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Post by Ivanov on Mar 10, 2008 5:25:40 GMT -5
Turkey's government declined to sign a EU-funded cooperation agreement with Bulgaria because of the decision of the city council in the Black Sea city of Burgas to recognize the genocide of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915-1922. The funds blocked by Turkey under the PHARE Trans-border Cooperation Program amount to EUR 32 M, the Bulgarian private TV channel BTV reported. EUR 12 M of these are for the 2007-2009 period. The agreement was supposed to be signed on March 6 by the district governors of the Bulgarian Burgas District, and the Turkish Edirne District but the meeting was canceled by the Turkish side. "It is not within the authority of the Burgas City Council to take decisions on political matters, especially with regard to this issue as there is no consensus between Turkey and Armenia over it, and the interference by a third party will not be of any help", declared Turkey's General Consul in the city of Burgas on Sunday, March 9. The Burgas Mayor Dimitar Nikolov also received Saturday a letter from the Edirne District Governor regarding Burgas City Council's decision to recognize the Armenian genocide stating: "This decision is offensive and we denounce it. Until it is canceled we will discontinue all social, cultural, and economic contracts with your district." Mayor Nikolov, who is from the Sofia Mayor Boyko Borisov's GERB party, expressed his surprise over Turkey's sharp reaction. He said the City Council was going to discuss the matter during its next session. Valery Simeonov ( president of the Burgas City Council) : "This person (the governor of Edirne) probably thinks that he is still in the Ottoman empire and Burgas is still part of his vilayet. We are independent state and this is a sovereign decision of ours. The Burgas City Council is dominated by members of the extreme right Ataka Party, and of the GERB party. On February 28 it voted to recognize the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire, and declared April 24 Day of Remembrance. Last week members of the rightist Democrats for Strong Bulgaria party of the former PM Ivan Kostov tabled a proposal for recognizing the Armenian Genocide to the city council in Bulgaria's capital Sofia. Bulgaria's parliament has rejected similar motions by the rightist opposition several times, allegedly because of the ethnic Turkish part Movement for Rights and Freedoms, which is a junior partner in the governing three-way coalition. www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=91136
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Rhezus
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Post by Rhezus on Mar 10, 2008 5:52:10 GMT -5
Well said! What has Burgas mayor to do with such an issue, when "Bulgaria's parliament has rejected similar motions by the rightist opposition several times". Seems he was beging for problems with Turkey..
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Post by Ivanov on Mar 10, 2008 7:01:09 GMT -5
The Bulgarian people want this genocide recognized! The parliament, because of the dirty political games does not do it. So, this actually is a good option. Plovdiv (2nd largest) city council recognized it in 2007, Stara Zagora(5th largest) city council recognized it together with Burgas. Now it is time Sofia city council to do it.
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Rhezus
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Post by Rhezus on Mar 10, 2008 8:22:46 GMT -5
So... the city councils suddenly authorized themselves to take up such political issues? I've never heard something like this before. When all these councils shall take the responsibility of improving living conditions and social structure of their own cities? All towns look like there's been a war around there.. "Dela, dela i samo lajna!" - such a nice slogan.
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Post by bb681 on Mar 10, 2008 9:04:16 GMT -5
I vaguely remember an effort by the Burgas council to get some sort of autonomy from Sofia and this should serve as example to the rest of the province.
Good move by the Burgas council!
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Post by pagane on Mar 10, 2008 11:17:51 GMT -5
Offensive?! Is it more offensive than the massacre of millions of Armenians? To hell with the Edirne council. Well done, Burgas!!!!
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Post by blagun on Mar 10, 2008 11:44:54 GMT -5
Bravo to the Burgas City Coucil!That's an act worthy of respect. And this is a possition I want to see more often by our politicians in Bulgarias' relation with foreign countries(not like the present day 'yesmen") And about Turkey-it seems many Turks live in some kind of a parallel reality where Tr is a superpower,and it can dictate to others how to act and what to think...well it's not and never will be;a major regional player yes,but nothing more...ever.
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Rhezus
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Post by Rhezus on Mar 10, 2008 19:02:58 GMT -5
So weird... blind for the enormous problems of their own municipalities, but taking up issues out of their business. Let this council get in action, improving things he's responsible for! Nowhere else you find such kind of cirkus.. Bulgaria is fantastic!
