and pressured Turkey to accept them within three months. However, the Turkish authorities declared that the country could not accept these numbers in such a short time and closed its borders over the following year.

In what was tantamount to expulsion, pressure for ethnic Turks to leave continued and by late 1951 some 155,000 Turks left Bulgaria. Most had abandoned their property or sold it well below its value, resettling successfully primarily in the Marmara and Aegean