1. This paper is a thoroughly revised version of “Islam, Ethnicity and State in the Contemporary Balkans,” which first appeared in H. Poulton and S. Taji-Farouki, eds, Muslim Identity and the Balkan State (London: Hurst, 1997).Google Scholar

2. For example, Greece's claims to continuity to ancient Greece, and Bulgaria's to 1,300 years of existence.Google Scholar

3. In Greece today the Muslim populations are regarded as suspect and are not considered to be true citizens of the state. Furthermore, this also applies to non-Orthodox Christian groups, like Baptists, Roman Catholics, and Jehovah's Witnesses. This is clear from statements like that of the public prosecutor of Naxos, who described Roman Catholic Greeks as “foreigners getting their orders from the Pope.” It is also illustrated by the arrest of large numbers of Jehovah's Witnesses for proselytising: 67 have been sentenced to between four and six months’ imprisonment since 1983. See D. Kunz, “Greece Accused on Minorities’ Rights,” Le Monde , 14 December 1994.Google Scholar

4. Bektashism is a Sufi order (named after its founder Hacı Bektash) that was widespread in the Balkans during Ottoman rule. On Bektashism and the Albanians, see below.Google Scholar

5. The Shiite Kızılbashıs (literally “red-heads”) were so named after their distinctive head wear. The Dobrudzha is the area south of the Danube delta, from Tulcea in Romania to Varna in Bulgaria.Google Scholar

6. See H. Norris, Islam in the Balkans: Religions and Society between Europe and the Arab World (London: Hurst, 1994).Google Scholar

7. Vlachs were prominently pastoral peoples living south of the Danube who practised transhumance and spoke a form of Romanian. While some were Islamicised, most remained Orthodox. Many were prominent supporters of Hellenism. They remain especially evident in the Pindus mountains in Greece and in southern Albania. See H. Poulton, The Balkans: Minorities and States in Conflict (London: MRG, 1993).Google Scholar

8. This was most noticeable in the competition for Macedonia at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. For a full study of the Macedonian Question see H. Poulton, Who Are the Macedonians? (London: Hurst, 1995).Google Scholar

9. Uncertainty remains uncertainty over the origins of this system. Many trace the system back to the appointment by Mehmed II, conqueror of Istanbul, of Patriarch Gennadias, Bishop Yovakim of Bursa, and Rabbi Capsali as presumed hereditary leaders of the Greek, Armenian, and Jewish communities, respectively. In contrast, other scholars (including Benjamin Braude) maintain that the term millet was used to refer to various mainly local arrangements which differed from one place to another. They point to the substantial evidence suggesting that the authority vested in the leaders of the millets was personal (rather than hereditary/institutionalised), and varied significantly in its territorial extent. Thus, the Greek Patriarchates of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch retained their autonomy at least in canon law, while for the Armenians the see of Istanbul became “over the centuries … a sort of de facto patriarchate, but its ecclesiastical legitimacy was grudgingly recognized, if at all.” See Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1982), pp. 72–82, and the review article by Andrew Mango, “Remembering the Minorities,” Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 21, No. 4, 1985, pp. 118–140.Google Scholar

10. At least as far as Anatolia is concerned, modern scholarship gives credit to the Karamanids for the first establishment of Turkish as the basis of the official language. In the thirteenth century the Karamanids created a strong polity on the ruins of the Seljuk Sultanate. See M. Önder, “Türkçenin Devlet Dili Ilanini Yildönümü,” Türk Dili, Vol. 10, 1961, p. 507, quoted in David Kushner, The Rise of Turkish Nationalism 1876–1908 (London: Frank Cas, 1977), footnote to p. 90. However, this was not the same as the demotic Turkish spoken by the mass of the population.Google Scholar

11. See Boriana Panaiotova and Kalina Bozeva, “The Bulgarian Muslims (‘Pomaks'),” in The Committee for the Defence of Minority Rights, Minority Groups in Bulgaria in a Human Rights Context (Sofia: The Committee for the Defence of Minority Rights, 1994).Google Scholar

12. Ibid.Google Scholar

13. A crucial factor here is the terrible persecution the Bosnian Muslims have suffered in the recent war due to being Muslim—a factor that has immeasurably helped to cement a national consciousness.Google Scholar

