Bulgarian Ethnic Turkish 'Dissidents' Launch New Party

A new political party is being founded in Bulgaria Saturday by Kasim Dal, a "dissident" from the ethnic Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms, DPS.

The party is named Freedom and Dignity.

"The party will be a center-right formation, anti-Communist, with a clear stance on agents and collaborators of the former Communist State Security, DS, who by their reports have harmed Bulgarian citizens," Korman Ismailov, a former head of the youth organization of DPS says, cited by the Bulgarian online news agency "Dnevnik."

The idea for the new party was first presented by Dal in September.

Both Dal and Ismailov broke off from DPS back in January 2011 after scandals caused by a conflict between Dal and the party's controversial leader Ahmed Dogan.

After some two decades of close political and personal friendship, including with respect to the establishment of the local DPS organizations all over Bulgaria, Dal has criticized Dogan publicly for the latter's involvement with the former State Security, the secret police and intelligence of the Bulgarian Communist regime.

The formal reason for his rift with Dogan was criticism of the way the long-standing leader has been running the party, which according to Dal resembles a "personal fiefdom".

After Dal was excommunicated by the DPS leadership, he was joined by Korman Ismailov, whom Dogan earlier called "one of the most promising young politicians in DPS." Ismailov left the party and became an independent Member of the Bulgarian Parliament.