Istanbul-Based 'Bulturk' Blasts Bulgaria's Ethnic Turkish Party

Bulgaria's ethnic Turkish party DPS (Movement for Rights and Freedoms) and its leader Ahmed Dogan have been subjected to devastating criticism by Bulturk, the organization of Bulgarian Turkish expats living in Turkey.

In a formal statement to the media, Ismail Erdem, deputy head of Bulturk, has slammed DPS and Dogan, voicing similar criticism as DPS MP Kasim Dal, who has resigned from the leadership of the ethnic Turkish party.

Erdem declares that the DPS party has estranged the ideas of the Bulgarian Turks, who suffered from the so called "Revival Process" (or "Regeneration Process"), a notorious assimilation campaign undertaken by the Bulgarian communist authorities in the late 1980s. The formation of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms back in 1990 has been viewed as a reaction to the Revival Process after the fall of the communist regime.

The assimilation campaign, which included measures such as forcing the Muslims in Bulgaria to take Slavic Christian names, made some 300 000 Bulgarian Turks to flee to Turkey, and even though an estimated half of them came back after 1989, cities such as Istanbul and Bursa have large communities of Bulgarian Turkish expats who fled the "Revival Process".

Bulturk is an organization of the Bulgarian Turkish expats in Turkey, which is traditionally critical of the DPS party.

Erdem's statement, as cited by BNR, contains harsh criticism of DPS founder and leader Ahmed Dogan.

Nizamettin Yumurtaca, a representative of another organization of Bulgarian Turkish expats, the Association for Culture and Cooperation of the Balkan Turks in Istanbul, thinks that expat organizations in Turkey should not take a side in the rift between Kasim Dal and the DPS leadership as the conflict is an intra-party matter.

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