Transitions Online_Around the Bloc-Albania May Extradite Suspected Gulenist to Turkey
In Serbia last week, Turkish leader Erdogan promised to crush Gulenism in the Balkans.
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In Serbia last week, Turkish leader Erdogan promised to crush Gulenism in the Balkans.
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The article presents the sociological reconstruction of images of Slovakia and Slovaks used by Polish local elites in Southern Poland. The analysis is based on the qualitative data from three borderland towns. The theoretical concept of space as the social construct and S. Ossowski’s idea of the neighbourhood distance, led to mapping of structure of different local imaginations of Slovakia and their position in the general concept of locality used by the respondents.
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Since condemnation of operation Vistula by the Senate, we have conducted a „strategicpartnership” policy towards Ukraine, expecting at most symbols, not calling for the memory of thousands of victims murdered in Volyn and Cherven Cities. Driven mainly by Russophobia, wesupported the Orange Revolution and Euromaidan. On the latter, our politicians didn’t hesitate to join banderite shouts in front of portraits of Bandera and Shukhevych. We should not be surprisedthen that two hours after the address of the President of Poland Bronislaw Komorowski, The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted without discussion four Acts, which aim were: the recognitionof the OUN and the UPA as fi ghters for Samostijna Ukraine, erasing from the collective memory shared 70-year history of the Ukrainian nation and increase of divisions in Ukrainian society. In Poland, the Acts have been passed over by the mass media (except for ”Przegląd” and “Nie”).
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The aim of this article is to present the main threats resulting from international migrations to the internal security of the state. The text is divided into three main parts. The first part presents the links between migration and the negative phenomena such as terrorism, political extremism, organized crime and a strong social divisions (which can lead to acts of aggression). The second part is devoted to the phenomenon of illegal migration, which can be perceived as one on the main challenges to internal security of the state. In the third part author describes what actions can be taken by the states to reduce the risks associated with migration flows.
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The assimilation politics of the Bulgarian Communist regime reaches its summit in the 1984-89 period when it acquires the dimension of ethnic cleansing. The present study focuses on the response of Turkish intellectuals to these practices and the representation of this response in the short stories of Bulgarian writers from Turkish origin. The research encompasses four short stories by three authors: “Consciousness in Riot” and “Blackboard Words” by Islam Beytullov, “There were Traitors too” by Sabri Tatov and “Bread Knife” by Ahmet Timişev. Their analysis shows that Turkish intellectuals can be divided into three groups on the basis of their response to the government’s assimilation policy: 1. Open rebellion, 2. Mask of conformity, and 3. Collaboration with the authorities. The research demonstrates that even when characters collaborate with the regime, they are loyal to their ethnic identity and their behavior is motivated by the pressure of the totalitarian government.
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The authors raise questions about the forms and types of public activity of Kurds in Poland during the last half-century, the impact of the political transformation on this activity, and the similarities and differences between the activities of Kurdish minorities in Poland and in Western countries. On the basis of an analysis of documents and academic studies, as well as examining the organizations described, the authors point to the demographic differences between Kurdish minorities in Poland and in the West, the advancing integration of Kurdish public activity with Polish public life and, finally, the inability to use the social capital of members of this minority for achieving common, long-term goals.
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The break-up of the former Yugoslavia resulted in the establishment of seven states with manifestly different citizenship regimes. Relating the politics of citizenship to the dominant nation-building projects, this paper argues that in the post-Yugoslav countries in which nation-building projects are consolidated (Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia) citizenship regimes converge around ethnic inclusiveness, while in those where nation building is contested (Macedonia and Montenegro) territorial rather than ethnic attachments are articulated in citizenship policies. In the case of Kosovo, and to a certain degree Bosnia and Herzegovina, policies emphasise territory due to international involvement in the shaping of their citizenship regimes. Even though all of these states have adopted ius sanguinis as the main mechanism of citizenship attribution at birth, the different approaches to naturalisation and dual citizenship indicate that the politics of citizenship are inextricably linked to the questions of nation building and statehood. To explore these issues, the paper first outlines the main traits of citizenship policies in contested and consolidated states. It proceeds by looking at different naturalisation requirements in the two groups of states. It argues that extension to ethnic kin occurs only in countries in which statehood and nation building are consolidated, where it serves to project an image of national unity. In states that are challenged by several competing nation-building projects, citizenship attribution through ethnic kinship is impossible due to lack of internal unity. The paper also analyses approaches to dual citizen-ship, identifying patterns of openness and restrictiveness. By doing so, it links the politics of citizenship to the interaction of foreign policy mechanisms in post-Yugoslav countries and identifies the points where these regimes overlap or conflict with each other.
