The persona non grata expression is considered to be diplomatic lingo, meaning “you must leave now, bad guy”. This is how you say to a foreign diplomat that he is no longer welcome to the country he has been accredited to – the man might have broken the rules, including the unspoken ones or has been revealed as a spy, or the relations between the two states are simply worsening. The expression is Italian and it literally means “a person that is not welcome here anymore”. This situation is not so common for any country’s diplomacy and it requires really serious reasons.

However, that was exactly what happened to Turkish diplomat Ugur Emiroglu, a social issues attaché with Turkey’s Consulate General in Burgas. The Bulgarian foreign ministry revealed no details and refused to comment his expulsion, which is a normal practice for diplomacy. At the same time the latter is perfectly aware of the fact that it is public media’s turn now and usually “anonymous diplomatic sources” are cited. The colleagues tried to enlighten the biography of Emiroglu. If everything read and heard is true, then the man is indeed a classical persona non grata.

According to the anonymous sources mentioned above, the diplomat was involved in religious activities and propaganda, related to the Muslim community in Bulgaria – something incompatible with his diplomatic status. It turns out that before his 2015 Burgas accreditation Ugur Emiroglu used to be a mufti of Muslim communities across a series of cities, Turkish Busra and French Strasbourg among others. Once he received diplomatic immunity, he set off on tours among the East Bulgaria Muslim communities, teaching local imams to proper serving at mosques. Furthermore, the man agitated for certain political persons in the context of the inter-party fight within the Movement for Rights and Freedoms – a parliamentary represented party with its voters mainly coming from the Muslim community. This is now par excellence interference in the home policy of a sovereign state.

“Ugur Emiroglu is one of those specific agents of MIT – the Turkish intelligence who work in the direction of religious activities,” MP from the Patriotic Front Valeri Simeonov said directly. “His biography shows the precision of MIT’s activities and the great accent it puts on the treatment of the Bulgarian Muslim religious community,” the MP further claims. Former intelligence agents from this country added that Emiroglu’s actions in Bulgariа aimed at “the further development of a network of agentswho were to work for grounding neo-Ottomanism here”.

Following another diplomatic rule, named reciprocity, Ankara decided in its turn to expulse the first secretary of the Bulgarian consulate in Istanbul Zornitsa Apostolova, in charge of the connections with the Bulgarian Exarchate in Istanbul. In such cases the host state is not obliged to explain anything, but it seems unlikely for Apostolova to have toured around Istanbul, preaching Orthodox Christianity.

So, is Bulgaria’s sovereignty endangered? Optimists say “no”. Then why did the parliament create, right before Emiroglu’s expulsion, a temporary committee for the search of all facts and circumstances, related to the claims on Turkish and Russian interference in Bulgaria’s domestic issues? Furthermore, are there any other directions for that interference? How should we take the statement of Chief Mufti Mustafa Hadji, saying that 40% of the Muslim religion’s maintenance in Bulgaria comes from Turkey?

English version: Zhivko Stanchev