From: sk@groo.sunbim.be (Sasa Konecni)
Subject: THE NEW BULLY OF THE BALKANS [ Part 4 from 4 ]
Reply-To: sk@sunbim.be ()
Organization: BIM Everberg Belgium
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 92 08:29:32 GMT



Parts from : THE NEW BULLY OF THE BALKANS for the benefit of
the readers who can not access the original( a beautiful piece
of professional journalism)
  Noel Malcolm on how Greece's profound neurosis about its own
identity is the biggest single impediment to any sensible EEC
policy in the region


                               IV

     The Greek Slav Macedonians are caught between the hammer
ant the anvil of Greek policy on minorities: assimilation or
expulsion. To see successful assimilation in action, one has
only to visit the Vlach region in the Pindus mountains of
northern Greece. The Vlachs who speak a language closely
related to Rumanian, have a population of perhaps no more than
50,000 in Greece.... Most modern Greek writings about the
Vlachs claim that they are "pure Greeks", descended from
ancient Greeks who just happened to acquire a Latin language
when they did military service for the Romans... and one
recently published Greek book about the Vlachs gives a list of
words in the Vlach language borrowed from Greek, and concludes
in all seriousness that Vlach is "a Greek dialect".....

     The 100,000 Turks of western Thrace, on the other hand,
have a much stronger sense of ethnic identity. Yet in the eyes
of the Greek state they are not Turks at all; they are "Greek
Muslims", a religious minority, not an ethnic one. When Dr
Sadik Ahmet, a surgeon who stood for parliament in 1989,
referred in a campaign leaflet to "the Turkish minority", he
was sentenced to 18 months in prison for using the word
"Turkish"......(The Turkish population is mainly agricultural;
though they have tractors, they have not been granted licences
in the past. [!!!!])

     ...this summer's Amnesty report on torture and ill-
treatment in Greeks prisons and police stations happen to
concern Turks, Albanians and other non-Greek victims.... The
new Greek electoral law will prevent Dr Ahmet from being re-
elected next time, and when he loses parliamentary immunity he
may face another deferred prosecution. And the long-standing
policy of driving these Turks out of Greece continues....More
than 3,000 acres have been confiscated for various public
projects in the last ten years, and there is now a plan to
seize 15,000 acres of farm-land which at present support
20,000 Turks ......
     Fear of Turkey is, in the long run, a greater stimulus to
neurotic Greek nationalism than the Macedonian issue.The fall
of the communist bloc has badly damaged Greek self-esteem; ...
today it is Turkey that is emerging as the strategic power-
base of the whole region...Hence, ..a Greek government
television advertisement every night, "means equal status for
Greece in Europe!" - is a statement either meaningless or
mendacious......

     Personally, I have found that whenever I have long
conversation with EEC politicians or officials, there always
comes a point when they say, "Between you and me, I can't
understand how we ever let Greece in." [!?!?!] With its
peculiar brand of paranoid nationalism, Greece's foreign
policy is now the biggest single impediment to any sensible
EEC policy in the Balkans; and if the Greek public mood
intensifies any further, it may threaten not only the future
of the ex-Yugoslav Macedonia but the territorial Integrity of
Albania as well. Amid all the discussions about the procedure
for new members to join the EEC, has anyone thought of a
polite way of inviting one member to leave?
            
	- The End -

>From "The Spectator" of 15th of August, 1992

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"I understand the world only as a field for cultural 
competition between the nations " GOCE DELCEV (1872-1903)
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