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This article explores the major approaches to the study of conflict resolution strategy from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives. It argues that conflict resolution strategy, as a civil integration resource, is a necessary tool for overcoming deep-rooted ethnic conflicts in the unstable North Caucasus. This research pursues the goal of analyzing how the strength of civil integration can affect conflict resolution and peacebuilding. The author considers the essential factors of protracted ethnic conflicts and emphasizes the destabilizing role of the repoliticization of ethnicity in a crisis society. The concept of ethnic, “identity-based” conflicts is the heuristic theoretical model of exploring causes for increased ethnoreligious tensions in the North Caucasus. This article focuses on the ability of conflict resolution strategy to de-escalate growing tensions and transform protracted identity-based conflicts. The need to stimulate civil integration is caused by moral and structural causes: from the ethical point of view, the creation of an inclusive society is the fundamental societal goal; structural factors are related to the need to reduce inequalities and differences leading to social fragmentation and an escalation of ethnic conflicts. Among the structural conditions of regional conflicts, the author names ethnosocial inequalities, a civil identity crisis, ethnopolitical neo-authoritarianism, large-scale socioeconomic polarization and an “ideological combat” between secular modernization and religious fundamentalism. While discussing conflict resolution strategies, it is necessary to consider the following: 1) Peace and integration within the North Caucasus is a macropolitical project, the content of which is determined by issues of social cohesion and civil solidarity; 2) The development of the North Caucasus after the end of armed ethnic conflicts shows the inadmissibility of political demodernization, fundamentalism and isolationism. Today, the North Caucasus remains a crucially geopolitical macroregion, as it forms the southern volatile frontier of Russia. In this case, conflict resolution strategy must serve as an integrational and preventive tool on the conflict environment by way of providing structural solutions for deep-rooted cultural antagonisms, transforming and rationalizing ethnoregional contradictions.
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This paper explores the link commonly made between border control and crime prevention, which underpins European discourse on immigration policy. In order to do so, it firstly looks at the theoretical and ideological background of these policies, as well as the political context in which they operate. Indeed, they are a response to fears among the European population caused by global forces such as the abolition of internal borders in the European Union and globalization. These fears are then exploited by politicians, who, through what is known as ‘the politics of fear’, mobilise the electorate by pointing to foreigners as the common enemy of nationals. This, in turn, results in the institutionalisation of the link between border control and security. Secondly, this paper looks at how, through this link, these ideas are translated into policies. In order to do this, the paper critically analyses European treaties and policies such as the Dublin agreement and the Refugee Convention. Following this, the paper will question their effectiveness and success as security measures. The deconstruction of the link between immigration control and security shows that these policies are not empirically rooted and fail to provide durable and sustainable solutions for both border control and security.
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Apart from a short history of Banat Zrenjanin, as well as descriptions of inter-ethnic events that take place in the city, the paper analyzes the function of inter-ethnic events in the city, based on evidence collected from the literature and the media. The analysis showed that inter-ethnic events in Zrenjanin primarily reflect the multicultural city policy to promote ethnic diversity and tolerance, as well as contribute to the development of the regional identity of Banat. Despite that fact they are often used for the revival of ethnicity, which contributes to the division in the local community.
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Analysis of ethnically mixed marriages in the Former Yugoslavia, for the period 1970—2005, shows that after 1990 in all former Yugoslav republics and provinces (except Montenegro) degradation of inter-ethnical relationships induced a fall of inter-ethnical relations, especially at the beginning of 1990. Vojvodina is still singled out (even if there is a decreasing trend after 1990) as a territory with the highest share of exogam marriages (around 25%), while Kosovo and Metohia represent a territory with the lowest shares during the entire period of observation. The most exceptional changes after 1990 occurred in Croatia where the share of ethnically mixed marriages decreased from 19% to around 7% which was mostly a reflection of changes in behaviour of the majority group towards ethnically mixed marriages. The group that was most „open" on the territory of the Former Yugoslavia were the Serbs in Vojvodina until 2001 and after that the Montenegrins, with the highest percentage of interethnic marriages (more than 15%) while all other majority groups are characterized by certain reticence in marrying other nationalities. Concerning the differences between men and women towards ethnically mixed marriages, it shaws that women are, in general, more endogam than men, meaning that they seldom marry outside their group. This is especially characteristic for the Montenegrin's women in Montenegro. When observing the degree of interethnic relations between minority groups and the majority group, it follows that there have not been any changes. In general, degree of integration is higher, meaning that the inter-ethnic relations are more frequent between nationalities that are closer in cultural, religious and linguistic way. Unlike that, during all the period of observation, there is a highly marked segregation between nationalities that belong to different cultural and religious circles, which is especially emphasised in Macedonia.
