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Bulgarian Military Achieves Professional Goals, Regional Influence: Interview with General Zlatan Stoykov

By Christopher Deliso
The successful conclusion of a long reform process that has brought a greater sense of stability and security for military personnel, as well as a more prominent role in Balkan partnerships on the national level, are two of Bulgaria’s key achievements, according to General Zlatan Stoykov, Chief of General Staff of the Bulgarian [...]

Bulgaria: 2008 Year in Review

By Oxford Business Group*
Though Bulgaria was sidetracked by the economic slowdown, the country fared better in 2008 than many of its neighbours and fellow members of the EU, maintaining higher levels of growth, seeing a fall in inflation and recording solid rates of foreign direct investment (FDI).

According to official figures published by the state news [...]

Snow Descends on the Balkans, to the Relief of Ski Resorts

The first New Year’s gift of 2009 to the citizens of many Balkan countries has come in the form of the season’s first significant snowfall, blanketing large areas in Macedonia, northern Greece, Serbia, Kosovo, Bulgaria and Albania.
In the Macedonian capital of Skopje, some 16cm of snow has accumulated in the past three days- posing a [...]

Bulgaria: Sticking to Fixed Exchange

By Oxford Business Group*
Bulgaria is expected to experience leaner economic times over the coming year, but reports of an impending crisis appear to be somewhat unfounded.

On November 3, the European Commission (EC) issued a warning that Bulgaria is set to face slowing growth, consumption and investment over the coming year, while the current account deficit [...]

Charging Up

By Oxford Business Group*
With bids for a stake in Bulgaria’s new nuclear power plant (NPP) to be submitted this month, and the funding recently secured, eyes are now turning to the electricity sector’s potential.
Binding bids for a 49% share in the new NPP at Belene on the Danube are to be submitted by June 23, [...]

Macedonian Peacekeeping Contributions Recognized at International Defense Conference in Sofia

By Christopher Deliso
Two Macedonian Army representatives were among the chosen expert speakers at a conference last week in Bulgaria devoted to peacekeeping issues involving the former conflict in Bosnia and the Balkan security situation today. The conference was organized by the Bulgarian General Staff and NATO, and held at the prestigious G.S. Rakovski Defense and [...]

American Friends of Bulgaria: Interview with Roy and Anne Freed

By Christopher Deliso
In this detailed interview, Balkanalysis.com director Christopher Deliso gets a contemporary view on Bulgaria from a unique perspective- Americans Roy and Anne Freed, at 91 years young undoubtedly among the most senior of American lovers of this Balkan country.
Roy and Anne had long and distinguished careers in the legal and psychology/social work fields, [...]

Bulgaria: EU Funds on Hold

By Oxford Business Group*
The European Commission (EC) has decided to suspend some farm aid payments to new EU member Bulgaria over suspected fraud, for the first time since the country joined the bloc in January 2007.
The suspended payments were motivated by an investigation launched in 2006 by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), based on [...]

Balkanalysis.com Announces New 2006 Archive Uploads

Balkanalysis.com would like to announce that nine months’ worth of archived articles, many previously unavailable on the website, have now been uploaded to our page at the Central and Eastern European Online Library (CEEOL.com).

The articles in question number more than 50, and cover the months March-December 2006. They will be of interest to researchers of contemporary Balkan history. They complete the current archive of Balkanalysis.com articles, covering the period 2001-2006. These articles specifically include articles on Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo.

Over 220 instititutions from 21 countries currently offer access to articles in the Library. If you would like to access these articles, but your institution is not yet a member of the CEEOL.com program, please have your institution’s acquisitions or reference librarian contact CEEOL.com directly.

Sincerely,

Balkanalysis.com team

2007 Balkan Year in Review: Key Underreported Trends for the Future

The year 2007 was an eventful one in the Balkans, though several major trends remained underreported or were simply ignored. The Western media utilized most of its limited capacity to the political dimensions of the future status of Kosovo, choosing to tell and retell a tired story of good vs. bad (i.e., the West vs. Russia and Serbia), barely scratching the surface of what is if not necessarily the most important, at least the most hyped issue in the region.

Kosovo is however intimately tied to specific events and factors that, on the larger level, indicate an emerging strategic balance of power in the region, one that may not quite be what had been planned by the West, and thus which will likely leave a complicit media scrambling to find explanations for years to come. In this special retrospective report, Balkanalysis.com discusses a few of the major trends that have been identified in 2007 and which will likely help shape the Balkans in 2008.

The first major event has to be the growing power of Russia in the region and the future way in which this power, even if lessened, will be exerted. Less than a decade ago, the chief successor state to the USSR was grasping for economic stability and political respect on the global stage, with the nadir being reached in March 1999, when it proved powerless to stop NATO’s air war on Yugoslavia over Kosovo. This national humiliation was aggravated when the West failed to grant Russia equal partner status in keeping the peace in post-war Kosovo. Russia could only watch helplessly as half of Kosovo’s Serbian Orthodox population was driven out of the province by Albanian ethnic cleansers, with tacit Western approval.

From the ashes of this defeat arose Vladimir Putin, the ex-KGB officer determined to not let the national interest be trampled on again. In fact, Putin’s opportunity was created by the West in its reckless game in 1999. Until the question of changing Kosovo’s political status arose, Russia had not had a point of strategic leverage in the Balkans. For Putin, simply fomenting stubborn diplomatic opposition while an increasingly frantic West tries to appease the independence-minded Albanians has proven a very cost-effective and powerful strategy to contest Western ambitions and reassert his country’s role as a major power.

Nevertheless, the Western media has more often than not chosen to simply condemn these tactics rather than provide objective analysis, thus betraying their own sympathies with Western governments. Although there is little to be learned from boring invective, it would prove embarrassing to the powers that bombed Kosovo in 1999 for journalists to ask whether the intervention itself provided an opportunity for Russia to expand its sphere of influence, and precisely an opportunity that had simply not existed before. True, the US got its enormous military base in the heart of the Balkans with Camp Bondsteel – now more than a liability than anything else – but Russia has made major inroads on Balkan energy acquisitions, as well as buying considerable valuable seaside real estate in Montenegro, that former partner republic with Serbia whose independence, myopic and partisan Western diplomats still today maintain, is yet another well deserved punishment for the Serbs.

