As Bulgaria heads for its seventh general election in nearly four years, DPS co-leader Delyan Peevski, sanctioned by the US and the UK for corruption, poses several obstacles in negotiations to form a regular government in Sofia.

“As long as Peevski is in the political terrain, we have no chance to talk with DPS on policies. If Peevski is removed from the political terrain – then we will already be able to talk,” said Nikolai Denkov, who was Bulgaria’s prime minister until March this year and is currently the leader of the Continuing Change – Democratic Bulgaria (PP-DB) parliamentary group.

Denkov’s statement coincides with a split in the Turkish minority party DPS (Renew Europe), the second political force in the country, of which Peevski is co-leader.

Over the past two weeks, Peevski has been playing power politics in his party, trying to exclude many influential members who are close and loyal to DPS founder Ahmed Dogan, the honorary leader of one of the country’s oldest and most stable political formations. Dogan is not an MP.

Under Peevski’s leadership, 30 DPS MPs supported the election of a government with a GERB mandate, although their votes were insufficient. However, another 17 MPs from the party followed Ahmed Dogan’s request and voted against the GERB government. Immediately after this vote, a real storm broke out in the local structures of the DPS, with most members declaring their allegiance to Dogan.

“There is no turning back”, announced the other co-leader of the DPS, Jevdet Chakarov, who, without mentioning Peevski’s name, said that he had led the party in an authoritarian way and that there would be big changes.

The events in the DPS represent a major upheaval in Bulgarian political life, as the DPS defines itself as “the guarantor of the peaceful Bulgarian ethnic model”. The party gives a secular character to the country’s 10% Turkish minority and has pursued a policy of independence from Ankara for more than 30 years. At the same time, the party has been accused of corruption and clientelism, with Dogan and Peevski being the main targets.

The pro-European PP-DB coalition takes advantage of Peevski’s shaky position in the party and demands that he leave politics to negotiate a government with the DPS and GERB.

“This proposal should be discussed carefully. It has its advantages, but it also has its problems,” Denkov said.

Bulgaria’s political crisis began in 2021 with the fall from power of then-prime minister Boyko Borisov and his GERB party. The situation in Sofia makes the EU’s poorest country particularly vulnerable to Russian influence and weakens NATO’s eastern flank.

“Peevski is associated with the most toxic part of Bulgarian political life at the moment. Removing him from politics would be a breath of fresh air in the current overly complex political configuration. GERB could interact much more easily with DPS if it did not have Peevski casting a dark shadow over it. The same goes for PP-DB,” political analyst Ivo Indzhov told Euractiv Bulgaria.

(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)

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