Electronic Magazine On Global Politics, International Relations, History and World Security Since April 2014
he present-day Macedonians are having a century and a half identity disputes with their neighbors, especially with the Greeks and the Bulgarians but as well as and self-identity problems within the territory of the state of Macedonia which was proclaimed as an independent in November 1991 on the foundation of ex-Yugoslav socialist republic (1945−1991) under the same name […]
The name “Macedonia” today belongs to two independent states: Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (the FYROM) […]
In the spirit of the New Cold War and following on its success in snuffing out South Stream, the US has prioritized its efforts in obstructing Russia’s Balkan Stream pipeline […]
The decision to expand the EU and with it NATO right up to Russia’s borders, initially under the guidance and policies of the Clinton administration, was a clear indication that the governments of the EU had come under American domination […]
The destruction of the Serbian economy, by the Serbian Government, on the orders of Washington and Brussels, is not only causing Serbs to leave the country, in the hope of finding a better future for themselves and their families elsewhere, but is also causing homelessness to explode to shocking levels. People living rough on the streets, once unheard of in Serbia, is now a common sight and especially in Belgrade […]
Even more significantly for the assimilation of Paionia into the Greek world are the dedications of statues of Paionian kings made at Delphi and Olympia, and especially the bronze head of a Paionian bison, also at Delphi […]
The “Macedonian Question” is today actual for several reasons of whom two are of the fundamental importance: 1. The Albanian secessionism in the FYROM; and 2. The Greek dispute with the FYROM authorities over several issues […]
In recent years, some strong research has begun to emerge on the genocides against Armenians and Assyrians. But there is scarcely any reliable information available on the Pontic Genocide, as both academia and opinion makers largely ignore the subject […]
Article by Vladislav B. Sotirović: “Who are the Albanians? The Illyrian Anthroponomy and the Ethnogenesis of the Albanians – A Challenge to Regional Security”, Serbian Studies: Journal of the North American Society for Serbian Studies, Vol. 26, 2012, № 1−2, ISSN 0742-3330, 2015, Slavica Publishers, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA, pp. 45−76 […]
Greece, North Macedonia and Albania, defined exactly what was meant by “Macedonia” and “Macedonian.” For Greece, according to the agreement, these terms denote an area and people of Greece’s northern region, who continue the legacy of the Ancient Macedonian Hellenic civilization, history and culture, as well as the legacy of Alexander the Great […]
The term “Macedonia” has always been used for a wider geographical area, approximately 51 percent of which is part of Greece, 38 percent of which is in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and 9 percent of which is in Bulgaria […]
Maybe it is the best agreement ever signed…Maybe by applying it, Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, will enter an era of great friendship and enormous prosperity […]
The name of the man in command of the “British Police Mission” to Greece is little known. Sir Charles Wickham had been assigned by Churchill to oversee the new Greek security forces – in effect, to recruit the collaborators […]
Although the idea of a Greater Albania may seem like an exaggerated conspiracy, to the Serbian people this is anything but. The Serbian mythos finds itself in the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, where despite their courage, Serbian Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović was martyred and his forces routed by the Ottoman invaders […]
Last month, Turkish journalist Uzay Bulut wrote a revealing article, “Turkey Uncensored: A History of Censorship and Bans,” published on the Philos Project website, regarding the status of Turkish archives and documents going back several centuries. Bulut is free to expose such secrets because she no longer lives in Turkey; she is currently based in Washington D.C. […]
When in 2008 Kosovo declares independence, nearly a decade after the Western military intervention, few commentators call attention to the dominant “Albanity” of this new small state […]
The end of WWI in November 1918 as a consequence of the military collapse of the Central Powers and the following series of peace treaties of Versailles on June 28th, 1919 between the Allies and Germany, of St Germain on September 10th, 1919 with Austria, of Neuilly on November 27th, 1919 with Bulgaria, and finally of Trianon on June 4th, 1920 with Hungary, produced major border changes in Central, South-East, and East Europe as the continent saw the emergence of several of new states and the enlargement of others fortunate enough to be on the side of the victorious powers. After 1919, new states included the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), Finland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia (under such formal name from 1929) […]
As a condition for the “Westerners” giving the go-ahead for a new date to be set, the US spokesperson Brian Hoyt demanded submission and immediate ratification of new bill that would enable the country’s president Gjorge Ivanov to repeal the pardon he had issued for the 55 former governmental officers charged with wiretapping and corruption, to be submitted and voted on the same day […]
