southeastern europe

English translation of an article originally published in  http://www.sydsvenskan.se/opinion/aktuella-fragor/tala-om-modeller/ IN SEARCH OF A MODEL FOR THE MIDDLE EAST: RETHINKING THE TURKISH AND NORDIC EXPERIENCES På Spaning Efter En Modell För Mellanöstern: … Av Turkiska Och Nordiska Erfarenheter Umut Ozkirimli är professor i samtida Turkietstudier och verksam vid Centrum för Mellanösternstudier vid Lunds universitet. Spyros A. Sofos är gästforskare vid Centrum för Mellanösternstudier vid Lunds universitet. The “Arab Spring” caught everybody off guard. Almost overnight, autocratic regimes have been toppled, social and ideological fissures have emerged, and conflict has become the order of the day, sometimes crashing hopes for freedom, democracy and dignity. But political change is like the Swedish winter, long and replete with challenges. Transition to democracy requires a national consensus and a new social contract based on respect for human rights,...

The First Agreement of Principles Governing the Normalization of Relations between Kosova and Serbia was signed today. The text is deliberately vague so that it can satisfy both those who want to see the sovereignty of Prishtina over the North recognized and those who want to see some sort of recognition of the predominantly Serb municipalities of North Kosovo, nevertheless, it constitutes a breakthrough in the turbulent relationship between Serbia and its former province. The agreement opens the way for the start of EU accession talks of the two countries - it is expected that Serbia will be invited to start accession negotiations as early as next week. According to Kosovo's Gazeta Express the basic points of the agreement are: 1. There will be an Association/Community of Serb majority municipalities in Kosovo. Membership will be open to any other municipality provided the members are in agreement. 2. The Community/Association will be created by statute. Its dissolution ...

Serbia and Kosovo have concluded their own version of an interim agreement today. Although the fate of the Greek-Macedonian Interim agreement suggests we should be cautious in our assessment of what has been achieved today, this EU-brokered rapprochement, despite its provisional character and vagueness, represents a very positive step, albeit short of full recognition. Not for Greece though, as its ambitious agenda 2014 of a forward looking Greece in a forward looking Southeastern Europe is a faint mirage of what could have been. Instead, Greece is probably the only country that continues to follow the previous Serbian policy of non recognition of Kosovo. It is probably a symptom of a chronic affliction, of dwelling in a past forever gone. It reminds me of the Greek Communist Party's inability to realize it inhabits a world that has left Stalin's Soviet Union behind at a time that those who lived through it have long moved on. 

The politica l system of the Republic of Cyprus, even after the de facto partition of the island after the invasion of the Turkish armed forces back in the summer of 1974 is a system built on deliberation and compromise. Presidential elections are an intricate affair that can often lead to unlikely bedfellows sharing between them the key political positions of the small state and the power these entail. The likelihood of gaining positions of influence in the state apparatuses, as well as personal rivalries are usually important factors in determining the composition and shape of alliances, especially in the second round of the presidential poll. These are often shortsighted attempts to gain advantages that maintain and reproduce a clientelistic system and perpetuate the "relevance" of political parties that would have otherwise become obsolete. In such a context, the notions of   Left ,   Centre  and   Right  are not able to convey recognizable messages to the...

a note on the May 6, 2012 Greek elections appeared in Diplomaatia Elections in Greece by Spyros A.Sofos Instead of the traditional left-right division, Greek political landscape is increasingly divided according to the parties’ attitudes towards austerity measures. On May 6, just less than six months after the coalition government of technocrat Lucas Papademos succeeded that of beleaguered prime minister George Papandreou in order to initiate the reforms agreed at the Eurozone summit on October 26, 2011, Greek voters went to the polls to elect a new parliament and government against a rather gloomy backdrop. The path to the polls The sovereign debt crisis had exacerbated the contraction of the economy and the increase of unemployment (now affecting one in every three young people). The desperate attempts of the last Panhellenic Socialist Movement  (PASOK) and the subsequent tripartite coalition government to raise revenues through hastily concocted ...

The region north of the river Ibar in the Mitrovica area of Kosovo has been resisting the imposition of Kosovar Albanian control. Its largely Serbian population is quite apprehensive of the extension of Pristina's jurisdiction. UNMIK has stepped in in 2002 to administer northern Mitrovica and provide a crucial liaison between Pristina and the region's Serbs. Gerard Gallucci is arguing in Transconflict that the dismantling of the UNMIK administration there would be disastrous as it would undermine Serbian confidence and create a source of tension and even violence in the region.                                                                                                                       ...

The May and June parliamentary elections have returned Greece's openly national socialist and erstwhile marginal party to the parliament. Today 18 members of parliament have been elected under the party banner. Many more seem to share some of the views that have made the party popular; the demonization of immigrants, the assumption that crime is imported, an intense anti-europeanism. There is a lot that needs to be done to analyse and counter such discourses. But the phenomenon of Χρυσή Αυγή (Golden Dawn) is still unexplored beyond the journalistic work that has surrounded it.  Back in November 2011, I was invited to talk in a panel on the extreme right in Europe with Zeev Sternhell and Vassiliki Georgiadou. There I suggested that we need to see how the extreme right engages citizens at the micro level, providing local services that the state or civil society seem not to be able or willing to. At the time, another extreme right party, ΛΑΟΣ, had agreed to participate to a coali...