ABSTRACT

For several centuries the Balkan region has been regarded as a zone of fraction between the Orient and Europe, between Islam and Christianity, where nothing is actually Christian, nor is it Islamic, a mysterious area where everything is possible. Not so long ago the discourse about the Orient concentrated around and treated mainly the interests of the big colonial empires in the East and their reflection in scholarship and letters, in the image of the "Orient" and "Oriental" peoples in the West. The attitudes in the Balkans, however, and especially those of Bulgarians to Turks and Muslims, meet us with a different reality, the reality of a (probably) "white" people (Christians) ruled by an "Oriental" empire. The recognition of the neighbour, the ethnic, religious and/or linguistic "other" in the Balkans where the relations are further complicated by the impact of the historical factor, and where each nation claims some kind of political and/or cultural dominance in the past, usually at the expense of the neighbours, is still in its beginning.