East of kosovo, things look better. Bulgaria has wound up its 600-year-old quarrel with Turkey and its 86-year-old quarrel with Macedonia. It all goes to prove, Bulgarians say, that ethnic hostility is not some primordial Balkan curse; that even here, "European" or even "transatlantic" behaviour is possible.
It could have been very different. Bulgaria lived under the Ottoman empire from 1389 until 1878. Bulgarian memories of the "Turkish yoke" were not good. None the less, within Bulgaria a modus vivendi developed with the ethnic Turk minority-until the 1980s. Then Bulgaria's communist leaders, such as Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia, sought to stay in power by riding the nationalist tide. They closed mosques and stopped Turkish-language education. They forced Bulgarian Turks to Slavicise their names and expelled some 350,000 of them.
After the cold war ended and the communist government was toppled in 1989, the new centre-right government began to make amends. It invited those who had been expelled to return; it rebuilt mosques and reinstated Turkish-language education. It was not easy; by then a popular anti-Turkish mood had grown, reinforced by fears of revenge by returning Turks.
At this point a vital role was played by a number of brave individuals. Antonina Zhelyazkova recalls: "At the beginning of the 1990s there was a strong nationalist backlash. There was nearly bloodshed against the Turks. The Communists were still strong and had involved Bulgarians from mixed regions in violence against Turks."
As tension mounted, Zhelyazkova and others founded a Committee on National Reconciliation. "People from the Committee travelled throughout the country to calm people down. We managed to get on to television and to set up telephone hotlines." She and others received death threats. But they persevered and appealed to a Bulgarian tradition of civil courage. Their country had saved its Jews in the Nazi era and sheltered Armenians 50 years before that. Bulgarians should be proud of this reputation and not squander it, they urged. The campaign worked. Tensions gradually dissipated. Polls now show negative stereotypes fading.
Reconciliation with Turks at home led to reconciliation with Turks abroad. The ex-communists, who governed in the early 1990s, cultivated good relations with Athens rather than Ankara, but after they fell the new centre-right government mended fences with Turkey, too. President Petar Stoyanov apologised publicly, in Turkey, for Bulgarian treatment of its minority.
Even more striking than its rapprochement with Turkey was Bulgaria's rapprochement in February with Macedonia. Macedonia could have been as much of a tinderbox as Kosovo; it is just as much the cradle of Bulgarian identity as Kosovo is of Serbian identity. It became part of Yugoslavia rather than Bulgaria in the early 20th century, and thereafter relations were tense. But once democratic politicians took office in Bulgaria in 1997, rapprochement became possible.
This doesn't end the fighting in Kosovo. It doesn't even ensure Bulgaria a fast-track into the EU or Nato. It does show it is possible to choose peace.
