Violence Against Women

Reproductive rights and health

The maternal mortality rate in Bulgaria is 11 deaths/100,000 live births (as of 2010). The total fertility rate (TFR) in Bulgaria is 1.45 children born/woman (2015 estimates), which is below the replacement rate, and one of the lowest in the World. Abortion in Bulgaria is legal on request during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and at later stages for medical reasons.

Military

In terms of military organization, women’s role has been limited to supporting functions. On exceptional basis there might have been some recruitment during critical times but that would have been very unusual and on voluntary basis.[citation needed]

Marriage and family life

While marriage was traditionally very important in Bulgaria, there has been a rapid increase in unmarried cohabitation after the fall of communism. The transition from communism to market economy had a great impact on the demographic behavior of the population. After the fall of communism, the legal and social pressure to get married has declined, and the population has started to experience new life styles. As of 2014, 58.8% of children were born to unmarried mothers. In the European Values Study (EVS) of 2008, the percentage of Bulgarian respondents who agreed with the assertion that “Marriage is an outdated institution” was 27.2%.

A new Family Code came into effect in 2009, modernizing family law. Legally, Bulgaria has long recognized the equality of men and women in family law. This is explicitly stipulated in the Family Code, Art 2, which defines seven principles of family relations, one of which is “equality between the man and the woman”. This is reinforced at Art 13, titled, “Equality between spouses” which states: “The spouses shall have equal rights and obligations in the matrimony.

“Despite legal equality, societal norms of the Balkan culture often consider the wife to be in a position of subordination to the husband. In terms of maternity leave, from the beginning of the 1970-es women in Bulgaria enjoyed two years of paid leave and one year of unpaid leave. In the early 1990-es it was reduced to one year paid leave and one year unpaid leave.

Violence against women

Bulgaria is part of the paradox of many Eastern European societies: a long tradition of involvement of women in public working life, and high professional status for women; but at the same time leniency towards domestic violence. A 1996 report stated: “Society recognizes women’s intellectual abilities. For fifty years now, women constitute half of the labour force in the country. The situation in the family is different. The relationship model is a patriarchal one. In the 21st century, with the entry in the EU, Bulgaria has revised its policy on family violence, particularly by enacting its first domestic violence law, the 2005 Protection against Domestic Violence Act. In 2015, Bulgaria repealed Article 158 of the Penal Code, which stated that a perpetrator of several sexual offences could escape prosecution by marrying the victim.

 

The Southeast Of Konya

Our fellow citizens who lived in Anatolia about 10.000 years ago had a “matriarchal” belief system. The most significant settling area of Anatolia at that time was un­doubtedly Catalhoyuk. Catalhoyuk, which is on the borders of Cumra district lying 50 km southeast of Konya, is, in our opinion, the first capital of Anatolia. Together with Catalhoyuk, Hacilar Mound in Burdur is a significant settling area as well. However, Catalhoyuk can be regarded as the most important culture centre in Anatolia of that period and around the world. As for the belief system of glorious Catalhoyuk civilization, it comprises the idea of “Goddess”.

It is necessary to familiarize with Catalhoyuk before dealing with the belief system of Catalhoyuk and man of that time.

Catalhoyuk emerges on the scene of history with the Neolithic period. Anatolian citizens settled at Catalhoyuk amid years of 6.500-5.600 BC. 6.000 people living in about 145.000 square meters territory enlivened this place with their tamed ani­mals. Man of Catalhoyuk first tamed cattle, sheep and goat. He created master of wood, weaving and crockery out of his own bo­som. The houses of these first Anatolians who led a collective and sharing life all together by building up a village had a structure of adjacent order without windows and doors. Entrance and exits of houses were available through the door on the roof thanks to a stepladder.

All in all, people of Catalhoyuk symbolize first models of a re­productive society. They could put cereal and certain wild animals in service of humanity. People of Catalhoyuk, having such a great success, worshipped “Earth Mother”, that is, “Mother Goddess”.

The statuettes we first encounter at Catalhoyuk and Hacilar had big belly, wide hips and busty form. This fertile and bulky Mother Goddess was always protected by the wild animals situ­ated on her right and left side. In fact, there are always leopards near Mother Goddess shown on the throne.

When man of Catalhoyuk dating back 10.000 years ago begins to familiarize himself with the soil he lives on, he learns to cultivate it in the course of time. And he starts to get harvest from the soil. The soil takes a new meaning ever after for man of Catalhoyuk. He begins to show a different respect for this soil. He takes a thousand in return for one. The soil becomes fertile, nutritious and signifies nearly eternal continuity in the eyes of a man of Catalhoyuk. He likens the soil with these characteristics to a fertile woman and starts calling it with the name of “Earth Mother”; that is, “Mother Goddess”.

Catalhoyuk first emerges with the belief of Mother Goddess in Anatolia and all over the world. However, after centuries, ex­pression of “God” will depart from matriarchy and turn into a patriarchal denotation through sky-religions.

