2 6 Regional Issues I S I M NEWSLETTER 5 / 0 0

The Balkans RAYMOND DETREZ Religion

In the Balkans, religion seems to have played a much more important role in the process of nation building than language. Speakers of Serbo-Croat fell apart in three national communities on the basis of religion. and Nationhood Thus emerged the Bosniak nation, which identifies it- self with Islam and clearly distinguishes itself from the Catholic and the Orthodox Serbs. The es- tablishment of the national states in the Balkans was accompanied, from the beginning of the 19t h c e n t u- in the Balkans ry, by attempts to restore the pre-Ottoman Christian states. The population was ethnically homogenized ian nationhood in 1969 – under the clumsy The identification of national and religious jority: the Turks and the Kosovars, being nei- by expelling ethnic and religious minorities or by denomination ‘ in the ethnic sense identity is the strongest with the Orthodox ther Slavs, Greeks, nor Orthodox Christians. forcibly assimilating them. In particular the Muslims of the word’ – resulted mainly from the nations in the Balkans – Bulgarians, Greeks, As Islam was introduced in the Balkans in the Balkans, and especially the Muslim Turks, fell need for a national community whose rep- Macedonians, and Serbs. This is the result of mainly as a result of the Ottoman conquest, victim to this policy. resentatives would balance Croat sepa- the Byzantine legacy of ‘national’ churches. there was no place for Albanian and Turkish ratism and Serb hegemonism at the level of Nation, state, religious community and ec- Muslims in the restored Christian Balkan It is generally assumed that in the Balkans, the federal government and of the govern- clesiastical organization are supposed to be states. As the double barrier of ethnic and religion – including Islam – rather than lan- ment of the Republic of -Herzegov- congruent. The Bulgarian Constitution religious ‘otherness’ made it impossible to guage, plays a decisive role in the process of ina. This does not mean, however, that the states that Orthodox Christianity is the tra- reconstruct their national identity in a way nation building. The former Yugoslavia is a Bosnian nation was an artificial creation. ditional religion of the Bulgarian people; the to make them – albeit conceptually – disap- case in point. In the central part of the east- The Bosnians constituted already then a Greek Constitution is promulgated in the pear into the majority, more radical ways to ern Balkans, where the former Yugoslavia very distinct national community, defining name of the Holy Trinity. Consequently, eliminate them had to be resorted to. All in- was situated, a South Slavic language is spo- itself through Islam, just as Croats and Serbs non-orthodox minorities – Muslim dependence wars in the Balkans (the Serb ken which used to be called Serbo-Croat or defined themselves through Catholicism and Turks, but also Catholics and Protes- Uprisings in 1804-30, the Greek War of Inde- Croato-Serb until recent times. In the 19t h and Orthodoxy respectively. In fact, the very tants – are considered, sometimes quite ex- pendence in 1821-30, and the Russian-Ot- century, the very similar dialects of Serbo- insistence of Croats and Serbs on religious plicitly, as ‘defective’ Bulgarians, Greeks or, toman War in 1877-8) were accompanied by Croat were standardized into one single lit- affiliation as a basic component of national for that matter, Macedonians and Serbs, and massacring and expelling not only the Ot- erary language, intended to demonstrate identity had largely contributed to prevent- as a threat to national unity and solidarity. toman officials and military, but also the the ‘oneness’ of the Yugoslav or South Slav- ing the from considering them- The identification of national and reli- Muslim Turkish population. During the First ic nation v i s - à - v i s its many enemies (Ger- selves Muslim Serbs or Croats, as both Serbs gious community has determined the atti- Balkan War in 1912, not only Turks but also mans, Hungarians, Turks). and Croats indefatigably attempted to tude of the Orthodox peoples in the Balkans fell victim. The ethnic cleansing of In the same period, however, within the make the Bosnians believe. How could a towards Islam in yet another way. In the 19t h Bosnians in Bosnia- and Kosovo community of speakers of Serbo-Croat, na- Muslim be a Serb, if being Orthodox is fun- century, urged by nationalism, the Balkan is a resumption of this ‘method’ of nation tional identities began developing on the damental to being Serb? Besides, just as peoples began their struggle for national in- building in the late 20t h c e n t u r y . basis of religion; or rather, national commu- Croats think of their nation as a part of West dependence against the Ottoman domina- Having lost most of its non-Turkish and nities emerged, coinciding greatly with reli- European civilization and Serbs have the tion, established at the end of the 14t h a n d non-Muslim populations, the late Ottoman gious communities. Catholics speaking sense of belonging to Slavic Orthodox East- during the 15t h century. Independence was Empire and the subsequent Turkish Repub- Serbo-Croat, living in the Habsburg Empire, ern Europe, the Bosnians consider their na- perceived by the leaders of the respective lic resorted to similar practices in order to identified themselves as Croats, whereas tion a full member of the large family of Is- independence movements as the restora- ultimately create a homogeneous Turkish the Orthodox speakers of Serbo-Croat, liv- lamic peoples with their own age-old and tion of the former mediaeval, pre-Ottoman state. The treatment of the Armenians, ing scattered over the Habsburg and the Ot- rich cultural traditions, which are an integral states. Since