Reporting on the changing Russian role in the Balkans becomes even scantier in terms of its relation to the year’s second key trend, and perhaps the most astonishing- the diplomatic triumphs of Greece. A member of both the EU and NATO, Greece is a thoroughly Western country which has however sought to maintain its diverse relationships in nurturing national interests- in the process perhaps becoming guilty of wanting to have its cake and eat it too. While Greece’s major new alliance, with Russia, is more a harmonious convergence of certain interests than a deliberate planned partnership, it has been amply displayed and was singled out in a ‘power audit’ by the new interventionist think-tank, the European Council on Foreign Relations, some of whose members are famous for their roles in the Kosovo war and peace.

Greece’s convergence of interests with Russia owes primarily to two things; wariness over national security, vis-à-vis perennial enemy Turkey, and its ambition to be a regional player in the energy sector. As with the Russian bear’s awakening over Kosovo, Greece determined these interests in the late 1990’s, in response to Turkey’s enhanced position globally. The first Greek concerns were registered with the Clinton administration’s determination to use the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan for the terminus of a new oil pipeline (the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, or BTC pipeline) that would bring Caspian oil to the West and bypass Russia in the process. Under such a scenario, it was only natural that both affronted parties would reach out to one another in the energy sector, as has been the case with both LUKoil’s acquisitions in Hellenic Petroleum and in the major efforts to hammer out a deal on the anticipated Burgas-Alexandroupoli Pipeline bringing Russian oil to the Aegean via Bulgaria.

Greece’s second point of panic, though a far less reported one, came with the deepening alliance in the late 1990’s between Turkey and Israel. This first of all involved the transfer of lobbying know-how from the latter to the former in Washington, and soon developed into full-fledged intelligence cooperation, with one jarring result being the Turkish MIT’s kidnapping of Kurdish guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan, supposedly under Greek protection, in Nairobi. The Israelis had participated in gathering intelligence. It was a major embarrassment for Athens and a wild success for the Turkish government, by which it effectively ended the Kurdish insurrection, at least for a few years. Israeli-Turkish cooperation would strengthen and, with the victory of George W. Bush in 2000, catapult the neoconservatives, closely affiliated to both Israeli and Turkish lobby groups, into power in Washington.

Greece, like Russia a historic ally of Serbia, had also been less than thrilled about the NATO intervention of 1999, and chose not to participate in NATO air strikes; pivotally, however, it also chose not to veto the operation as Serbia had hoped. Alienated and insulted on all sides, Greece began to develop a parallel security infrastructure to that of NATO, turning to Russian expertise, most significantly in the advanced S-300 and TOR M-1 mobile anti-aircraft system which by virtue of its provenance was not supposed to be acquired by a NATO member. Intense interest in Greece’s air defense capacities from the Turks led, in May 2006, to a brief skirmish between Turkish and Greek fighter jets near the island of Karpathos, leading to the accidental death of a Greek pilot.

Aside from the defense sector, Greece’s budding partnership with Russia has also comprised energy diplomacy- the factor that will raise Greece’s political and economic stature as a transit corridor for oil, at a time of fierce competition between European countries desiring such a role. The expected Burgas-Alexandroupoli pipeline, in which Russia’s stake will be larger than either of the two countries through which the pipeline will actually go, is also seen by Athens as a defensive precaution against Turkey: it will hug the militarized eastern border in Evros, a tangible investment deterring any Turkish invasion. This factor was dramatically enhanced with the Greek Cypriot government’s decision, against Turkish protests, to drill for oil off of the island’s coast. Should multinational oil companies be active in Cypriot oil projects, the logic goes, Turkey will have to take a less bellicose stance towards Nicosia and, by extension, Athens.

The larger implications of Greece’s diplomatic success in 2004 in lobbying for Cyprus’ unconditional entry into the EU – that is, with its membership not being contingent on the passage of the ‘Annan Plan’ for unification – have indeed registered this year, with the EU’s second Greek state ready to uphold Athens’ policies within the bloc, particularly on the Kosovo issue, thus relieving Greece of having to take the strongest stance possible against Kosovo independence. So long as Cyprus can be counted on to conduct an identical policy, Greece can desist and so appear more ‘accommodating’ to Western interests- something that also buys it more political capital to expend on issues which are (erroneously, perhaps) equated with the national interest, such as trying to force the Republic of Macedonia to change its constitutional name. Despite increasing world sympathy for the Macedonian side, Greece has continued to prevent major EU powers from recognizing the country’s name, allegedly due to economic threats. At the same time, Greece is happy to let Turkey remain bogged down on its eastern front, embroiled in a war against Kurdish guerrillas that has now unwisely led it into northern Iraq.

That said, the major point of inquiry for journalists in 2008 has got to be the question of finding the source of Greek power. A NATO member that uses Russian military technology, opposes Kosovo independence, and that has threatened to torpedo NATO plans by vetoing Macedonian accession in April, Greece nevertheless continues to have its way with the West. Despite all of these apparent red flags, there has never been a detailed media investigation into precisely how Greece wields its economic and diplomatic clout to extract results that diverge wildly from those of its allies.

This brings us to the third major issue in the Balkans this year, though before considering it we must acknowledge that for the Greeks, success may be coming at a price: the massive summer fires, which blazed along fronts of up to 70km in width and which reached urban Athens, while decimating large stretches of the Peloponnese, can be considered the greatest threat to national security, and we expect that they will be happen again this coming summer.

While some fires occurred due to natural causes amidst parched, hot natural conditions, the majority occurred due to human involvement. Everyone from arsonists to property developers to Kosovo Albanians have been blamed, all with different alleged motives. While the last of these propositions has been derided as conspiracy-theorizing, it is clear that for irredentists with no chance of undertaking military action against much stronger state forces, the only other possibility for pressuring Greek policy is by causing widespread material destruction through fires or other terrorist acts. However, the Western press by and large chose not to look at the situation from this strategic aspect.

The third major underreported issue of the year in the Balkans has been the intrinsic connections and future possibilities of the major international bodies’ self-created problems in the region. The issue of Kosovo, Western governments have continuously maintained, is one that cannot be considered a precedent for any other of the numerous self-determination struggles across the globe- even as the representatives of these independence movements continue to remind that no, in fact Kosovo is being perceived as a precedent for them.

The possibility that Kosovo could be partitioned, anathema to the West as potentially having the capacity to set off a chain reaction in the Balkans, has ironically been given precedent due to the admission of a divided Cyprus into the EU in 2004. In that case, both the UN and EU were unable, or unwilling, to force Greek and Turkish Cypriots to settle their differences and enter as one nation, thus exacerbating the existing political animosities between Greece and Turkey. Whatever the reason for Cyprus entering the EU divided may have been, it is clear now that the whole thing has proven an embarrassment for the credibility of the supranational world bodies.

Since the UN could not force the non-warring Greeks and Turks of Cyprus to come together in 2004, it should be no surprise that the UN is now saying it can’t do anything more to solve the Kosovo conundrum, and will hand it off to the EU to figure out. This is another blow to the credibility of the alleged global peacekeeper, and will be perceived by potential secessionists around the world as evidence that the UN has no ability to curtail their future ambitions.

For its part, the EU has enough of a headache dealing with embarrassments more recent than the Cyprus fiasco. The two countries that made headlines on Jan 1 by joining the bloc, Bulgaria and Romania, did so on condition of implementing further reforms in the future. European diplomats state that by the end of 2006, the whole train of EU enlargement had built up such momentum that it could not be stopped; and, had everything gone according to plan with the Romanians and Bulgarians, the EU might be more confident now of its future enlargement. However, the complacency that has been shown by the new members – disinterested in finishing reforms, safe in knowing that they are finally in the club – is making Brussels much more circumspect about further Balkan enlargement. While the value of Croatia’s tourism industry and its relatively homogenous Christian society could indeed keep it on track for membership, Macedonia, Bosnia, Albania and Serbia could find themselves out in the cold, stymied both by the cancerous presence of Kosovo in the middle and the recent legacy of less-than-honest candidate countries.

For 2008 at least, therefore, events in the Balkans should continue to outstrip the control of supranational institutions, and perhaps at an accelerated pace. While this is not necessarily a recipe for war, it does mean that the demonstrated trends in the region towards the bold and unpredictable unilateralism of the pre-WWII alliance systems will intensify. To paraphrase the friendly Chinese curse, we are indeed living in interesting times.

Finally, another emerging trend in the Balkans to watch during 2008 will be the activities of Islamic extremist groups in the region. Although their activities in 2007 were reported mostly in the local medias, the international press took interest as well when Serbian police in March broke up a Wahhabi training camp in the mountains of Novi Pazar, in the southwest Sandzak region; recently, from the other side of the border, Montenegro’s intelligence chief attested that the fundamentalists inhabited camps in Montenegrin Sandzak, while also masquerading their activities in NGOs and youth groups. Also in 2007 Macedonian special police carried out an action against an Albanian irredentist group near the Kosovo border, killing at least one known Islamic extremist in the process. And failed jihadi plots against the US Embassy in Vienna and Ft. Dix in New Jersey both had clear connections with the Balkans. These are only a few of the stories that emerged this year, indicating activity that we believe will increase in the year ahead. The fact that certain Western countries and Israel are starting to take a closer look at the phenomenon of Islamic extremism in the Balkans provides further indications that it remains one of the major, if more underreported, issues affecting regional security.

News from Balkanalysis.com: Summer Recess, New Books, Essential Articles

Balkanalysis.com would like to inform its readers that the site will be on summer recess through September. Look for new articles and photos to be posted then. Until we’re back, readers may like to check out two new books from Balkanalysis.com director Christopher Deliso, and to peruse the archive- as well as new hand-picked essential background articles presented for you below.

The first new book, The Coming Balkan Caliphate: The Threat of Radical Islam to Europe and the West, published by Praeger Security International, details in depth the sordid story of how Western interventions in the Balkans during the 1990’s directly allowed foreign Islamic terrorist groups to set up shop- and how Western policy since has created a climate in which extremist groups can thrive, boding ill for regional security.

A work of unprecedented depth, The Coming Balkan Caliphate analyzes the situation on a country-by-country basis, and will be useful for general-interest ‘beginners’ to Balkan issues and experienced professionals alike. Relying on five years of field research and dozens of interviews with ranking security officials from several Western and regional countries, The Coming Balkan Caliphate dispels myths and enhances our knowledge of the emerging extremist threat coming from the Balkans.

The second new book, Hidden Macedonia: The Mystic Lakes of Ohrid and Prespa, is a travelogue out now from London’s Haus Publishing, which details the author’s circular journey around Lakes Prespa and Ohrid, through Greece, Albania and the Republic of Macedonia. Along the way, the history, culture and contemporary life of the great Macedonian lakes are intertwined with a little adventure, camaraderie and good food and drink. Hidden Macedonia will appeal to travelers looking forward to visiting the region, or those who are content to imagine the Macedonian lakes from afar.

Finally, here is a list of twelve original and essential articles (in no particular order). All are among those published over the last year, and will enhance readers’ knowledge and help tide you over until we return from summer recess.

Thanks for your understanding and continued reading.

-Balkanalysis.com

The Strategic Significance of Greek Thrace: Current Dynamics and Emerging Factors (Ioannis Michaletos & Christopher Deliso)

Turkey: Why a Coup, Soft or Hard is Unlikely in 2007 (Mehmet Kalyoncu, December 2, 2006)

Estimating Yugoslavia, (David Binder, December 22, 2006)

In Macedonia, New Concerns over Rural Fundamentalism (Christopher Deliso, October 2, 2006)

Bulgaria To Finally Open Secret Files (Jan Buruma, May 15, 2007)

A Brief Travelers’ Guide to Sarajevo’s Local Traditions, (Lidija Jularić, November 17, 2006)

Exclusive: How the US Ordered Increased Activity against Macedonia’s Islamists after the Fort Dix Arrests (Balkanalysis.com, June 22, 2007)

Turkey: Europe’s Emerging Energy Corridor for Central Eurasian, Caucasian and Caspian Oil and Gas (Mehmet Efe Biresselioglu, January 20, 2007)

Varieties of Religious Experience in a Macedonian Village (Christopher Deliso, September 27, 2006)

The Hijacking of a Nation (Sibel Edmonds, November 29, 2006)

Wahhabis in Labunista Antagonize Locals, as New Details Emerge about Italian Arrests, (Balkanalysis.com, January 5, 2007)

Greece, Turkey and Balkan Security: Interview with John M. Nomikos (Balkanalysis.com, December 12, 2006)

Bulgaria To Finally Open Secret Files

By Jan Buruma
Almost two decades after the fall of communism, Bulgarians are still wrestling with their totalitarian past. They do not yet have complete access to the files of the communist-era secret service (Darzhavna Sigurnost), but that is about to change. In June 2006, a legal deadline to open the files expired. But only in [...]

