Turkish Forum

Tag: Balkans

  • Balkan nations

    Balkan nations

    The Balkans is a southeastern European region that includes countries located on the Balkan Peninsula, with diverse landscapes and climates:

    Albania, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Greece, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Turkey

    The initial Ottoman expansion took place at the expense of Christian lands in western Anatolia and the Balkans, particularly the Byzantine Empire
    The initial Ottoman expansion took place at the expense of Christian lands in western Anatolia and the Balkans, particularly the Byzantine Empire

    Countries in the Balkans often share borders with one another, and historical border disputes have influenced regional dynamics. Many Balkan nations were once part of the Ottoman Empire, which has left a significant historical and cultural impact.

    The breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s resulted in violent conflicts, with lasting implications for the region.

    The Balkans are home to various ethnic groups and religions, with Orthodox Christianity, Islam, and Catholicism being the major faiths.

    Some Balkan nations aspire to join the European Union and NATO, which has implications for their political and economic development; while others have already become members.

    balkans

    Let’s compare them by several key attributes relating to their military, size, economy and quality of life.

    We will look at the top 3 and bottom 3 in each case.

    Military power (Global Fire Power index – 2023) 0 = Super military power and higher the number= less military power

    Top 3

    1. Turkey (11th in the world) – 0.2016
    2. Greece (30th in the world) – 0.4621
    3. Romania (47th in the world) – 0.7735

    Bottom 3

    1. Bosnia and Herzegovina (133rd in the world) – 3.0788
    2. Montenegro (128th in the world) – 2.8704
    3. North Macedonia (108th in the world) – 2.1717

    Population

    Top 3

    1. Turkey – 84.78 million (2021)
    2. Romania- 19.12 million (2021)
    3. Greece – 10.64 million (2021)

    Bottom 3

    1. Montenegro – 619, 211 (2021)
    2. North Macedonia- 2.065 million (2021)
    3. Slovenia- 2.108 million (2021)

    Landmass

    Top 3

    1. Turkey – 783, 562 km²
    2. Romania – 238, 397 km²
    3. Greece – 131, 957 km²

    Bottom 3

    1. Montenegro – 13, 812 km²
    2. Slovenia – 20, 273 km²
    3. North Macedonia – 25, 713 km²

    Education (UN education index – measures the expected years of schooling and mean years of schooling of the population – 0 = no Education at all and 1 = maximum Education)

    Top 3

    1. Slovenia – 0.914 (2019)
    2. Greece – 0.855 (2019)
    3. Croatia – 0.805 (2019)

    Bottom 3

    1. North Macedonia 0.704 (2019)
    2. Bosnia and Herzegovina 0.711 (2019)
    3. Turkey 0.731 (2019)

    Democracy Index (The Economists Intelligence Unit – 2022, 10 = super democratic and 0 = dictatorship)

    Top 3

    1. Greece – 7.97, Flawed Democracy (25th in the world)
    2. Slovenia – 7.75, Flawed Democracy (31st in the world)
    3. Bulgaria – 6.53, Flawed Democracy (57th in the world)

    Bottom 3

    1. Turkey – 4.35, Hybrid regime (103rd in the world)
    2. Bosnia and Herzegovina – 5.00, Hybrid regime (97th in the world)
    3. North Macedonia – 6.10, Flawed Democracy (72nd in the world)

    GDP (size of economy)

    Top 3

    1. Turkey – $819 billion (2021)
    2. Romania – $284.1 billion (2021)
    3. Greece – $214.9 billion (2021)

    Bottom 3

    1. Montenegro – $5.861 billion (2021)
    2. North Macedonia – $13.83 billion (2021)
    3. Albania – $18.26 billion (2021)

    GDP per capita (size of economy relative to population)

    Top 3

    1. Slovenia – $29, 291.40 (2021)
    2. Greece – $20,192.60 (2021)
    3. Croatia – $17,685.33 (2021)

    Bottom 3

    1. Albania – $6,492.87 (2021)
    2. North Macedonia – $6,694.64 (2021)
    3. Bosnia and Herzegovina- $7,143.31 (2021)

    GDP per capita at Purchasing Power Parity – IMF (how much can people buy with money in a country)

    Top 3 (2023)

    1. Slovenia – $52,641
    2. Croatia – $42,531
    3. Romania – $41,634

    Bottom 3 (2023)

    1. Albania – $19,197
    2. Bosnia and Herzegovina – $19,604
    3. North Macedonia – $21,111

    Exports of goods and services (in millions of $, 2022)

    Top 3

    1. Turkey – 343,688
    2. Romania – 129,165
    3. Greece – 105,756

    Bottom 3

    1. Montenegro -3,178
    2. Albania – 7,057
    3. North Macedonia – 10,150

    Percentage of Population Living in Poverty – Poverty Rate, World Bank

    Top 3 (with lowest poverty of population)

