Mehmed Karahyuseinov (,Although accepted in Bulgarian Turkish, the Bulgarian surname ending -ov is an extrenous addition, not part of the standard form of this Turkish surname. Hence, in Turkey, the poet's name would be spelled Mehmet Hasan Karahüseyin ,In Ottoman Turkish, the name would be spelled as follows: محمد حسن قرهحسین Mohammad Hassan Qarahhossein. 5 October 1945 – 3 May 1990) was a Bulgarian poet, translator, artist, and dissenter of Turkish and Muslim background. On 2 February 1985, he committed an act of self-immolation in protest against the state policy of the forced assimilation of Turks and Muslims in communist Bulgaria.
Biography
Mehmed Karahyuseinov was born on 5 October 1945 in the then-mixed (TurkishThe Turkish mahalla was split into Sunni and Shiia sections. and Bulgarian) villageRoma estbalished their presence in Sevara during the second half of the 20th century of Sevar, near the town of Kubrat in the Razgrad Province. The village was mainy inhabited by Alevis, and the family also professed this strain of Islam.Георги Кулов. 2021. Ислямът и виното в България (pp. 168-183). Политически хоризонти. Vol. 5, No. 2, p. 172. His father was writer and politician Hasan Hyuseinov Karahyuseinov (Хасан Хюсеинов Карахюсеинов), also known under the pen name Sevarski. In 1985, a new Bulgarianized name was imposed on the father, namely, Asen Sevarski (Асен Севарски).Sevarski coined his new surname from the name of his family's home village of Sevar. The poet's mother, Zühre Karahuseinova (Зюхре Карахюсеинова), was a homemaker. Mehmed had two siblings, younger sister Nesrin (Несрин) and elder brother Ahmed (Ахмед).
The family spoke Turkish at home and both parents were fully literate in this language. In the mid-1950s, the family moved to the country's capital of Sofia, where the father had been sent, in 1951, by the Bulgarian Communist Party to work in the minority Turkish-language periodical Yeni Işık (New Light, 1945-1985;In 1985, it was relaunched as a monolingual Bulgarian-language periodical for 'Bulgarian Muslims,' titled Нова светлина (New Light, 1985-1991) bilingual, Turkish-Bulgarian after 1969)Renamed as Yeni Işık-Нова светлинаDžambazov, Ismail Ismailov. 2011. Bulgaristan Türk basini tarihinde: Yeni işik - Nova svetlina: Işik, Yeni işik, Nova svetlina, Işik-Svetlina, Güven-Doverie: gazetesi. Istanbul: Erkam Matbaasi. and mainstream Bulgarian newspapers (for instance, Rabotnichesko delo, Narodna mladezh, Trud).Поетът, запалил се в протест срещу „възродителния процес”, с който ДПС днес си прави пиар Написано от Георги Михайлов, desehistory.com Неделя, 03 Май 2015 This rapid social advancement was triggered by Sevarski's meeting with the world-famous Turkish communist poet Nâzım Hikmet, who visited Bulgaria in September 1951. The communist authorities took note of Sevarski as an aspiring young Bulgarian Turkish intellectualist and loyal communist. Furthermore, the Bulgarian authorities sought to promote marginalized groups of Muslims (like Alevis) against the Sunni mainstream of Bulgaria's Turks.ELENA MARUSHIAKOVA & VESSELIN POPOV. 2004. Muslim Minorities in Bulgaria. In: Blaschke, Jochen, ed. Migration and Political Intervention: Diasporas in Transition Countries. Berlin: Parabolis, p. 52
Mehmed learned Bulgarian at school. he also finished the capital's so-called Russian Gymnasium, or the prestigious (elite) secondary school with the extended Russian language curriculum in Sofia. At that time, it was the main language of international education and politics across the Soviet bloc. An excellent drawer, Mehmed applied to the National Academy of Art (Национална художествена академия), but without success. Subsequently, he graduated with an MA in Russian philology from Veliko Tarnovo University.
Thanks to the poet's village background, renewed during each summer vacation, Mehmed kept practising his Turkish. What is more, he honed his command of the standard form of this language by reading voraciously Turkish-language books from his father's home library. Meanwhile, during his youth in Sofia, Mehmed became fluent in Bulgarian. Then it was already the family's main language.
In the mid-1960s, Mehmed began to work as a printer and copy editor in the Turkish-language literary monthly Yeni Hayat (New Life, 1954-1985;In 1985, it morphed into Bulgarian-language Нов живот (1985-1988 bilingual, Turkish-Bulgarian, after 1970).Rename as Yeni Hayat-Нов животHacı, Sadık (Садък Хаджъ). 2022. От вмешателство в турския книжовен език към пълна забрана (езиковата политика на комунистическа България) / From Interference in the Turkish Literary Language to a Total Ban (The Language Policy of Communist Bulgaria) (pp. 206-215). Езиков свят – Orbis Linguarum. vol. 20, no. 2. For satisfying his artistic aspiration, Mehmed found employment as a stage designer and lighting engineer at the Boyana Cinema Center.
In a way, Mehmed was following in his father's footsteps. In addition to his literary and journalistic work, in 1964, Mehmed's father began working in Radio Sofia. In 1966, Mehmed married his school sweetheart, Shemsie (Шемсие, her name often dimunitivized as Sheri Шери in emulation of the French word chérie for 'darling'). In the same year, their daughter SevaraShe was named after the family's home village of Sevar. was born, while the couple's son, Aspar, was born in 1990, a couple of months after the poet's death.
