Excerpt:
Bulgaria’s nationalist United Patriots coalition, which is part of the government, has caused tension that may also provoke a dispute with Turkey after its city councillors in Stara Zagora, in central Bulgaria, voted to scrap 838 place names that pointed to Turkish or Arabic origins.
The vote passed with 39 “for”, two “against” and four abstentions, the VMRO party announced, and follows a year-long process in which academics helped to translate the Turkish-Arabic names to Bulgarian ones.
The vote was passed on Thursday despite “pressure on the local administration” from the Turkish consulate in Plovdiv, a VMRO Stara Zagora councillor, Anton Andonov, claimed on TV.
According to him, the consulate had “warned the municipality that the change of names will worsen relations with the city and Turkey”.