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Ethnic diversity in the former Yugoslavia, measured as informational entropy, increased in most regions at the level of the naselje, the opština, and the region, 1961-1991 (no useful data for Slovenia, Macedonia, and Kosovo in 1991). Vojvodina is the most diverse region, Slovenia the least. An exception to theincrease is Kosovo-Metohija, where diversity decreased 1961-1981, driven by already serious interethnic conflict. There is some diminution of the increase in diversity in some regions in 1991, possibly because of refugee flows in anticipation of the impending violence. This rather broad and steady increase in diversity leads to questions about the view that pre-existing ethnic hatreds among broad segments of the population led to the ethnic fracturing and collapse of Yugoslavia. Instead it suggests that this fracturing may instead have been the result of competition between political leaders, stimulated by serious economic difficulties, leading them to emphasize ethnicity in their search for popular support. From this the authors support the view that the collapse of Yugoslavia was from the top downward, not from the bottom upward.
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Review of: "Srbi na Kosovu i u Metohiji"; Proceedings from the Scientific Conference held in Kosovska Mitrovica 27-29. May 2005, (2006); Belgrade: Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts - Scientific Conferences Book CXII, Department of Social Sciences, Book 26), p. 471. by: Drago Njegovan
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Falling under the rule of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century, Sandzak was occupied by Serbia and Montenegro in the Balkan Wars and shared by these two states with the Belgrade Agreement signed in 1913. Sandzak stayed under the rule of Serbian-Croatian-Slovenian Kingdom and its successor Yugoslavia in the First World War and was occupied by German and Italian forces during the Second World War. After the Second World War, Sandzak was split up between Serbia and Montenegro according to 1913 borders. Yugoslavian administration followed policies forcing the Turks and the Bosnians in Sandzak to migrate until the end of the Cold War. However, the Serbians and the Montenegrins continued the same politics after the Cold War. Therefore, the Bosnians of Sandzak began to establish their own political parties and organizations in order to ensure grant of their rights, gain autonomy or unify with Bosnia-Herzegovina after transition to multiparty system. Following the civil war in 1991 in Yugoslavia, Croatia, Slovenia and Macedonia declared their independence. In this process, Serbia and Montenegro established the Yugoslavia Federal Republic in 1991. Sandzak remained in the administration of the new state. Sandzak Muslims, who are regarded as the religious minority according to the constitution of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, suffered repression and persecution during the civil war, especially during the Bosnian and Kosovo wars. After the establishment of the Serbia-Montenegro State in 2003, some reforms were made in favor of Muslims within the framework of reforms carried out to become a member of the European Union (EU). But as a result of the referendum held in 2006, Montenegro departed from Serbia and Sandzak was re-shared between these two states. The division of Sandzak was a process against the ongoing struggle for the unification of the Bosnians and other Muslims in the Balkans. In this study, the situation of Sandzak in the post-Cold War era and the challenges for the autonomy, independence and Bosnia-Herzegovina unification of the Sandzak Muslims were discussed.
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Since the 19th century, the history of East Central Europe was shaped by antagonistic perspectives. Whereas German historians claimed German cultural and political hegemony since the Middle Ages or even earlier, the Slavic nations referred to their autochthony and in a Herderian view to the civilization of these territories. Despite refined and interdisciplinary research methodologies referring to the German Slavic territorial overlap, national perspectives prevailed even until the post-war era after 1945. Among those notions that changed the perception of the German-Slavic interactions in East Central Europe was the concept Germania Slavica with a focus on medieval history during the German expansion towards East Central Europe. This paper discusses, whether the research on the history of East Central Europe with a focus on mutual relations, on ethno-cultural substrate and migration, and on transfer and adaptation can be expanded towards the mid-20th century. The notion of Germania Slavica would thus be accompanied by the concept of Slavia Germanica. Arguments in such a direction refer to the fundamental change of the social and cultural situation as German vs. Slavic cultural substrate and Slavic vs. German migration. Despite the obviously different political framework and the time gap of several centuries, one might argue that perspectives on interactions and adaptation are comparable and can on the basis of their respective methodologies contribute to a scholarly interpretation of social and cultural processes in Polish and Czech regions
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The author argues that a significant problem with the ongoing internation al administration in Bosnia is an epistemic hegemony of the West, which has further deformed Bosnian conflicted society through the establishment of approaches that resemble Western colonialism/imperialism. Although illiberal and lacking local legitimacy and accountability, this informal trusteeship has adopted discourses of liberalism and Europeanness to justify itself in front of the local and global public. Nevertheless, that caused local resistance — mostly in the form of ethnopolitics. Political elites, both internal and external, have framed post-war society of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a ‘continuation of war by other means’, which resulted in the construction of mutually contested national identities and ethnicized peaces. Therefore, the author uses critical approach to peacebuilding, interpretative methodology and discourse analysis to argument his general hypothesis.
