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The World - News from June 4, 1989

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Bulgaria expelled 340 more ethnic Turks amid mounting Turkish indignation at Bulgaria’s treatment of the minority, Turkish official said. Turkish border officials said Bulgaria has deported 960 ethnic Turks to Turkey since May 6, apparently for joining hunger strikes and other protests against Sofia’s forced assimilation campaign. “If Bulgaria sends a million of our people, we will take them,” Prime Minister Turgut Ozal told a meeting in Ankara, the capital. Bulgaria maintains that those claiming to be Turkish are descended from Bulgarians forced to convert to Islam under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, predecessor of modern Turkey.

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