Trilateral Signing in Skopje Brings AMBO Oil Pipeline a Step Closer to Realization

By Christopher Deliso
Economy ministers representing Macedonia, Bulgaria and Albania signed an important trilateral convention at a ceremony at 1 PM on Wednesday at the Macedonian government building. The signing paves the way for preliminary work to begin on the long-anticipated AMBO oil pipeline, devised since 1994 but still not executed.
However, with yesterday’s signing another hurdle [...]

Why the EU Needs a Strategy for the Black Sea Region

By Lara Scarpitta*

It is old news that geography matters in foreign policy. A dormant EC/EU had to learn this vital lesson in 1989, when communism crumbled behind its safe walls. Faced with the sudden prospect of bordering poor, unpredictable and unstable neighbours, it responded by anchoring the former soviet satellites of Central Europe with the offer of EU membership. But now that a new enlargement has been completed, geography matters even more. With the accession of Romania and Bulgaria on the 1st of January, the EU’s new eastern border has moved south, to the shore of the Black Sea. Across its waters, however, lies one of the most unstable and conflict-prone regions of post-Soviet Eurasia.

For centuries, the Black Sea region has been a theatre of violent conflicts and power struggles, due primarily to its geographical location and character as a transit route. During the Cold War, all Black Sea states (except Turkey) were within the Soviet sphere of influence and at the periphery of international strategic interests. But as the Soviet Union began to break down in 1991, the Black Sea region plunged into chaos, torn apart by several ethnic and separatist conflicts. The end of the Cold War’s artificial stability freed long concealed (and suppressed) historical grievances and a number of new independent states such as Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and Azerbaijan emerged from the ashes of the Soviet Empire.

Nevertheless, most of them are still very weak democracies, facing territorial separatism, ethnic tensions, undemocratic trends in domestic politics, slow economic progress, environmental degradation and endemic corruption of public officials. The long years of armed conflicts have caused disruption to trade and damaged infrastructure. Due to its potential for conflict, the region has attracted relatively little foreign investment and most such countries are still today heavily dependent on the Russian economy. Unemployment rates are generally very high, with almost all states suffer from a hemorrhagic migration abroad of a consistent percentage of the working-age population.

Today the Black Sea region is also a major source and transit area of several security threats, from terrorism to international organised crime as well as arms and human trafficking. It is home to four so-called “frozen” conflicts — Transnistria, Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia – the unresolved separatist issues which followed the breakdown of the USSR.

Despite years of diplomacy and talks, hopes for finding a peaceful and long-standing resolution for these conflicts remain bleak. Apart from fuelling bilateral tensions, these “frozen’ conflicts have been a bane for the region’s democratic and economic development, breeding instability and corruption and favouring the proliferation of organised crime. Uncontrolled territories in Transnistria and Nagorno-Karabakh, for example, have become safe havens for the activities of powerful organised criminal groups involved in people smuggling, human trafficking as well as goods and arms trafficking. The phenomenon of arms trafficking is widespread in the region and much of the large weapons stockpiles abandoned by Russia in the early 1990s have ended up on the grey and black markets. The region is also a major source of drug production and a trafficking route for drugs coming from Central Asia and the Middle East (especially Afghanistan) into Europe. Large profits are also being made from smuggling people across the region with a promise of a better life in the West, and there is evidence that these profits are being reinvested into drugs and arms trafficking, as well as financing terrorist activities, as a recent Europol report highlighted.

This situation carries significant implications for EU security. A power vacuum in the region can potentially result in a security vacuum with consequences which are self-evident yet highly unpredictable. Because of its sudden and new geographical proximity to the wider Black Sea states, the EU will no longer be immune from the backlashes of instability and conflicts in the region, but rather will be directly exposed to a whole range of security threats, from organised crime to drugs and arms trafficking, as well as refugee and illegal migration pressures.

Aside from these security concerns, however, the Black Sea region offers many positive opportunities. The most obvious is in the field of energy. Thanks to its proximity to the oil-rich Caspian Sea and its vast energy resources, the Black Sea region can play a major role for the EU’s energy strategy, to secure alternatives to Russian energy supply.

Many ambitious pipeline projects were launched in the 1990s to guarantee direct access to Caspian oil via the Black Sea. These include the U.S. East-West Energy Corridor and the EU Traceca project (Transit Corridor Europe-Caucasus-Central Asia).

Although these failed to materialise when conflicts erupted in the Balkans and in the South Caucasus in the 1990s, it is in the interests of the EU that these projects be reinvigorated to ensure greater Western access to Caspian energy resources.

Perhaps most importantly, the Black Sea region matters for its strategic importance, owing to its proximity to the Middle East. Since 9/11, the US has played an active role in the region to safeguard its vast security and economic interests, especially access to Caspian oil and gas reserves. American “pipeline politics’ has gone hand in hand with its war on terror and the U.S. administration has been keen to support the NATO aspirations of some Black Sea countries.

Yet is the EU ready take up these challenges with similar energy? Can it exploit the region’s huge and lucrative potentials and prevent the Black Sea from becoming a permanent source of security threats?

Most likely, it will only be able to do so partially. The reasons are multiple. First, the EU does not have a Black Sea policy, or at least not a coherent strategy as such. It has opted instead for a patchwork of policies and approaches: enlargement to South-eastern Europe and Turkey, the “European Neighbourhood” policy and a structured cooperation with the South Caucasus states.

