Bulgarian ultra-nationalist movement Ataka tried to disrupt an official reception for Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in front of Sofia's St Alexander Nevski cathedral.

Eyewitnesses told The Sofia Echo that police led away Pavel Shopov, deputy chairperson of the parliamentary group of Ataka.

About 100 Ataka supporters, including movement leader Volen Siderov, gathered before the cathedral to protest against Erdogan’s two-day visit to Bulgaria. In ultra-nationalist circles, considerable emotion is generated by anything to do with Turkey, because Bulgaria was under Ottoman rule for five centuries up to the end of the 19th century.

Siderov said that Erdogan wanted to “seize Bulgaria’s waters”, an apparent reference to the Gorna Arda electricity generation project. An agreement on the project was to be signed during Erdogan’s visit, Siderov said, as quoted by Focus news agency.

On March 26, 2008, Siderov said that Erdogan’s planned visits outside Sofia were illegal because they did not conform to official protocol.

Erdogan's visit to Bulgaria on March 27-28 is at the invitation of his counterpart Sergei Stanishev. The agenda of Erdogan's visit includes meetings with Stanishev and Parliament Speaker Georgi Pirinski, as well as a trip to the town of Kurdjali. The region of Kurdjali in south-eastern Bulgaria is heavily populated by the Turkish ethnic minority in Bulgaria.