“Religion means not only knowing which day of the calendar is your neighbor’s fest and what it is all about. It is essential to comprehend that this is part of our common culture. This religion, which is colorful, diverse and sensitive for each and every one of us with a different religion, is something that we represent ourselves in front of the world with.” That was how Vice President Margarita Popova welcomed a Turkish delegation of university lecturers, who visited Bulgaria in relation to a large-scale project.

Dr. Savaş Kafkasyali, a tutor at the International Relations Dept. with the Kirikkale University gives us details:

“We are working on a major project – The Dialogue between religions in the Balkans and the Expansion of Islam. Our goal is to tour across all Balkan states and to prepare a scientific treatise, containing articles, studying the dialogue between the different religions in the past, in present days and also the views on the future. We have visited eight Balkan countries so far: Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. Bulgaria was 9^th on the list. We visited Sofia and many other towns, where we met men of statehood and science, religious leaders, the chair of the Shalom Jewish organization and also intellectuals.”

Presenting the policy of Bulgaria in regard to religions, Vice President Popova said:

“The development of the intercultural and inter-religious dialogue is part of our living standard. Maybe people that have grown up in areas with no other religious ethnicities will find it harder to understand what I feel. However, things are different when you used to sit on the same desk with a friend, who had a different religion. That is why I say that the intercultural and inter-religious dialogue is not enough to take place at the level of common people only. It is essential this dialogue to be headed by state institutions and politicians, also by religious leaders. I know what it is to live on the same spot with the other, to understand the person in front of you and these human relations to find their reflection in the policy of state, culture and education.”

“Nowadays we have to put tremendous efforts for educating both our kids and ourselves in the spirit of tolerance, respect and unification,” Mrs. Popova goes on to say. “If we are divided as a community and a nation, as neighbors and as people, inhabiting a region with specifics and things in common, if we are separated as countries in Europe, there is no chance for this common European idea to be put through…”

Margarita Popova gave as an example for tolerance her birthplace – the town of Velingrad: “If you visit the town on its market day, Sunday, you will see people from the “high area” /Sarnitsa, Yakoruda/ come and sell cheese, butter, meat - and raspberries and blueberries in the summer. The town market is an attraction of cultures and religions gathered together. The ones living around the town knit and sell their handmade works of art. Then they go to the mosque and pray, the way we light our candle in the church. This has been going on for years on end. Velingrad is a symbol of interethnic consolidation and tolerance.”

Greece, Romania, Hungary and Poland are the next stops of the Turkish lecturers.

English version: Zhivko Stanchev