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The Muslim experience in the Balkan states, 1919-1991

Poulton, Hugh. Nationalities Papers28. 1 (Mar 2000): 45-66.

Abstract

Muslim communities remain an integral part of the present-day Balkans. The close correlation
between religion and ethnic or national identity in the Balkan context, which can be seen as a legacy
of the Ottoman millet system, issued in an entwining of nationalism and religion, and of national and
religious identities.

Full text

THE MUSLIM EXPERIENCE IN THE BALKAN STATES, 1919-1991 1

During the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire retreated from the Balkans, and underwent
a steady decline culminating in its final demise in the early part of the twentieth century. Sizeable
communities of Muslims, derived both from those who had arrived with the Ottomans and from
indigenous inhabitants who had converted to Islam, remained in the new successor states of
southeast Europe. With the exception of Albania, where the Muslims formed the majority of the
population, these communities became established as minorities within the new states. Upheld as
ethno-national states each based on one dominant nation, the new states suffered from irredentism
on the one hand, and internal tension between majority and minority populations on the other.
Tension was particularly evident in the relations between the new Orthodox Christian rulers and
their Muslim minority populations, which were seen as undesirable relics from the Ottoman past. In
spite of such attitudes and the continuing waves of emigration, however, these Muslim communities
remain an integral part of the present-day Balkans.

In spite of claims to the contrary,2 all the Balkan states are new states, the earliest of which only
appeared at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The nationalist ideology that penetrated
the Balkans from western and central Europe in the course of the nineteenth century, and which
contributed to the demise of the Ottoman Empire, was essentially a secular ideology. However,
the close correlation between religion and ethnic or national identity in in the Balkan context, which
can be seen as a legacy of the Ottoman millet system, issued in an entwining of nationalism and
religion, and of national and religious identities. This was especially so in the case of Orthodox
Christianity, and is apparent even today in Greece, where Orthodoxy, ethnicity, and citizenship
are often confused.3 Furthermore, the Balkan peninsula is very mountainous and communications
have in the past been difficult. This geography has historically contributed to a situation where
communities tend to be inward looking and compartmentalised, rather than outward looking and
unified.

The Muslim communities of the Balkans are predominately Sunni. However, the heteredox Bektashi
Sufi sect4 was widespread among Albanians in the south central regions, and the associated
Kizilbashi sect has been evident in the Dobrudzha region 5 While the penetration of Islam had
already begun before the Ottoman invasion,6 this brought large numbers of Muslims from Anatolia
and other parts of the Empire into the Balkans. While most of these were Turkish speakers, they
also included other Turkic groups, Circassians, and other Muslim groups. Traces of these groups
do remain, but on the whole they have gradually become assimilated into the three main linguistic
branches of Balkan Islam: the Turkish, Albanian, and Slavic speaking concentrations.

Following on the Ottoman invasion, sizeable groups of indigenous inhabitants converted to the
religion of their new rulers. These included the majority of the Albanians, the Pomaks (Islamicised
Slavs) of the Rhodope mountains, and SerboCroat-speaking Slavs in Bosnia-Hercegovina and the
Sandzak. In addition, many Greeks, Slavs, and Vlachs7 in what is present-day Greece converted to
Islam, but were expelled to the Republic of Turkey during the 1920s, following the defeat of Greece
by the forces of Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) in 1922. In these population exchanges some 390,000
Muslims emigrated to Turkey and some one million Orthodox people left Turkey, of whom some

540,000 settled in Greek Macedonia along with about 100,000 more Greek refugees who had come
before 1920. In these exchanges, due to the influence of the millet system (see below), religion not
ethnicity or language was the key factor, with all the Muslims expelled from Greece seen as "Turks,"
and all the Orthodox people expelled form Turkey seen as "Greeks" regardless of mother tongue or
ethnicity.

Ottoman rule in the Balkans was essentially non-assimilative and "multinational" in spirit. It also
lacked the technological and institutional facilities for integrating and unifying subject peoples: in
contrast, in western Europe states were for the most part able to transcend regional loyalties and lay
the foundations for the new nation states. As a result the peoples of the Balkans were able to retain
their separate identities and cultures. Many were also able to keep alive a sense of a former glorious
history, when they had controlled a particular territorial area. During the national awakenings of the
nineteenth century such claims were revived, often at the expense of neighbours who made similar
historical claims to the same territory.8

The Millet System

The arrival of Islam in the Balkans through the Ottoman conquest was of particular significance, as
the Empire was ruled in theory by Islamic precepts for most of its existence. In line with these, the
Empire was divided not along ethno-linguistic lines but by religious affiliation-the millet system;9
this system remained in place until changes beginning with the Tanzimat reforms from the mid
nineteenth century. In accordance with traditional Islamic beliefs that uphold them as "People of the
Book," the Christian and Jewish populations were readily accepted; Muslim tolerance was illustrated
by the acceptance of large numbers of Jews, for example, as in the case of the Ladino-speaking
Sephardic Jews who were expelled from Spain in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, many of
whom settled in Salonika, which became predominately Jewish. Within the Islamic Ottoman state
the millet system achieved a separation of the different religious groups, with specific regulations
governing, for example, the colour and type of clothing Jewish and Christian subjects were permitted
to wear.

Leaders of the various millets enjoyed wide jurisdiction over their members, who were bound by
their own regulations rather than the Shariat (Islamic Law). The Ottoman state treated the millets
like corporate bodies. It encouraged the perpetuation of their own internal structures and hierarchies
by dealing exclusively with their leaders as opposed to the individual members. These structures
included educational systems specific to each religious community. The millet became established
as the prime focus of identity outside of family and locality, bequeathing a legacy of a confusion in
modern times between concepts of citizenship, religion, and ethnicity. Furthermore, as the millet
system placed control of education and much of the millet's internal affairs in the hands of the
millet hierarchy, and hence beyond official state control, it proved ideally suited to the transmission
of the new ideology of nationalism intruding from the West. This was especially so in the case of
the Christian millets in spite of frequent tension between the traditional millet leaders and the new
nationalist radicals.

