Big Excursion

"Big Excursion"
Part of the Revival Process
LocationBulgaria
DateMay – August or December 1989[note 1][1]
TargetBulgarian Muslims and Bulgarian Turks
Attack type
Persecution, Ethnic cleansing, Forced displacement
Victims310,000[note 2] – 400,000[note 3][1]
PerpetratorsPeople's Republic of Bulgaria, Bulgarian Communist Party
MotiveAnti-Muslim sentiment, Anti-Turkish sentiment, Bulgarianisation

The "Big Excursion" (Bulgarian: Голямата екскурзия, romanizedGoliamata 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]


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