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The author presents two alternative concepts of democracy: the procedural, which values systems according to the procedures that a government; makes use of in its day-to-day functioning, and the substantial, which insists on the political decisions’ content as the criterion of a system’s democracy. Based on these two concepts, the theoreticians of democracy have construed three different models of democracy (majority, pluralist and consensual),; the first two are on the line of the procedural, and the third of the substantial theory of democracy. While the advocates of the majority model are of the opinion that a government is primarily responsible to public opinion, i.e. the citizens’ majority, the pluralists consider democracy to be the government of several interest groups, of which none is powerful enough to impose its interest. The consensual model emphasizes the need for the government to guarantee, through its decisions, human and civil rights. This model also points out the need for protecting national minorities by employing mechanisms which enable their participation in the government. The author concludes that the latter model would best suit the societies of Central and Eastern Europe since they, due to their historical, social and cultural circumstances are not in the position to evolve Western models based on the procedural understanding of democracy.
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The conflict between the Croatian government and the Serbian minority in the UNPA zones in Croatia was deep and irreconcilable. The Croatian government tried, at any price, to bring the UNPA zones under the authority of Zagreb while the Serbian secessionists wanted to separate the UNPA zones from Croatia and bring it under the authority of Belgrade and Serbia. The conflict between Croats and the ethnic Serbs in Croatia corresponds to the concept of a deeply rooted conflict as described by John W. Burton and Donald L. Horowitz. The author analyses the process of the negotiations between the Croatian authorities and the local Serbs from the UNPA zone East in the fall of 1995. The ethnic Serbs agreed to a compromise with the Croatian government after they had found themselves in a stalemate. By this term William Zartman understands when one ethnic group sees no other way out, since all the military and political moves have been blocked for it. The author thinks this is the main reason why the local Serbs in eastern Slavonia agreed to a dialogue, accepted the compromise and signed the Erdut Accord on 12 February 1995.
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The 1949 rise to power of the Chinese Communist Party (Zhongguo Gongchandang 中国共产党) was the beginning of a new era in China: the declaration of the People’s Republic of China (Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo 中华人民共和国) was the first step on the “socialist road” leading to the creation of the long-coveted Chinese national unity. However, progress on the “socialist road” has posed many challenges for the ethnic minorities living within China’s borders. Mostly because melting into the Chinese national unity – paradoxically – became a symbol of the autonomy of ethnic minorities. In the spirit of this process, the ethnic nationalist aspirations of the Sibe (Chin. xibo zu 锡伯族; Sib. sibe uksura ᠰᡞᠪᡝ ᡠᡣᠰᡠᠷᠠ), the ethnic minority I studied, unfolded alongside the writing of Chinese national history. In my work, I follow these endeavors from the 1950s until recent times. At the center is a story that is seemingly about the knowledge base of Sibe ancestors, the family trees, and beyond that, about the “reunification” of a clan that was torn apart in 1764 by thousands of miles. But, in fact, it formulates much more than that: the idea of political martyrdom by the Sibe in the interest of creating the Chinese national unity. It is through this story that I wish to provide an insight into how Chinese national unity was created.
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The intensifying processes of migration make pertinent the question of what makes a diverse society successful. This study attempts to explore factors that might address this crucial issue through analysing the results of the third phase of 20-year-long longitudinal research. Participants are primarily disadvantaged youths living in Hungary whose social disadvantages are in strong connection with their belonging to the Gypsy/Roma community. Seventy interviews regarding the paths of participants’ lives were realized in the theoretical context of resilience and inclusion, highlighting factors that might support or hinder life opportunities (e.g., school, family, social environment). Through analysis of these interviews, observations of participants lives are typified, inequalities are explored (in effort to stabilize them), and phenomena which positively influence a person’s resilience are collected. Results of the study indicate that inclusion (an inclusive and supporting environment realized in an integrative setting) empowerment, motivation, and responsibility to the community are factors which may lead to individual success.
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