Pomaks
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| c. 1 million | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 Turkey
|
350,000- 600,000 |
 Bulgaria
|
67,350 Muslim Bulgarians (2011 census) up to 250,000 incl. of Turkish and of no ethnic identity |
 Macedonia
|
40,000 Muslim Macedonians up to 100,000 incl. Turkified |
 Greece
|
50,000 in Western Thrace |
| Languages | |
| Bulgarian and different Bulgarian dialects as part of the wider Bulgarian dialect continuum as native language | |
| Religion | |
| Sunni Islam | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| other Slavic Muslims | |
Pomaks (Bulgarian: Помаци/Pomatsi, Greek: Πομάκοι/Pomákoi, Turkish: Pomaklar) is a term used for Slavic Muslims inhabiting Bulgaria, northeastern Greece and northwestern Turkey, mainly referring to the ca. 220,000 strong confessional minority in Bulgaria known officially as Bulgarian Muslims. The term has also been used as a wider designation, including also the Slavic Muslim populations of the Republic of Macedonia and Albania. The Bulgarian dialect spoken by the Pomaks in Greece and Turkey, is referred there as the Pomak language. The community in Greece is commonly fluent in Greek, and in Turkey, Turkish, while the communities in these two countries, especially in Turkey, are increasingly adopting Turkish as their first language as a result of education and family links with the Turkish people. The origin of the Pomaks has been debated; but usually they are considered descendants of native Bulgarians, who converted to Islam during the Ottoman rule of the Balkans.
They are not officially recognized as one people with the ethnonym of Pomaks. The term is widely used colloquially for Eastern South Slavic Muslims, considered derogatory. However, it should be noted that in Greece and Turkey the practice for declaring the ethnic group at census has been abolished for decades. Different members of the group today declare a variety of ethnic identities: Bulgarian, Pomak,Muslim, Turkish, Albanian and others.
The Pomaks in Bulgaria are referred to as Bulgarian Muslims (българи-мюсюлмани Bǎlgari-Mjusjulmani), and under the locally used names Ahryani (pejorative, meaning "infidels"), Pogantsi, Poturani, Poturnatsi, Eruli, Charaklii, etc. They mainly inhabit the Rhodope Mountains in Smolyan Province, Kardzhali Province, Pazardzhik Province and Blagoevgrad Province. There are Pomaks in other parts of Bulgaria as well. There are a few Pomak villages in Burgas Province, Lovech Province, Veliko Tarnovo Province and Ruse Province. Officially no ethnic Pomaks are recorded, while 67,000 declared Muslim and ethnic Bulgarian identity, down from 131,000 who declared Muslim Bulgarian identity at the 2001 census. Unofficially, there may be between 150,000 and 250,000 Pomaks in Bulgaria, though maybe not in the ethnic sense as one part declare Bulgarian, another part - Turkish ethnic identity. During the 20th century the Pomaks in Bulgaria were the subject of three state-supported assimilation campaigns - in 1912, the 1940s and the 1960s and 1970s which included the change of their Turkish-Arabic names to ethnic Bulgarian ones and in the first campaign conversions from Islam to Eastern Orthodoxy. The first two campaigns were abandoned after a few years, while the second was reversed in 1989. The campaigns were carried out under the pretext that the Pomaks as ancestral Christian Bulgarians who had been converted to Islam and who therefore needed to be repatriated back to the national domain. These attempts were met with stiff resistance by some Pomaks.
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Wikipedia