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Desecuritizing Identity in South-Eastern Europe
| : In the modern understanding of security, threat is related to identity, where identity evolves as a particular social construct. My study attempts to reveal two trends: the mechanisms which were applied to create the identity of the Bulgarian Turks as a threat to the state and society in Socialist Bulgaria (late 1970s-1980s) and the reverse policies which have been developed in the transition period (from 1990s on) aiming to take the security threat off the image of the Bulgarian Turks. I use the International Relations (IR) theories of securitisation and de-securitisation to explain the motivation and results of this societal experiment. The focus is to reveal another perspective on the analysis of the Bulgarian Turks' identity transformation from the Revival Process to Euro-Atlantic integration by outlining the evolution in the left wing’s perceptions. Methodology is based on analysis of speeches and plans of the Bulgarian Communist Party, blueprints of security policy in the transition period as well as analysis of media interpretations and public reactions.
This research finds that the success of de-securitization lies with the implementation of the Euro-Atlantic integration of the whole region. The fact remains that a working security policy has been implemented in the framework of a successful ethnic model but the long-standing and universal resolution of the security problem has yet to be seen. It is, hence, difficult to acknowledge the Bulgarian ethnic model as a completed and irreversible one.
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