site.btaOpposition Bulgarian Socialist Party Calls On Prime Minister Borissov to Tell Turkish President Erdogan That His Recent Remark about Kurdjali is Unacceptable

Sofia, March 25 (BTA) - The National Council of the opposition Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) Sunday adopted a declaration urging Prime Minister Boyko Borissov to tell Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the March 26 high-level meeting in the coastal city of Varna that President Erdogan's statement in mid-March that Kurdjali is part of Turkey's spiritual borders is unacceptable. BSP reiterated its position that the statement is yet another provocation to Bulgaria's sovereignty and national integrity.

The declaration also says that Bulgaria's role as a go-between Europe and Turkey must not be at the expense of its national interest.

The BSP adopted the declaration on the eve of March 26, marked as the Day of Thrace. The declaration also calls on Borissov to raise the issue with the Thracian refugees compensations when the EU leaders meet with Erdogan in Varna.

The matter concerns 52,000 ethnic Bulgarians who were forced to resettle to Bulgaria from Eastern Thrace in Turkey after the 1913 Second Balkan War, leaving behind land properties which, according to an official document prepared by the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry in 1983, were worth over 10,000 million US dollars at that time.