Halil Ali, chairman of the Nikola Kozlevo Municipal Council, was removed from office amid a heated dispute at a council meeting on 30 April. Ali, who is politically aligned with municipality mayor Ismail Ibryam, who is associated with Delian Peevski, was replaced by Turhan Karakash – a politician who openly campaigned for Rumen Radev’s “Progressive Bulgaria” in the recent parliamentary election.

Just 10 days after the election and amid Bulgaria’s new political landscape, a majority of councillors in Nikola Kozlevo appears to have shifted its allegiance from Peevski towards Radev. Karakash was elected by 10 of the municipality’s 13 councillors.

The change, however, came amid a bitter dispute, raised voices and an interruption of the meeting, after outgoing chairman Halil Ali initially refused to put the proposal to remove him on the agenda.

At the start of the session, while councillors were setting the agenda, Karakash proposed that the first item should be a motion submitted by a group of councillors calling for Ali’s early removal and the election of a new chairman.

Ali refused to put the proposal to a vote, referring to the municipal council’s rules of procedure.

Karakash continued to insist on a vote and cited the Local Self-Government and Local Administration Act, under which councillors have the right to submit proposals concerning the agenda and those proposals must be put to a vote.

“You are obliged to put it to a vote. Obviously you are afraid and are making up your own interpretations of the law,” Karakash told the council chairman.

Sharp exchanges and accusations followed. Tensions escalated when Dzhemil Aziz, director of the Nikola Kozlevo municipal company and a close associate of mayor Ismail Ibryam, joined the argument from the audience.

Aziz approached Karakash shouting, “Who the hell are you?”, forcing the meeting to be suspended before the confrontation could become physical.

After a lengthy break, Halil Ali returned to the chamber and again categorically refused to put the motion to a vote.

Ali said he had consulted lawyers who had told him that, as chairman, he had the right not to put councillors’ proposals to a vote.

“In this case, I am exercising that right and I will not put the proposal to a vote,” Ali said.

“You are obliged to comply with the law because this is a Municipal Council and you must put the proposal to a vote,” Karakash replied.

Ali then threatened to remove him from the chamber and told him to “complain wherever you want”. He subsequently put his own proposed agenda to a vote, without the motion to replace him.

The majority of councillors rejected Ali’s agenda and adopted a new one, with the proposal to elect a new chairman listed as the first item.

Karakash was then elected chairman with 10 votes in favour.

A return to the chair after six months

Karakash is returning to the position he held for a year after the 2023 local elections.

At the time, he was chairman of the then-unified DPS and was the politician who nominated Ismail Ibryam for mayor of Nikola Kozlevo. Ibryam was elected by a local DPS-BSP coalition, while Karakash became chairman of the municipal council.

A year later, however, the two split politically. Karakash remained loyal to Ahmed Dogan, while Ibryam became one of Peevski’s most prominent mayors.

Ibryam subsequently assembled his own majority in the council and, on 13 November 2024, Karakash was removed as chairman at an extraordinary session.

A DPS–New Beginning majority was then formed in the municipal council and remained in control until now.

The latest vote for Karakash suggests that political loyalties among councillors are shifting once again.

After the vote, Karakash said the Peevski-Borissov model was beginning to break down even in areas that had until recently been strongholds of DPS–New Beginning.

“We showed that people can vote according to their conscience and the law, without fear of mayors who have lost all sense of proportion and who intimidate and pressure them,” Karakash said, referring to Nikola Kozlevo mayor Ismail Ibryam.

Shortly after the council meeting, it emerged that mayor Ibryam had dismissed from the municipal administration the wife of one of the councillors who had voted for the change of chairman.