Namely, 10.000 years earlier, a man from Catalhoyuk is not aware of his own role in the pregnancy of a woman. In the course of time, a discrepancy emerges between man and woman who hunt, battle together equally in the beginning. The man starts to feel inferior in front of woman. Because woman whose stomach is slowly getting swollen and breasts are growing is thought to breed on her own and provide continuity of generations.

Two-Tier Framework For The Protection

A comparative report of the Asylum Information Database (AIDA) managed by European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) discusses the impact of Europe’s two-tier protection regime, distinguishing between refugee status and subsidiary protection, on the rights of those granted protection.

The European Union (EU) has developed a two-tier framework for the protection of those fleeing persecution and serious harm, drawing a normative distinction between refugee status and subsidiary protection. While the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) is premised on the existence of harmonised standards of protection and outcomes of asylum procedures, the assumption of a common protection space across the continent has never been realised and continues to be dispelled by the practice of asylum administrations to date. The “asylum lottery” results in asylum seekers having widely disparate chances of obtaining international protection, as well as different forms of protection granted, depending on the country where their claim is processed.

Differences in the status granted have direct and far-reaching impact on the lives of beneficiaries of international protection, given that they entail a widely different set of rights between refugees and subsidiary protection holders in some countries.

From an efficiency and integration perspective, the advantages of the full alignment of refugee status and subsidiary protection under EU law are clear. De-coupling the content and level of rights from the type of international protection status granted could:

Foster integration in a more coherent manner, by providing all persons in need of international protection with the tools to become active members of new host societies;

Reduce litigation costs related to the form of international protection granted;

Reduce potential secondary movements between countries related to the level of rights granted to holders of the status in question;

Reduce administrative burden on national authorities by removing undue complexity and fragmentation in integration policies and rules. This would not only affect asylum and immigration authorities, but also employment authorities, social welfare services, or even health care institutions across Europe.

Successful integration of beneficiaries of international protection is generally acknowledged as one of the key challenges for European countries’ asylum policies in the coming years. The current discussions on the reform of the Qualification Directive present a unique opportunity to establish an EU legal framework that supports national, regional and local authorities and beneficiaries of international protection in their integration efforts.

Beyond the reform of the Directive, ECRE encourages European countries to further approximate the content of international protection statuses in their national frameworks and practices in the interest of a smoother integration process.

Two-Tier Framework For The Protection

A comparative report of the Asylum Information Database (AIDA) managed by European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) discusses the impact of Europe’s two-tier protection regime, distinguishing between refugee status and subsidiary protection, on the rights of those granted protection.

The European Union (EU) has developed a two-tier framework for the protection of those fleeing persecution and serious harm, drawing a normative distinction between refugee status and subsidiary protection. While the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) is premised on the existence of harmonised standards of protection and outcomes of asylum procedures, the assumption of a common protection space across the continent has never been realised and continues to be dispelled by the practice of asylum administrations to date. The “asylum lottery” results in asylum seekers having widely disparate chances of obtaining international protection, as well as different forms of protection granted, depending on the country where their claim is processed.

Differences in the status granted have direct and far-reaching impact on the lives of beneficiaries of international protection, given that they entail a widely different set of rights between refugees and subsidiary protection holders in some countries.

From an efficiency and integration perspective, the advantages of the full alignment of refugee status and subsidiary protection under EU law are clear. De-coupling the content and level of rights from the type of international protection status granted could:

Foster integration in a more coherent manner, by providing all persons in need of international protection with the tools to become active members of new host societies;

Reduce litigation costs related to the form of international protection granted;

Reduce potential secondary movements between countries related to the level of rights granted to holders of the status in question;

Reduce administrative burden on national authorities by removing undue complexity and fragmentation in integration policies and rules. This would not only affect asylum and immigration authorities, but also employment authorities, social welfare services, or even health care institutions across Europe.

Successful integration of beneficiaries of international protection is generally acknowledged as one of the key challenges for European countries’ asylum policies in the coming years. The current discussions on the reform of the Qualification Directive present a unique opportunity to establish an EU legal framework that supports national, regional and local authorities and beneficiaries of international protection in their integration efforts.

Beyond the reform of the Directive, ECRE encourages European countries to further approximate the content of international protection statuses in their national frameworks and practices in the interest of a smoother integration process.

Language of Bulgaria

Language is not an ethnic defining feature. This axiom of the old and the new worlds is often forgotten by scholars who identify ethnicity on the basis of an established or presupposed language spoken by the community under investigation. This refuted ethnic-linguistic approach is used in cases when it is assumed that there is no better means of differentiation between “us” and “them”.

The ancient rule states that it does not matter where one is born but what culture one carries. The rule does not implicate the modem meaning of “culture”, which is close to “art”, if not synonymous. The Latin term, which is a translation from the Old Greek “paideia”, means that a set of specific types of moral norms drive and shape a way of thinking, which determines the active social behaviour of man.

