In the parliamentary elections, Ahmed Dogan's party, the APS, suffered a huge defeat - it received only 1.57% of the votes. Why did the Bulgarian Turks abandon Dogan and when did the ruin begin? By Vildan Bayryamova.
In the parliamentary elections on April 19, the thinned ranks around the founder of the MRF, Ahmed Dogan, received only 1.57% support. But how did it get to this point?
The Movement for Rights and Freedoms, established in January 1990, guaranteed representation of ethnic Turks and Muslims at all levels of power. The overambitious Delyan Peevski appeared, whom Dogan personally nominated as the new leader. However, he not only took away part of the parliamentary group and summoned the mayors from the mixed regions for a photo under the coat of arms, but also managed to grab the MRF brand. Thus, Dogan's people were forced to choose the otherwise modern-sounding name Alliance for Rights and Freedoms in order to participate in elections.
When did the collapse begin
In the past, party splinters arose from the MRF, but they all suffered a complete fiasco. The first was the Party of Democratic Changes (PDP), established in May 1994 by the movement's former deputy Mehmed Hoxha. This happened after the dramatic national conference of the DPS in December 1993, when 100 delegates from Kardzhali left the forum due to disagreement with Dogan's policies.
Nedim Gendjev, who in the 1970s was a full-time employee of the State Security Service and in 1988 became the chief mufti, also tried to create an alternative to Ahmed Dogan's DPS. In the early 1990s, he registered the DPS - RB party (DPS in the Republic of Bulgaria), also called DPS-2. However, his attempts at party building hit a snag, despite the patronage of the BSP and the UDF.
In December 1998, Güner Tahir founded the NDPS - National Movement for Rights and Freedoms. An agreement was signed with the United Democratic Forces for joint participation in local elections and for joint governance. In February 1999, the NDPS received court registration. In January 2000, Dogan announced an amnesty for all MRF members who had left before the National Conference of the movement, and the leader of the NDPS, Güner Tahir, applied for unification with the MRF for the then upcoming elections. "Tahir dreams of hamsters", said then MP Dr. Hasan Ademov and defined him as an impostor. Dogan, in turn, refused amnesty for Tahir and his people.
On December 1, 2012, the People's Party Freedom and Dignity (NPSD) was founded in the NDK - a centrist liberal political party. 1,000 people attended, including Kasim Dahl and Korman Ismailov, who left the MRF in early 2011. At the first congress in November 2016, Orhan Ismailov was elected chairman. For the parliamentary elections, the NPSD formed a coalition with the NMSV under the name Center – Freedom and Dignity (2013), in 2014 it was already part of the Reformist Bloc.
In April 2016, another party was founded - DOST (Democrats for Responsibility, Freedom and Tolerance). Its leader is Lyutvi Mestan, who was previously the chairman of the MRF - between 2013 and 2015. The abbreviation translated from Turkish means "friend". This created problems with court registration, but in July 2016 the Supreme Court of Cassation issued a decision to allow it.
In June 2019, former deputies of Dogan from different periods, former deputies, former and current mayors, members of the leadership of DOST, NPSD and NDPS gathered in Plovdiv with the idea of creating a new political formation. At that time, only Kasim Dal was against the unification. However, there is no data on registration or any successful events on the political scene.
In January 2021, the Movement for Unity of the People (DEN) was born, headed by a former member of the MRF and Minister of Agriculture in the "tsarist" cabinet Mehmed Dikme. The formation was registered as an association with the participation of entire parties and individuals, the idea being to bring together all the pieces that broke away from the MRF. Before that, Dikme had called on the MRF to begin reforming the party in order to be an acceptable participant in the next government, which meant a break with Delyan Peevski. In the 2021 elections, DEN called on its supporters to vote for GERB.
With all these fragments in recent decades, Dogan's MRF managed to consolidate. Until the vote on April 19, 2026, when the result was crushing – only 1.57% support.
