Banishment: Forgotten Histories Unveiled
As part of the Fotofabrika 2025 festival, the exhibition Banishment by Turkish photographers Behic Gunalan and Suleyman Akman will open on June 3 at the National Reconciliation Exposition in Sofia’s South Park, CE Report quotes BTA
Presented in Bulgaria for the first time, the exhibition documents two waves of displacement of ethnic Turks from Bulgaria — the 1989 forced migration under the Communist regime and a lesser-known emigration from 1969. Around 360,000 Bulgarian Muslims fled to Turkiye in 1989, an event later declared “a form of ethnic cleansing” by Bulgaria’s Parliament.
Described as a “dialogue through images,” Gunalan and Akman’s work sheds light on forgotten chapters of history and invites public reflection. A discussion will follow at the Toplocentrala Centre for Contemporary Art.
The exhibition is part of the Visual Archive of Assimilation, a project collecting photographic evidence of repression against Bulgaria’s ethnic Turks.