    1. Slovenia – 12% (2018)
    2. Albania – 14.3% (2012)
    3. Bosnia and Herzegovina – 16.9% (2018)

    Bottom 3 (with highest poverty of population)

    1. Montenegro – 24.5% (2018)
    2. Bulgaria tied with Romania – 23.8% (2018)
    3. Serbia – 23.2% (2018)

    Peacefulness (Global Peace Index 2023, 1 – 5 scale, 1 being a super peaceful utopia and 5 being a warzone)

    Top 3

    1. Slovenia – 1.334 (8th in the world)
    2. Croatia – 1.450 (14th in the world)
    3. Bulgaria – 1.640 (30th in the world)

    Bottom 3

    1. Turkey – 2.389 (121st in the world)
    2. North Macedonia – 2.039 (88th in the world)
    3. Albania – 1.925 (79th in the world)

    Happiness (Happiness Index, 2023, 10 being maximum happiness and 0 being totally depressed)

    Top 3

    1. Slovenia – 6.63 (22nd in the world)
    2. Romania – 6.48 (27th in the world)
    3. Serbia- 6.18 (43rd in the world)

    Bottom 3

    1. Turkey – 4.74 (109th in the world)
    2. Albania – 5.2 (88th in the world)
    3. Bulgaria – 5.37 (84th in the world)

    Suicide Rate (suicides per 100,000, WHO, 2019)

    Top 3 (has the least suicide)

    1. Turkey – 2.3 (10th in the world)
    2. Greece – 3.6 (27th in the world)
    3. Albania – 3.7 (29th in the world)

    Bottom 3 (has the most suicide)

    1. Montenegro – 16.2 (161st in the world)
    2. Slovenia – 14 (150th in the world)
    3. Croatia – 11 (121st in the world)

    Homicide rate (murders per 100,000, UN)

    Top 3 (with least murders)

    1. Slovenia – 0.4 (2021)
    2. Greece – 0.9 (2021)
    3. Bosnia and Herzegovina – 1 (2021)

    Bottom 3 (with most murders)

    1. Turkey – 2.5 (2021)
    2. Montenegro – 2.4 (2021)
    3. Albania – 2.3 (2021)

    Healthcare Index (100 being amazing quality & universal healthcare and 0 being 0 healthcare, 2023)

    Top 3

    1. Turkey – 71.1
    2. Slovenia – 66.4
    3. Croatia – 64.5

    Bottom 3

    1. Albania – 49.3
    2. Serbia – 52.2
    3. Bosnia and Herzegovina -54.8

    Life expectancy

    Top 3

    1. Slovenia – 82.31 Years
    2. Greece – 82 Years
    3. Croatia – 79.4 Years

    Bottom 3

    1. Bulgaria – 72.84 Years
    2. Romania – 75.14 Years
    3. Serbia – 75.21 Years

    CONCLUSION:

    Turkey has the most economic and military power as a whole, due primarily to it’s size.

  • Balkans

    Balkans

    Why did the Ottoman Turks call all European lands that they conquered as “Balkans”?

    The Ottoman “Rumi” Turks did no such thing. Although the word “Balkan” comes from the Turkish language, its real meaning until the 19th century was different. It only referred to the Balkan mountains, not more. Balkan in older Turkish meant “steep mountain range full of trees”. Then this word became the name of that particular mountain range specifically. As for the term “Balkans” to refer to that entire “peninsula” that makes up southeastern Europe, it was invented in the 19th century by Western European scholars based on the name of the said mountain range. The term was then adopted in the Turkish language as “Balkanlar” too.

    The actual Ottoman Turkish term for what is now called the Balkans was Rumeli (Rum ili), which has been borrowed into English as “Rumelia”. This was, in turn, a translation into Turkish of the more previous Greek and Latin word “Romania”, which means “Roman-land” and should not be confused with the modern nation of Romania —which, in turn, used to be called Wallachia and Moldavia and Transylvania (Eflak ve Boğdan ve Erdel in Turkish) until the 19th century. Actually, Anatolia, which constitutes the majority of Turkey’s present territory between the three seas and the Euphrates River, has also always been an integral part of the greater Roman lands. However, “southeastern Europe”, centered in Thrace and Macedonia, was even more Roman and was therefore called Roman-land/Rumeli because the capital Istanbul, also known as Nova Roma (New Rome) belongs to this peninsula. That is why it was called Romania in late antique and medieval times and then Rumeli/Rumelia.

    balkans

    Ottoman and Austrian and Russian Rumelia/Balkans in 1815.