Career The future poet received education and grew up in Bulgaria, where the Turkish-medium local administration, education, publishing and culture were in full bloom, developed after World War II and guaranteed for the country's Turkish (Muslim) minority,Eminov, Ali. 1983. The Education of Turkish Speakers in Bulgaria (pp. 129-150). Ethnic Groups. No. 5. amounting to a tenth of the population. Yet, he entered adult life at the turn of the 1970s, when the authorities rapidly dismantled the system, pushing for full bilingualism in Bulgarian and Turkish. Bulgaria's Turks and Muslims were to be fully Bulgarianized in their language, identity (names) and culture. In the 1980s, monolingualism became the norm, and beginning in 1985, officially no ethnolinguistic minorities remained in Bulgaria.Rudin, Catherine and Eminov, Ali. 1990. Bulgarian Turkish: The Linguistic Effects of Recent Nationality Policy (pp. 149-162). Anthropological Linguistics. Vol. 32, Nos. 1–2. The use of Turkish and of the term 'Turk' was banned. Hence, in the regime's mass media, the country's Turks had to be referred to as 'Bulgarian Mohammedans.'Eminov, Ali. There Are No Turks in Bulgaria: Rewriting History by Administrative Fiat (pp. 203-222). In: The Turks of Bulgaria: The History, Culture and Political Fate of a Minority, edited by Kemal H. Karpat. Istanbul: Isis Press.Dimitrov, Vesselin. 2000. In Search of a Homogeneous Nation: The Assimilation of Bulgaria’s Turkish Minority, 1984–1985 (pp. 1-21). Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe. Vol. 1, No. 4. In the winter of 1984-1985, the names of 0.8 million Turks (Muslims) were Bulgarianized by force.
Having proved himself as a translator, journalist and artist, Mehmed began to write poetry in the late 1960s. He wanted to publish his own poems, like his father did. He kept submitting material for as many as three collections of poetry, but the publishing house Narodna Mladezh Nation's Youth sat on these submissions for over three years and did not reply. Through backchannels, Mehmed was informed that, first, he would have to glorify Bulgaria and communism with some poems. Afterward, another requirement was added, namely, to write five poems praising the 'Revival Process,' or the forced assimilation (Bulgarianization) of the country's Turks and Muslims. Mehmed refused because serving propaganda was not a poet's tasks, whereas denying one's own identity and language was a moral and logical impossibility to him.
Self-Immolation
Mehmed's family had a small countryhouse, consisting of one room only, in Люти дол Liuti dol street, district Knyazhevo, at the picturesque feet of Vitosha Mountain in Sofia's sparsely populated south-western periphery. On 28 January 1985, the poet attended a meeting in his workplace's party cell. He was informed that he and his family would need to adopt new names to replace the Turkish ones by the Friday deadline.
On 2 February 1985, the poet left for the countryhouse with a canister of gasoline. His wife Sheri and daughter Sevara were to join him on the following day. Instead, on this fateful Friday, he doused himself with gasoline indoors. Seen by no one, he lit himself in front of the countryhouse. It was snowing heavily. He fell into a snowdrift, which extinguished the flames. Mehmed remained alive. Unable to walk due to the burns, in extreme pain, he crawled for a kilometer to reach a bus stop. A taxi driver who spotted him at the bus stop took Mehmed to Pirogov Hospital downtown.Мехмед Карахюсеинов. 2015. Болката на откровението Bolkata na otkrovenieto [The Pain of Revelation]. 2015. София: Фондация “Мехмед Карахюсеинов–Мето”, p. 155.
On Saturday, before leaving for the countryhouse, Sheri with Sevara visited her parents-in-law to ask if Mahmud had phoned as his custom was. Because he had not, they became frightened and rang up Pirogov Hospital. They learned the poet was hospitalized there.
Forced name change
Mehmed lost consciousness at the hospital entrance. He suffered burns to half of his body's surface. No one believed he would survive. He remained in coma for 20 days. The Bulgarian secret service DS guarded the patient, not allowing his family to visit him. Sheri was then pregnant with their son Aspar. The main objective was to prevent any leak to the international press about Mehmed's solitary and principled protest.
When the poet was in coma, the authorities confiscated his internal passport. Afterward, without Mehmed's consent, they changed his name to Metodi Asenov Karakhanov (Методи Асенов Караханов). Another internal passport was issued in this name.
Aftermath Bowing to the administrative imposition, nevertheless the poet did not give up. He played on the similarity of his old name Mehmed and his new one Metodi, and in everyday life went by the diminutive Meto (Мето), which in Bulgarian works for both names.
Meanwhile, in July 1985, his father was one of the top signatories in the state-sponsored declaration of the country's intellectuals in support of the campaign of forced name changing. For his unwavering loyalty to the communist authorities and the program of forced assimilation of the country's Turks and Muslims, Asen Sevarski was rewarded with his election to the Bulgarian Parliament for the 1986-1990 term.Народни представители в Деветото народно събрание на Народна република България. 1987. София: Издателство Наука и Изкуство, p. 62
Poet Mehmed Karahyuseinov survived but required numerous plastic surgeries. His looks remained off-putting. He put on a brave face but was plagued by ill health. In 1987, Mehmed underwent a lung surgery. He witnessed the 1989 ethnic cleansing of Bulgaria's Turks and MuslimsTomasz Kamusella. 2019. Ethnic Cleansing During the Cold War: The Forgotten 1989 Expulsion of Turks from Communist Bulgaria (Ser.: Routledge Studies in Modern European History). London: Routledge. and the end of communism in Bulgaria and across the Soviet bloc. Mehmed died in 1990 of lung cancer.
After Meto's death, his father Asen Sevarski suffered two consecutive strokes, the second of which proved fatal. He died half a year after his son. Not only did he have to witness his son's death but also the bankruptcy of his loyalty to communism and the policy of forced Bulgarianization. In the end, his son's principled stance seized the day. Unfortunately, to this day, the place of his 1985 self-immolation remains without any commemoration.
Importance