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Turkish Voting Rights Come Under Attack in Bulgaria

08 02 2007  Opposition says 100,000 citizens living in Turkey should not be able to vote for European parliament.

By Krassen Nikolov in Sofia (Balkan Insight, 8 Feb 07)

“Bulgaria will be Turkey’s Trojan horse in the EU!” shouted Mihail Konstaninov. The voice of the member of the Central Elections Committee became raised in fury.

He was not the only one to get so emotional. The deputies from the opposing parties nearly got into a fist fight during the debate in the parliament on Thursday.

The furore concerns the 100,000 odd votes that may come from Bulgarian Turks living in Turkey if the national assembly allows them to vote for candidates in the European parliament. Some say the deputies, elected with their votes, will be in fact representatives of Turkey, not of Bulgaria.

Politicians say squabbles over the issue reflect a battle between the ruling coalition and opposition parties, with the latter concerned the new law would win governing parties more votes in future polls.

They say the ruling coalition of Bulgarian Socialist Party, BSP, National Movement Simeon II, NDSV and DPS, representing the ethnic Turks, pushes the matter not to protect human rights, but to win more votes. The 100,000 in question usually support DPS.

This week the assembly is expected to vote on a European Parliament Elections Bill to establish the rules for the elections, which will be held for the first time in Bulgaria in May.

But on Thursday, after deputies argued for four hours over the controversial text, eighty of them walked out of the plenary hall, depriving the assembly of the necessary voting quorum.

While opposition parties insist only permanent residents in Bulgaria should vote, the ruling coalition, which has majority in the parliament, is likely to allow every citizen to be enfranchised regardless of where he or she resides.

Polling agencies estimate that on account of an expected low turnout, Bulgarian Turks living in Turkey will be able to elect one or two of the 18 Bulgarian representatives to the European parliament.

The affair is controversial largely because there is no equivalent situation elsewhere in the EU to Bulgaria’s large community in Turkey, so there is no established EU precedent to follow.

Left entirely to Bulgarian politicians, some think the outcome will be shaped by the demands of the ethnic Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms, DPS, which is part of the ruling coalition.

Bulgaria has a long and troubled relationship with its Turkish minority, which is unsurprising given its geographical position as an immediate neighbour of Turkey and its history as part of the Ottoman Empire.

The former communist regime expelled about 300,000 Turks from the country. After the one-party system collapsed in 1989, they reclaimed their Bulgarian citizenship but only some resettled in Bulgaria while others who regained Bulgarian passports stayed in Turkey.

Over the past 16 years of democracy, the Turkish community has proved well-organised in its voting and committed to the DPS.

The Central Elections Committee, which organises and coordinates general elections in Bulgaria, says about 70,000 votes come regularly from election bureau in Turkey.

Apart from these, about 30,000 people travel for the elections from homes in Turkey to vote in towns where they are registered in southern Bulgaria.

Politicians from several parties say the DPS organises the trips to gain votes and want to deny these ethnic Turks any voting rights for the European parliament. “This would mainly affect the DPS,” said Kolyo Kolev of Mediana polling agency.

The issue is difficult to solve, as Brussels has no rules that define people’s voting rights for the EU parliament.

As Vladimir Shopov, of the Alpha Research sociological agency, says no EU regulation exists to tell national parliaments how to deal with the issue of people voting outside national borders.

“Half the EU countries allow their citizens living abroad to vote and half of them do not,” said Shopov.

“Many EU countries require persons to have lived permanently [in the country] for at least six months or even two years [to vote],” said Nadezhda Mihaylova, of the United Democratic Forces coalition, one of the authors of the European Parliament Elections Bill.

Other politicians from the conservative and nationalist opposition parties support her position. “It is unnatural for citizens who have lived permanently in Turkey for years to define Bulgarian institutions without even knowing the names of the candidates they vote for,” said Ekaterina Mihaylova, of Democrats for Strong Bulgaria.

She insisted that representatives elected by Bulgarian Turks living in Turkey would in effect be representatives of Turkey in the European parliament.

Nationalist parties such as VMRO and Ataka use harsher rhetoric. The VMRO leader Krassimir Karakachanov told the national assembly recently that it was “absolutely unacceptable” for citizens living outside the EU to select European parliament representatives.

However, the left-wing government has no intention of irritating Turks in this way. Maya Manolova, a deputy of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, BSP, the main party in the ruling coalition, said the new act should follow the pattern of existing legislation regulating national elections. She said these stipulate that all citizens “even those outside the country, have the right to vote”.

The DPS naturally agrees. Chetin Kazak, a deputy of the party, said the constitution guaranteed equal voting rights for all citizens regardless of their place of residence.

“Any attempt to limit the voting rights of Bulgarian citizens… would be ruled void by the Constitutional Court,” Kazak told parliament.

Bulgarian Turks themselves are adamant that they see the right to vote as a basic civic right, based on their Bulgarian citizenship.

“It does not matter whether we are Turks, Jews or others; we are Bulgarian citizens and as such have the right to vote,” said Eshref Kahraman, who has dual citizenship and is member of the municipal council of Bursa in Turkey. He added that withdrawing that right would “harm Bulgaria’s image”.

However, the opposition believes the debate has nothing to do with principles and more to do with votes.

“The ruling parties have apparently reached a deal,” said Mihaylova. “In supporting the DPS interest in this debate, they are solving problems between the coalition partners.”

Karakachanov dubbed the situation as a “shameful bargain” and said his party will ask the president to impose a veto over the European Parliament Elections Bill, if it is adopted regardless of opposition’s protests.


Krassen Nikolov is a journalist for the Bulgarian online edition Mediapool.bg and a regular contributor to Balkan Insight. Balkan Insight is BIRN`s online publication.