examine Pomak experience under each nationstate to identify the unifying patterns which have led to Turkification among Pomaks.