Supporters of Bulgaria’s ultra-nationalist party Ataka and Yane Yanev’s rightist Order Law and Justice party staged separate protests at the country’s borders with Turkey on July 4 2009 in protest against Turkish citizens with Bulgarian passports coming in to the country to vote on the eve of the country’s national parliamentary elections.
 
"Election tourism" is a vexed issue among opponents of the practice, given that people arriving from Turkey overwhelmingly vote for Ahmed Dogan’s Movement for Rights and Freedoms, the party led and supported mainly by Bulgarians of ethnic Turkish descent.
 
In a July 3 report, Bulgarian National Television (BNT) said that people from Turkey were arriving in groups in Kurdjali, in 20 buses, to get identification documents and passports to enable them to vote.
 
Queues at the passport office had started to build up from that morning, BNT. People interviewed on camera confirmed to BNT that they had come to the country to vote.
 
Asked why they were voting inside Bulgaria when there were voting stations in Turkey, people declined to answer.
 
Commentators have suggested that MRF supporters are being deployed in areas where their votes could boost majoritarian candidates. The 2009 elections for Bulgaria’s unicameral Parliament, the National Assembly, are on the basis of a mixed system of proportional representation and majoritarian voting.
 
BNT said that more than 100 000 people in the Kurdjali region had dual Turkish and Bulgarian citizenship.
 
At the Kapitan Andreevo border checkpoint, more than 800 people blocked the road, Bulgarian news agency Focus said on July 4.
 
The OLJ press office said that the protest was against Turkish interference in Bulgarian domestic affairs.
 
The protest involved supporters of OLJ, the Macedonian People’s Revolution Organisation VMRO, Agrarian National Union, Bulgarian National Agrarian Union, European People’s Party, New Right Wing as well as civil organisations from the towns of Haskovo, Burgas, Ruse, Pazardzhik, Plovdiv, Kardzhali and Sliven have gathered at the rally.
 
The theme of the protest was "Stop Doganisation"
 
Protestors said government and Bulgarian institutions had deserted from defending national interests and thus citizens had to defend the country.
 
Despite OLJ had filled in application for peaceful rally police and gendarmerie presence have been stepped up in the area. They have been pushing people aside.
"Ministry of Interior services are put against Bulgarians to defend interest of a foreign country-Turkey," leader of VMRO and OLJ nominee for MP in the town of Ruse Krasimir Karakachanov said during the rally.
 
Earlier, the OLJ’s Dimitar Abadzhiev said that flights were being chartered to bring in MRF supporters from Turkey.
 
Ataka supporters gathered at both the Kapitan Andreevo and Lesovo border checkpoints, Focus said.
 
Sedan cars, minibuses and buses were crossing into Bulgaria from Turkey in a steady stream, with a large police presence on guard.
 
"The so-called Bulgarian police have defended sharply Turkish buses as they crossed the Bulgarian border. It is a shame for Bulgarian police to be used for defending Turkish voters," Ataka leader Volen Siderov said, quoted by Focus.
 
"Instead of allowing us to block the road we had to fight with them (the police). We do not want to fight with Bulgarian police but it has been used against Bulgarian patriots," Siderov said.
 
He said Ataka supporters’ presence at the border checkpoint had nothing to do with the actions of Order, Law and Justice.
 
Siderov said that the Turkish buses had been sponsored by Ankara, and accused Bulgaria’s Foreign Minister of inaction and national betrayal.
 
In a separate incident, several Bulgarians commented on internet forums on a fatal motor vehicle crash on July 4 in which seven Turkish citizens, one a 12-year-old child, died in a collision between a Turkish van and a Serbian bus near Svilengrad.
 
In its report on the crash, BNT quoted authorities as saying that the cause of the crash was the Turkish vehicle swerving into the Serbian vehicle.

While some initial comments in Bulgaria linked the Turkish vehicle to "election tourism", authorities said that the occupants of the vehicle were Turkish people travelling from Germany in transit to Turkey.