Turkey Ambassador Blames Bulgaria for Gas Link Delay

Turkey has stood ready for years to build its part of a gas interconnector to Bulgaria, the country's Ambassador to Sofia has said. "We were ready four years ago," H.E. Süleyman Gökçe explained in an interview with private national TV Bulgaria on Air, reminding that Turkey proposed back then the construction of a gas link so that
Bulgaria attains energy independence.

The link is now envisaged to carry natural gas from Azerbaijan to Bulgaria starting 2018. Sofia is seeking to connect its gas grid to those of its neighbors but construction has been stalled for years on different grounds.

Commenting on a proposal backed by Bulgarian PM Boyko Borisov under which the EU should invest in asylum seekers accommodation centers based in "third countries", Mr Gökçe refused to comment, pointing to his country's cooperation with all neigbors on dealing with the migrant influx from the Middle East.

The ambassador also voiced Turkey's insult caused by the decision of Bulgaria's Parliament to adopt a declaration which calls the mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire "mass extermination", short of using the term "genocide". He described the term as not being "legally founded".