Head of Bulgaria's DOST Party Meets Turkey's Erdogan

A delegation of DOST party, led by its chair Lyutvi Mestan, held a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Ankara, the party's press office has said.

Key DOST members accompanying Mestan included Shabanali Ahmed, Hyusein Hafazov and Aydoan Alo.

Two AKP lawmakers (Hüseyin Bürge and Aziz Babuşcu) alongside Erdoğan's adviser Ibrahim Kalın, also attended the meeting.

The issues discussed are not made clear.

Mestan has visited Turkey to meet officials several times for the past two years. In 2014, while still heading the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS) party, he met Erdoğan and congratulated him on his election as President.

In December of last year, he was expelled from the DPS, Bulgaria's second-largest opposition force, after being accused by the party's honorary chair of betraying the interests of his country and siding with Turkey in the Moscow-Ankara dispute over the downed Russian warplane.

He held a meeting with then Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in April and with incumbent Binali Yildirim in August.

The acronym of Mestan's party, DOST (which stands for Democrats for Responsibility, Solidarity and Tolerance) spells and sounds like a word for "friend" in Turkish.