When he was 6 months old, Ahmed Dogan's parents divorced. One year later his mother remarried. Dogan has three sisters from her second marriage. Until he was eight years old he grew up under the care of his maternal grandmother and grandfather. His grandfather is a shepherd and member of the party since 1944. He died in 1971 at the age of eighty.
Early years
In 1962 the entire Dogan family moved to the village of Drandar. He studied in the local school until the 4th grade. "Lomonosov was my idol. However, due to my hot temperament and poor upbringing I behaved badly. I liked to challenge my teachers and got into a lot of fights", Dogan wrote in his autobiography for the FMD in 1979. .
When he graduated from secondary school, he enrolled in the Technical College for Industrial Chemistry in Varna, but was obliged to withdraw before he completed the first year, since his parents left him without any money, on the pretext of being dissatisfied with him. "From that moment on I decided to make my own way in life", Dogan wrote in his autobiography for the FMD. He enrolled in the specialised Technical College for Glass in the village of Beloslav, "since food and a bed were provided free of charge".
In 1968 he was accepted in the communist youth movement. "At the end of 1970, I got hold of some books about the life and activities of Marx, Engels and Lenin. About 6-7 months independent reading about the events in their lives was enough to give me an emotional basis to begin the systematic and logical study of Marxism and Leninism as a philosophy", Dogan told the SSS.
After completing his secondary education, he worked for 5-6 months as a steel armature and cement worker in the G. Dimitrov shipbuilders in Varna. In October, 1973, he began his national army service in the Construction Corps in Shumen. He specialised as an electrician.
Recruited by the MCI
In 1974 while on national army service, he was recruited by the MCI under the pseudonym "ANGELOV". He was used to report on the Turkish element in the Construction Corps of the Bulgarian People's Army. He worked on 6 operational investigations and with the exception of one case, the MCI indicated "all objects were investigated and the facts coincided with those provided by the agent".
After his national service he worked for 5 months as a shipping concreter in the G. Dimitrov shipbuilding factory in Varna.
Agent of the regional directorate of the MoI-SSS Varna
After demobilisation from national service, the Regional Directorate of the MoI-SSS Varna showed interest in Dogan. He was recruited by them under the pseudonym "SERGEI". The documents in the file show that he was to be used in connection with Turkish intelligence. In practice he received a monthly educational grant from the SSS amounting to 90 levs per month.
During his cooperation with the Regional Directorate of the MoI-SSS in Varna, however, he was given no specific tasks. The SSS helped with Dogan's admission to the Higher Pedagogical Institute in Shumen, specialising in Bulgarian language and literature. He focused on his successful studies as a student in Shumen. He developed also from an ideological point of view.
In 1978 the SSS helped him transfer to the St.Clement of Ohrid University in Sofia to study philosophy.
Agent "SAVA" in the FMD
On the 14th March, 1979, Agent "SERGEI" was transferred by the Regional Directorate of the MoI-SSS, Varna to the FMD. "Working for the SSS for him was a sacred thing and he was committed to it. He is strongly devoted to the SSS", the FMD stated when he was transferred from SSS-Varna.
"I have devoted my life and death to Marxist-Leninist philosophy and communist ideology. I am linked in blood, honest and devoted to the SSS", the agent declared to his controlling officers in 1979.
The intelligence services considered that the agent had sufficient potential after the necessary investigations and training to be used as an operational agent - both illegal and as a special agent. In August, 1979, he took on the pseudonym "SAVA" which he chose for himself, after it was proposed that the former pseudonym be replaced.
As an agent of the FMD, Dogan continued to receive financial assistance. In many documents, "SAVA" certified with his signature that he was receiving the amount for "services provided to the SSS". The amounts varied from 30 to 270 levs.
After Dogan was transferred to the FMD, the intelligence services carried out many loyalty tests, and they tried to control him totally, even in his contacts with his girlfriends.
During this period he worked actively on specific targets in the Higher Pedagogical Institute in Shumen and the St. Clement of Ohrid University in Sofia. He provided information about the behaviour of the students. He was used to exert influence on certain figures of Turkish origin.
On the instructions of the FMD, he investigated areas of Turkish nationalism and religious fanaticism amongst Bulgarian citizens of Turkish origin. His file contained analyses with the following titles: "Turkish nationalism and religious fanaticism", "Ideological influence and religious production – the problem of the bi-symbolic culture of the Bulgarian Turks", "Methods and forms for opposing the nationalism of the Bulgarian Turks", "About the moral image of the communist intelligence officer". He also wrote about the so-called revolutionary process and Islam.
When the operation to forcibly replace Turkish names with Bulgarian names at the end of 1984, Agent 'SAVA" told his controlling officer that he felt offended. He was offended that he had not been warned and informed in advance, not by the fact of the "renaissance process" which affected him as well.
Archive materials from the files of Agent 'SAVA" showed that during the "renaissance process" he continued to accept the funds given to him by the SSS. The last receipt for 200 levs was signed by 'SAVA" on the 9th June in 1986. At this time he was a Candidate (Doctor) of Philosophy and worked as a research assistance in the Institute of Philosophy of the Bulgarian Academy of Science.
