^{This page is part of © FOTW Flags Of The World website}

Pomak Nation (Bulgaria)

image by Chrystian Kretowicz, 24 June 2008

About the Pomak Nation
Variant flag

See also:

About the Pomak Nation

There is a large minority nation in the Balkans which is mostly overlooked and neglected, even if they used to have an independent and recognized state of their own not so long ago. Minahan doesn't count them at all among many nations of One Europe. They number @ 500 000 - (150 000-200 in Bulgaria, 35 000 in Greece, some in Macedonia, and a large diaspora in Turkey -@ 300 000), speak dialects of Bulgarian and Turkish and maintain a strong and distinct identity. Their homeland is in the Rhodope Mountains. Bulgarians and Greeks consider them mostly converted to Islam Slavs. The Turks, on the other hand, like to believe they are descendants of ancient Cumans who accepted Islam from the early Muslim missionaries.

When the Bulgarian Principality was created in the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish war, the Congress of Berlin 1878 established, at British insistence, an autonomous, but largely independent province of Eastern Rumelia with the Christian governor who was, nominally only, appointed by the Ottoman Sultan. The Pomaks rebelled against the Bulgarian-dominated Eastern Rumelia and established, with the British help, an independent Pomak Republic of Tamrash which lasted until the military coup brought Eastern Rumelia into the Bulgarian State in 1886. The territory of the Republic was then reincorporated into the Ottoman Empire. The Tamrash Pomak Republic used the flag of three horizontal bands of red-green-black.

This flag is still considered as a flag of the Pomak Nation to this day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomak
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Tamrash
http://www.pomaklarinsesi.tr.gg/
http://pomaklar.azbuz.com/readArticle.jsp?objectID=5000000002024069
http://slavia-slavialand7.tripod.com/
Chrystian Kretowicz, 24 June 2008

Variant flag

image by Chrystian Kretowicz, 24 June 2008

One of the Turkish websites shows the flag in different arrangement: red-black-green.
http://alcannes.azbuz.com/readArticle.jsp?objectID=5000000001862385
Chrystian Kretowicz, 24 June 2008