Indeed, therein lays part of the problem. While the EU enlargement policy – with its strict conditionality and convergence to EU norms and standards – has (at least so far) been relatively a success story, other policies failed to deliver the expected results. Bilateral cooperation with post-Soviet Eastern neighbours like Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, as well as with the South Caucasus states (Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan), put in place since the mid-1990s hardly proved a recipe for stabilisation and prosperity. The over 3 billion euros from the EU’s TACIS funds allocated in the last ten years have failed to convince reluctant post-Soviet governments to introduce sound democratic and market-based economic reforms. Part of the problem is that the EU lacks sufficient leverage to push for such reforms. This is hardly a surprise if one considers that most of these states are still heavily under Russia’s influence. The 2006 energy crisis in Ukraine and Moldova, as well as Russian import bans on Moldovan and Georgian wines and water are a stark remainder of Russia’s economic power over its neighbours.

The EU, by contrast, continues to have a limited impact on the region. But the EU “stabilisation’ policy has also been too weak in its incentives to push for reforms. The so-called Partnership and Cooperation Agreements (PACs), lacked not only a prospect for membership but also a strict conditionality and were based primarily on a multidimensional cooperation on economic and cultural questions and a political dialogue on issues concerning minorities, human rights and security in Europe.

The “European Neighbourhood” policy, launched officially on the eve of the 2004 “big bang’ enlargement, was aimed at addressing some of these problems. But judging by the results so far, the innovative offer of “everything except institutions,” has not been the trump card the EU was looking for as an alternative to enlargement. The colour revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia have not given way to the expected substantial democratic reforms. Moldova continues to struggle to control its separatist region of Transnistria and there are no signs of Belarus abandoning its totalitarian regime. Little progress has been made in fulfilling the various Action Plans, the EU’s own financial commitment for the region for 2007-2013 has increased but remains marginal and the EU has continued to politely dismiss the long-term membership aspirations of some of its pro-Western neighbours.

Paradoxically, with these differentiated approaches towards its neighbours the EU has in fact achieved the rather unexpected results of widening the economic, political and social gap between them. While in Romania and Bulgaria the EU accession process has arguably ensured the successful creation of sound democratic institutions and fast economic growth, the EU’s eastern neighbours have witnessed a halt or reversal of their democratic process, as highlighted by the 2005 Freedom House Report, with most struggling with macroeconomic and structural difficulties and declining standards of living.

So what should the EU do? For a start, think strategically. After the 2007 enlargement and with the accession negotiations already underway with Turkey, the EU has already become an actor in the Black Sea region. Developing a coherent and well articulated Black Sea policy to protect EU economic and strategic interests has therefore become imperative.

No doubt, anchoring the countries of the Black Sea region is not going to be easy, not least of all because without a realistic prospect of EU membership for most of these states, the EU lacks its most powerful point of leverage. On the positive side, however, the EU is now in a far better position to develop an ambitious and realistic policy for the region than it was some years ago. It can now draw on its expertise and the instruments developed in the past decade, by abandoning rhetoric and reinforcing its concrete actions.

The coming months may be crucial for the development of a coherent EU Black Sea strategy. German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier made it clear that Germany intends to achieve concrete results in Black Sea Region during its presidency by examining the effectiveness of the European Neighbourhood policy.

Still, by itself this policy is not sufficient. The stability of the region requires political courage and long-term strategic thinking. The EU should certainly put “some meat on the bone’ on its neighbourhood policy, by offering to its neighbours concrete and lucrative economic incentives in exchange for serious and tangible commitments to democratic and market-based reforms and the protection of human rights. But a credible EU Black Sea policy also needs to demonstrate that the EU is serious about the resolution of all the “frozen’ conflicts in the region. The support for the EU Border Assistance Mission between Ukraine and Moldova and the appointment of a EU Special Representative for Moldova in 2005 is a positive sign that EU commitment heads in this direction.

However, concrete steps must be taken at regional and bilateral levels to find durable peaceful solutions. In this respect Brussels must also find the political courage and determination to take the initiative diplomatically with Russia. Unfortunately, EU reactions to Russia’s allegedly “imperialist’ policy to its near abroad have remained weak and not much more has been done beyond expressing disappointment.

Finally the EU needs to step in with greater support and financial involvement to support regional cooperation efforts. So far the EU has paid lip service to regional cooperation preferring to focus instead on bilateral relations. As active regional partners and new EU members, Romania and Bulgaria are likely to play an active role in this respect.

Romanian President Traian Basescu has made it clear on several occasions that Romania intends to promote more assertively the idea of a strategic vision for the Black Sea region and a greater involvement in regional dynamics. Black Sea economic cooperation in particular can offer the EU an ideal forum for promoting projects in the field of energy as well as non economic areas, such as the protection of the environment, controlling immigration and fighting arms and human trafficking. Ultimately, the extent to which the EU will be able to secure its immediate and distant neighbours in the Black Sea region will depend on its ability to increase its role and impact on the region and become a pulling factor for democratic change. A democratic and fully integrated Turkey will be crucial in this respect.

The benefits of a coherent, realistic and forward-looking strategy towards the Black Sea region are enormous. If the EU’s “close’ and “distant’ neighbours can successfully complete their economic and political transition, security threats will be weakened. Similarly, the creation of stable democratic institutions, functioning economic structures and vibrant civil societies will undermine the operation of criminal groups. To achieve this long-term objective all EU instruments and forces should be mobilised. Otherwise, the region may well plunge once again into chaos. However, this time EU citizens many not be immune.

*Lara Scarpitta is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies of the University of Birmingham. Before embarking on a PhD, Lara worked in Holland, Italy and recently in Brussels where she worked as an intern in the Cabinet of Vice President of the European Commission Franco Frattini, EU Commissioner for Freedom, Security and Justice.

Greek Energy Diplomacy and Future Balkan Oil Pipelines

By John Demopoulos*
Energy diplomacy has come to dominate the foreign policy agenda for countries on Europe’s periphery and the Balkans is no exception. As the West seeks to strengthen and diversify its energy supplies, the region has become awash with proposals for new transit routes to ease the flow of resources from the Caspian. [...]

