The Process of Rebirth (also "Process of Revival" – Bulgarian:Възродителен процес) was the culmination of the assimilation. With this explicit policy, enacted between 1984 and 1989, the Bulgarian government forced Bulgaria's Turkish community – 900,000 people or 10 percent of the country's population, to change their names. The people affected were all ethnic Turks. By 1984 other Muslims, mostly the Muslim Roma and the Pomaks had already been forced to give up their Turkish or Muslim names for Christian names. The government had been encouraging the educated Turks to voluntarily adopt Bulgarian names.
