Pomaks - a history of forcefull assimilation

To revive a consciousness of lost nationality in the minds of their kinsmen, the Bulgarians employed force and persuasion, persuasion of a type as brutal as force.

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The Moslems were ranged in groups. Each group was given some baptismal name, generally a name honored in the Bulgarian church or in Bulgarian history. An exarchist pope then passed from group to group and took aside each of his catechumens sui generis; and while sprinkling his forehead with holy water with one hand, with the other he compelled him to bite a sausage. The holy water represented baptism, the piece of sausage renunciation of the Moslem faith, since the Koran forbids the eating of pork. The conversion was completed by the issue of a certificate adorned with a picture of the baptism of Jesus, the price of which varied between one and three francs. A friend who arrived today from Thrace told me that what is happening in Macedonia is also happening there. He showed me two baptismal certificates. He added that the converted were obliged to give up their fez, and the converted women to walk in the streets with their faces uncovered.

In an official report to the Sub-Prefect of Kavadar, on March 2, 1913, a petty Servian official, Mr. Drakalovits, says:

At Pechtchevo (Maleche plateau) a special committee has been formed, with the Bulgarian Sub-Prefect, Chatoyev, as its President, and among its members John Ingilisov, the director of Bulgarian schools, and the priest, Chatoyev, the brother of the Sub-Prefect. This committee was instituted to convert all the Turks of Maleche to Christianity. By order of the committee, 400 peasants of the place were armed with muskets and sticks; they attacked Turks of the neighboring villages and forcibly led them into the church at Verovo, where they were all baptized. Finally on February 17, baptism was carried out at Beloro, where there were ten Turkish families and ten Bosnian (Servian) Mahometan families. Pechtchevo alone was spared, the reason being (so we were told) that the Sub-Prefect would not allow violence in the town. A Turk from Pechtchevo told us that every Turkish house had to pay two pounds for its protection. Four Turks who could not pay such a sum hanged themselves in despair in their houses. In the other Turkish villages conversions were not exacted, because the population was too poor, whereas the Turks at Pechtchevo were known to be rich.

Forcefull assimilation by the Bulgarians,forcefull conversion by the ottomans??

The worst part is some people actually believe these ridiculous stories, the Ottomans did not have a forcefull assimilation program if they did there wouldn't be a single Christian in the Balkans today, everyone would be a Muslim Turk.