The EU Has No ‘Plan B’ for the Balkans, or, Welcome to the Reservation

By Christopher Deliso
EU policy towards the West Balkan states has sought to keep the various antagonistic nations and ethnicities from one another’s throats, by promising eventual membership in NATO and the European Union to each country. This was to be the magic solution. The premise was that the collective advantages of membership in these [...]

Sofia Readies for Pivotal AMBO Oil Pipeline Meeting

A tri-country expert meeting that could determine the future of Balkan oil transit is set to take place tomorrow in the Bulgarian capital.
The meeting, which brings together representatives of Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania as well as the chief executive of the AMBO oil pipeline project, Ted Ferguson, had been delayed by one month because of [...]

Balkanalysis.com: the New and Improved Version

We at Balkanalysis.com are proud to welcome our readers to the new and improved version of the website. With a different look, improved functionality, enhanced features and more, we are sure that you will enjoy the site more than ever.

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Greek-Bulgarian Relations, 1912-2006: A Historical Synopsis

By Ioannis Michaletos
In this detailed synopsis, Greek researcher Ioannis Michaletos outlines the key moments and trends in the history of Greek-Bulgarian relations from the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 through the Cold War, concluding with the unprecedented excellent relations enjoyed by the two countries today.
Introduction
Greece and Bulgaria have a long and colorful history [...]

Massacres and Machinations Continue: 1905 through to the Bitter End

The last in a 10-part series by Carl Savich and Christopher Deliso.

This depressing outlook was shared by other international observers. A couple months after Captain Nandrup’s final report was issued, the atrocities were still occurring. One was cited by Henry Noel Brailsford, the leader of the British aid mission to Macedonia, and a foreign correspondent for The Manchester Guardian and other publications. He had spent time on assignment in the Balkans in the 1890’s. His 1905 book Macedonia: Its Races and Their Future recounts his experiences in Macedonia during the insurgency and the implementation of the reforms. Brailsford described the Ottoman Turkish attack on Kuklish in 1905 thus:

“a typical outrage occurred in February, 1905, at the Bulgarian village of Kuklish, where, according to the report of a Russian gendarmerie captain, 64 houses out of 105 were burned, 38 unarmed peasants killed, including two women and a baby, five persons wounded, and eleven women violated. The whole place was pillaged, and the officers made no attempt to check the savagery of their men. It is worthy of note that the “reformed’ gendarmes who were present behaved exactly like the unregenerate soldiery.” Zervi, Mogila, Konopnitsa, and other Macedonian towns were similarly attacked during the spring and summer of 1905 by the “reformed” gendarmerie.

A Macedonian woman stands in the desolation of Djupanishta (photo: Methuen and Company)

On May 23, 1905, the arrest of Romanian or Vlach school inspectors by the Turks and the assault on the Romanian consulate on the orders of the vali of Ioannina provoked a diplomatic crisis. This led to the creation of a separate Vlach nationality or “millet” in Macedonia, with its own official language schools and churches. Ottoman Turkey was divided into millets, or communities based on religious affiliation who were autonomous with their own religious leaders and own laws and customs and language. The Turkish government supported this splintering of groups in Macedonia because it divided the Christian populations even further and pitted the Christians against each other.

Brailsford again gave the following on-the-spot, eyewitness evaluation of the reforms:

“the Mürzsteg programme aimed at something more than the improvement of the Turkish administrative machinery. It has done a very little in this direction, and when it is complete it may do more. Its chief aim, however, was to bring some measure of appeasement, to restore order, to re-establish confidence, to repair devastation, and, in a word, to remove the motives for rebellion. Here it has failed, and the failure is so conspicuous that it has actually aggravated the normal anarchy.

The Macedonians were encouraged to hope; the loss of their hope has deepened their despair and increased their recklessness. The reforms left the Turks supreme in all administrative matters. They used their liberty to resort to all the old devices of repression and provocation. They still seemed to contemplate an eventual war with Bulgaria, and to make a pretext, they tried to drive the Bulgarians to desperate courses. They were for ever mobilising their troops, calling out the reserves, and accumulating armaments. The troops lived on the peasants and drained the exchequer. Mutinies were frequent and discipline was lax. Under the plea of searching for arms they harried the villages and carried on their perquisitions, with the usual accompaniments of rapine and brutality.”

The bottom line, for the British observer, was that life for Macedonian civilians had not been qualitatively improved after two years of reforms:

“as in 1903, the migratory Macedonian labourers who annually visit Constantinople in search of work were confined to their villages and forbidden to travel. A curfew ordinance was enforced, which renders any peasant abroad after sundown liable to be summarily shot. Half the refugees from the Adrianople region have been unable to return, and their lands were occupied by Moslem ’squatters.’”

Austria-Hungary Moves on Kosovo

After objecting to other powers’ actions further south, Austria sought to extend its own sphere of influence northwards in 1906 by sending its officers to the northern cazas of Gnjilane in Kosovo and to the Presevo Valley in southern Serbia. In March 1907, Austria received permission from Hilmi Pasha to send an Austrian officer, Captain Franz Schmidt to Presevo. But the Serbian and Albanian civilian populations opposed the deployment of Schmidt. The Turks sent Shemsi Pasha, the commander of the Turkish 18th division to Kosovska Mitrovica to establish order. On April 18, Schmidt was recalled to Skopje. By the end of the year, however, these two cazas would be attached to the Austrian sector.

Meanwhile, the effect of excluding Kosovo from the reforms was bearing fruit, as the province’s beleaguered Serbian population came under the combined fire of Turkish and Albanian Muslims. Because of the exclusion, the latter could act with impunity. As in Macedonia, a cheta militia movement had sprang up among the Christians to provide some form of self-defense.

However, by summer 1907, tensions had significantly increased and Serbian traveling companies were frequently being waylaid. “The discovery of komitadjis [among the Serbian population] vexed the ethnic Albanians who feared the expansion of chetnik action and the inclusion of Kosovo and Metohia in the reform action,” writes Serbian historian Dusan Batakovic. “Feuding Albanian tribes immediately expressed solidarity… An assembly was held in the large mosque of Prizren; the ethnic Albanians of Ljuma demanded the extermination of Serbs. [Vice-consul] Milan Rakic discovered the demands of the people in Ljuma: “[…] for the assembly to determine the day when all ethnic Albanians would rise in arms and carry out a general massacre of Serbs. The reason stated by the people of Ljuma for the extermination of Serbs was that peace among the ethnic Albanians was impossible as long as there were Serbs in these regions, since the Serbs were always complaining to foreigners, bringing about bidats – reforms – with their complaints, and recently, they had started to infiltrate companies from Serbia.’”

