In an interview with BTV, Bulgaria’s Deputy Prime Minister Krasimir Karakachanov said that Macedonia will wait at the gates of the EU for a long time if it continues to behave as a country that is a mentor to Bulgaria.
“Bulgaria has the right to ask the candidate countries to comply with certain conditions. One of the conditions is our national security. Stubbornness is not the way, and we see that in Skopje – “but we want it”, and I may want many things in life, but how can I want something that is not mine, and they want everything. You cannot have pretensions about Bulgarian history, you cannot but apologize to those people you killed and tortured for decades, just because they were Bulgarians and tell me ‘but we have an identity for centuries,'” Karakachanov said.
Speaking on the morning show, he said that the Macedonian identity in 1944 was created by violence, murder and repression against the Bulgarians.
“Do you know that a law was passed in Macedonia in 1945, maybe in Nazi Germany there was no such law, for the protection of the national name and honor, according to which anyone who says he is Bulgarian, not Albanian, if you say you are Albanian you have no problem, if If you say that you are a Turk, you have no problem, if you say that you are a Serb, you will be applauded, but if you say that you are a Bulgarian, according to the law, you can get up to five years in prison. And now those people are telling me that they have gained some identity from themselves, and that is what the political elite says, that cannot happen,” Karakachanov said when asked to explain Bulgaria’s position on Macedonia.