The system was also an ideal tool for assimilating different Orthodox people into a single national
body, and the Greek Patriarchate in Istanbul controlled the millet into which the Orthodox Balkan
populations were organised. Until the nineteenth century, when the Bulgarian Exarchate Church was
finally established (see below), only the Serbs escaped Greek spiritual tutelage for the majority of
the period under Ottoman rule, due to the granting of the autocephalous patriarchate in Pec in 1557.
The autocephalous Archbishopric of Ohrid, demoted from a patriarchate following Samuil's defeat
by Basil II, had become a Greek institution, ceasing to be head of an autocephalous church in 1772.
For centuries the non-Greek Orthodox populations (i.e., Slavs, Albanians, Vlachs, Roma) under
the control of the Phanariot Greeks and the Istanbul Patriarchate were (consciously or not) subject
to being Hellenicised. The Bulgarian case illustrates clearly the implications of the fact that the
millet system permitted control of Christian populations by a specific church. Following the Ottoman
invasion, the separate Bulgarian church and its corresponding educational system were placed
under the control of the Greek Orthodox Church, and the Greek Patriarch in Istanbul. Prior to the
Bulgarian national revival in the nineteenth century, it can thus be argued that the Bulgarians faced
as serious a threat of assimilation from the Greeks, who controlled religious services and education,
both of which were held in Greek, as they did from the Ottoman Turks. As far as the Christian

Bulgarians were concerned, the illiterate peasants in the countryside spoke the Slav vernacular,
while the urban educated became Hellenicised and spoke Greek.

While the Christian population hence faced a threat of ethnic assimilation arising out of the nature
of the millet system itself, Muslim populations in the Ottoman Empire clearly faced a parallel threat
of Turkification. It is important to note, however, that the Ottoman state recognised no official
differentiation by language or ethnicity among its Muslim citizens: the modern notion of being
a "Turk" was until the end of the nineteenth century alien to the Ottoman elites, who regarded
themselves as "Ottomans" rather than "Turkish." In fact the term "Turk" had the connotation of
being an uneducated peasant. Ottoman Turkish, the language of state, was not the vernacular
of the mass of the Turkish-speaking population, and along with being a Muslim, knowledge of it
was a requirement of high office in the Ottoman state.10 Ethnicity per se was not a factor in this
respect and many Grand Vezirs and high officials were originally from Albanian, Muslim Slav, or
other Ottoman Muslim populations. Indeed when the devsirme system-whereby the subject Christian
populations had to give up a number of their most able sons, who were then educated and raised
as Muslims to run the Empire in both civilian and military capacities-was still in operation (it fell into
abeyance in the seventeenth century and had disappeared by the eighteenth) the state officials were
necessarily from non-Turkish Christian backgrounds. In spite of this, however, vernacular Turkish
became widespread as the mother tongue among the Muslim populations (and even the Christian
populations) of Anatolia, although this process was less pronounced in the Balkans.

Muslim Identity

A crucial legacy of the millet system has been to raise questions concerning the national/ethnic
identity of Muslims in the Balkans. A consistent thread in recent Balkan history has been the change
from Muslim identity solely based upon Islam, to one in which an ethnic content has become
an important factor. It is noticeable that in the main the new Muslim political elites couch their
programmes in terms and language that are essentially secular. However, such a shift has been
relatively easy for groups like ethnic Turks or Muslim ethnic Albanians whose identity is differentiated
from Orthodox Christians by language as well as by religion and religious customs. Additionally both
these groups have kin states in the regions to provide both emotional and at times material support,
and, as shown below, there has been a tendency for these groups to assimilate smaller Muslim
groups cohabiting with them. For others, especially Muslim Slavs who share the language with the
respective majority Christian population, the situation is very different.

The situation of the Slav Muslims in Bosnia-Hercegovina and the Sand.ak and how their separate
identity has evolved and strengthened are detailed below. Another example illustrative of changes
in national identity, especially of minorities whose distinctiveness from the majority is based almost
exclusively on their religious adherence and traditional related customs, is the situation of the
Bulgarian Pomak community of Islamicised Slavs living predominately in the central Rhodope
mountains. The state has oscillated between viewing them on the one hand as aliens who should
be encouraged to go to the Ottoman Empire (Turkey), and on the other as a group who should be
assimilated, forcibly if necessary, into the Bulgarian nation. During the Balkan Wars there were
forcible conversions of Rhodope Pomaks to Orthodox Christianity as well as massacres. This
policy of forced conversion and name changing from Islamic forms to Bulgarian ones was soon
abandoned. In the 1920s and 1930s there was a movement among some of Bulgaria's intellectuals
to view religion as not being of paramount importance and thus to view the Pomaks as part of
the national body, and Rodina, a cultural-educational organisation, was set up in 1937 to further
this aim. The Koran was translated into Bulgarian and a Rhodope Mufti separate from the central
Turkish one was set up. In 1942, the practice of forcibly christening all new-born children with
Bulgarian names was introduced and the National Assembly introduced a law to facilitate the
changing of names of adults: many Rhodope Pomaks, either voluntarily or under pressure, changed
their names. The Communists initially changed all this and in October 1945 a decree restored old
Muslim names.11 However, following the rise of Todor Zhivkov in the 1950s, Communist Bulgaria
progressively pursued a policy of homogenisation of its minorities and the Pomaks were subject
to severe pressure to assimilate and become part of "the unified Bulgarian socialist nation." At the
same time, in the eastern Rhodope, where the Pomak and the ethnic Turkish communities overlap,
the Bulgarian Communist Party's policy was to view the Pomaks in these areas as essentially
standard bearers of Bulgarian identity among the Turkish mass, and correspondingly the Pomaks

there were given a privileged position (most party bosses and factory heads in these areas were
Pomaks rather than ethnic Turks). This has led, despite the millet legacy which would encourage
intermarriage and assimilation, to a separation of the two communities.

