Radical Islam: A Bulgarian Storm In A Tea Cup

The formation of an allegedly radical Islamic party in Bulgaria last Saturday has caused a week of uproar amongst Bulgaria’s political elite and media.

The brothers Ali and Yuzeir Yuzeirov founded the “Muslim Democratic Union” on Saturday. The new party is based in Slavyanovo village, near Popovo - an area largely populated by ethnic Turks.

The brothers have been in the spotlight before as Yuzeir, a chicken meat importer, is the founder and leader of the "Bulgarian Red Crescent," an organization the Bulgarian Red Cross says is illegal, according to the Geneva Convention. He also ordered the monument of the Unknown Turkish Soldier to be built in his village - the monument was dismantled late Wednesday after the municipality authorities stepped in.

The reaction to the founding of the Muslim Democratic Union was swift, with the Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov calling the move a provocation to ethnic peace in the country and former rightist PM Ivan Kostov slamming the party founders. The whole political spectrum except the ethnic Turkish DPS party then jumped on the bandwagon trying to get their sound bites out of the affair.

Stop.... Rewind...... This whole situation is actually a storm in a tea cup and has been used by politicians to show themselves at their ‘nationalistic’ best. Although the party is both divisive, as it only attracts Muslim members, and most likely against the Bulgarian constitution, it must be mentioned that it is so small that it is completely insignificant.

The truth is that the very same ‘nationalistic’ politicians who are now ‘up in arms’ have let Bulgarian culture be infiltrated by Turkish influences once again over the last decades without saying a word. This is not to say that the Turkish population in Bulgaria does not deserve a voice it is just a suggestion for Bulgaria to keep a hold on its long fought for national identity.

All people in a democratic society are obviously allowed to voice their views and to have a foot on the political ladder but the major influence of Turkey in the everyday life of the Bulgarian media and politics is non-democratic, as it is out of proportion with the percentage of ethnic Turks in the population. To use Germany as an example – the Turkish influence in politics is roughly proportional to the number of Turks living in the country – this is surely fair in a democracy.

You could argue that it is the Bulgarian public who are to blame and not the politicians as they fail to use their votes when compared to the Turkish community but it is still up to the main stream politicians to protect the rights of the native population.

I would like to ask where all these politicians have been hiding over the past 20 years while unconstitutional Turkish parties, Turkish soaps on the TV and even Turkish news on BNT have been slowly eroding the country’s culture.

The rise of radical Islam is certainly not yet a threat to Bulgarian ethnic peace whatever the people who are now looking at our TV screens with shocked expressions may have you believe. However, these very same faces seem to have missed the real threat!