EVENTS held by ultra-nationalist party Ataka throughout Bulgaria on February 19 - the 133-year anniversary of the hanging of Vassil Levski - grew into anti-Turk demonstrations.

On February 20, news that 6500 people in the central Bulgarian town of Kazanluk had signed a petition asking for the official recognition of the Turkish minority in Bulgaria, made headlines. The initiator of the petition, Menderes Kungyun, told Bulgarian news agency BTA on February 20 that the petition was not organised through official channels and that the principal demand was to stop ethnic inequality in this country, which was caused by imperfect national legislation.

“Ataka is saying the truth now (about the lack of fair legislation in Bulgaria),” Kungyun said.

He said that all Muslims’rights were impaired and cited the lack of a Muslim cemetery in the Kazanluk Municipality, which has a population of 15 000 Muslims.

The petition demanded that Turkish be adopted as a second official language in Bulgaria, that the ban on forming ethnic parties be cancelled and that the Turkish minority be officially recognised.

Petitioners further insisted on the opening of a Turkish state university, a Turkish-language broadcasts directorate at Bulgarian National Radio and Bulgarian National Television, and on a rejection of the Bulgarian ethnic model, “which is an extension of the assimilation and genocide of the Turkish-Muslim minority”.

The signatories included members of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) and their entire families.

On February 21, Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev, who is also leader of the ruling Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), called the demands “illegal and provocative” and warned Bulgarians to be wary of another Ataka attempt of “cheap populism” on March 3, the Bulgarian national holiday.

Whoever tried to play with the patriotic feelings of  Bulgarians was playing with fire, Stanishev said. Every action in the direction of ethnic intolerance would encounter the categorical resistance of the state, he said.

The BSP would also insist that relevant government institutions clarify who would gain from stirring ethnic tensions in Bulgaria and was behind such efforts, BSP deputy chairman Ivelin Nikolov told a news conference on February 21.

Speaking in Parliament on February 22, Ataka leader Volen Siderov said that it was absurd to link Ataka to the petition of a group of citizens asking for more autonomy of the Turkish national minority in Bulgaria.  He said that it was Stanishev, particularly, who had looked for a link to Ataka.

What led to separatism was the politics of the MRF - part of the current ruling coalition - and other parties that acted as their accomplice and signed the framework convention on ethnic minorities when Ivan Kostov was prime minister. The constitution gave more than enough rights to all citizens regardless of their background, Siderov said. There was no need to sign a special convention to give privileges to separate groups.

On February 20, Kemal Eyup, chairman of the National Assembly’s Commission for Protection against Discrimination, called the petition a political act probably aimed at pushing the MRF out of power.

The same day, speaking on behalf of the MRF parliamentary group, MRF deputy chairman Lyutvi Mestan described the petition as “yet another carefully planned and brazen provocation against the integration model established in this country”.

Siderov said that the MRF’s disassociation from the petition was hypocritical because many MRF MPs, including Mestan, had repeatedly demanded that Bulgaria become a multinational, multiethnic country.

A spokesperson for the chief mufti’s office, Hussein Hafazov, refused to comment on the declaration, saying that the demands did not concern Muslim religious or spiritual activity.

Hafazov said that there was no threat to ethnic peace in Bulgaria.

On February 20, the National Committee for the Defence of National Interests described the petition as a criminal act aimed against the unity of the state.

The committee demanded that the initiators be arrested and put on trial.

Committee head Mincho Minchev accused the Interior Ministry and the Prosecution Office of passivity.

The committee also apologised for supporting President Georgi Purvanov’s candidature for president, since he had abandoned the national interests, the local Christo Botev Radio reported.