/ world today news/ Kalina Androlova’s interview with Petar Vodenski, diplomat, former ambassador of Bulgaria to Turkey, Moldova and Cyprus, colonel of the Bulgarian military intelligence.
Mr. Vodenski, is the reaction of the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry adequate to the scandal that broke out around Lyutvi Mestan? Don’t you think that the expulsion of the consul is an attempt to circumvent the decision to expel Ambassador Gokce? Which would have a completely different meaning compared to firing some employees?
Let’s take a broader look at these developments. Basically, expelling a foreign diplomat, declaring him persona non grata (unwanted person) is part of the arsenal of heavy artillery in diplomacy and is resorted to relatively rarely. What are we showing with this expulsion? We show that, in our opinion, Turkey is interfering in the internal affairs of our country, and because this attache was dealing with religious issues, we show that for us this is unacceptable, that in our opinion, Turkish official diplomatic representatives do not have the right to “roam” among the Muslims in Bulgaria and to “process” them in one direction or another. From this point of view, the expulsion of the attache (the lowest diplomatic rank) is at the same time a sign from our side that we do not wish for the deterioration of relations with Turkey, therefore we have not raised the level unnecessarily.
And the question of Ambassador Gökçe and his future in this post is very interesting. When I was in an active position in the Bulgarian administration, the “kitchen” for making a decision was as follows: the experts monitor the developments, and when the time comes, they make corresponding written proposals (memorandum) to the management, which must approve them. Such a report note should be very competently written, be short (no management likes to read long materials), and at the same time the arguments in it should be sufficiently convincing. Imagine if the leadership had to be offered something sharper regarding Turkey – instead of justifying it at length, now it is enough to just write that “…this is necessary in view of the inordinate interference in our internal affairs by of Ambassador Gökçe…” and the relevant leadership would already be convinced of the necessity of the given proposal. In other words, if I were in the place of the Turkish MFA colleagues in Ankara, I would take Gokce and send someone else (Turkey has a whole galaxy of experienced diplomats), that would better serve Turkey’s interests.
Turkey is an extremely complex country, it is powerful, close to us, with imperial aspirations, with a doctrine that, unlike before, now includes the use of minorities. Do you think that the Bulgarian ambassador to Turkey, Nadezhda Neinski, has enough competences to be in this country? I have not heard of any reactions from her side in Turkey to the scandal that broke out here. In practice, Bulgaria is without an ambassador there.
Look, I was consul general in Istanbul, I was ambassador in Ankara, in Chisinau and in Nicosia. One of the rules I have strictly followed is not to comment on the actions of colleagues before and colleagues after me in the respective post, because, given my objective and inevitable bias (everyone thinks they are the best at a given post and that is more strongly from him), it would not be fair to them.
At the same time (as I have shared in my book “Otherwise, diplomacy is a serious craft”), among our American colleagues there is an opinion that an ambassador, after working in a given place for a year and a half or two, “goes native”, i.e. . “becomes local”, i.e. ceases to protect the interests of its country before the authorities of the country of accreditation and begins to protect the interests of the country of accreditation before the authorities of its country.
Well, in my almost 40-year practice in diplomacy, I have met ambassadors who did not “become local” for a longer period, but at the same time I have also seen colleagues who managed to shorten the period specified by the Americans. Let me stop there in answering this question.
In the context of the future relations between the two countries, in what way could Turkey use the Turkish minority in Bulgaria, for what interests and purposes?
I don’t like to use the term “Turkish minority”, let’s not forget that there is still no international legal definition of what a minority is, etc., so I won’t go into this topic.
And in answer to your question: Turkey has always tried to use the Bulgarian Turks to exert influence and control over them in order to advance its interests. For the first time, I read a similar conclusion in a report by a royal officer from the Bulgarian military intelligence, who in the 1930s was sent “on a mission” to Thrace and wrote a report about what he saw, with the relevant conclusions. Turkey has constantly made such attempts, is making them now; only the form, which depends on the resource, is changed, but not the content of this intervention.
How are you mixing now? Well, the specially created TIKA agency is used to implement various programs and investments in the areas where a massive Turkish and Muslim population lives (this is not only in Bulgaria, this is in the countries of the Western Balkans, etc.) Another type of intervention is by a line of Diyanet (a structure for religious affairs of the Turkish government), which sends imams to these areas, allocates huge financial resources, etc. All this is under the supervision and guidance of the MIT (Turkish intelligence). And this is not from today, it is not from yesterday.
