southeastern europe

Interview with Aleksandar Bozinovski, "Nova Makedonija ; Appeared (in edited form) on 26 October 2009. AB: Can you tell us something about yourself. From which part of Greece You origins are? SS: My father’s family comes from Athens although my grandfather, who travelled throughout the then European part of the Ottoman Empire following his father who was a marble artisan, grew up in the old city of Saloniki (as he called it) before his family relocated to Athens. His wife’s family came from the town of Ayval ı k in Asia Minor and found themselves refugees in Athens after the Greek defeat in 1922. My mother’s family comes from the Peloponnese, and her father fought in the Asia Minor campaign. AB: Are you a historian? SS: I have studied politics, international studies and sociology but a strong component of my work is historical. I had several excellent history teachers in my university years in Athens and they had always encouraged us to stop being introspective a

My interview was mentioned in the Facebook fan group of Antonis Samaras – the architect of Greece ’s Macedonian quagmire and aspiring leader of Nea Dimokratia. The author of the comment, Mr Evangelos Papathanassiou has not bothered to check which book has excited Macedonian opinion and therefore provides a surreal narrative about the "Greek" academic at King's College (sic) who wrote a book about the persecution of the Macedonians by Greece that culminates in accusing my opinions as left-nihilist and moves on to associate them with the views of the Greek prime minister George Papandreou just because our book was featured in the book pages of his website. Mr Papathanassiou seems to be of the impression that whenever a book is presented in a website, it is endorsed. The idea of a book being a starting point of an intellectual search and adventure seems to be alien to him. I found his use of adjective s personally offensive and his logic simplistic and dangerously populi

Over the past month, the book I co-authored with my colleague and friend Umut Özkırımlı, Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey was discovered by journalists in the Republic of Macedonia . The reason for this interest is our discussion of the territorial expansion of the Greek state and the way nationalism informed the relevant process as well as our discussion of the minorities issue. To date, our work has been featured in countless media that support the government and the opposition, and in the past two weeks I have given four interviews and received a lot of ‘fan’ mail from Macedonia. Many Macedonian readers are just satisfied that a Greek academic has explicitly acknowledged the process of Hellenization of the Ottoman province of Macedonia during the first part of the 20ieth century but are unaware of the fact that Hellenization was one of the many opposing projects imposed on the inhabitants of Macedonia by the Bulgarian, Serbian and later the Yugoslav F

This new book published by Palgrave contains a chapter co-authored by me and & U.Özkırımlı entitled 'Colonizing' the Past: History and Memory in Greece and Turkey Nations and their Histories Constructions and Representations Edited by Susana Carvalho and François Gemenne Palgrave Macmillan Nations and their Histories highlights the importance of the past and its uses in the formation of modern nations and national identities. It looks at the construction of different national historiographies as well as present representations of the past in the politic

Seen a sneak preview and definitely recommend it.

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