Skip to main content

The way forward? Grassroots diplomacy in the southern Balkans | Transform, Transcend, Translate | TransConflict Serbia

Grassroots involvement in conflict transformation is key to overcoming the prejudice and mistrust that lies at the centre of many of the current problems facing the southern Balkans.

By Spyros Sofos
Two decades after the onset of Yugoslavia’s disintegration, the aftershocks are still affecting the Balkans. Kosova/o’s independence declaration, the ensuing Serbian ire and the reluctance of Greece to recognise it, the new round of inconclusive talks between Macedonia and Greece are just the visible aspects of a much broader conflict-ridden landscape.
These disputes are perceived as aspects of intractable conflicts: Kosovar Albanians, victims of Serbian prejudice and repression are not prepared to take seriously Serbian perspectives on the future of Kosovo. Serbs, oblivious to the stark reality of demography on the ground, consider Kosovo an inalienable part of their national territory and the sacred birthplace of their nation and are equally insensitive to Kosovar Albanian voices calling for independence. The assertion of the sovereignty of a Macedonian nation over the territory of the Republic of Macedonia faces competing claims advocating the autonomy of the country’s Albanian community. It also meets a powerful challenge by Greek nationalist discourse claiming ownership of names and symbols that Macedonian nationalism has also constructed as elements of Macedonian nationhood.
The international community has attempted to engage the leaderships of the countries and communities involved in these disputes in order to secure viable solutions. In Macedonia, international mediation averted the escalation of the six-month violent intercommunal conflict between the Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA) and the Macedonian army and security forces. Through negotiations and the services of EU and US mediation the opposing parties concluded the Ochrid agreement of 2001 which envisaged a package of wide-ranging amendments to the constitution and legislative changes that effectively recognized Macedonian-Albanians as stakeholders in the young state.

read the full article at

 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

In memoriam or A Kurdish Woman in a Turkish Dystopia

As I came across today a set of deeply disturbing photographs of  Turkish soldiers having stripped off the clothes of a young Kurdish girl after killing her, posing with her naked body, shared on social media, I remembered  Klaus Theweleit's  book Männerphantasien (1977), translated in English ten years later as Male Fantasies . In this unique book, Theweleit, provides an insightful  analysis of the proto-fascist consciousness of the Freikorps fighters who roamed the Weimar Republic during the interwar period to fight communists and 'other' enemies. Their ambivalent but, at their core, deeply misogynistic attitudes were central in their worldview and eventually formed one of the cornerstones of national socialist ideology as it was eagerly adopted by the Nazi party and, later on, by state discourse and policy.  The Turkish state, waging war against its own Kurdish citizens allows and encourages similar fantasies to be enacted at the 'battleground' and but...
Post a Comment
Read more

What’s next for Turkey after local elections put Erdoğan on notice

Published in The Conversation: April 16, 2024, 11.03am EDT The recent municipal elections in Turkey represented a significant defeat for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, signalling  a potential shift in Turkey’s political landscape . For more than two decades, Erdoğan has extended his  control over the Turkish media ,  the judiciary  and the  state bureaucracy , establishing an uneven playing field and skewed elections. This time, though, his Justice and Development Party — known as AKP — and its coalition with the ultra-right wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) lost 15 key municipalities. Mansur Yavas, Ankara’s mayor and CHP presidential hopeful, gestures to supporters in Ankara on March 31, 2024.   (AP Photo/Ali Unal) After  a disastrous and divisive presidential campaign  in 2023, the opposition, led by the secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP), assumed control of crucial municipal and provincial jurisdictions on March 31, 2024. The CHP, ...
Post a Comment
Read more