the mediaeval Balkan states re- Greeks and in Anatolia are the most toman Empires and in their own principality part of the Bosnian national identity. peatedly went through periods of imperial notorious of these measures. However, the of Serbia, considered themselves Serbs. The To be sure, in the Balkans, religion in gen- growth and feudal disintegration, the bor- identification of nationhood and religious development of a Bosnian national con- eral has little to do with devoutness. Forty ders were not very well defined. As a rule, affiliation is less apparent in the official sciousness among the Muslim speakers of years of communist rule dramatically re- every national community aimed at the re- Turkish (Kemalist) interpretation of national Serbo-Croat was slightly retarded, due to duced church and mosque attendance. The establishment of its respective mediaeval identity than it is in the Christian Balkan the Serbs’ and Croats’ attempts to incorpo- religious revival of the last decade is mainly state at its maximum size – which resulted c o u n t r i e s . ♦ rate them at least conceptually in their own the result of the people’s desire to express in legion territorial overlappings and border respective national communities as Serb or their belonging to an ethnic or national conflicts. In addition to the former size, the Croat Muslims, and to the fact that belong- community. As religion is the basic compo- Balkan peoples also wanted to restore the ing to the Muslim community traditionally nent of national identity, church and ethnic composition of the population of was far more important to the Bosnians mosque attendance appears to be a demon- their former states. As religion was one of than belonging to one or another national stration of national awareness. Of course, the main distinctive features of national community. The Yugoslav nationalists, en- the clergy (be it Catholic, Orthodox or Mus- identity, the former religious community deavouring to create a single Yugoslav na- lim) has seized the opportunity to strength- was to be restored as well. In contrast to his- tion, tended to minimize the religious differ- en its position in society and to acquire a torical evidence, the population of the ences among Bosnians, Croats and Serbs, as more or less official ‘national’ status. This Balkan mediaeval states was perceived by they thwarted the process of South Slavic may – and often does – threaten the secular the 19t h-century Balkan nationalists as eth- u n i f i c a t i o n . character of the state granted by the Consti- nically and religiously homogeneous. In the 20t h century, however, especially tution. It has, however, less to do with reli- Thus, in order to re-establish the mediae- after the establishment of the Kingdom of gious fanaticism than with nationalist fa- val situation, ethnic and religious minorities Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918 (re- naticism. This goes for Bosnians, Croats and that came into being after the Ottoman con- named Yugoslavia in 1929), as a result of the Serbs alike. quest had to be eliminated. In some in- Serbs monopolizing political and military stances, the identity of these minorities was power in the new state, Croats started dis- National and religious ‘reconstructed’ in such a way that they tancing themselves from the idea of a sin- i d e n t i t y could be incorporated in and consequently gle, South Slavic nation and state and devel- The identification of national and reli- assimilated by the majority. The Greeks la- oped a national identity of their own, em- gious identity (in the sense of belonging to belled their Slavic co-religionists (about phasizing the particularities of the Croat a religious community) is the least articulat- 150,000 people) in Greek Macedonia as language and the Catholic faith as distinc- ed with the Bosnians. The same phenome- ‘Slavophone Greeks’ and have been treating tive features of the Croat nation v i s - à - v i s t h e non can be observed with the other Muslim them as ethnic Greeks ever since. The Turks Serbs. After an abortive and rather compro- communities in the Balkans. The Pomaks in Greece too are officially called ‘Greek mising attempt to establish an independent () in the Rhodope moun- Muslims’. Calling them Turks is punishable. Croat state under Nazi protection during tains in Southern Bulgaria, in spite of their An attempt to ‘reconstruct’ the Bosnians as the Second World War, was re-inte- being linguistically related to the Bulgari- Islamicized Serbs or Croats failed. For the grated into Yugoslavia, which had become a ans, seem to associate more with the Turk- time being, Bulgarians have been more suc- communist federal state in 1944. The Croats ish minority in Bulgaria than with the major- cessful in preventing the Pomaks from de- finally achieved their aim in 1991, when the ity of Orthodox Bulgarians. Here, religion is veloping a separate Pomak national con- Republic of Croatia was internationally rec- apparently a stronger uniting factor than sciousness – though they have been help- o g n i z e d . language. In Greece too, the Pomak minori- ing them by explicitly identifying Bulgarian- ty is steadily absorbed by the Greek Turks, hood and orthodoxy. Bosnian nationhood notwithstanding the attempts of the Greek The main victims of the Balkan Christians’ In post-war Yugoslavia, the formation of a authorities to impose upon them a Pomak endeavours to restore their mediaeval Raymond Detrez is professor of Southeast European Bosnian national consciousness was finally consciousness, separate from the Turkish states are those communities that differ History at the University of Ghent, Belgium. completed. The official recognition of Bosn- (and Bulgarian). both ethnically and religiously from the ma- E-mail: [email protected]