The Greek Genocide (or Ottoman Greek Genocide) refers to the systematic extermination of the native Greek subjects of the Ottoman Empire before, during and after World War I (1914-1923). It was instigated by successive governments of the Ottoman Empire; the Committee of Union and Progress Party (C.U.P), and the Turkish Nationalist Movement of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk […]
The Allied Powers suspected Ataturk was going to take reprisals on the city for the conduct of the Greek army during the Greco-Turkish war, and warned him against doing so, but he ignored their warning and got away with it. It was an unnecessary act of wanton destruction that affected only the Christian sections of the city. What happened is very well documented, by eyewitness accounts, photographs, and even video […]
Great Powers upon the spheres of influences in South-East Europe was only temporarily settled in 1782 when the Russian Empress Catherine the Great and the Austrian Emperor Joseph II divided the Balkans into the Russian and the Habsburg spheres of influence […]
The perpetrators of the Greek Genocide were responsible for planning and executing the destruction of Greek communities during the genocide. They include members of the Committee of Union and Progress Party, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and his nationalist supporters (Kemalists) as well as German military personne […]
At the beginning of the 20th century the Great European Powers, divided into two totally antagonistic political-military alliances, were preparing themselves for the final settling of accounts among each other concerning the new division of political-economic spheres of influence and the redistributing the colonies around the world. Their different interests overlapped upon the territory of South-East Europe, much more look down at the other parts of the globe, for the reason of the exploitation of the regional natural wealth and to take advantage of the military-strategic importance of South-East Europe as the strategic hinterland of East Mediterranean and the most fitting bond between Central Europe and the Middle East […]
Israeli historians Benny Morris and Dror Ze’evi’s new book, “The Thirty Year Genocide,” makes the even more striking claim that genocide was committed over a thirty year period between 1894 and 1924 against not only the Armenians but against all Ottoman Christian communities […]
Often the Ecumenical Patriarchate can’t find convincing arguments to reason its decisions (see the discussion involving metropolitan Emmanuel (Adamakis) of France at the Order of St. Andrew’s Virtual Town Hall in late January). Sometimes the Phanar even prefers to keep silent as it did after the unilateral cancellation of the 1686 act on the transfer of the Kyivan Metropolis to Moscow’s jurisdiction […]
Article by Vladislav B. Sotirovic: „Nationalism and Territorial Claims of the Yugoslavs: Challenge to Re-Map the Balkans in the 21st century. Case Study“, Journal of Security Studies and Global Politics, Vol. 2, № 1, 2017, Islamabad, Pakistan, online: http://sciplatform.com/journals, ISSN (online) 2519-9609, pp. 69−81 (PDF) […]
Among his numerous publications, Prof. Jacobs is the author of the chapter entitled, “Lemkin on Three Genocides: Comparing His Writings on the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek Genocides,” in the recently published book, Genocide in the Ottoman Empire: Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks 1913-1923, edited by George N. Shirinian (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2017, published in association with The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center and The Zoryan Institute) […]
On January 17, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament) passed the bill No. 4128 on new amendments regarding the subordination (denomination) of religious organizations and the procedure of state registration of religious organizations with the status of legal entities. The relevant law No. 2673-VIII was signed by President Poroshenko on January 28 and came into force on January 31, 2019 […]
Projected population change in European countries from 2017 to 2050. Sources: International Data Base, International Programs Center, CIA… […]
From the present-day perspective, the fatal mistake of the Greek Cold War’s foreign policy’s priorities was a decision to keep as better as relationships with the USA. One can properly argue that the profile of this position and the relationships from 1947 (the Truman Doctrine) to 1974 (the collapse of Greece’s policy over Cyprus) was of the classic patron-client variety […]
It is very important to emphasize that the choice of Athens as a capital city was, in fact, of the temporal solution till Constantinople would be incorporated into the united national state of Greece according to the design of Megali Idea. In the early 1830s, Athens was, on one hand, nothing more than a big dusty village but on another hand it was a settlement which was dominated by the imposing ruins of the Antique time like the Acropolis and its splendid Parthenon with their associations with the glories of the Classical Age of the Greek history […]
The Balkans has always been cursed by a recurring theme: that each entity within it can, at some point, become greater and more consuming in territory than the next neighbour […]
What is really missing in the Western media reports on Macedonia’s referendum is a very and fundamental fact that 36% of the active voters were, in fact, predominantly ethnic Albanians while ethnic Macedonians boycotted it. This fact once again opened an Albanian Pandora box in Macedonia forcing domestic politicians and political analysts to start rethinking about Albanian-Macedonian relations after the dissolution of Yugoslavia […]