14. War has often been a crucial factor in promoting national identity.Google Scholar

15. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1983).Google Scholar

16. Ibid. p. 140.Google Scholar

17. Ibid. pp. 57.Google Scholar

18. See Eric Hobsbawm et al., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).Google Scholar

19. Anderson, op. cit .Google Scholar

20. Gellner, op. cit ., p. 141.Google Scholar

21. Ibid.Google Scholar

22. Article 19 of Law 3370 of 1955 stated, “A person who is of foreign origin leaving Greek territories without the intention of returning may be deprived of Greek citizenship.” This has been used mostly against Muslims from western Thrace—the only “official minority”—who have been deprived without being consulted of their actual intentions, while even immigrants who are ethnic Greek are normally recognised without problem despite years or even generations of absence. (Article 19 has also been used against ethnic Macedonians, who also suffer from the application of Article 20, which allows for stripping of citizenship from those who “commit acts contrary to the interests of Greece for the benefit of a foreign state”). From the time this law was introduced, more than 60,000 Muslims—predominately ethnic Turks—have been stripped of their citizenship, including an official figure of 50 people in 1997. Most of those affected were forced to stay in Turkey or Germany, although some 1,000 continued to live as stateless people in Greece without identity papers and the commensurate benefits— this in contravention to the U.N. 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons. On 17 December 1997, the authorities finally decided to provide such people with identity and travel documents, and by early 1998 some 100 had benefited. Article 19 was finally abolished without retroactivity in mid June 1998.Google Scholar

23. The role of Turkey thus as a potential kin state for Muslims of different ethnic groups in the Balkans and Cyprus, and the relationship between Muslim Turkish workers in western Europe and Turkey is discussed in Hugh Poulton, Top Hat, Grey Wolf and Crescent: Turkish Nationalism and the Turkish Republic (London: Hurst, 1997).Google Scholar

24. See H. Poulton, Who Are the Macedonians? (London: Hurst, 1995), pp. 141–143.Google Scholar

25. The same applied in the case of Jewish minorities; many of the Jews in the Balkans had fled to the Ottoman Empire from persecution by intolerant regimes in western Europe. While Jews had lived in the Balkans since antiquity, Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews fleeing persecution in central and western Europe fled to the Balkans even before the Ottoman period. These new arrivals tended to overwhelm the ancient original Jewish population, but were in turn overwhelmed after 1492 by Ladino-speaking Jews expelled from Spain, who made Salonika the spiritual and economic metropolis of the Jews in southeastern Europe; see H. Poulton, Who Are the Macedonians? , pp. 22–23.Google Scholar

26. On the Pomaks of Bulgaria see Yulian Konstantinov, “Strategies for Sustaining a Vulnerable Identity: The Case of the Bulgarian Pomaks,” and on the pressures on the smaller Islamic groups, like the Pomaks of Greece, the Muslim Roma, and non-Albanian Muslim groups in Macedonia to assimilate into larger cohabiting Muslim groups see H. Poulton, “Changing notions of National Identity among Muslims in Thrace and Macedonia: Turks, Pomaks and Roma,” both in H. Poulton and S. Taji-Farouki, eds, Muslim Identity and the Balkan State (London: Hurst, 1997).Google Scholar

27. This comprised modern Bulgaria together with what became Yugoslav Macedonia, large parts of Greek Macedonia, and Thrace. It even extended into modern Albania.Google Scholar

28. Robert J. Doina and John V. A. Fine, Bosnia-Hercegovina—A Tradition Betrayed (London: Hurst, 1994), p. 96.Google Scholar

29. See Ivo Banac, The National Question in Yugoslavia; Origins, History, Politics (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1984).Google Scholar

30. This did not apply as much to other Muslim groups in Royalist Yugoslavia, however. The Slavs of Macedonia—which included both Christians and a smaller Muslim community— were regarded as southern Serbs, and a policy of forced assimilation was employed against them. The Muslim Albanians, who of course are not Slavs, were viewed with acute distrust by the first Yugoslav state—“Yugoslavia” of course means “land of the South Slavs.” See Banac, op. cit .Google Scholar

31. In post-1945 Yugoslavia the Communist authorities’ nationality policy, which always officially espoused the slogan “Brotherhood and unity,” evolved from upholding a Serb-orientated polity during the period when Aleksander Ranković headed the all-powerful security apparatus, to a three-tier system of national rights which was enshrined in the 1974 Constitution. This system divided the population in descending order of recognised rights into: (a) the six “Nations of Yugoslavia”—Croats, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Muslims, Serbs, and Slovenes—each with a national home based in one of the republics; (b) the “Nationalities of Yugoslavia”—the largest being the Albanians (more numerous than some of the “nations,” but whose “national home” was outside the country and so they were not eligible for the status of a “nation” of Yugoslavia), Bulgarians, Czechs, Hungarians, Italians, Roma, Romanians, Ruthenians, Slovaks, and Turks—which were legally allowed a variety of language and cultural rights; and (c) “Other Nationalities and Ethnic Groups,” which made up the remaining ethnic groups—Austrians, Germans, Greeks, Jews, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Vlachs, and others, including those who classified themselves as “Yugoslavs.”Google Scholar

32. This was lower than in Kosovo (44%), Croatia (33%), Slovenia (26%), and Macedonia (19%), but higher than in Serbia (11%) and Vojvodina and Montenegro (both 10%). Interview, Belgrade, 28 March 1986.Google Scholar

33. See Ger Duijzings, Religion and the Politics of Identity in the Balkans (London: Hurst, forthcoming), although Duijzings warns that this is somewhat simplistic, and is careful not to fall into the trap of ethno-reductionism.Google Scholar