Since the fall of Zhivkov and the end of the Communist era, the Pomak community, estimated to
number some 250,000, has displayed different tendencies at different times. In the early 1990s there
was a strong movement of Pomaks in the western Rhodope (where they did not cohabit with Turks)
to self identify as Turks. This has declined in recent years along with the beginnings of a possible
move towards the creation of a separate "Pomak" identity12 similar to that which has occurred in
Bosnia with the adoption of the term "Bosniak" to denote Slav Muslims there.13 The basis for this
view seems to be the large numbers-65,000 as per the 1992 census-who declared themselves as
"Muslims," "Pomaks," "Bulgarian Mohammedans," and the like. On the other hand, the use of terms
like "Bulgarian Mohammedans"-a term used by the Zhivkov regime to denote Pomaks (and later
ethnic Turks as well) and one that a practising Muslim would be very loathe to use-perhaps merely
illustrates the present temporary confusion over national selfidentification of such groups, rather
than a process like that in Bosnia where a larger and more dominant group had previously been
recognised as a separate "nation" of Yugoslavia and whose identity has been cemented during the
course of a war.14

Balkan Nationalism and the Creation of the Modern State

The dynamics of nationalism in the Balkans appear to correspond to a paradigm of change from
pre-modern agrarian systems to those based on idealised nation states, as put forward by Ernest
Gellner.15 This model stresses in particular the role of culture and education, distinguishing in
pre-modern societies between the official "high" culture of the state and its rulers, and the "low"
cultures of the general population, which were often very local in nature and varied considerably.
Gellner argues that a modern economy depends both on mobility and on communication between
individuals, which can be realised only if the people have been socialised into a single high culture,
thereby enabling them to communicate properly with each other. Only a relatively monolithic
education system can achieve this socialisation.16

Thus, for Gellner, "nationalism is essentially the general imposition of a high culture on society,
where previously low cultures had taken up the lives of the majority, and in some cases the totality
of the population." This necessitates the "generalised diffusion of a school-mediated, academy
supervised idiom." As mobility of labour is essential in a modem society with individuals required
if necessary to move from one occupation to another within a single lifespan due to constant
innovation, what is needed is "ft]he establishment of an anonymous, impersonal society, with
mutually substitutable atomised individuals held together by a shared culture of this [high] kind, in
place of a previous complex structure of local groups, sustained by folk cultures reproduced locally
and idiosyncratically by the microgroups themselves."17

In contrast, nationalists usually claim the reverse, maintaining that they are acting in the name of a
putative, often imaginary, folk culture. This accounts for the ransacking of history which nationalists
tend to indulge in. Indeed Gellner sees the intelligentsia as the prime movers, who often invent the
past completely to fit the requirements of the "imagined community." In this context, it should be
noted that such inventions and distortions are not the prerogative of nationalists alone, as shown
by Hobsbawm and others,18 who demonstrate how similar methods have been used by a variety
of people and interest groups to help forge or strengthen a common identity or allegiance. The
term "imagined" here refers to the "imagined community" as coined by Benedict Anderson.19 In
the Ottoman context, for the mass of the population the "real" community was the village whose
inhabitants one personally knew, while the "imagined" one was the religious community as per the
millet system. In the post-Ottoman period the "nation" (however defined) competed for the allegiance
of the religious "imagined" community.

Gellner posits the high cultures of the agrarian age as the minority accomplishments of privileged
specialists. These were differentiated from fragmented, uncodified, majority folk cultures, and tended
and indeed aimed to be trans-ethnic and transpolitical, and frequently employed a dead or archaic
idiom with no interest whatsoever in ensuring continuity between its mode of communication and that
of the majority. In contrast with the privileged specialists, the mass of the people were excluded both

from power and from the high culture, being tied to a faith and a church rather than to a state and a
pervasive culture.20 The case of the Ottoman

Empire fits in well with this view. As shown above, the population was divided by religion, and the
language of the state elite was sharply differentiated from that of the masses by being a mixture
of demotic Turkish, Arabic, and Persian which was difficult to understand and use. By contrast
an industrial high culture is no longer linked-whatever its history-to a faith or a church, and it
requires "the resources of a state co-extensive with society rather than merely those of a church
superimposed on it."21 However, as indicated above, the Orthodox Church in states like modem
Greece has tended to become intimately entwined with the idea of the nation and thus in such cases
the pre-modern imagined community has become confused with the modern one-i.e. the nation.

The Break-up of the Ottoman Empire: Muslims in Orthodox Christian National States

The Orthodox Christian national states arising from the Ottoman Empire were Bulgaria, Greece,
Montenegro, and Serbia. However, after the First World War, the latter two became incorporated into
the multinational, multi-religious Yugoslav state. The gradual loss of Ottoman control in the Balkans
in the nineteenth century was witnessed by the emergence of small states at the periphery of the
peninsula. First to break away were Serbia in the north and Greece in the south; but these were
joined later by Romania and Bulgaria, as well as well as Montenegro. All these new national states
followed policies of aggressive expansion to enlarge themselves, and to incorporate their perceived
fellow nationals. Initially, this expansion was at the expense of the decaying Ottoman Empire, but
by the early twentieth century expanding states like Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia were directly
competing with each other for some regions-most notably Macedonia.

In the aftermath of the establishment of the new Bulgaria following the Russo-- Turkish War of
1875-1878, large numbers of Muslims emigrated to the rump Ottoman Empire. This process, which
was not confined to Bulgaria alone, has continued, with sizeable groups of Muslims (Slavs and
Albanians as well as Turks) later emigrating to what became the Republic of Turkey. After 1953,
Tito's Yugoslavia permitted the extensive emigration of "Turks," a term that in practice extended
to Muslim Albanians and Slavs as well as ethnic Turks, to Turkey. Non-Turkish elements in this
ongoing stream of migrants quickly became assimilated into the new Turkish identity propagated
since the establishment of the Kemalist state in Turkey. Turks in Greece have continuously
emigrated to Turkey; this process has been facilitated by Article 19 of the current Greek Nationality
Law which the Greek state has used to deny re-entry to Turks, and to deprive ethnic Turks who
leave the country, even for temporary periods, of their Greek citizenship.22 There remain close
connections between Turkey and Muslim communities in the Balkans, many of which are themselves
made up from ethnic Turks. Turkey also has an interest in maintaining close ties with Turkish
Muslims who have emigrated from Turkey to western Europe.23