In other words, creative activity depends on thinking, as does disruptive activity. This dependence is a part of the mechanism of thought-speech/speech-thought, which is the most productive not just with what is directly said (in the text) but also with what is suggested (the subtext). Thus, the problem of the languages spoken by the Bulgarians during the different periods of their history, and with which they make cultural-literary contacts, takes a new form. In the oldest linguistic period of the historical life of the Bulgarians contacts were established not by means of abstract notions, but through the simplified use of the word, in which the latter obtains its meaning according to the position of the interlocutor, the place, circumstances and pronunciation manner. This kind of expressing doesn’t create versatility of the verbal existence and doesn’t reach the abstract-conceptual functions of speech-thought/thought- speech.

The terminological instruments of the civilisation of the Bulgarians are not built by Turkic-Altaic speech. That possibly existent poor resource has been wiped from the languages and dialects of the Indo-Iranian world. We must underline the fact that the problems of language in Antiquity and the Early Medieval Period are unavoidably associated with the ruling dynasty and with its state-legal, military and clerical functions. As the state is not “of the people” but belongs to the ruler’s house, the “people’s vernacular” does not influence the language, which forms and formulates the activity in the various domains of life and of spirituality in particular. Therefore, the established Iranian borrowings in the ancient Bulgarian language, including the titles and names of the Kans, show the process of the cultural- linguistic unison in the course of the “movement of civilisation” which Bulgarians realised in Euro-Asia from east to west.

Linguistic material collected in recent decades undermines the thesis that the ancient Bulgarians belong to the Turkic-Altaic language group. The vocabulary and grammatical structure, with parallels in the East Iranian relic languages, anthroponomy and etymology belonging clearly to the Iranian onomastic tradition, notions and calendar system similar to the East Iranian (Sogdian) practices, support such a conclusion.

The runic inscriptions left by the ancient Bulgarians along the routes of their migration lead in the same direction. Some of the graphemes closest to the Bulgarian runes are part of the Alan-Sarmatian epigraphy, with a priority over the Turkic (7th—8th centuries) and the Old Hungarian runes (10th century). The graphic-phonetic links between the Bulgarian runes and some of the glagolithic signs indicate that the “development” of the Bulgarian script was a continuous process with three mutually determining phases – Runic, Glagolitic, Cyrillic. This means that the Bulgarians did not get their script as a result of a good turn of fate. The script was a necessity for the growth of their civilisation and historical existence.

 

Language of Bulgaria

Language is not an ethnic defining feature. This axiom of the old and the new worlds is often forgotten by scholars who identify ethnicity on the basis of an established or presupposed language spoken by the community under investigation. This refuted ethnic-linguistic approach is used in cases when it is assumed that there is no better means of differentiation between “us” and “them”.

The ancient rule states that it does not matter where one is born but what culture one carries. The rule does not implicate the modem meaning of “culture”, which is close to “art”, if not synonymous. The Latin term, which is a translation from the Old Greek “paideia”, means that a set of specific types of moral norms drive and shape a way of thinking, which determines the active social behaviour of man.

In other words, creative activity depends on thinking, as does disruptive activity. This dependence is a part of the mechanism of thought-speech/speech-thought, which is the most productive not just with what is directly said (in the text) but also with what is suggested (the subtext). Thus, the problem of the languages spoken by the Bulgarians during the different periods of their history, and with which they make cultural-literary contacts, takes a new form. In the oldest linguistic period of the historical life of the Bulgarians contacts were established not by means of abstract notions, but through the simplified use of the word, in which the latter obtains its meaning according to the position of the interlocutor, the place, circumstances and pronunciation manner. This kind of expressing doesn’t create versatility of the verbal existence and doesn’t reach the abstract-conceptual functions of speech-thought/thought- speech.

The terminological instruments of the civilisation of the Bulgarians are not built by Turkic-Altaic speech. That possibly existent poor resource has been wiped from the languages and dialects of the Indo-Iranian world. We must underline the fact that the problems of language in Antiquity and the Early Medieval Period are unavoidably associated with the ruling dynasty and with its state-legal, military and clerical functions. As the state is not “of the people” but belongs to the ruler’s house, the “people’s vernacular” does not influence the language, which forms and formulates the activity in the various domains of life and of spirituality in particular. Therefore, the established Iranian borrowings in the ancient Bulgarian language, including the titles and names of the Kans, show the process of the cultural- linguistic unison in the course of the “movement of civilisation” which Bulgarians realised in Euro-Asia from east to west.

Linguistic material collected in recent decades undermines the thesis that the ancient Bulgarians belong to the Turkic-Altaic language group. The vocabulary and grammatical structure, with parallels in the East Iranian relic languages, anthroponomy and etymology belonging clearly to the Iranian onomastic tradition, notions and calendar system similar to the East Iranian (Sogdian) practices, support such a conclusion.

The runic inscriptions left by the ancient Bulgarians along the routes of their migration lead in the same direction. Some of the graphemes closest to the Bulgarian runes are part of the Alan-Sarmatian epigraphy, with a priority over the Turkic (7th—8th centuries) and the Old Hungarian runes (10th century). The graphic-phonetic links between the Bulgarian runes and some of the glagolithic signs indicate that the “development” of the Bulgarian script was a continuous process with three mutually determining phases – Runic, Glagolitic, Cyrillic. This means that the Bulgarians did not get their script as a result of a good turn of fate. The script was a necessity for the growth of their civilisation and historical existence.