southeastern europe

After having spent ten days in the USA and a six-hour stopover in London -both quite remote from the intricacies of Greek politics- I arrived in Thessaloniki just after midnight today to speak in a Roundtable on Nationalism in Greece and Turkey hosted by the Thessaloniki International Book Fair. The taxi ride from Macedonia Airport (previously known as Mikra Airport to people of my generation) provided a reminder that Greece -just as every other EU country- was preparing for this year's European parliament elections but also an abrupt warning that nationalism was a potent force in the shaping of the debate surrounding the election. Giant posters inviting the voters to support one of the two largest parties were hard to miss as they dominated nearly every visible space in the few kilometers that separate the city from the air terminal. Among them, also hard to miss, were posters of a third suitor of the electorate's preference: the Panhellenic Macedonian Front (Πανελλήνιο Μακ...

Macedonia square in central Skopje has been at the centre of disputes over the planned construction of a church. But, as it has recently been revealed, the municipal authority of Skopje has even more ambitious plans over the city's central public space. As the daily Dnevnik has revealed, no expense has been spared in the city's intervention to give character to the square; Fonderia Artistica Ferdinando Marinelli, located in Florence , Italy , has been secretly hired to make statues of figures that are central in Macedonian national narrative. Apart from a monumental statue of Alexander the Great riding his horse Bucephalus which, together with its 10 metre high pedestal will reach 22 metres, statues of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, and of Czar Samuil as well as a host of Macedonian revolutionaries and politicians are planned to be positioned in the square. This ‘excess’ of history in one public space is something that begs closer investigation. It certainly constitute...

Tuesday 19 May 2009 , 18.00, Spyros Sofos (Senior Research Fellow, Kingston University): From Empire to nation: Space and landscape in the Greek and Turkish nation building projects. Venue : SOAS, 22 Russell Square, Room T102. The Greek-Turkish Encounters Series is series of lectures and events organised by the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, at King’s, and the Turkish Studies Programme, at SOAS. The aim of this series is to explore and bring to the fore points of contact between Greek and Turkish cultures in an atmosphere of critical inquiry. Attendance is open to all.

Discussion on the topic of "Nationalism in Greece and Turkey" on the occasion of the publication of the book Το βάσανο της Ιστορίας by Umut Özkırımlı and Spyros A. Sofos. Discussants: Lena Divani , associate professor of foreign policy history at the University of Athens, vice president of the Greek Book Centre Spyros A. Sofos , senior research fellow at the European Research Centre, Kingston University Ioannis Stefanidis , professor of diplomatic history at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Umut Özkırımlı , director of Turkish-Greek Studies at Istanbul Bilgi University - senior research fellow at the Hellenic Observatory, London School of Economics

I have been meaning to post a few thoughts on the results of the parliamentary elections in Northern Cyprus since the eve of the vote (just as I was hoping to do in the case of the Turkish local elections) but, as this is a volatile time, events seem to be overtaking any attempt to keep track of developments in Southeastern Europe. The outcome of the North Cyprus elections confirms the fears of people like me, who had supported - wit h some reservations - the yes vote on the Annan Plan back in 2004 that a Greek-Cypriot 'no' vote might make a rapprochement between the two communities very difficult. 2004 had presented a unique opportunity for an agreement - however imperfect that might have been. I have always maintained that provisions that sanctioned ethnic segregation were unworkable as they did not take into account the dynamics of closer contact: how can you classi fy mixed families, children of mixed backgrounds through a constitution that is blind to these complexitie...

Skopje 28.03.2009 On 28 March 2009, protesters gathered on Skopje’s central square in order to make publicly known their objection to a government sponsored plan to construct a new church in one of the most used everyday public spaces of the city. The protesters wanted the space to remain open and had reservations to erecting an orthodox church there with the us e of public funds. Their peaceful demonstration was met with violence as an orchestrated counter-protest which, with slogans such as " who is against the building of the Church, is against God", c hallenged their right to demonstrate. To add insult to injury, the leaders of the protest were accused of acting in defiance of the law that allegedly required them to give notice to the authorities prior to the demonstration. Leaving the legal technicalities aside - the constitution enshrines the right to peaceful protest - there is a lot at stake in the recent demonstrations and violence that ensued as well as the verbal e...

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 acc...