TURKIYE- Columnist Yilmaz Oztuna comments on Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit's visit to Bulgaria. A summary of his columns is as follows:
Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit will return from Bulgaria today. Bulgaria was a part of the Ottoman Empire for over 500 years, from 1362 to 1908. It split from the empire only in 1908 and became an independent kingdom. Ferdinand, Bulgaria's first king, was the grandfather of its third and final king and its present prime minister, Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Turkey, then a constitutional monarchy, appointed a staff officer, Ali Fethi Bey (later Prime Minister Fethi Okyar), as ambassador to the young state. His close friend, staff officer Maj. Mustafa Kemal Bey, was the military attaché, and later of course founded our Republic. Then our neighbor was the most loyal and faithful satellite of Soviet Russia for 45 years. In 1970, I paid my first visit to this country with the prime minister of the period, Suleyman Demirel. There I saw the hardest and toughest strain of communism. In the capital Sofia, the windows of the apartments were covered with curtains, made of old newspapers. In the 90s, I paid an official visit to this country twice with then President Suleyman Demirel. This country, which had never before experienced liberalism and democracy, was trying to be like Western Europe. Today, Bulgarian citizens can enter all the EU member countries without heeding a visa, and the nation will join the EU club before Turkey. Orthodox and Slavic Bulgaria had no objections to the EU regulations and principles. Over the past decade, they too have seen corruption. This is one of the reasons why they made their former king a prime minister and put him at the head of the executive branch. Turkey's Achilles' heel is that we come from a tradition of empire that lasted for 2,000 years. However, we have had 200 or 300 years to come to realize that we cannot control the world. In such a long period of time, our mentality has unfortunately not adapted to the reality of our situation. Now we have to live in compliance with the world's rules. I know this view might rankle some readers. Some people will ask me if I'm implying that we should take Bulgaria as an example. There will be those who will remind me that the one who modernized Bulgaria was our Tuna state Governor Midhat Pasha. However, it is the unconditional principle of my profession to help people see the truth.
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION