Wednesday was the 35th anniversary of what Communist Bulgaria back then officially called the "Big Excursion," the mass departure of citizens of Turkish origin to neighboring Türkiye. The culmination of a purge and assimilation policy targeting the minority, the forced migration left scars in the community, which still managed to build new lives in Türkiye.

"We always kept a rope on the balcony so that we could flee quickly," 87-year-old Bedriye Paşaoğlu recounts to Anadolu Agency (AA). A local politician and a factory manager under Bulgaria’s Communist regime, Paşaoğlu left her comfortable life when she joined a growing number of people of Turkish origin subjected to forced assimilation. As the pressure heightened, she and her family fled to Türkiye with others, what the Bulgarian regime portrayed as "a visit to relatives in Türkiye." "The Excursion," as it was called, started in late May when Bulgaria opened the borders with Türkiye for a thinly veiled deportation. Paşaoğlu and her family settled in Sakarya in northwestern Türkiye, while others scattered across Türkiye, mainly in western cities.

Forced to change their names and shed anything that could associate them with their ethnic identity, Turks who trace their history in the Balkan country to centuries of Ottoman rule first started leaving for Türkiye in the 1980s. Some 350,000 people came to Türkiye amid a harsh campaign to erase their identity by the Bulgarian regime between 1984 and 1989. Many fought peacefully, but the regime never softened, culminating in a mass exodus in 1989. It was the largest migration of people in Europe after World War II.

Under dictator Todor Zhivkov, who ruled the country from 1954 to 1989, an assimilation campaign against the Turkish minority in the country sought to curb their rights under the pretext of creating a homogeneous country. It started in 1984 with orders for Turks to change their Turkish-sounding names to Bulgarian ones and continued with a ban from speaking Turkish in public. It wasn't limited to language, and soon, mosques of the Turkish minority were closed by the communist dictatorship pursuing what it called a "Process of Revival." The community resisted through peaceful protests, but increasing restrictions on their daily lives forced them to leave for neighboring Türkiye, where they were embraced by the government.

The Communist regime has long gone, but the perpetrators of the ordeal of the Turks went unpunished. As the country transitioned to democracy, Zhivkov and others faced a lawsuit over their assimilation practices in 1991. Since then, little progress has been made in the case, while Zhivkov died in 1998.

Hristo Hristov, a journalist and historian on the Communist regime, told AA on Wednesday that the Bulgarian judiciary "unfortunately" acted as "lawyers for defendants instead of prosecuting them." Over time, all five defendants, including the Communist ministers, died. The lawsuit was dismissed a few years ago, but victims, including those taken to Belene concentration camp for resisting the assimilation, appealed the decision. Hristov said the statute of limitations cannot be applied to the lawsuit, but the prosecution did not proceed with the case.

Mehmet Vatansever, who spent more than three years in Belene and Bobov Dol labor camps, said he never gave up pursuing justice for 35 years. "Bulgaria is a new European Union country and I expect them to act so and (carry out justice)," he said. Vatansever said though the main defendants died, those who implemented their orders were still alive. "We expect them to be tried," he said.