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Post by bb681 on Mar 10, 2008 20:33:10 GMT -5
So weird... blind for the enormous problems of their own municipalities, but taking up issues out of their business. Let this council get in action, improving things he's responsible for! Nowhere else you find such kind of cirkus.. Bulgaria is fantastic! Its not from yesterday that provincial councils lack the needed municipal freedom so they are hardly to be blamed for being so far behind the capital. This is why any such decision(even non-economical) is welcomed! I agree with you on the part about Bulgaria being "fantastic" though. I can tell you straight away that I actually dislike this country and I love the part where I could live away from it and the closest to it I get is just via discussing issues around it while sitting on my bumm, not having to be involved myself. Having said that though, just have a wild guess what my relative opinion about a semi-fanatical neighbor such as Turkey would be.
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Post by depletedreasons on Mar 11, 2008 2:17:22 GMT -5
If the members of the Burgas city council (In my opinion, those must be made of clowns) are so keen in recognizing any genocide, then they should have started with the deliberate genocides executed on Turks, Pomaks and other Muslims (such as Romas) and Jews of Bulgaria. By late 1877 it had become clear how civilians would react to the two armies' advances and retreats. Thus in the war's third and final phase, Ottoman defenses collapsed, and Muslims poured out of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia. The mood in Sofia was grim as large numbers of Muslims and Jews prepared to leave the town. Among all the region's non-Muslims, Jews enjoyed the most comfortable relations with Muslims, and they shared Muslim fears when Russia won the war. On December 20, Captain Fife, a British military attache, observed "the feeling of alarm amongst the inhabitants, and the daily departure of large numbers of them from the town." The mood soon turned still blacker. Panicked Muslims and remaining Turks, tried to make their way out of Bulgaria despite bitter winter weather. By December 28 a relief worker saw women and children begging government officials for carts for the journey south. (FO 424, vol. 59, p. 84.)
The debate over whether Russians or Bulgarians caused Turks to flee is much more than a long-forgotten dispute about responsibility for crimes in obscure towns and villages. The controversy concerns a key issue in ethnic cleansing: who is responsible-state and military authorities, or ordinary people? If perpetrators in Bulgaria in 1877 were chiefly Russians, then the Russian state, acting through its military, initiated and organized Muslim flight, which would support the hypothesis that ethnic cleansing is a crime carried out by states. But if the perpetrators were chiefly local Bulgarians, this would confirm the view that ethnic cleansing rises from society's grass roots.
Detailed eyewitness reports collected by British diplomats revealed a more complex pattern of attack in which both Russian Cossacks and local Bulgarians drove out Bulgarian Muslims. One of the most striking examples came from Balvan, a village in north central Bulgaria. British Vice Consul Edmund Calvert collected much of the evidence about Balvan from Muslim refugees who escaped to the south. The war reached Balvan when Cossacks arrived on July 7 and demanded that residents surrender their arms. The villagers complied, but the next day two more squadrons of Cossacks arrived, this time accompanied by two thousand to three thousand Bulgarians from nearby villages, armed with hatchets, clubs, and guns. The mob plundered the village, taking away cattle and seizing valuables. "They then set the village on fire," driving those who tried to escape " back into the flames." All the while, "the Cossacks, who formed an outer cordon around the village, looked on quietly."
The attack on Balvan was not unique. Similar attacks were made on villages both north and south of the Balkan mountain range. As Cossacks surrounded the village of Btikltimtik, Bulgarians took the men to a barn, which they set on fire, shooting at those who tried to escape. On July 29, only days before Turkish troops recaptured the village, Bulgarians and Cossacks set fire to houses containing the village's women and children. soc.world-journal.net/pastblanket.htmlWith the uprisings against Ottoman rule in Bulgaria and elsewhere in the Balkans in the late nineteenth century, and especially during and immediately after the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78, the direction of Turkish migrations were reversed. Large numbers of Turks and other Muslims began to migrate, initially to areas in the southern Balkans still under Ottoman control and later to Asia Minor and Anatolia. One source estimates that in addition to 500,000 Ottoman casualties during the war, one-and-a-half million Turks and other Muslims emigrated from Bulgaria to other areas of the Balkans still under Ottoman control.(1) The Balkan wars and the World War I precipitated another wave of Turkish emigration. Turkish sources estimate that during the Balkan wars alone some 440,000 Turks emigrated from Bulgaria and other areas of the Balkans to Turkey. These emigrations significantly altered the ethnic composition of the population of Bulgaria as a whole, and especially of the urban population. (2) Overall some 1.5 to 2 million Turkish and other Muslims have emigrated from Bulgaria to Turkey since 1878.academic.wsc.edu/faculty/alemino1/biblios-turks_and_other_muslims.htmlIn 1877 and 1878 the Russians made use in Bulgaria of all the tactics they had perfected in the Caucasus. Their official agents were the Cossacks and sometimes other army units. To these were joined Bulgarian revolutionaries and Bulgarian peasants eager to seize the lands, crops and cattle of the Turks. The tactics were once again those of state terror. In a typical Turkish village, Cossacks would disarm the villagers, then surround the village and shoot all but a few who tried to escape. Hemmed in, the Turks were attacked by Bulgarians, who murdered the inhabitants... The scenes recorded by European diplomats equal any pictures of inhumanity and horror in history....www.humanities.ualberta.ca/ottoman/module4/lecture4.htm
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Rhezus
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Post by Rhezus on Mar 11, 2008 4:48:13 GMT -5
Excuses, ecxuses, excuses... Why don't they see to it that they have their rights?! Do you think Sofia is better, ha.. Durty, ugly buildings, homeless dogs everywhere, etc.
