This week’s bloody bomb attacks in Turkey raise some sobering and disturbing questions, and not just in Turkey but also in its neighbours.

Out of the twelve people killed in the bombing in Istanbul’s Vezneciler district, two – a woman and a police officer – turned out to be Turkish nationals of Bulgarian origin. Investigations were launched to find out whether the bombers hadn’t been assisted by neighbouring countries and the Turkish authorities asked Bulgaria’s help in collecting information about the individuals crossing over into and out of Turkey from Bulgaria. This put the Bulgarian authorities under additional strain – in 2015 alone, checks were run on 17,130 foreign nationals ascertaining that 181 of them may be a national security threat.

The additional concerns raised by the acts of terrorism in Turkey match the concerns the Bulgarian authorities have. The annual 2015 government report on national security states that in view of the terrorist acts in neighbouring countries there is a risk of the emergence of logistics centres on the territory of Bulgaria for use by terrorist groupings. Some analyses suggest that for the recent terror attacks in Turkey the “rival brothers” – the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the so-called Islamic state - had already entered into cooperation. There is no confirmation at this time of Bulgarian citizens involved in fighting on the side of terrorist organizations, but there have been suspicions and the special services have had to run checks on that too. There may be no ISIS cells in Bulgaria, but there are signs of imitative behavior by radically-minded Islamic elements in Central Bulgaria. The investigations of the terror attacks in Turkey include finding out who hired given vehicles over the past week. This too concerns Bulgaria because, as it turns out one of the cars damaged in Istanbul belongs to a Bulgarian citizen, a woman whose car was used by a foreign national without the formal documents attesting to the sales transaction, the aim being to avoid taxes. This is no isolated case but a widespread practice that must certainly be put a stop to, and not just for taxation but also for security reasons. To top it all, the terrorist acts in neighbouring Turkey coincided with debates on amendments to the counter-terrorism act, the aim being to put in place much tougher measures against terrorism. This, in turn, triggered negative reactions among the public and some political forces who see them as a crackdown on civil rights and liberties. All this comes to corroborate the well-tested truth that in the Balkans, any problems in one country quickly spread to the others and the best way to counteract them is by pooling the efforts of all.

English version: Milena Daynova