Successful integration/failed integration - My experiences with integration and the media in my country

By Teodora Kostadinova

Fortunately I’ve grown up with the culture of tolerance and in a cross-ethnical environment so any type of denial or discrimination of minorities was always unbearable for me.
Unfortunately, people in my country – Bulgaria are still ethnocentric. Minorities are generally considered as ‘second-hand’ people - thieves or cleaners, call-girls or deceivers. They never succeed in an honest way. They are probably sick or dirty so you better walk away if they happen to sit next to you. This is the general perception of the majority.
Sometimes, in my work as a young journalist I feel honestly helpless and ashamed from my fellow-citizens. A quick example – every time I publish a material in that Roma or Turkish people are mentioned, they turn to be actual subject of discussion. Scores of humiliating comments appear under the text, the worst display of hate speech. Deleting this comments would be considered as censorship, so I can’t do anything but leaving them as an eloquent sign of people’s intolerance.
In my opinion the more a nation suffers from inferiority complex, the more it will be hostile to ‘the other’. We demand to be equally treated in the EU but we don’t consider Turkish and Roma people as equal to us.
One of the biggest minorities in Bulgaria is the Turkish one. Since couple of years there is a news edition in 5 p.m. in Turkish language on the national television. The general public condemns it; there is even a facebook group against the news in Turkish. People often refer to them as the most evident example of our ‘absorption’ from the minorities. But once again, who is to blame that 60 percent of Bulgarians between 18 and 30 years decide to emigrate. Not the Turks for sure. And when they chose a different country to live in, they would always watch Bulgarian news in internet and would always fancy the idea of Bulgarian news edition on CNN for example.

Teodora Kostadinova is 23 years old an lives in Burgas on the Black Sea. She just finished her European Studies/Media degree at the Sofia University.