Ahmed Dogan, leader of the Turkish-led Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF), has issued a call to arms to his party's supporters in the run-up to this summer's elections. "You must ensure that you exceed 20 000 votes this time around," he said.

He made his address in Balchik, during the party’s pre-election campaign, in a region noted as a traditional stronghold for the MRF party.
 
In 2005, the party received 14 000 votes from Dobrudja. But, according to Dogan, "what was once achieved is no longer enough" Dnevnik daily reported.
 
"The politics of survivalism entails mandatory development and strife for something more. For us to be equal, means that our development must be accelerated drastically. We must aim to overtake our opponents; we have to be above them, in order to be equal to them. Others may find those words offensive but the truth is that anti-MRF campaigns in this country have become a norm, a trend," he said.
 
Dogan went even further by claiming that "ethnic Turks must carry on the fight, even if they have to ‘elbow others’".
 
According to Dogan, Bulgaria is not very different from the rest of Europe in terms of discrimination, as there is a "difference between the Frenchman who graduated from the Sorbonne University in Paris and the foreigner who accomplished the same".
 
"People from Dobrudja are slow to react, but once they get going, they are like a freight train," he said. Dogan, who hails from Dobrudja himself, angrily recalled the words of former agriculture minister, Nihat Kabil, who said that "the Dobrudja people think slowly and need extra time to grasp the context".
 
"I am a local myself too and we often get insulted by such statements," he said in an attempt to explain his sharp response earlier to Kabil's comments.