In spite of the considerable emigration of Muslims from the Balkans to Turkey, sizeable Muslims
communities remained in the new states. In Bulgaria, for example, a large number of Turks remained
in the southern part of the country around Kardzhali, as well as in the northeast. Large numbers
of Turks also remained in what became Yugoslavia, concentrated predominately in Macedonia,
as well as in Greece in western Thrace. The latter were exempted from the forced population
transfers (of Christians to Greece from Asia Minor, and Muslims from Greece to Turkey) following
Mustafa Kemal's victory over the Greeks in Anatolia in 1922. Alongside Turks, Albanians also
formed a significant Muslim group. There were also regional concentrations of Slavs who had been
Islamicised, most notably in BosniaHercegovina but also in the Sandzak plus the Pomaks of the
Rhodope mountains in what became Bulgaria and Greece. Other Pomaks, known as Torbeshi,
resided in Macedonia. Finally a large percentage of the numerous Roma (Gypsy) population,
who originated in northern India and were dispersed throughout the peninsula, were also Muslim.
These latter have traditionally suffered from indigenous prejudice and at times outright racism.
As such, many Roma have tended to self identify in successive censuses not as Roma but as
members of other groups-usually Christian Roma will identify with the majority Christian group, while
Muslim Roma will identify with the majority Muslim group (Turkish, Albanian, or Slav, depending
on geography). Recently some Roma in Kosovo and western Macedonia identified themselves as
"Egyptians" rather than be stigmatised as Roma.24

The new successor states were essentially ethnic states based on one dominant nation.
Consequently, they suffered from the associated problems of irredentism on the one hand, and
of how to treat their minorities on the other, and these problems have continued to the present.
Together with the relative newness of these states, their subsequent turbulent history of internecine
wars with neighbours over disputed territory and the resulting expansion and contraction of
boundaries has prolonged feelings of insecurity. These feelings have intensified as a result of the
end of the stagnant stability of the Cold War era, plus the bloody wars in former Yugoslavia.

In many ways the legacy of the Ottoman millet system has endured, as religion continues to be an
important differentiating factor among people. Minorities who shared the Orthodox religion of the
new state have tended to be more easily assimilated into the mass of the new nation. This was
especially so for "nonterritorial" minorities-i.e. those without a mother nation with its own state to
provide support. Such minorities were the Vlachs and, as mentioned above, the Roma: Orthodox
Christian Vlachs and Roma tended to join the relevant majority group-Bulgarians in Bulgaria, Greeks
in Greece, etc. In some cases, even if a mother state did exist, assimilation of Orthodox minorities
took place on a large scale. This is illustrated by the Orthodox Albanians in Greece; the mother
state in this case (Albania) was especially weak. In contrast, it was much more difficult for the
Orthodox majorities to assimilate Muslim minorities.25 There was, however, a tendency for smaller
Muslim groups to be assimilated by the dominant Muslim minority within a particular country. This
phenomenon was clearly assisted by the legacy of the millet system, as well as the concept of
Islam as a transnational community of believers. In Bulgaria and northeast Greece, for example,
small Muslim groups including especially Turkic-speaking and Caucasian groups who arrived during
the Ottoman period tended to be drawn into the mass of Muslim Turks. Similarly, on Macedonia's
borders in the western Balkans, small Muslim minorities in Macedonia tended to be drawn into the
great Albanian mass. While Arabic is the language of the Koran, the language used by hodzhas and
in mosque schools has no doubt facilitated this process.26

Muslims in Multinational States: The Muslim Slavs of Bosnia-Hercegovina and the Sandzak

The experience of Serbo-Croat-speaking Muslims in Bosnia-Hercegovina and the Sandzak has
been different from that of Muslim communities in the other Orthodox Christian national states.
Serb statesmen in the mid nineteenth century considered Bosnia-Hercegovina and the Sandzak
to be areas into which the new Serbian state would naturally expand, with the aim of achieving
union with perceived Serbian co-nationals. The Sandzak, for example, separated Serbia from what
it construed as the fellow Serbian state of Montenegro. Russia's defeat of the Ottoman Empire
in the Russo-Turkish War of 1875-1878 was followed by a Russian attempt to construct a large
Bulgaria, made up of all Orthodox Christian parishes that had opted by a two-thirds adult male
majority for the Bulgarian Exarchate Church: this was the so-called San Stefano Bulgaria,27 named
after the San Stefano Treaty. This attempt was aborted, however, due to pressure from the other
Great Powers, notably Britain and Austria-Hungary, who feared that such a Russian client state
with areas on both the Black and Aegean Seas would dominate the Balkans. In its place instead
a severely truncated Bulgaria emerged as a result of the Treaty of Berlin (1878). This treaty also
established the administration of Bosnia-Hercegovina and the garrisoning of the Sanjak of Novibazar
(the Sandzak) by Austria-Hungary. Although theoretically still subjects of the Ottoman Sultan, the
Serbo-Croat-speaking Muslims of Bosnia-Hercegovina and the Sandzak experienced a transfer from
the control of the multiethnic and multidenominational Ottoman Empire to the similarly multiethnic
and multidenominational Hapsburg Monarchy.

In spite of fierce Muslim resistance to the new Austro-Hungarian rulers, the Hapsburg government
did not dispossess the Bosnian Muslim elites: instead it allowed them to retain many of their
former privileges, and indeed coopted them. Although many Bosnian Muslims remained in
village communities, the continuance to the present day of a Muslim urban elite marked the
Bosnian Muslims out as different from other Balkan Muslim groups (outside of Turkey in Europe)
who remained in essentially peasant communities only. Bosnia-Hercegovina came under the
administration of the Joint Ministry of Finance, which was one of the three ministries that owed
allegiance to the Hapsburg crown rather than to either of the two halves of the empire.28 The
Muslims of Bosnia quickly established that their survival depended on maintaining good relations
with the central authorities. Their strategy in this respect continued after the collapse of Austria-
Hungary in the First World War and the incorporation of Bosnia-Hercegovina and the Sandzak into

what became the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918-1941), which was effectively another multinational,
multiethnic, and multidenominational state (albeit in reality dominated by Serbs29).