Arrested and Sentenced
In 1986, other structures within the SSS discovered that Agent "SAVA" of the FMD was in contact with Bulgarian Turks involved in the preparation and distribution of appeals in North East Bulgaria on behalf of the Turkish National Liberation Movement in Bulgaria. Ahmed Dogan was arrested and investigated by the "Investigation" department of the State Security Services.
In his statements Dogan revealed the names and activities of the other members of the movement. He was sentenced by the Varna Regional Court to 10 years in prison for anti-state activities.
After 10th November, 1989 Key figure in the transition
After 10th November, 1989 Ahmed Dogan was given amnesty and released. He became involved in the foundation of the Movement for Rights and Freedom (DPS – MRF). He was elected its leader (1990-2013).
As the chairman of the MRF for more than 23 years, he became one of the key political figures. Two governments governed Bulgaria using the mandate of the MRF – the government of Luben Berov (December 1992 – October, 1994), also known as the government of Multigroup and the government of Sergei Stanishev (August 2005 – July 2009) also known as the government of the Triple Alliance (BSP, MRF NMSS).
Dogan's party was a partner to Simen Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in his government (July 2001 – August, 2005). The "MRF- Strike" by Dogan in the autumn of 1992 became one of the main reasons for the collapse of the UDF government of Philip Dimitrov. With the decisive support of the MRF in 2001 Georgi Parvanov was elected President.
Distributor of Financial Portions in Bulgaria
Dogan's metamorphoses over the years are amazing: from the threat to ban the Bulgarian Communist Party/Bulgarian Socialist Party in 1990, to demonstrating close relations with Iliya Pavlov, the boss of "Multigroup" and the transformation of the MRF into an unassailable political balancing party, to a member of the National Assembly who never visited parliament and a partner of the BSP in the government.
He made the shocking confessions that "every party has its own entourage of private business" and that he distributed "the portions of finances in the state". When in 2008 he was criticised for appearing in a luxury yacht, Dogan stated without blinking an eyelid: "If I could I would but myself a flying saucer and not just a yacht... I have been born once and now I want to live my life in the way I understand it".
One of his most recent metamorphoses was that of "Exploration Manager" for the "Tsankov Kamak" hydro-electric power project and three other projects, for which he was paid 1.5 million levs.
On the 19th January, 2013, during the 8th National Conference of the MRF in the National Palace of Culture, he retired from the post of Chairman, and proposed Lutvi Mestan, another former SSS agent, as his replacement.
During the conference, 25-year old Oktai Enimehmedov attacked Dogan on the platform and pointed a gas pistol at his head while the chairman of the MRF was reading his report. Dogan escaped unharmed but frightened. After the incident the conference was suspended. A few hours later, the delegates elected Mestan as the leader of the MRF and Dogan as the honorary chairman of the MRF.
After this he avoided any publicity, but many consider that Dogan continues to pull the strings in the MRF, which after the early parliamentary elections in 2013 once again formed a government together with the BSP.
Revelations about Dogan's collaboration
The person who first publicly revealed Dogan's collaboration as an agent was Colonel Radoslav Raikov, Deputy Director of the National Intelligence Service. In 1991, he announced that the leader of the MRF has worked for the First Main Directorate of the SSS (external political intelligence) under the pseudonyms 'SERGEI" and "SAVA". Dogan did not deny this, but Raikov began to receive death threats and left Bulgaria, never to return.
The first official announcement of Dogan's collaboration as an agent of the SSS was made in October, 1997. Then on the basis of the first Law on State Security Files, the "Bonev" commission announced the names of the SSS agents in parliament. Amongst the 23 names announced by the Minister of the Interior, Bogomil Bonev, in his report was that of the leader of the MRF.
This was the only time when Ahmed Dogan publicly commented on his past as an agent:
"I had been trained for very serious things and I am proud that under their aegis I was the person who struck the greatest blow against them during the last 13 years. When several hundred thousand people headed for the borders, this was a serious situation. If the events of 1985 had not taken place, then instead of the 10th November, we would have had a different date".
Later in 2011, Kasim Dal, the former Deputy Chairman of the MRF and co-founder of the National Party "Freedom and Dignity", revealed that after the revelation of the files, Ahmed Dogan swore to his co-party members that he had never denounced them.
In 2002 the MRF voted to repeal the Law on SSS Files together with the NMSS and the BSP. After a scandal with the selective revelations of the files of journalists and public pressure by Rumen Petkov, the Minister of the Interior, in 2006, Dogan took a different position with the leaders of the other parties in the Triple Alliance, Stanishev and Saxe-Coburg-Gotha - he insisted on all files being opened. This led to the passing of the Law on Files in December, 2013.
Dogan may have made a mistake. He could not have envisaged that this time wide access would be allowed to the files, including his, and that they would be read and studied. See Ahmed Dogan's online file (Bulgarian only).