Plovdiv and Turkish-speaking at the census ("Xoraxane Roma"). For further information see the article Roma people in Plovdiv. Like elsewhere in the country, Roma people are subjected to discrimination and segregation (See the Bulgaria section of the article Antiziganism). After the Wars for National Union (Balkan Wars and World War I), the city became home for thousands of refugees from the former Bulgarian lands in Macedonia, Western and Eastern Thrace. Many of the old neighbourhoods are still referred to as "Belomorski", "Vardarski". Most of the Jews left the city after the foundation of Israel in 1948, as well as most of
Church of the Holy Mother of God, Plovdiv 10 January 1860 the bishop of Plovdiv Paisius held a service in Bulgarian language and publicly announced that his congregation denounced the Greek Patriarch of Istanbul which became a great scandal and Plovdiv became the most radical center for the struggle of the autonomy of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. On 30 April Paisius organized a Church and People's counsel in which the citizens were also represented in order to discuss the church question. Plovdiv sent a delegation to the Ottoman government asking officially for an autonomous Church. That Counsel was held annually until 1870 when the Bulgarian Exarchate was recognized