In the Kingdom of Yugoslavia the Muslim elites continued with their efforts to be coopted by the
central authorities. The main Serbo-Croat Muslim political organisation, the Yugoslav Muslim
Organisation (JMO) led by Mehmed Spaho, was a regular coalition partner throughout the life of
this first Yugoslav state. While this state was obviously multinational, it tended in its first form to
be Serb dominated. The Serbs considered the Serbo-Croat-speaking Muslims to be ethnically
Serbs, while the Croats viewed them as ethnically Croat. Consequently they were not considered
to be alien in this state.30 The survival strategy was continued in the post-1945 era. In the initial
Communist period, the ethnic identity of the Serbo-Croat Muslim Slavs remained undefined. In the
1948 census they were classified as "indeterminate Muslims" (neopredeljeni muslimani), in the 1953
census as "indeterminate Yugoslavs" (neopredeljeni Jugoslaveni). From the 1960s onwards the Tito
regime attempted to end the competition between Serbs and Croats over the ethnic ownership of the
Bosnian Muslims by constructing the term "Muslim" as referring to a separate ethnic group. In the
1961 census they were referred to as "Muslims in the ethnic sense" (Muslimani a ernickom smislu)
while in the census of 1971 they were defined as "Muslims in the sense of nationality" (Muslimani
a smislu narodnosti), until finally in 1981 they were officially recognised as one of the "Nations of
Yugoslavia."31

It should be noted that religious observance in Bosnia-Hercegovina as measured in an opinion poll
in 1985 was low-only 17%32-and thus the identity of the "Muslims" rested more on customs and
culture and the millet legacy than on religious observance. However, the Islamic religious community
(IZ) was, for most of former Yugoslavia's life, dominated and controlled by the Sarajevo Muslim
Slavs; and the prevalence among Yugoslavia's Muslim Albanians of Sufi sects like the Rufai of
Prizren, as opposed to the orthodox Sunnism of the IZ, can on one level be seen as expressions
of ethno-national differences within Yugoslav Islam.33 By the late 1980s the IZ began to change
and attempted to become less Bosnian dominated, culminating in the unanimous election of Jakup
Selimovski-a Macedonian and the first ever non-Bosnian-as Reis-ul-Ulema in November 1989. The
new line, while condemning Albanian irredentism showed solidarity with the Kosovo Muslims, and
gave an increasing emphasis on supranational Islamic identity uniting Yugoslav and east European
Muslims, but supported individual national identities. In line with this the IZ joined the SDA (Party of
Democratic Action) in calling on Bosnian Muslims to give their mother tongue as "Bosnian" rather
than Serbo-Croat in the 1991 census.34

Regarding the language issues, although many Croats have for some time insisted that Croatian is
a separate language from Serbian, linguistically this claim has been somewhat tenuous as even the
main ijekavian dialect used by Croats (as opposed to the ekavian one that was more prevalent in the
eastern part of former Yugoslavia) is shared by many Serb areas. Recently the Croatian state has
encouraged the use of "pure" Croatian words at the expense of the former vocabulary in an attempt
to distance "Croatian" from "Serbian." There is now similarly an attempt by the Bosnian Muslims
(who now call themselves "Bosniaks") to create a "Bosnian" language distinct from both "Croatian"
and "Serbian," with the introduction (or reintroduction) of Turko-Arabic word forms.

The question of intermarriage, which has only occurred since after the Ottoman period, is prone to
be overemphasised. In the 1980s intermarriage was about 12% and equivalent to that of Yugoslavia
as a whole and less than in Vojvodina (28%) and Croatia (17%), while Sarajevo, the Bosnian flag
bearer for multiculturalism, with 28% lagged behind some Croatian towns like Pakrac (35%) and
Vukovar (34%). Moreover, in Bosnia-Hercegovina mixed marriages "were essentially a feature of the
urban elite and manual workers, and were most frequent between Serbs and Croats."35 However,
it is indisputable that mixed marriages were a feature in Bosnia-Hercegovina while Albanian-Slav
marriages in Kosovo and Macedonia were not.

However, the slowly growing sense of national consolidation based on religious customs (if
not actual religious belief) which was evident in the 1980s was only allowed to develop within
the confines of the Tito and post-Tito Communist system. Any form of perceived "Islamic
fundamentalism" was until the great changes of 1989-1990 seen as being party to a conspiracy to
make Bosnia-Herceogovina an "ethnically pure Islamic Republic." The most striking example of this
was the trial in mid 1983 of 13 Muslims accused of "hostile and counter-revolutionary acts derived
from Muslim nationalism." The main defendant was Alija Izetbegovic, a lawyer and retired director of

a building company (later to become President of independent Bosnia-Hercegovina), then aged 59.
He was found guilty by the Sarajevo district court and sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment, reduced
on appeal to 11 years. Four of the 13 on trial including Izetbegovic had been convicted in the late
1940s for membership of the Young Muslims. In the indictment Izetbegovic was accused of claiming
that Muslims had suffered considerably at the hands of Communists when partisans entered their
villages at the end of World War II and that the Young Muslims and other similar organisations
were set up to counter this. The main charge centred on a 50-page treatise written by Izetbegovic
in 1970 entitled "The Islamic Declaration."36 Parts of this treatise had been legally published in
Yugoslavia some ten years previously. The prosecution mentioned that it indicated a desire to
create an ethnically pure Muslim state out of Bosnia-Herceogovina, Kosovo, and other Muslim
areas. Izetbegovic and his codefendants, however, stressed that the declaration was concerned with
the general emancipation of Muslims, not with Yugoslavia or Bosnia in particular, and that it was
meant to apply to countries where the overwhelming majority of the population was Muslim.37 The
defendants were also accused of having links with Iran.

