Eurasia Press & News
Bulgaria is threatening to block Turkey’s application to become member of the European Union unless it pays out billions of euros in compensation for displaced people, in a case dating back to the days of the Ottoman Empire.
Bulgarian minister in charge of the Bulgarians abroad, Bozhidar Dimitrov, pressed the claim in remarks to the Bulgarian newspaper, 24 Hours, on Sunday.
“Turkey is surely able to pay this sum, after all, it’s the 16th largest economic power in the world,” Dimitrov said, putting a sum of USD 20 billion (EUR 14 billion) on the settlement. “One of the three conditions of Turkey’s full membership of the EU is solving the problem of the real estate of Thracian refugees.”
The Ottoman Empire in 1913 expelled hundreds of thousands of ethnic Bulgarians from lands lying on the western side of the Bosphorus. It recognized the rights of the displaced people in a 1925 treaty, but the agreement was never implemented, Bulgaria says. The Ottoman Empire became the Republic of Turkey in 1929.
An official with the Bulgarian government’s press office, Veselin Ninov, told EUobserver on Monday that Mr. Dimitrov’s statement reflects government policy and that the dispute is being handled by a Bulgarian-Turkish intergovernmental working group.
However, Mr. Ninov mentioned a different sum.
