Bulgaria 'Postpones Turkish PM Visit'

Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu will not be visiting Bulgaria in January as previously planned, Turkish media reports suggest.

The reason is that Sofia is not willing to receive him before June's general election in Turkey, according to the English-language version Zaman daily.

Information obtained by the newspaper reveals the visit is not likely to take place before the parliamentary elections.

Previously, Davutoglu had told Turkish lawmakers he was going to visit Macedonia and Bulgaria "sometime" in January and would "take new steps with these countries."

Bulgarian officials then told Turkish counterparts they could not host him in January but would do so in end-February instead.

But "according to a well-placed source who asked not to be named, the Bulgarians do not see the point of organizing a visit at this time and do not want to invest their energy in such a meeting," Zaman writes.

The Bulgarian Foreign Ministry in Sofia has not yet commented.

Davutoglu's last visit, which took place in the end of February this year, had been initially planned for the first weeks of February but was rescheduled after he was denied a meeting with Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev. The latter explained it was "technically impossible" to meet Davutoglu at that time.