Despite the above-mentioned lack of active religious practice among Bosnian Muslims, the attitudes
expressed by the "Sarajevo Muslims" (as the defendants became to be known) appear to have
elicited strong support from the Muslim population in Bosnia. Izetbegovic was released in November
1988 and when political relaxation came to Bosnia-Hercegovina, as it came to other republics, he
founded in May 1990 the Party of Democratic Action (SDA). Despite a split in the leadership of
the SDA between Izetbegovic and Adil Zullcarpasic (a former leading figure of the emigre Muslim
community who returned to Yugoslavia but who fell out with Izetbegovic over what he saw as
the latter's "too rigid Islamic approach" and instead founded a rival party, the Muslim Bosniak
Organisation, on 21 September 1990), the SDA triumphed in the elections held in December 1990
and became the largest party with 86 of the 240 seats in both chambers of the assembly. However,
a dangerous portent for the future was that the voting was predominately along national lines, with
72 seats for the Serbian Democratic Party and 44 for the Croatian Democratic Community. In all
there were 99 Muslims, 85 Serbs, 49 Croats, and seven declaring themselves as "Yugoslavs" in the
new assembly. Given this, it was not surprising that Izetbegovic (along with Macedonian leaders who
similarly initially viewed the break-up of Yugoslavia as potentially disastrous) were among those who
worked hardest at keeping the Yugoslav state together in some form or other.

However, when Yugoslavia did fall apart, Izetbegovic went for independence. In this he was not
unanimously supported within the Muslim camp. The controversial Fikret Abdic was a leading figure
in the Agrokomerc financial scandal in the 1980s. Agrokomerc was a huge agro-industrial combine
which had greatly enriched the Bihac area and had helped to make Abdic extremely popular. He
was jailed for his part in the fall of Agrokomerc, although his supporters claimed he had been framed
by opponents in the Communist hierarchy who were jealous of his success. In the 1991 elections
he was a candidate for the SDA and polled the largest number of votes-1,010,618--compared
with Izetbegovic's 847, 386. However, his position in the SDA was relatively weak and he allowed
Izetbegovic to become Head of the Presidency of Bosnia-Hercegovina. The personal dimension
aside, the Abdic affair can be seen as a conflict between two different points of view regarding
the future of the Bosnian state. Izetbegovic`s position, nominally supported by the international
community, was that Bosnia-Hercegovina constituted an indivisible independent state. In contrast,
Abdic appeared prepared to have dealings with Serbia and Croatia, and to countenance a scenario
whereby the Muslims would remain in some form of Yugoslavia.38

While the concept of a "Muslim" (or "Bosniak," as they now term themselves) national identity
was perhaps weak within the lifespan of former Yugoslavia, it has become cemented by war and
bloodshed when the very existence of the state and of the Muslims, its largest constituent people,
representing in 1991 44% of the population, seemed at times to be in doubt. Increasingly the SDA
has adopted Islamic insignia and symbols, and there has been a steady drift towards Islam as a
basic source of identity in place of the more citizen-orientated multiethnic, multidenominational
approach represented by Haris Silajdzic and others. The revival of Islamic faith and practice as a
central pillar of Muslim identity in Bosnia-Hercegovina is a reality, and will have ramifications for
Muslims throughout the Balkans.

Muslims as the Majority: The Albanian Case

Albania's late arrival in the nineteenth-century race for territory from the ailing Ottoman Empire
resulted from the fact that the majority of the population shared their faith with that of the Ottoman
rulers, and hence were initially less susceptible to the new ideology of nationalism, as well as to
external Western, Christian benefactors. Indeed it can be argued that the impetus for the Albanian
national awakening, which significantly was initially led by Christian Albanians, arose out of a
realisation that unless the Albanians claimed their own state there was a danger of being swallowed
up by Greece from the south and Serbia and Montenegro from the north. The Bektashi Sufi sect
became a major factor in southern Albania and the Albanian-inhabited areas of western Macedonia.
Bektashism is a Sufi order (named after its founder Haci Bektash)-which was widespread in the
Balkans during Ottoman rule. Sufi organisations tended to absorb popular movements, and the
Shiites in particular were forced, within the Sunni Ottoman Empire, to seek asylum within them. The
heterodox Bektashi order gave this phenomenon its fullest expression. This situation also applied
in relation to Christian communities in the Balkans which adopted Islam. The Sufi orders or tarikats
indeed facilitated the conversion of non-Islamic peoples by allowing a certain symbiosis between
Islamic and other religious beliefs and practices: the wandering dervishes who accompanied or
followed in the wake of the conquering Ottoman troops were thus a crucial component in this
conversion of large sections of the Christian Anatolian and Balkan populations. In the Albanian case,
the presence of local power boss Ali Pasha of Janinna, who was a Bektashi himself, seemed to
have been a major factor in spreading the sect in the areas under his control and those adjacent.
Indeed by the end of the nineteenth century Albania had become the second largest Bektashi area
after Anatolia. This process was no doubt also aided by the similarity between many Bektashi rites
and Christian rites. Bektashism tolerated Christian saints and rights and many Bektashi saints were
deliberately ambiguous: Christian pilgrimages were allowed and stimulated by the Bektashis.39

The first Albanian state which emerged in 1913 was politically very weak. Indeed it was barely a
functioning state and came increasingly under Italian control. Following the Second World War the
Communist authorities under Enver Hoxha instituted an anti-religion campaign, severely persecuting
all religious activity. Following this period of darkness, there appears to be a significant level of
multi-religious tolerance in Albania today. Rare in the context of the Balkans, this can at least be
partly attributed to the simple fact that all religious groups suffered equally under the Communist
dictatorship, as well as perhaps to the influence of the heterodox Bektashis.

While all of the new Balkan states had sizeable minorities outside of their borders-as clear lines
of demarcation between different population groups had failed to emerge-Albania's late arrival
resulted in a situation where there were almost as many Albanians outside of the new state as
there were within it. Many of these to the south in the new Greece were Orthodox Christian, and
tended to become assimilated by the Greeks, who have pursued a consistent policy of attempted
assimilation of all minorities. The Muslim Chams in northern Greece remained a distinct group,
however. Their faith prevented them from absorption in the Greek identity, to which Orthodoxy is
central. Following the Second World War, they were expelled en masse from Greece and their
mosques were destroyed.

