Bulgaria's ethnic Turkish party wants to show that the voting restrictions will in no way affect the party's turnout in the MEP vote, the ethnic leader Ahmed Dogan said after casting his ballot.

Some 185,000 of the core voters of the ethnic party Movement for Rights and Freedoms will not be allowed to the polling stations, because of the controversial law that the government adopted for the country's first MEP elections. It states that only Bulgarian nationals who have lived in the county or in a EU member state in the three months prior to the vote will be allowed to cast their ballots.

Dogan commented that he does not see any grounds for early parliamentary elections in the country. The turnout is alarmingly low for the time of the day, he said but expressed his hopes that this is due to the heavy rains all over Bulgaria.

"In these elections the structure of Bulgarian citizens' voting will be clearly outlined in terms of their will - this is a very important political message, that we politicians must read correctly," Doganov concluded.

The Movement for Rights and Freedoms party is the third member of the ruling coalition and its list is headed by MEP Filiz Hyusmenova. The top goal of its mission statement is a more tolerant Europe.

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