34. Cornelia Sorabji, “Islam and Bosnia's Muslim nation,” in Frank Carter and Harry Norris, eds, The Changing Shape of the Balkans (London: UCL, 1996), pp. 57–58.Google Scholar

35. X. Bougarel, Bosnie: anatomie d'un conflict (Paris: Editions la Decouverte, 1996), p. 87.Google Scholar

36. For the full text see South Slav Journal , Spring 1983.Google Scholar

37. It is somewhat ironic that such a situation has become more likely in Bosnia-Hercegovina with the effective partition by the Dayton agreement, which, if the Serbian Republika Srpska splits off, will leave the state with a convincing Muslim majority.Google Scholar

38. In 1994 Abdić declared the creation of his own quasi-state, the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia, and was consequently expelled from the Bosnian government. Bitter inter-Muslim fighting ensued; the 5th Brigade loyal to Sarajevo defeated Abdić's “rebels,” many of whom fled to Croatia. In November 1994, when the Muslim 5th Brigade broke out of the Bihac pocket and achieved notable victories over the Serbs, the inevitable Serb counter-attack was aided both by Serbs from Croatia and by some 5,000 of Abdić's supporters. The Bihac pocket was surrounded by Serb-held positions in both Croatia and Bosnia. Its natural geography between rivers and Abdić's manoeuvrings and deals with both the Serbs and Croats facilitated its survival. Despite being viewed as a traitor by the SDA Sarajevo leadership, Abdić has recently made something of a political comeback in his power base of Velika Kladusa in the Bihac pocket.Google Scholar

39. Additionally the elite praetorian guard of the Ottoman Empire—the Janissaries—had been a stronghold of Bektashism for centuries up to their violent dissolution by Mahmud II in 1826. The Janissaries were initially formed from those Christian youths taken by the devsirme system to Istanbul, circumcised and brought up as the Muslim “slave elite,” and the tolerance and similarities in Bektashism of many Christian rights must surely have been a factor in the strength of Bektashism in the Janissaries.Google Scholar

40. See H. Poulton and M. Vickers, “The Kosovo Albanians: Ethnic Confrontation with the Slav State,” in H. Poulton and S. Taji-Farouki, eds, Muslim Identity and the Balkan State (London: Hurst, 1997).Google Scholar

41. Their relationship with the new Macedonian state, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), itself based on the relatively new concept of a separate Macedonian nation fostered by the Tito regime, is explored in H. Poulton, Who Are the Macedonians? , Chapters 7 and 9.Google Scholar

42. Sheikh Xemali of the Rifai tarikat in Prizren has been a key figure in this. See Ger Duijzings, Religion and the Politics of Identity in the Western Balkans: The Case of Kosovo (London: Hurst, forthcoming).Google Scholar

43. Although it is likely that what remains of Bosnia-Hercegovina will also have a Muslim majority if the Serb areas remain outside.Google Scholar

44. It should be noted that while the Greek minority in Albania is solidly Orthodox, many Orthodox Christians in Albania are ethnically Albanian.Google Scholar

45. H. Poulton, Who Are the Macedonians? , p. 187.Google Scholar

46. In Greece, for example, anthropologists studying the Slav Macedonian minority in the northern part of the country have noted that the rate of assimilation has accelerated sharply since the Second World War. Personal communication with Anastasia Karakasidou.Google Scholar

47. This particularly covers the expansion of satellite TV sets and other means of transnational communication which has occurred in the last few years.Google Scholar

48. See H. Poulton, The Balkans , p. 155.Google Scholar

49. This view rests on the argument that there is a general tendency for differing states/cultures to copy a particular model of what is perceived as modern. This can be seen in the apparently universal appeal of blue jeans and trainers and Western pop music (Michael Jackson, Madonna, etc.) in youth culture, along with the penetration of domestic economies by multinationals so that even eating and drinking habits become homogenised, with the growing universality of brand names like McDonalds and Coca Cola. Such cultural invasions go hand in hand with a parallel unification of modern architectural styles, regardless of indigenous cultures, so that, for example, all modern airports and hotels tend to resemble each other. In this view the rise of this global culture, facilitated by the ongoing revolution in electronics and the media (especially satellite broadcasts), signals the end of classic nationalism as a driving force on the world stage.Google Scholar

50. Likewise France, which represents the classic model of “territorial” or “civic” nationalism as opposed to the German “ethnic” model (see Anthony Smith, Theories of Nationalism (London: Duckworth, 1971), also refuses to recognise minorities within its borders and even refused to sanction Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which deals with guaranteeing minority rights (and which Greece has not ratified). However, citizens in France do not face the same penalties for declaring themselves separate from the majority as they do in Greece. For a discussion of minority rights in Europe see Hugh Miall, ed., Minority Rights in Europe: The Scope for a Transnational Regime (London: Chatham House Papers, RIIA, Pinter, 1994).Google Scholar

51. See H. Poulton, Who Are the Macedonians? , pp. 165–171.Google Scholar