southeastern europe

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

This new volume published by Palgrave contains a chapter co-authored by me: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey: Modernity, Enlightenment, Westernization; S.A.Sofos & U.Özkırımlı Nationalism in the Troubled Triangle Cyprus, Greece and Turkey Edited by Ayhan Aktar, Niyazi Kızılyürek and Umut Özkırımlı Nationalism in the Troubled Triangle is the first systematic study of nationalism in Cyprus, Greece and Turkey to date in the English language. Bringing scholars from Greece, Turkey and both sides of the dead zone in Cyprus (and beyond) together, the book provides a comparative account of nation-building processes and nationalist politics in all three countries and four cases as well

Back in 1997, I spent a few months in the beautiful city of Rethymno in the island of Crete, undergoing the compulsory military training that all conscripts undergo. During the little free time I had, I had the opportunity of getting to know the towns of Rethymno and Chania, wonderful testaments to the complex history of the island: the melange of Byzantine, Venetian and Ottoman architecture still gives Western Crete a sense of a cosmopolitanism that has left its indelible marks in the urban landscapes of the area. Bustling Christian churches often within a walking distance of the few remaining mosques that betray Crete's Muslim past that is rapidly sinking into the whirlwind of oblivion and, in the city of Chania, a unique marker of Crete's other forgotten inhabitants, the Etz Hayyim Romaniote synagogue. Just like the Ottoman mosques of the island which, to some locals, have no place in the Cretan landscape, Etz Hayyim has managed to withstand the impact of neglect and delibe