However, the Serbs were not able to attract the same attention to their captivity as had the Macedonians, though this was not through a lack of effort. Rather, all entreaties and official complaints fell on the deaf ears of the Austro-Hungarians, who sought to suppress any potential challenge from Serbia.

Albanian irregulars in the Ottoman Turkish forces helped repress the Christian uprisings (photo: Alfred A. Knopf; copyright unknown)

Today, long after the demise of the Hapsburg dynasty and its grandiose dreams, the failure to include Kosovo in the reform scheme has shown itself to have had a retarding influence on development in the area. Events do not emerge from a vacuum, after all. The problems that the Great Powers did not want to face in 1906 simmered until finally exploding almost a century later. Now, in 2006, the diplomatic descendants of the Great Powers are being overwhelmed by the results of their ancestors’ selective inattention.

Swallowed Up by Larger Events, the Mürzsteg Programme Fizzles Out

By early 1908, it was clear that the reforms programme was not working as had been planned. This resulted in a sea change in, among others, British foreign policy towards Macedonia. In March of that year the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, proposed autonomy for Macedonia as a way to resolve the crisis.

On June 9-10, 1908, two weeks after the Ottomans put down a Greek revolt on the island of Samos, Edward VII and Russian Tsar Nicholas II met “cordially” at Reval/Tallin to discuss plans for installing a mostly European administration in Macedonia under an Ottoman governor to be approved by the Great Powers. Germany and the dissident Ottoman Young Turk movement, the Committee for Unity and Progress (CUP) rejected the proposal.

The Young Turk movement was fed both by pro-Western, pro-reforming inclinations, but paradoxically also by resentment of Western interventionism in Ottoman lands, specifically Crete and Macedonia. While the British and Russians were contemplating the idea of an independent Macedonia, however, the Young Turks were making urgent plans for an armed revolt that would render the sultan powerless to give away the territory. CUP agitators relocated from Paris to Thessaloniki, allied with disillusioned military officers and indigenous propagandists, especially Turks and Albanians.

Any dreams of an independent Macedonia were abruptly vanquished, however, early the next month, when the Young Turk revolution began. The Great Powers had found a way out of the quagmire, without having to do another thing. Not surprisingly, this revolt too emerged from Macedonia, among disaffected soldiers in the Ottoman 3rd Army Corps stationed in Resen, west of Bitola.

On July 3, Young Turk sympathizers in the army under command of Major Ahmed Niyazi decamped from Resen, “leaving behind a demand for the restoration of the constitution. The sultan’s attempt to suppress this uprising failed, and rebellion spread rapidly.”

A forgotten mosque in the once-turbulent southeast of Macedonia attests to the Ottoman occupation (photo: Christopher Deliso)

The reformists issued a proclamation which spelled out their liberalizing goals. Like Nikola Karev five years before, they promised equality and freedom to all citizens, regardless of nationality or religion. The strong sense of an Ottoman identity which the Young Turks called for, however, ran counter to the prevailing trend towards nationalism among the different groups. The rule of theocratic oppression was coming to an end, but a new and even more volatile age was beginning.

From Thessaloniki, CUP President Enver Bey declared the restoration of the 1876 constitution, and “the second and third army corps threatened to march on Constantinople if the sultan refused to obey the proclamation. On the 24th the sultan yielded, and issued an irade, restoring the constitution of 1876, and ordering the election of a chamber of deputies.” A limited purge followed, with some of the “more unpopular” Hamidian officials assassinated, like former spy chief Fehim Pasha. On August 6, 1908, Young Turk sympathizer Kiamil Pasha was appointed grand vizier to the sultan.

The Great Powers tried to accommodate themselves to the new situation. On July 27, they withdrew their peacekeeping force from Crete, the other European “project” at the time. They had failed to resolve the situation there as well. The provisional government of the island, which was autonomous but not yet free, soon swore allegiance to the Greek king and thus raised tensions with the Ottomans, who sought to keep it from uniting with Greece.

The Dual Monarchy Raises the Stakes

The victory of the Young Turks meant the end for all intents and purposes of the status quo that the Great Powers had with such frantic inaction sought to maintain throughout their weak intervention in Macedonia. The new Turkish regime was, after all, calling for much of the same reforms that the Europeans had, and more seriously for the Powers, could they pacify the population and keep the empire united, the Young Turks might pose a renewed threat to European hegemonic ambitions. The potential threat seemed most serious to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

On October 7, 1908, the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph thereby took the step of annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was not a surprise; Russian and other diplomats had been expecting it since the summer. According to Vienna, the Young Turk revolution had made the annexation “necessary.” It was allegedly justified by the fateful 1878 Treaty of Berlin. The Austrians were in fact pushing a reckless “back to the future” strategy. The immediate result was a damaging trade boycott in protest from Constantinople and a dramatic increase of tensions with Serbia, which prepared to defend itself from the ambitious Austrians.

At the same time Bulgaria, liberated in fact but not by law with the Berlin treaty, took the opportunity to declare its own full independence. While the Ottomans protested, they were in no position to take military action and instead decided to sue for compensation in both cases.

Thus on April 6, 1909, the Ottoman parliament approved of the Austrian offer to buy Bosnia for 2,200,000 pounds, as well as to pull out of the sandzak of Novi Pazar. Thirteen days later, the Turks recognized the independence of Bulgaria in exchange for more fiscal compensation. The following month a summer-long revolt against the Turks, the most serious yet, erupted in Albania.

Outgunned and outnumbered, the heroic insurgents nevertheless took on the impossible task of defeating the Ottomans (photo: Methuen and Company)

The political drama unfolding in Constantinople and its side effects left the Great Powers gaping. The fate of sorry Macedonia remained in suspended animation as events began to speed up. The Young Turk revolution, plagued by intrigue, assassinations, leadership shake-ups and counter-revolts, raised fears that the new government would be more volatile than the last and its fire, more random. It was an unsettling thought. Russia, confronted with the Austrian provocation in Bosnia, lost its nerve to stand up for the Serbs, when Germany warned that it would back Austria in any war that would ensue from the disagreement. The Great War was arriving fast, and almost a decade of shared intervention in the Balkans had sped it up.