The large majority of Muslim Albanians (and some Roman Catholics) remaining outside of the new
Albania found themselves not in Greece but in Serbia or Montenegro, in what became Yugoslavia.
The majority resided in Kosovo, which, under the Titoist system as it evolved through the 1960s and
early 1970s, developed into a separate federal unit of the Yugoslav state. The destruction of this
federal unit by the Milosevic regime and the ongoing acute repression of the Kosovo Albanians saw
an end to this 40 In addition to Kosovo, many Albanians also resided in western and northwestern
Yugoslav Macedonia, where they made up compact regional majorities.41 The Albanians of former
Yugoslavia continue to display an impressive sense of national solidarity which, especially in
Kosovo where there is a sizeable Albanian Catholic community, to a large degree overrides religious
divides. This is something of a rarity in the Balkans, where the millet heritage has tended to work
in the opposite direction. Moreover, as Ger Duijzings convincingly shows, the rise in Albanian
nationalism in the 1980s can be seen to be directly linked with the rise of Sufi tarikats in Kosovo
and Macedonia (another rarity as elsewhere in the Balkans, the tarikats continued to decline) as
the Muslim Albanians of former Yugoslavia sought to differentiate themselves from the Muslim Slav
dominated Sunni community centred in Sarajevo.42

Minorities and the Balkan State

The classic Balkan state emerging from the Ottoman Empire was essentially an ethnic state based
on one dominant nation. Within these states minorities were inevitably considered to be alien and
objects of suspicion. The fact that all of these states, with the exception of Albania, had majority
Christian populations made the position of Muslim communities within them especially problematic.
The differentiation of these communities from the majority along ethno-linguistic as well as religious
lines in certain cases merely intensified perceptions of "otherness." As the only Balkan state
with a Muslim majority, Albania stands out as an exception, characterised by a very low level of
antagonism between its different religious communities.43 In a hostile Balkan environment the
demands of "Albanianism" apparently produced a united front out of the different Albanian religious
groups, helped along by the sense of solidarity engendered by Enver Hoxha's blanket repression.
Even here, however, where the religious divide coincides with an ethnic one, as in the case of
the wholly Orthodox Greek minority44 that resides in the south of the country, the same problems
arise as elsewhere in the Balkans. These problems have been further aggravated by the dominant
nationalisms which have led the emergence of the classic Balkan state to be characterised by a high
degree of centralisation. The ideology that the state is the natural territory of one dominant national
group has tended to result in power being exclusively wielded by that group within a centralised state
where they control the central apparatus and where little decision making is devolved to the regions
where the minorities tend to reside.

The exception to this Balkan centralist model is the post-1945 Communist Yugoslav state. Although
even here the history of the Communist state can be seen as one of swinging from centralisation
(during the Rankovic period, for example) to decentralisation (the case of the 1974 Constitution for
example). In this context, centralisation tended to be equated with dominant Serb nationalism. The
state's break-up can indeed be seen as a reaction to the return to acute centralisation, led this time
led by Slobodan Milosevic, who rode to power on a wave of aggrieved Serbian nationalism over
Kosovo. The successor states to Tito's Yugoslavia have generally tended to revert to the classic
Balkan model of centralisation, leading to an exacerbation of the frictions with minorities which this
model brings. This is evident both in Franjo Tudjman's Croatia and in the new Macedonian state
(FYROM). In the latter the large Muslim Albanian minority that predominates in the western and
northwestern areas points with some justification to the fact that its regional democratic majorities
mean little more than the power to sweep the streets, as all crucial decisions are made at the
centre.45

Conclusion

The entire period in the Balkans from the break-up of the Ottoman Empire to the present can be
seen as corresponding to Gellner's model. As demonstrated earlier, minorities within the state who
share the religion of the dominant nation have in the main been assimilated: this has been most
evident in the Balkans in the case of Orthodox Christianity. Mass education has been employed
by state elites to instil a unified high culture based on what is perceived to be the essence of the
dominant nation (and thus almost by definition with high nationalist content). The instilling of such
unified high cultures has been particularly marked since the Second World War, as mass education
has become a reality for the region's countries.46 A crucial aspect in the success of this process has
been the state's monopoly over the means for propagating the relevant high culture in the Balkan
context. Until very recently the state in the Balkans has been virtually the exclusive actor, not only in
education but also in radio and television. It has also made exclusive and effective use of censorship
and other pressures.

This situation is changing, however, due to the communications revolution,47 which has had a
profound effect. Greece and Bulgaria, for example, are no longer able to isolate themselves from
the outside world, or to pursue policies of forced assimilation of their minorities, including Turks and
other Muslims, and in the case of Greece Orthodox Slav Macedonians also. During the infamous
forced assimilation campaign of 1984--1989, Zhivkov's Bulgaria attempted to completely seal off
from outside influences the areas inhabited by Muslims and Turks. The advent of glasnost in the
USSR made this policy unfeasible, however. The ethnic Turks made use of the meagre opportunities
afforded by the new climate, including in particular the unjamming of foreign radio stations like Radio
Free Europe, which could hence be broadcast into Bulgaria. The use of such media by the ethnic
Turks to coordinate their opposition to the assimilation campaign directly led to the defeat of this
policy.48 Moreover satellite television broadcasts from Turkey helps to preserve and develop Turkish

culture among Muslims in Greece, where locals can receive Turkish TV channels with as much ease
as Greek ones. The only way to combat this is to ban satellite dishes. This demonstrates how, far
from creating a unified world culture,49 the global communications revolution can actually play a
crucial role in preserving and strengthening cultural differences.

Furthermore, the world community has finally become aware of minority problems. While the League
of Nations (established after the First World War) had a number of provisions regarding the rights
of minorities in east and southeastern Europe, these were largely ignored by the states concerned,
with little or no sanction from outside. The explosion of German nationalism under Hitler which
led to the appalling destruction of the Second World War produced a revulsion towards all forms
of nationalism, which extended even to provisions for minorities. In the post-war period minority
rights were generally ignored in favour of individual human rights. The dynamics of the Cold War
issued in a further emphasis on individual rights as both sides used different aspects of these in
the ideological struggle, with the Soviet camp stressing economic and social rights while the West
stressed civil and political ones. In the late 1980s with the ending of the Cold War and the collapse
of the Soviet bloc, minority rights once more came on the human rights agenda. Since then the
international community has moved towards standardisation and codification of minority rights,
leading to the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Persons belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious
and Linguistic Minorities, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly Resolution 47/135 of 18 December
1992, and the Council of Europe's Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities:
the first legally binding international instrument devoted to the plight of minorities. This has been
followed by various regional declarations. While there remains little real sanction against offenders,
and even a European Union member like Greece can apparently continue to deny the existence of
any minorities within its borders apart from religious ones,50 it can at least be said that no European
country appreciates being accused of trampling on minority rights by its peers. It seems likely that
a country's minority record will increasingly come under scrutiny, and offenders will face increasing
censure in the international arena.

