Galery

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Nihal Yozergan is known as the Bulgarian voice in Turkey. She is a journalist and commentator for major Bulgarian media, for which she has worked for more than 20 years. At various times, she was the author of "The Balkans +" and "Manager" magazines, of daily newspapers such as "Standard", "24 Hours" and most recently of "Trud" and has woriked for TV7 Bulgaria and TV+ television channels. She has been a correspondent for the Bulgarian National Radio for many years and recently for Darik Radio. She has produced three documentaries, including "Istanbul - Meeting of Civilizations" 2002, "Syria - the geopolitical needle of the Middle East" 2007, which was repeatedly broadcast on the Bulgarian National Television for which she had worked as a permanent correspondent in Turkey for over 10 years until 2008. Her latest documentary "Tolerance", which is co-authored by Turkish director Semih Dindar, is about the Bulgarian ethnic model of tolerance and the "revival process", about the forcible renaming of Muslims in Bulgaria during which 350,000 Bulgarian Turks were expelled from their homeland at the end of the era of the communist regime of Todor Zhivkov in 1984. The film was made with the support of Turkey’s Ministry of Culture in 2010 and won the second major prize at the International Film Festival "Antakya - Meeting of Civilizations", and was broadcast on the private Turkish news channel 24. Currently Nihal Yozergan is a PhD student at "Dialogue Europe" Institute at Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski". The subject of her research is the new foreign policy course of Ankara and its coverage by "Miliyet" and "Zaman" daily newspapers during the administration of the Party of Justice and Development. Nihal Yozergan talks with Maria S. Topalova.
- Until a few months ago, Turkey had created the impression of a country with a strong economy and reforming society, determined to meet all the criteria for membership in the European Union. What has happened that has changed Turkey so much? Why has the government begun to dictate to people how to dress and how to behave, to prohibit words? Why has it come to the regression of individual rights and freedoms?