site.btaBulgarian Expats in Turkiye Want More Events to Be Organized on Bulgarian Holidays

Expatriates from Bulgaria in Turkiye want more events to be organized on the occasion of Bulgarian holidays. This is the opinion of many of the guests of Bulgarian origin during the martenitsa workshop at the BTA national press club in Ankara.

The event was organized on Sunday by the Bulgarian Embassy in Turkiye and BTA. Within the workshop there were two sessions for making martenitsas. They were attended by lecturers and students from Bozok University in Yozgat, and from the Department of Bulgarian Studies at the Faculty of Languages, History and Geography of Ankara University. People of all ages took part in the joyful event.

"I think that we should do more often such events with our expatriates who live in Ankara. It could start with the expatriates in the Turkish capital, and then spread to the whole of Turkiye," an expatriate from Haskovo working at the Turkish Youth and Sports Ministry told BTA.

People should be familiar with these traditions because these are important cultural values for Bulgarian expatriates. Since 2017, the martenitsa has also been included in UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage. More people in Turkiye must be familiarized with Bulgarian traditions, he added.

According to another Bulgarian expat, a lecturer and PhD student in Bulgarian studies at Ankara University, such events should be organised more often so that Turkish citizens have the opportunity to get to know Bulgaria better.  

He also pointed out that there is a growing interest in learning Bulgarian in Ankara and in Turkiye in general, especially after the Bulgarian Parliament adopted amendments to the Bulgarian Citizenship Law proposed by the Council of Ministers (the new amendments stipulate that a compulsory condition for acquiring Bulgarian citizenship by persons of Bulgarian origin is fluency in the Bulgarian language).

A Bulgarian woman of Turkish origin, working as a translator and living in Ankara for a year and a half, also told BTA that the martenitsa workshop organized at the agency's press club in Ankara was a great initiative.

"Yes, martenitsas are used in Turkiye, but nobody knows that this is a Bulgarian tradition," she said, adding that martenitsas have been sold in the country for many years, but nobody knows about their origins and in particular about "Baba Marta".