The municipalities of the Bulgarian cities of Burgas, Khaskovo and Svilengrad won’t be receiving EU funding that is provided within the scope of the transnational cooperation between Turkey and Bulgaria due to Turkey’s position on those cities’ recognition of the Armenian Genocide, reports bTV, according to “Armenpress”.

Nevertheless, the authorities of those cities are certain that their actions are righteous and won’t allow anyone to interfere in their internal affairs. The funding has been banned by the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which prohibits the Turks from collaborating with cities that recognize the Armenian Genocide. Since the Bulgarian cities haven’t been able to find Turkish partners to carry out EU-funded projects, they will lose several millions of Euros. The more major initiatives are connected to the environment and are aimed at preventing natural disasters. Recep Gurkan, who is the mayor of the Turkish city of Edirne, which has collaborated with Khaskovo in the past, has stated that the decision of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs is final. “Edirne has worked well with Khaskovo, but now the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has banned that cooperation due to the decision that the city council of Khaskovo took last year to name the city park in observance of the Armenian Genocide,” Gurkan said.

Turkey’s relations with Burgas and Svilengrad deteriorated when the Bulgarian cities adopted declarations condemning the Armenian Genocide. In an interview with bTV, Gurkan advised the cities to annul their decisions for the sake of their cooperation with Turkey. “Nobody can interfere and tell us how we should name our streets or parks,” Mayor of Khaskovo Dobry Belivanov said in relation to this. Taking into consideration the fact that the cities receive funding from the European Union in the presence of a partnering city in the neighboring country, the Bulgarian cities might really lose the funding provided by the European Union. Turkish-Bulgarian relations have deteriorated recently. Bulgaria has declared the Turkish diplomat working for Turkey’s Consulate General in Burgas as “persona non grata”.

A Bulgarian government official said the Turkish diplomat had carried out actions that breach the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Moreover, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bulgaria Daniel Mitov recently said that Ankara has to decide if it really wants to maintain its Ambassador to Sofia.