The infrastructure of the Turkish language in Bulgaria: Visualization, semiotization, and contemporary challenges

In this article, we examine the role of the Turkish language in the semiotization of public space in Bulgaria. We begin by outlining the historical background that underpins the presence and significance of Turkish in the country, focusing primarily on the political framework that has shaped its use before and after Bulgarian independence. The Turkish population in Bulgaria constitutes the largest minority group in the country, and, therefore, the Turkish language continues to be the most important minority language. Next, we analyze the language management policies affecting Turkish in Bulgaria, considering the legal and social conditions under which it continues to develop in this southeastern European country. Through attempts at assimilation, the communist regime exerted pressure on Turkish and other Muslim communities living in Bulgaria, after changing its attitude since the democratic revolution. The historical and legal context is essential for understanding the semiotic representation of the Turkish language in the Bulgarian public sphere today. In our study, we then explore how this social background aligns with language management across different spheres in Bulgaria. We turn to the question of how the management of public space functions for the Turkish language. It is important to highlight that Turkish holds no official administrative status in Bulgaria and can therefore only appear in public spaces within certain domains. We argue that the visibility of the Turkish language in the public sphere in Bulgaria consists of two fundamental components: visualization and semiotization. Visualization is studied within the framework of linguistic landscapes, while semiotization is analyzed through semiotic landscapes. We briefly introduce these two theoretical approaches before exploring concrete examples of Turkish language use in Bulgaria. We analyze examples from relevant places with a dense Turkish minority, such as Shumen, Plovdiv, Razgrad, and others. Drawing on our empirical observations, we broaden the scope to explore both the significance and the challenges of Turkish language visibility in Bulgaria. As a result, our study shows that the Turkish language serves a niche infrastructure in the visualization of Bulgarian public space due to its absence from the administrative sphere, but the language appears where there is a sufficiently large ethnic Turkish community.