Hence there is reason to argue that the attempt in the Balkans (and elsewhere for that matter) to
create homogenised nation states (i.e. monocultural, monoethnic, and monoreligious, all based
on the attributes of the dominant nation) is finally running its course. Indeed the current tragedy in
Bosnia-Hercegovina can be construed as the final attempt at such forced homogenisation in the
Balkans. The location of this attempt can be explained on the basis of the observation that, as noted
above, up until the break-up of Yugoslavia, Bosnia-Hercegovina had remained as a substantial
element in multinational polities, from the Ottoman Empire through Austria-Hungary to the two
Yugoslav states. It had thus avoided the classic Balkan state route. This, it must be stressed, does
not mean that nationalism is a diminishing force in the Balkans. On the contrary, the break-up
of Yugoslavia has seen an intensification of various nationalisms throughout the region. What it
does perhaps show is that the idealised nation state can now be created only by genocide or by
mass expulsion. Total assimilation is a thing of the past, as the states no longer totally monopolise
the means of propagating culture. While the process of homogenisation in the Balkans has been
markedly successful in, for example, transforming multiethnic peasants in Greece into Greek
citizens, it has failed miserably when faced with the need to bridge the gulf between Orthodox
communities on the one hand and Muslim ones on the other. Even in the case of the Orthodox Slavs
in northern Greece this policy has met with a militant minority who refuse to abandon their perceived
ethnicity in order to merge into the majority Greek one. The more pressure the Greek state applies to
this minority, the more the policy proves to be counter-productive. While hitherto and in accordance
with Gellner's analysis, an attempt was made to obliterate "low" peasant cultures and to replace
them with a unified high culture, this situation may well be changing. The new possibilities created by
mass communications and satellite dishes, plus the growing ability of the private sphere to effectively
challenge central dominance as a result of a general trend of economic privatisation, appear to
permit some erstwhile "low" cultures to develop into sustainable "middle" cultures and even into rival
regional high cultures. That this process is taking place in an atmosphere of heightened nationalist
feeling following the collapse of Yugoslavia unfortunately increases the possibilities of further
violence.

In the light of these developments, and given its proven historical success as a civilisation-building
religion, Islam appears destined to remain a major component in the Balkan mosaic. This is already

evident in the increasing number of new contacts being established between Muslim Balkan
communities and Muslim countries beyond the Balkans. One big question remains. This relates to
the nature of the political development of these communities. A consistent thread in recent Balkan
history has been the change from Muslim identity solely based upon Islam to one where an ethnic
content has become an important factor. It is noticeable that in the main the new Muslim political
elites couch their programmes in terms and language that are essentially secular. This is surely a
result of the peculiar history of these communities in the last two centuries and their relationship with
the Balkan state. Whether this will continue or there will be a return to a more rigidly Islamic mode
of political discourse remains to be seen. The tragic events in Bosnia-Hercegovina perhaps show
that, faced with a continuation of the traditional Balkan state model of intolerance to minorities, and
the attendant homogenisation, Muslims will be forced to revert to the latter line. In the long term,
however, continual confrontation cannot be the optimum solution.

NOTES

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).

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

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.

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

5. The Shiite Kizilbashis (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.

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

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).

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).

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.

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. Onder, "Turkqenin
Devlet Dili Ilanini Yildonumii," Turk 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.

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).

12. Ibid.

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.

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

15. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1983). 16. Ibid p. 140.

17. Ibid. pp.57.

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

19. Anderson, op. cit.

20. Gellner, op. cit., p. 141. 21. Ibid.

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 benefitsthis 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.

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).

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

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.

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).

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

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

29. See No Banac, The National Question in Yugoslavia; Origins, History, Politics (Ithaca, NY,
Cornell University Press, 1984).

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 communitywere 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.

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 Rankovic 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:'

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.

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.

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.

35. X. Bougarel, Bosnie: anatomie d'un conflict (Paris: Editions la Decouverte, 1996), p. 87. 36. For
the full text see South Slav Journal, Spring 1983.

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.

38. In 1994 Abdic 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 Abdic`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 Abdic`s supporters. The Bihac pocket was surrounded by
Serb-held positions in both Croatia and Bosnia. Its natural geography between rivers and Abdic`s
manoeuvrings and deals with both the Serbs and Croats facilitated its survival. Despite being viewed
as a traitor by the SDA Sarajevo leadership, Abdic has recently made something of a political
comeback in his power base of Velika Kladusa in the Bihac pocket.

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.

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).

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.

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 ease of Kosovo (London: Hurst,
forthcoming).

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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).

51. See H. Poulton, Who Are the Macedonians?, pp. 165-171.

Indexing (details)

Subjects:

History, Islam, Nationalism; Balkan states

Locations:

Balkan states

Title:

The Muslim experience in the Balkan states, 1919-1991

Authors:

Poulton, Hugh

Publication title:

Nationalities Papers

Volume:

28

Issue:

1

Pages:

45-66

Number of pages:

22

Publication year:

2000

Publication Date:

Mar 2000

Year:

2000

Publisher:

Taylor & Francis Ltd.

Place of Publication:

Abingdon

Country of publication:

United Kingdom

Journal Subjects:

Social Sciences: Comprehensive Works, Humanities:
Comprehensive Works

ISSN:

00905992

Source type:

Scholarly Journals

Language of Publication:

English

Document Type:

Feature

ProQuest Document ID:

228605871

Document URL:

http://proquest.mlp.cz/docview/228605871?accountid=16579

Copyright:

Copyright Carfax Publishing Company Mar 2000

Last Updated:

2010-06-10

Database:

ProQuest Central

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