After both Bulgaria and Armenia were conquered by the Ottoman Empire , many Armenian settlers from Armenia , Crimea , the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Asia Minor arrived in what is now Bulgaria due to internal migration . Those coming from Armenia were forced to seek a new homeland because of their country 's devastation by Arabs , Persians , and Turks . With Bulgaria gaining autonomy in the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 , many Armenians fled the Ottoman Empire because of the Hamidian massacres in the 1890s and settled in the country , particularly in the major cities of Plovdiv and Varna . In 1878 , there were 5,300 Armenians in the Principality of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia , and this number increased by almost 20,000 after the Hamidian massacres
Hamidian massacres
Hamidian massacres
Armenians in Bulgaria