During the Kosovo conflict in 1999, military intervention by the US and NATO was precipitated by the use of outright lies and deceptions. The conflict was “ostensibly about preventing “genocide” on the scale of the Holocaust. This was the Big Lie […]
German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung reviewed a book called “Reparation Debt Mortgages of German Cccupation in Greece and Europe”, in which historian Karl Heinz Roth and researcher Hartmut Rubner, present documents of the dispute and conclude that, even though Berlin claims the war reparations issue was resolved in 1960, in fact nothing has been done about it […]
The Greater Albania project, which dates back to the 19th century is an idea of the unification of all Albanians into one state. Namely, the Prizren League then demanded the recognition of the national identity of Albanians and the autonomy of Albania within the Ottoman Empire […]
There is a common misconception among liberal circles who are confident that the Russian presence in the Balkans is primarily due to the economy. But this is not that case. It would be erroneous to assume that the Balkans is somehow seriously impactful for the economy of the Russian Federation in terms of exports or imports […]
George Mauropoulos, “The Forgotten Genocide of the Greeks of Asia Minor”, AHIF Policy Journal, American Hellenic Institute Foundation, Inc., Vol. 8, Spring 2017, pp. 3 […]
Ever since Macedonia declared independence from Yugoslavia 25 years ago, Greece insisted that the United Nations call the country the “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,” which became an acronym known as FYROM […]
The legalization and continued presence of a Turkish occupation force – of any size – and granting Ankara the right of any kind of intervention is completely inconsistent with the goal of a workable and lasting reunification. We cannot prioritize the international community’s desire for a diplomatic victory at the expense of a viable solution […]
Unlike Salvador Allende, Makarios escaped death and with him his state survived also, albeit mutilated by the Turkish invasion that followed suit. Kissinger had to admit that Cyprus had been the greatest failure of his career […]
The Republic of Macedonia and Greece reached a tentative deal to change the former’s constitutional name to the so-called “Republic of North Macedonia” as a “compromise” for Athens agreeing to Skopje’s membership in the EU and NATO […]
A time of Macedonization of Macedonia by the creation of Macedonian regional feelings, which after the WWII became transformed into the ethnonational consciousness, was also a time of the struggle over Macedonia between Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia from 1870 to 1913. This struggle started with the establishment of an independent Bulgarian Orthodox Church (Exarchate) in 1870 and finished by the division of the territory of historical-geographical Macedonia between them after the Second Balkan War in 1913 […]
The current war conflict in Syria and constant warfare between the Israeli state and the Palestinians which recently erupted once again in Gaza strip brought the region of the Middle East to the world attention once again. However, the Middle East is a natural-geographic continuation of the Mediterranean Sea basin and, therefore, it is a part of the broader Mediterranean geopolitical game. Nevertheless, the geopolitical and geostrategic importance of the Mediterranean Sea basin is probably of the highest level from the global perspective […]
These coming days, the final result of the inter-state negotiations between the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) and Greece about the official and internationally used state’s name of the former is to be announced. According to many unofficial sources, most probable new state’s name of FYROM is going to be the Republic of North Macedonia but other options like the Republic of Ilinden Macedonia are also circulating in mass media. Here, it is worth to remember some of the aspects of historical disputes over the “Macedonian Question” […]
The status of the Vlach minority in South-East Europe is characterized with a shortage of authoritative resources, cultural, linguistic and political subordination to the ethnolinguistic majority environment, social, economic, and territorial (administrative) marginalization and, finally, with a long-standing process of tranquil assimilation especially by the Orthodox majority(s) due to the long-term cohabitation and familiarization […]
Probably the pivotal reason why the Greek authorities are not willing to open the Vlach-language schools and to allow the church service in the Vlach language is unpleasant experience with the same matter from the turn of the 20th century when a significant part of the Vlach community in Greece, following the Romanian propaganda and political support, fought for the Romanian-language schools and churches to be opened in the Kingdom of Greece […]
My hypothesis is that a market economy requires a permanent state of war. Behind the crocodile tears for the human disasters and ‘white man burden,’ people and nature are of value in themselves and war does a good job at consuming both very quickly […]
Washington’s objective is to impose the terms of Korea’s reunification. The NeoCons “Project for a New American Century” (PNAC) published in 2000 had intimated that in “post unification scenario”, the number of US troops (currently at 37,000) should be increased and that US military presence could be extended to North Korea. In a reunified Korea, the military mandate of the US garrison would be to implement so-called “stability operations in North Korea” […]