    Ugur Dinc

  • Montenegrin Ambassador Ramo Bralic: Turkey and Montenegro Have Good Relations

    Montenegrin Ambassador Ramo Bralic: Turkey and Montenegro Have Good Relations

    Montenegrin Ambassador Ramo Bralic: Turkey and Montenegro Have Good Relations

    Posted under Government on Friday, 6 January 2012

    Ramo BralicRamo Bralic, Montenegrin Ambassador in Turkey, told “SES Türkiye” that Montenegro and Turkey had good relations based on mutual support.

    Ramo Bralic Montenegrin Ambassador Ramo Bralic: Turkey and Montenegro Have Good Relations “Turkey was ready to support Montenegro wherever and whenever we needed support. Turkey also supported the independence of Montenegro, and was one of the first countries to recognize Montenegro as an independent state.”

    When it comes to NATO membership, Montenegro counts on Turkey’s support.

    “We are working very hard to achieve this goal and join NATO. We have already implemented the roadmap of NATO, and we have been given the green light to start preparations for EU accession negotiations (June 2012).”

    Ambassador Bralic said that Turkey was an important factor for stability and peace in this region. This country has an important role in resolving regional problems. He also pointed out that Montenegro had a very specific status under the Ottoman Empire, and received considerable help from Turkey after Berlin Congress (1878). In 2006, Turkey supported Montenegro once again, and officially recognized it as an independent state.

    via Montenegrin Ambassador Ramo Bralic: Turkey and Montenegro Have Good Relations – Daily News Montenegro.

  • Turkey in the Balkans: The good old days?

    Turkey in the Balkans: The good old days?

    Turkey in the Balkans

    The good old days?

    Talk of an Ottoman revival in the region seems exaggerated

    Nov 5th 2011 | BELGRADE AND SARAJEVO | from the print edition

    20111105 EUP002 1

    A shadow over an Ottoman domain

    “SARAJEVO won today as much as Istanbul,” declared Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, after his election victory in June. His comment excited new debate in the western Balkans about Turkey’s activist foreign policy. Are the Ottomans coming back? Several examples suggest not.

    In Ankara on October 22nd, Muslim politicians from Bosnia and Sandzak in Serbia praised the Turks for mending a rift between Serbia’s two Islamic groups. The deal swiftly collapsed. The Turks were also praised in 2010 for reconciling Serbia with Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) politicians in Sarajevo. Yet relations between Bosniak, Serb and Croat politicians in Bosnia remain icy. A recent poll showed that views of Turkey in the region divide pretty clearly between Muslims (pro) and Christians (anti).

    Turkey does better with soft power. Turkish soap operas have edged out Latin American ones in popularity. The Turks are busy restoring Ottoman monuments. Turkish schools and universities, some linked to the controversial Gulen movement, now educate several thousand pupils in Muslim regions. Petrit Selimi, Kosovo’s deputy foreign minister, notes that in the past Turkey was seen as “more backward than us.” Now, by contrast, it is a “modernising force.”

    The western Balkans matter little economically. High-profile road and airport projects give a false impression of huge Turkish investment. Except in Albania and Kosovo, there has been more talk than cash. Alida Vracic, an analyst in Sarajevo, says that when Bosniaks go to Istanbul there is a lot of “kiss, kiss” for Balkan cousins, but the money goes to Serbia. Even there Turkey is not among the top 20 foreign investors.

    The Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, waxes lyrical about a “golden age” of the Balkans with Turkey. But Zarko Petrovic, a Serbian commentator, says the region’s interest is largely emotional. Accession to the European Union remains the priority. And, as one Serbian official mutters, “we don’t want to get too close to Turkey, because we don’t want to be seen as part of an EU losers’ club.”

    via Turkey in the Balkans: The good old days? | The Economist.

  • Breivik’s Balkan obsession

    Breivik’s Balkan obsession

    AN UNPLEASANT little surprise. Anders Behring Breivik, the man who has confessed to the Friday attacks in Norway that killed at least 96 people, makes a glancing reference to me in the “manifesto” he apparently put on the internet hours before he began his killing. Discussing a key event in the history of Serbia and Kosovo, in 1690, Mr Breivik refers to me (mistakenly) as a historian, and says that I “refuted” a specific claim made by Noel Malcolm in one of my book reviews. In fact I questioned the claim; “refute” is too categorical.

    A look through Mr Breivik’s 1,500-page 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, which he published under the pseudonym “Andrew Berwick”, shows that he had a strange obsession with the Balkans. A word search for “Kosovo” comes up with 143 matches, “Serb” yields 341 matches, “Bosnia” 343 and “Albania” 208. (“Srebrenica”—the site of a Bosnian Serb massacre of some 8,000 Bosniaks in 1995—does not appear in the document.)

    The document is best described as a kind of “Mein Kampf” for our times, in which Jews are replaced by Muslims as the enemy which must be fought and expunged from Europe. Drawing on the crudest of warmongering Serbian propaganda from the 1990s, the document describes Muslim Albanians and Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) as an evil jihad-waging enemy. Needless to say, its history is convoluted and misinformed.

