“This practice of ‘creating’ new languages - God forbid new nations, in the Balkans, of which w are all too familiar, starts exactly like this - when a nature is unclear, it is intermediate”, Kocheva said. “However, such practice eventually finds another ethnonym, another linguistic labelling, which has nothing to do with its genetic derivation, i.e. with Bulgarian. In other words, I mean to say that it is no wonder that one day we will end up not only with a Shopi language and a Shopi nation, but that this language will be almost Serbian.”

“I feel sorry for the Bulgarian minority in Serbia because instead of becoming a bridge of good-neighbourliness between the two countries it is becoming a hostage of Serbian political interests in the region,”

In an open letter to Serbian state officials, eight ethnic Bulgarian associations in Serbia recently condemned the newly resurged “Shopi ethnicity” narrative in that country. A key bone of contention is the support provided by the National Council of the Bulgarian National Minority, the Municipality of Bosilegrad, and the Hristo Botev National Library in Bosilegrad for A Book about Bosilegrad – Notes from the Past by Ivan Mitic, where the author claims that the local Bulgarian population is not Bulgarian but belongs to a separate Shopi nation. The letter accuses the National Council of funding a publication that undermines Bulgarian history and identity, violating its constitutional duty to protect minority rights.