| "Big Excursion" | |
|---|---|
| Part of the Revival Process | |
 | |
| Location | Bulgaria |
| Date | May – August or December 1989[note 1][1] |
| Target | Bulgarian Muslims and Bulgarian Turks |
Attack type | Persecution, Ethnic cleansing, Forced displacement |
| Victims | 310,000[note 2] – 400,000[note 3][1] |
| Perpetrators | People's Republic of Bulgaria, Bulgarian Communist Party |
| Motive | Anti-Muslim sentiment, Anti-Turkish sentiment, Bulgarianisation |
The "Big Excursion" (Bulgarian: Голямата екскурзия, romanized: Goliamata Ekskurziya) was the 1989 forced migration (Turkish: 1989 Zorunlu Göç) of Bulgarian Muslims by the Communist government of the People's Republic of Bulgaria. In total, around 360,000 Bulgarian Muslims crossed the border into Turkey.[2] In late December 1989, a month after the resignation of General Secretary Todor Zhivkov, the "Big Excursion" came to a genuine end, with the new government promising to restore the rights of Bulgarian Muslims.[3] By the end of 1990, around 150,000 Bulgarian Muslims had returned from abroad.[4]
The "Big Excursion" has been recognized as an ethnic cleansing, including by the democratic government of now-EU-member Bulgaria in 2012.[5] Though the Excursion is not as widely remembered in the West as the Bosnian genocide and expulsion (and subsequent return) of Kosovar Albanians in neighboring Yugoslavia,[6] as of 1989 it was the largest instance of ethnic cleansing in Europe by number of victims since the expulsion of Germans living east of the Oder–Neisse line between 1944 and 1950.[7]
Cite error: There are <ref group=note> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=note}} template (see the help page).
- ^ a b Kamusella 2019a, p. 1.
- ^ Martino.
- ^ Kamusella 2019b.
- ^ Kalinova 2008.
- ^ Bulgarian Parliament 2012.
- ^ Kamusella 2019a, p. 2.
- ^ Faktor.bg 2016.