Minorities in the South Caucasus

The Balkan Peninsula has a combined area of about 470,000 km2, and it is bounded by the Adriatic Sea to the west, the Mediterranean Sea (including the Ionian and Aegean seas) and the Marmara Sea to the south and the Black Sea to the east. The region includes States which are entirely, or mostly or partially within the Peninsula. This bundle refers only to what is known today as the Western Balkans, which comprises Albania and the territory of the former Yugoslavia, with the exclusion of Slovenia.  

In the aftermath of World War II, Marshall Tito founded the second Yugoslavia for the purpose of achieving a solution to the nationality question inherited from the Turkish and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia was established in 1946, renamed Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia [hereinafter SFRJ)] in 1963, with a view to constructing inter alia a supranational identity –Yugoslavhood– which officially condemned any form of nationalism. The SFRJ consisted of six republics: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia, all enjoying a high degree of internal autonomy in legislation and jurisdiction. It is in this context that Matthias König introduces us to a comprehensive historical review of the situation of minorities, especially during the violent dissolution of the SFRJ after 1989.  

The successor of the SFRJ was the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia [hereinafter FRY], which existed from 1992 until the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro was established in 2003. Gergana Noutcheva and Michel Huysseune explained back in 2004 the origins of the FRY, which had its roots in the SFRJ. In their contribution to JEMIE, these commentators point at the multi-ethnic character of Serbia and Montenegro whose common history was not marked by ethnic antagonism. In fact, the common adherence of Serbs and Montenegrins to Orthodox Christianity created an important bond in the context of the Balkans, where religion was an important marker for ethnic identity. Noutcheva and Huyssene provide us with a complete overview of the State Union, which ceased to exist after the referendum of 2006 granted independence to the republics of Serbia and Montenegro.  

Florian Bieber explored also in 2004 the different aspects of the post-conflict era in the Western Balkans. One of the problems resulted from the conflict, in the words of Bieber, was the establishment of weak institutions which are often unable to undertake the reforms necessary to bring the region closer to the EU. Moreover, he also points at the question of ethnicity as a prevalent element in terms of political identity, which coexists with frequent tensions between the different identities in the Peninsula. Franziska Blomberg also digs in the concept of ethnicity in Western Balkan States as part of a study published in JEMIE, which seeks to analyse the EU’s democracy promotion in the ethnically diverse region. The author explained in 2012 that there is a difference between the theory and the practice of the EU’s approach, arguing that its policies are insufficiently understood in relation to issues of ethnicity during democratization. 

Lastly, post-conflict situations also lead to the question of reconciliation, especially when a number of communities coexist in a given territory. This is the case of Kosovo, where efforts have been made to reconcile ethnic Serbs and ethnic Albanian communities. In his JEMIE publication, Lars Burema explores the difficulties and possible opportunities in the context of a reconciliation process. 

 

List of Related Publications: 

 

ECMI Founders

The German Federal Government
The Danish Government
The Federal State Schleswig-Holstein