The Young Turks' Outflow
"Disappointment with Ahmed Dogan's policies is not a first-sense act, but the result of a long-standing feeling of replacing the original idea. Over the years, the MRF has moved away from its mission to be a guarantor of equality and real representation, and has begun to function as a closed system in which decisions are made in a narrow circle, and access to development is severely limited," commented 27-year-old lawyer from Burgas Fahreddin Mollamehmed to Deutsche Welle. According to him, local and regional structures have become encapsulated, the same people are reproduced in the party and state government, and the opportunity for new people to grow has been blocked. Thus, the party has begun to lose its inner life, and with it the trust of the people.
"We from the traditional MRF regions were left out of the focus of the other parties, and this created a feeling of political impasse. Thus, the figure of Ahmed Dogan was perceived as a symbol of stability and unification even when reality already contradicted this image," Mollamehmed points out. He specifies that the rift between Dogan and Peevski has increased expectations for change, but it has not happened, and the real reason for this clash is still unclear. According to him, this conflict between the two has revealed tension between the different centers of influence, the main goal of which is access to power.
Dogan's silence leads to a loss of trust
Dzemal Osman is from Ruen, graduated in philosophy from Sofia University, and is now studying law there. "For decades, a large part of the Muslim community was perceived as a guaranteed electorate for the MRF. Today, this is gradually changing, more and more people want to vote according to their beliefs, and not according to inherited political affiliations," he told Deutsche Welle.
Why did the young people from the community turn their backs on Dogan? "Because many have long been critical of the way politics is done in the MRF - with a sense of closure, feudal dependencies, lack of internal democracy and justice. These people did not support Delyan Peevski, nor Dogan's APS, because his symbolic and emotional influence is no longer what it was in the 1990s," says Dzemal. According to him, many people expected a renewal and transfer of leadership to the younger generation of prepared and untainted personnel, but this did not happen.
In addition, Dogan does not want to answer in detail the questions related to the complex processes that have been taking place in the MRF for decades. "His silence leads to a loss of trust," he adds. And he emphasizes that an ethnic or religious community cannot be reduced to a single political entity. "It is normal for different political views to exist within it, as long as the fundamental rights, freedoms and dignity of Turks and Muslims in Bulgaria are protected and guaranteed", says Cemal Osman.
"I also have my mistakes and shame"
"I am ashamed of the mayors and especially of this local one, and everywhere I am asked what happened to Kardzhali, how did a mafia organization take over our party. This is a party coup, and all those who carried it out were our members", said Ahmed Dogan in Kardzhali at the end of the election campaign. He arrived there for a meeting organized in a large cafe in the city center. "I came for coffee, and I feel the tension here, as if Kardzhali has been taken over, the minor tone of the regional leader makes me sad. During communism in Kardzhali, there was a will to fight, but apparently fear has taken over", Dogan said. And then he spoke about his mistakes.
"The first one I made is that I probably retired early, and I shouldn't have – then I was 58, now I'm 72 years old. After that, the MRF began to take shape entirely as an administrative structure and from there all the processes that we are now ashamed of started. We turned into a mayoral party and from Kardzhali the takeover of the MRF started, by people who wanted power and benefits for their lives. These are the facts, they can be verified," Dogan emphasized to his silent followers.
He emphasized that these elections are not about APS finding a place in the political space, in parliament, but about something else. "There are suggestions that we should have voted for Radev's party, or for PP, etc. Everyone is free to make their choice, but if our community does not have representation in parliament, I cannot imagine that. We have all become accustomed in the last 35 years to having representation in the parliamentary body of the state and in local government. If we lose our seat in the National Assembly, it will be disastrous for our community," Dogan pointed out.
"I realize that everyone who was in the manger, they betrayed us – "So our mistakes are systematic, we let ourselves be carried away by inertia, thinking that everything was fine with us, we lost our vigilance, and some of our more ambitious people pushed us with their elbows, and we became overconfident," he added. But according to him, it is not the headquarters that can make the correct assessment of each candidate, but the people on the ground.
Finally, Ahmed Dogan assured that everyone should be aware that there is one party, the APS, and the others. Whether this was a sign of an upcoming mobilization of the surviving structures was not clear. Perhaps he explained this at the subsequent meeting with the veterans who created the party structure in the region in 1990.