Bulgarian elections: Splitting of votes proved no good

The Turkish media did not pay much attention to the early general elections held on March 26 in Bulgaria, the related incidents and their possible causes. Developments that concerned 650,000 Turkish voters remained behind our domestic referendum debates. 

Compared to previous elections, in this election, two Turkish parties were unsuccessful despite Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party's (AKP) open support. The Movement for Rights and Freedoms (HÖH) passed the threshold, but its number of deputies fell to 26 from 38 because the votes were split. 

HÖH is headed by honorary chair Ahmet Doğan, but the party's official chair is Mustafa Karadayı. Opponents of Doğan regard him as "an agent of Todor Zhivkov who caused agony to Turks." 

When Kasım Dal split from HÖH, he formed another party and received one percent of the votes in the last elections. Upon this, again, another person to resign from HÖH was Lütfi Mestan, who founded the DOST Party with the support of the AKP. In a notorious incident, Doğan was attacked at the party convention; he quit his position, but kept the party under his control as the "honorary chair." 

Mestan, naturally, got closer to Turkey and the AKP. His aim was to obtain control over HÖH. He placed five people who had gone to theology faculties in Turkey in top spots on the candidate list. Deputy Chair Ruşen Rıza also was a person close to Turkey. They kept their close links to Turkey. They seemed like they were asking for more freedoms for Turks; but at the same time, they were against Turks speaking Turkish.
 
Tightening his reign more for the last three years, Mestan started to have more contact with people, making Doğan unhappy. In the Turkey-Russia plane crisis, when he talked in favor of...