I've heard people saying that the massacres turkey carried out in the 1870s were genocide. How valid is this claim?

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I assume you are referring to the killing of ethnic Bulgars by Ottoman forces during the April Uprising?

It is a stretch to call this a genocide, at least under the traditional definition of such. The massacres at Batak and other locations were certainly crimes against humanity (and attracted widespread condemnation by other European powers at the time). However, the killings were largely perpetrated by irregulars (the infamously undisciplined bashi-bazouk), many of whom would have been Pomaks or other Slavic Muslims. Not that the Ottomans are absolved of culpability, but what killings did occur were largely a result of local rivalries/disputes/jealousies (Bulgaria has a host of different tribes and ethnic groups, many of whom share mutual hatreds). There doesn't seem to me to be much evidence of a systematic attempt to wipe out the Bulgarians, "only" an excessively brutal suppression of a revolt.

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On the other hand, the annihilation of around a million European Muslims of various ethnicities in the wake of the Russo-Turkish War that followed was definitely ethnic cleansing.

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Are you referring to the Circassian War?

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No the 1877-78 war, though a million killed is an exaggeration. That many people were displaced but many were just forced to flee death into Turkey. This including what may have been an actual majority of the population of Bulgaria; though Bulgaria was larger then then it is now. Everyone was very fond of having the chance to all but shut the Turks back into Asia Minor, by any and all means possible. If the British and French had not intervened its likely that Constantinople would have been put to the torch and sword; which is of course precisely why they decided not to allow that to happen. It would have meant the collapse of the Ottoman and who knows; its possible the Russians and allies wouldn't have stopped at controlling the Bosporus.

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