site.btaEP Hosts Exhibition on 40 Years Since Final Stage of Muslim-Turkish Names Change in Bulgaria

An exhibition marking the 40th anniversary of the final stage of the so-called "Regeneration Process" of forcible assimilation of ethnic Turks in Bulgaria was opened Wednesday night at the European Parliament in Brussels. The event was hosted by MEP Ilhan Kyuchyuk (Movement for Rights and Freedoms/Renew Europe).

The Regeneration Process is an internationally condemned campaign that reached its height between December 1984 and February 1985, whereby Bulgaria’s communist regime forced not fewer than 850,000 ethnic Turks to adopt Slavic names, limit their religious activity, and refrain from speaking Turkish in public.

The exhibition features photographs, personal testimonies, documents, and memories from the forced name change campaign targeting Bulgarian Turks and Muslims - an event described as a painful but important part of Bulgaria's and Europe’s recent history.

In his opening remarks, Kyuchyuk said the exhibition is more than just an archive or memory—it is a voice of remembrance, of human destinies, of disrupted lives, and of entire communities resisting the erasure of their identity. "In the heart of the European Parliament today, we affirm that memory is resistance against forgetting. Identity is a human right. A name is who we are," Kyuchyuk said.

The exhibition aims to honour the victims, present the historical truth to the European public, and call for moral and institutional responsibility. It also seeks to be a bridge toward reconciliation and to reflect the European values of human rights, freedom of religion, language, and cultural identity.