Over a week ago today, on July 31, 2022, Vladimir Djukanovic of the Serbian National Assembly mentioned the 'denazification' of the Balkans. What was he talking about? Today, we'll be talking about the history of the Balkans and what he meant.
History
In 1389 the Battle of Kosovo took place. In that battle, the Ottomans and the Serbians fought. Neither side won, and the Ottomans eventually took over the country. Still, to the Serbians, it was a day to celebrate those who fought bravely against Ottoman subjugation and for their faith and fatherland. This battle is celebrated in Serbia as Vidovdan. Serbians were not the only people fighting for their freedom but were led by a Serbian Prince.
Fast forward five centuries into the 1800s, many Balkan nations had high tensions against the Ottomans, like the Greeks, who fought for their independence and won; or the Bulgarians, who tried to fight for their independence but were brutally suppressed, although they were given a principality shortly afterward. That's to name only a few of the many that wanted independence. Serbia itself had gained some level of independence in the 19th century.
In the early 20th century, the Ottoman Empire began to fall to the west as more and more nations fought for their complete independence. As a result, Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria formed the Balkan League in the Balkans. The Balkan League fought the Balkan wars against the Ottoman Empire and pushed them out of the region for good.
After the Balkan League had won the first war, there was disagreement between the Balkan states on how to split up the region. Bulgaria wished to distribute land proportionally according to casualties and ethnicity. However, Serbia and Greece believed they should occupy whatever land they occupied with their troops. This disagreement led to the former allies fighting each other in the second Balkan war in 1913. The Bulgarians lost and had to concede to the terms of the Greek and Serbian government.
In 1918, the Balkan states, mainly only the south Slavic states, agreed to unite as one nation for their linguistic similarities were too close to ignore. Of course, that is an oversimplification, but the south Slavic states generally wanted to unite under one name, Yugoslavia.
In the 1980s, Yugoslavia started to have significant growth in Serbian nationalism. Not just that, in 1991, when Yugoslavia collapsed, Serbian nationalists began to kick out smaller people outside of territory thought to be Serbian. One of these spots is Kosovo. Kosovo used to be part of Serbia once but fought for its independence in 2008 due to the Kosovar Albanians being purged by the Serbian government. Kosovo had fought with Serbia from 1998-1999 alongside NATO to keep the lives of the Kosovar Albanians safe from what they saw to be ethnic cleansing.
Conclusion
So what does this all mean? From this, we can learn that there is a strong historical sense of nationalism inside the Balkans. Perhaps we should keep a lookout and watch what will happen in the region to see what will happen soon.
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