Turks settled in the territory of modern Bulgaria during and after the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. Being the dominant group in the Ottoman Empire for the next five centuries, they played an important part in the economic and cultural life of the land. Waves of impoverished Turks settled fertile lands, while Bulgarian families left their strategic settlements and resettled in more remote places. According to the historian Halil Inalcik, the Ottomans ensured significant Turkish presence in forward urban outposts such as Nikopol, Kyustendil, Silistra, Trikala, Skopje and Vidin and their vicinity. Ottoman Muslims constituted the majority in and around strategic routes primarily in the southern Balkans leading from Thrace towards Macedonia and the Adriatic and again from the Maritsa and Tundzha valleys towards the Danube region. According to Aubaret, the French Consul in Ruse in 1876 in the Danube Vilayet (which then included the territory of the post-1878 Bulgarian principality and Northern Dobruja) alone there were 1,120,000 Muslims, of whom 774,000 (33%) were Turks and 1,233,500 non-Muslims of whom 1,150,000 were Bulgarian. The Ottoman officer Stanislas Saint Clair in 1876 based on Ottoman teskere estimated roughly the same proportions and that Turkish males in the Danube Vilayet represent 36% of the male population. Between 1876 and 1878, through emigration, massacres, epidemics and hunger a large portion of the Turkish population vanished. The flow of Turks to Anatolia continued in a steady pattern depending on the policies of the ruling regimes until 1925 after which immigration was regulated. During the 20th century Bulgaria also practiced forced deportations and expulsions, which also targeted the Muslim Pomak population.