    In one section Mr Breivik says he would like to meet Radovan Karadžić, the wartime leader of the Bosnian Serbs who is currently on trial at the UN’s war crimes tribunal in The Hague. “But isn’t Radovan Karadžić a mass murderer and a racist?!” he asks. “As far as my studies show he is neither.”

    The document goes on to claim that for decades Muslims in “Bosnian Serbia” andAlbanians waged deliberate demographic warfare, or “indirect genocide”, against the Serbs. This echoes an infamous draft  memorandum by the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, which was leaked in 1986 and widely regarded as a key influence on Serbian nationalists at the time.

    The section goes on to display the extent of Mr Breivik’s delusions. Mr Karadžić, he says, “offered the Muslims in Bosnian Serbia the chance to convert or leave the country”. He continues:

    …he even went as far as offering the Muslims certain enclaves. When they refused he wanted to deport them by force. When this was made impossible by NATO he gave the order to fight the people who refused which was his sovereign right and responsibility as one of the primary leaders of Serb forces. This was never about ethnicity but about ridding the country of the genocidal hate ideology known as Islam. I do condemn any atrocities committed against Croats and vice versa but for his efforts to rid Serbia of Islam he will always be considered and remembered as an honourable Crusader and a European war hero. As for the NATO war criminals, the Western European category A traitors who gave the green light, they are nothing less than war criminals.

    Mr Breivik also has harsh words for Albanians. Their families, he says, “procreate at large scales [sic] trying to conquer territories demographically and later through bloodshed.” Although Albanians are among the most secular Muslims in the world, and fanatically pro-American at that, Mr Breivik chooses to highlight alleged links to al-Qaeda.

    In the coming “war” that Mr Breivik foresees, he discusses the deportation of Muslims from Europe and appears to endorse the physical annihilation of any Albanians and Bosniaks that resist. As they have lived here for “several centuries”, he says, “they will not accept being deported from Europe and will fight for their survival. A more long term and brutal military strategy must therefore be applied.”

    As Europe is cleansed of Muslims, Albania is designated by Mr Breivik as the official “transit zone for the Balkans”. After that, the local map is to be completely redrawn. Once all Muslims have been deported from Europe, Kosovo will be “reunified with Serbia once again.”

    Bosnia, too, is to disappear from the map, in a manner that recalls the failed attempts of the 1990s to divide it between Serbia and Croatia. Mr Breivik refers to the country as “the Serbian/Croatian territory currently known as Bosnia Herzegovina.” It will be divided into a “Serbian (60-70%) and Croatian (30-40%) part… after historical ethnic lines. All Muslim individuals (Bosniaks and Albanians) will be deported to the nearest transit area (Albania) awaiting deportation from Europe.”

    His geography gets a little wonky when it comes to the country he refers to as “the Greek/Croatian/Serbian territory currently known as Albania”: Albania shares no border with Croatia. He suggests dividing the country such that Greece and Montenegro get 20% each, with the rest left for Christian Albanians. “All Muslim Albanians will be deported to central Anatolia.” The resulting “rather large” unpopulated areas in Albania could be offered as a “permanent home (territory) to several Christian minorities” coming from the Middle East.

    Seeing himself as a modern-day crusader, Mr Breivik presumably hoped that by murdering so many fellow Norwegians he would provoke a new world war in which the Balkans would be one of the central fronts. His document contains details of various medals to be awarded. The “Liberation of the Balkans Service” medal is to be given “for assisting to drive out Islam from occupied territory belonging to Serbia and Croatia (Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina).” There are similar prizes for Macedonia and Albania.

    Interestingly, Mr Breivik claims that it was Norway’s “involvement in the attacks on Serbia” (the NATO bombing of the country during the Kosovo war) that led him to want to “move on with the assault”. He writes:

    It was completely unacceptable how the US and Western European regimes bombed our Serbian brothers. All they wanted was to drive Islam out by deporting the Albanian Muslims back to Albania. When the Albanians refused, they really didn’t have any choice but to use military force. By disallowing the Serbians the right for self-determination over their sovereign territory they indirectly dug a grave for Europe. A future where several Mini-Pakistan’s would eventually will be created in every Western European capital. This is unacceptable, completely unacceptable.

    Finally, Mr Breivik discusses the creation of a so-called military order, to which he says he belongs. The initial contact was through Serbian “cultural conservatives”—presumably extreme nationalists—on the internet. He met others from all over Europe, but notes:

    I had the privilege of meeting one of the greatest living war heroes of Europe at the time, a Serbian crusader and war hero who had killed many Muslims in battle. Due to EU persecution for alleged crimes against Muslims he was living at one point in Liberia. I visited him in Monrovia once, just before the founding session in London, 2002.

    www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches, Jul 25th 2011