There are two aspects here on which I would like to focus the readers’ attention. The first is the global approach, the global vision, according to which Turkey seeks to be one of the “big players” in establishing control over the “Silk Road”, or at least in those sections of the road where it can play some role : from the Adriatic, across the Black Sea, to the Caucasus and beyond, to the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Here, Turkey seeks to purposefully use its resources to develop economic cooperation with the countries of this belt, advancing its interests through “Turklik” (generally speaking, everything related to Turkish) and the Muslim religion.
The second aspect is related to the attitude of the Bulgarian society towards these Turkish actions in Bulgaria. I will not say anything new if I draw attention to the fact that with their clumsy actions, the Turkish diplomats – I mean the so flagrant interference in the internal political process in our country and the determination of who should be the head of a given party and who the activists of this party should vote for – all this created sentiments in the Bulgarian society that spread, more or less, to the Bulgarian Turks as well, and this is very unfair to them and very dangerous for all of us. I have worked for 20 years on Turkey, I remember that insane decision to change the names of our compatriots, I have encountered human suffering related to this policy. (Let me emphasize that about this decision I do not remember any of the politicians asking the experts who were working with Turkey at the time). I assume that the basis of such a decision was the then increasing interference of Turkey in the internal affairs of Bulgaria: after the military coup of General Evren, tens of thousands of activists of leftist, leftist, radical, Kurdish, etc. parties in Turkey were thrown into prisons , which, figuratively speaking, freed up a resource for Turkey to pay attention abroad and strengthen its espionage activities in neighboring countries, including Bulgaria. The then Bulgarian leader Todor Zhivkov said in a meeting with the Turkish ambassador that “Bulgaria is not Cyprus!” (referring to the Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus). When I said Cyprus, I thought of a quote in the book “Strategic Depth” by the Turkish Prime Minister Davutoglu, which reads (I quote from memory): “Turkey, using the Turkish and Muslim factor in Bulgaria, must create such conditions and guarantees, so that, if necessary, he can act as he did in Cyprus”. And this could cause even stronger sentiments in our country against our compatriots – Bulgarian Turks, which no one is interested in.
Let’s take a “bird’s eye view” again: apparently Davutoğlu’s concept of strategic depth was successful at the beginning of its implementation, it failed at the moment Turkey “believed in itself” and decided to play not only a regional but also a global role, and in this its interests collided with Russia, USA, EU, Iran, etc. Currently, Turkey, which until a few days ago had good and problem-free relations only with Bulgaria (with the other neighbors there were various contradictions), now has problems with everyone, including the “big players” – with Russia (in Syria, etc.), with the USA (regarding the role of the Kurds), with the EU (regarding refugees). Perhaps against this background, our “provincial” unrest with the expulsion of a Turkish attaché on social affairs fits in as being done at the right time, when the “big ones” will not scold us for such an action?
In what aspect should the Bulgarian intelligence and counterintelligence work in relation to Turkey, what are its tasks? To put it another way: what are the threats from Turkey?
Our special services should monitor the actions of their foreign colleagues in Bulgaria and suggest to the management what to do. Do they do it? I don’t know.
It is known that the services obtain information through various channels, among which “live sources” are the most valuable. Do our services now have such sources? Well, who would agree to help Bulgaria with information about one or the other, if he knows that one day, sooner or later, his name will be printed publicly on the website of some (new or old) Dossier Commission? I worked for the Bulgarian military intelligence, I was in our embassy in Ankara during the revival process, one of my tasks was to monitor whether the “potential adversary” had the resources to attack us, where this resource was concentrated, so that Bulgaria could to answer adequately, etc., and as a result… I was expelled as an informer of the DS!?! Would I work for such services again?
Hopefully the colleagues from the services will have someone to work with today, because NATO is NATO, but, for example, whether Greece has stopped its special activity in Turkey, or Turkey – in Greece; whether foreign embassies in Sofia, including from allied countries, engage in similar activities. Snowden revealed how the US spied on its NATO allies, etc.
And what could be the threats from Turkey to Bulgaria, if there are any at all? Not long ago, we were at the same table with… I will not name names, let me say – with colleagues in the line of diplomacy. One asked me “what are these fabrications about a Turkish threat to South-Eastern Bulgaria and how can such an unthinkable thing happen”. I told him to imagine a hypothetical scenario in which Turkey “involuntarily releases” a large group of migrants to Bulgaria, from several hundred to several tens of thousands of people, who, even without explicit instigation by possible representatives of the special forces among them, would inevitably cause disturbances, and against this background, Turkey sent us an army as specialized help to deal with it… After that, we will have to look for arguments and counter-arguments from the precedents in Kosovo, Abkhazia, Cyprus or Crimea – examples of pain. But this is only a hypothesis, of course, which does not mean that we should not think about it.
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