Seems like many Bulgarians still have problems with that. It's a kind of obcession, blaming and acusing Turkey for this and that. Why do you say they are"semi fanatic" and what makes that Bulgaria is so much better?! The World would still preffer going to TR, making business with Turkey instead of Bulgaia. I've red in the newspapers this week, many foreigners been cheated in Bulgaria when buying properties or just being on holiday. BG is loosing in many aspects and getting bad reputation. Why do we not discuss these kind of things here, why do we not strive to be as good as i.e. Croatians or Czehs ?!
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Post by Ivanov on Mar 11, 2008 9:53:45 GMT -5
Rhezus, I have noticed long ago that you are very fond of Turkey, hostile towards Bulgaria+ you hate Greece. What is your Turkish connection? Jeny, like I've told you before, your statements lack original sources which prove them. And those cited (with no reference, to check credibility) anonymous British diplomats were servants of Jewish prime minister of Great Britain who was desperately trying to save the Ottoman's ass and who said "I don't care whether the Turks killed 30000 or even 100000 Bulgarians, we must save them." Some months before I gave you an original source of an eyewitness how the Turks surround a Bulgarian village and massacre all civilians, It is described in details: www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/related/macgahan.phpPlease, find at least something similar. You are playing with big numbers.
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Post by pagane on Mar 11, 2008 13:21:47 GMT -5
Probably a Pomak, from those who believe they are different from Bulgarians and being some autochtonous population. Religion plus brainwashing and maths is done.
As for the Turk, the only thing I can do while reading this pile of horsecrap, is laughing loud.
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Post by Ivanov on Mar 11, 2008 13:44:13 GMT -5
He is actually a Volga Bulgar, at least he claims so
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Post by bb681 on Mar 11, 2008 14:21:45 GMT -5
"If the members of the Burgas city council (In my opinion, those must be made of clowns) are so keen in recognizing any genocide, then they should have started with the deliberate genocides executed on Turks, Pomaks and other Muslims (such as Romas) and Jews of Bulgaria."
We are more likely to witness a case scenario of Turkey being divided among Greece, the Kurds and Armenians than seeing Bulgaria being charged with a genocide vs Turks/Ottomans.
Next episode of your wet-dreams type of chronicles would have to include Germans putting genocide charges on ethnic Jews...
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Post by pagane on Mar 11, 2008 14:29:43 GMT -5
Huh? Is this some kind of joke?
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Post by Ivanov on Mar 11, 2008 14:36:13 GMT -5
It is not a joke
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Post by pagane on Mar 11, 2008 14:39:07 GMT -5
If not, this guy is mightly confused, especially when considering his attitude.
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Post by Ivanov on Mar 11, 2008 15:41:05 GMT -5
Actually, his theory sounds reasonable (if you have in mind the alleged Turkic origin of the Bulgars): He believes that Bulgars were of Turkic origin, and unlike us, the Volga Bulgars converted to Islam, so he has enough reasons to shape his current attitude. My impression is that Volga Bulgars don't feel us close. Maybe a year ago, on these forums came a girl who also claimed such an origin - she said she loved most Russia and Turkey. I think the decision of the Volga Bulgars to choose Islam led them to their end, they were assimilated and gone.
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Post by pagane on Mar 11, 2008 15:54:44 GMT -5
Well, they are not gone. There are still quite many people who consider themselves Bulgars. And I don't think it's Islam that brough to the end of their state. They simply had mighty enemies they were not able to oppose.
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