A grim anniversary

Yesterday, air raid sirens could be heard all over Serbia to commemorate the NATO bombing of the country that led to the de facto end of Serbian rule in Kosovo ten years ago. The anniversary was a tense occasion that confirms the volatility of Serbian politics but also the fragility of the country's current European orientation.

Politicians of almost all hues invariably denounced the raids, and Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic branded them "an illegal act" and added that "Serbia cannot forget those tragic days." Public rituals that reproduce a sense of collective trauma such as a special cabinet session, visits and "pilgrimages" to bombing sites, remembrance activities at schools were held countrywide for yet one more year but only a heavily policed rally in central Belgrade was organized by hard-line nationalists and the hardliners were largely contained.

And although Serbian President Boris Tadic called the bombing a "tragic" event that accused and bombed Serbs collectively, official discourse on the bombing remains ambiguous. Deputy Prime Minister and a member of the Socialist Party (led by Milosevic at the time of the NATO intervention) Ivica Dacic speaking at a Socialist Party event in Belgrade called NATO's action a "criminal act" that was designed to wrest Kosovo away from Serbia while most commemorations had largely anti-Western undertones. Although the NATO air campaign became perhaps the only option at the time largely due to the earlier inaction and indecision of Western governments to stem the tide of nationalism and the opportunism of the ruling elites throughout former Yugoslavia, it was, nevertheless, unavoidable as Milosevic was embarking on yet another reckless campaign dragging with him into the abyss the citizens of Serbia. But as Liberal Party leader Cedomir Jovanovic bravely pointed out the government has yet again failed to spell out that the bombing was the consequence of irresponsible, criminal and wrong policies pursued by the Serbian government under Slobodan Milosevic. It is imperative that present day Serbia shook off its uncritical anti-western reflexes and reflected on the internal factors that led one of the most polyphonic and cultured societies of East Central Europe descend into the murky realm of genocidal politics just as it is imperative that the Western democracies that allowed this to happen reflected on their culpability in the killing and suffering of so many innocent Serbian and former Yugoslav civilians - before and during the air raids. Perhaps this might be the most fitting commemoration of all those lost ten years ago.

Spyros Sofos: Bulgaria’s Blackmail is Unfair

INTERVIEW 13.09.23 19 ПРЕГЛЕДИ At a time when Macedonia is under strong international pressure concerning the constitutional changes, and the region is waiting to see whether it will be coupled to the European locomotive, external views become a dire need for the country to position itself on the right coordinates during the geopolitical developments that will not leave us unaffected. After the interview with the German journalist and specialist on the Balkans Michael Martens, we present to you another conversation, this time with Spyros Sofos, whose research at the London School of Economics and Political Science has focused, among other things, on social insecurity, identity and collective action, as well as populism in Southeast Europe. He says that Bulgarian elites playing the nationalist card poses the risk of adding fuel to the fire in the region at a time when North Macedonia's access to the EU would render the contentious issu

11 December 2009: Turkey's Constitutional Court bans the pro-Kurdish Demokratik Toplum Partisi

Following a lawsuit filed by Chief Public Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya on November 16, 2007, the Turkish Constitutional Court has decided yesterday to shut down the Demokratik Toplum Partisi (Democratic Society Party) due to the party’s alleged links with the PKK. Following 9-hour deliberations on the fourth day of the case, Constitutional Court President Haşim Kılıç said that its members voted unanimously to close down the DTP as it became a focal point of acts against the indivisible integrity of the state . The result of this controversial decision is that, yet again, voices advocating human rights protection for Turkish Kurds are stifled, and the largest pro-Kurdish political force that had made considerable inroads in the Turkish political system by wining in nine provinces in the 2009 local elections is now seriously impaired. Thirty seven DTP members, including DTP Chairman Ahmet Türk and MP Aysel Tuğluk were banned from politics for five years. The rump parlia

Whose Is This Song? (Chia e tazi pesen?) (2003)

My friend Mirjana has pointed out the existence of this very interesting documentary by Bulgarian director Adela Peeva. Listening to a song she knew since her childhood as Bulgarian being performed in Istanbul in Turkish, the director starts a small Balkan Odyssey through Turkey, Greece, Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia, Serbia only to end up at the Bulgarian-Turkish border region in her native Bulgaria. A song that apparently encapsulated common aesthetics and, more importantly, a shared yet diverse culture, where borrowing and translation make it impossible to argue about cultural ownership and origins proved to carry in it all that divides the peoples of Southeastern Europe. Not only people tried to claim it as exclusive property of their own nation but they often angrily dismissed counterclaims as nothing more than theft. It reminded me Freud's remarks about the 'narcissism of minor differences', the accentuation of antagonism towards those who look, sound and feel so similar

AnonymousMarch 27, 2013 at 9:53 PM
Dear Spyros
You appear to assume that Nato interventions are moral and democratic or based on universally agreed rules of engagement.
A
Spyros A. SofosMarch 29, 2013 at 10:58 AM
Dear A. I never described NATO interventions as democratic and even more so moral and I do not consider them to be either. I think they were the culmination of a chain of failures on the part of the "international community". What I am opposed to is the symbolic absolution of particular political forces in Serbia on the grounds of the NATO intervention. The repression and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians and before them the wars in Croatia and Bosnia did happen and although Serbia was not the only culprit, some soul searching is in order. I have written about these issues and the complexity of responsibility in Nation and Identity in Contemporary Europe.

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