On September 1, 1909, the ambassadors of the Great Powers decided unanimously to recall the Civil Agents from Macedonia and to abrogate the financial commission set up after the naval intervention of December 1904. On the 13^th of the month, the international commission of finance held its final meeting. The Mürzsteg Reform Programme in Macedonia was over.

In a fitting irony, “its members were reappointed to a higher finance board for the whole empire, under the presidency of [Ottoman Finance Minister] Djavid Bey.” Other staff from the French, British, and Italian contingents were also rehired under private contracts to reorganize the gendarmerie in all of Ottoman Turkey. This cynical move showed the utter absurdity of the reforms.

Conclusion: The Failure of the Mürzsteg Plan to Stabilize Macedonia

The Mürzsteg Reforms achieved very little in Macedonia. They were stalling tactics that only made the Balkan powder keg more volatile and explosive. The international intervention only made matters worse, demonstrating the abject and tragic failure of international intervention. The Balkans Wars would follow in 1912-1913 and World War I, the Great War, would follow in 1914.

According to historian Arthur May, the Mürzsteg Reforms “remained a dead letter.” There was no judicial reform in Macedonia. While the Mürzsteg plan granted a measure of local autonomy to Monastir, Skopje, and Salonika, Macedonian Christians continued to be denied even basic civil and human rights in the Turkish courts. Turkey refused to allow international monitors or officials to participate in the judiciary in Macedonia. Turkey was supported in this by foreign chancelleries. Rival comitadji guerrillas continued to infiltrate and to gain control and to seize territory in Macedonia

According to May, “not very much, in a word, was accomplished in bettering the wretched lot of the Macedonians.” In 1907, the British foreign office sought to coerce Turkey to make significant reforms in Macedonia and to break the deadlock. Austria and Russia, however, opposed the new reform initiative, stating that the time was “singularly inopportune for advancing fresh proposals.” Austria considered the possibility of sending in an international force into Macedonia that would exclude Britain but ultimately rejected it. May argued: “Only force, as a matter of fact, could compel the Turk to rectify evils in Macedonia, and that the powers were unwilling to apply.” Pro-Ottoman Germany argued that applying force in Macedonia would result in instability and would encourage insurgencies in the other parts of Ottoman Turkey.

The enactment of the reforms did not bring any positive change to Macedonia. The reforms did not “receive practically any real application.” The only parts of the reforms that were applied were those for the reorganization of the gendarmerie. According to French military attache Dupont in Constantinople, this was done only because the Turks wanted above all to avoid direct Great Power intervention in Macedonia.

The main problem of the reforms, therefore, was that there were no enforcement mechanisms to compel the Turks to act. French representatives recommended that “urgent measures” be taken but Turkish Inspector Hilmi Pasha ignored them. And while the enforcement was feeble in areas covered by the reform plan, it was utterly non-existent in the Albanian-populated areas kept off-limits thanks to the patronage of Vienna. And so at best, the Turks would receive a gentle chiding over atrocities committed in the former areas, while those carried out in the latter areas were not considered.

But by no means do these failings mean that the endemic problems of the region were the fault of the would-be reformers. Turkish cunning created a policy in Macedonia that pitted the different Christian national and ethnic groups against each other. Extending favors and promises to a corrupt Christian leadership, primarily the religious one, at the Porte helped ensure that significant interested parties would support the outdated regime.

Brailsford analyzed this divisive policy as follows:

“with the evident intention of fomenting the feud between Greeks and Bulgarians, Hilmi Pasha has handed over a large number of Bulgarian village churches to the Greek faction. But the worst feature of all is the complicated racial strife, a sort of furtive civil war, which devastates the country. The Turks watch this internecine contest, not merely with tolerance, but with satisfaction. The rayahs are at war among themselves, and the master may fold his arms. But the real responsibility lies with the Government, which connives at the vendetta and seeks to profit by it. The Turks, despite their vast armaments, have proved once more their total incapacity to maintain even an outward semblance of order.”

Brailsford further adduced that the reason for the failure of the Mürzsteg reforms was “largely because it attempted to reform Macedonia without reckoning with the Macedonians.” According to this observer, the reform scheme “was an advertisement to all the world that the Near Eastern Question was open at last. It bore on its surface the marks of transition.”

Many Macedonian villages, like this one near Strumica, look no different than they did 100 years ago (photo: Christopher Deliso)

In a sentence that seems uncannily similar to that facing the Balkans today in Kosovo, the English writer eulogized Mürzsteg as follows:

“no one could imagine it to be final, and no one could suppose that, having recognised the impossibility of Turkish rule, the Powers would ultimately shrink from drawing the logical conclusion. It announced to every race in the Balkans that the end was approaching, and inevitably it accentuated their latent rivalries and hostilities.”

The Mürzsteg Reform Programme failed because it was not so much concerned about the people in Macedonia as it was about advancing the national self-interests and geo-political and geo-strategic agendas of the Great Powers who carried it out. As has remained the case today, the peoples of Macedonia were merely pawns in a greater game.

Moreover, the Great Powers were never able to resolve the inherent contradiction and conflict between international intervention and sovereignty. One precluded the other.

In the end, the international intervention in Macedonia from 1902-1909 was essentially a stalling tactic, a smokescreen, a harmful ruse that revealed the absurdity and futility of all interventions. For history has shown that every intervention addresses the superficial symptoms, and not the inherent causes, of conflict. The Mürzsteg reforms only put off and delayed a final resolution of the conflict, making Macedonia more unstable and volatile, and ensuring that the conflict, when it did come, would be cataclysmic.

Now, one hundred years on, today’s Great Powers seem to think that they have survived the worst of it, and that their innovations in intervention will lead to unending peace and prosperity for the Balkans. But in light of the maxim that those who don’t learn from their historical mistakes are bound to repeat them, it is deeply concerning that the institutional memory regarding intervention in the Balkans seems limited to the last 15 years.

For while no one today talks about or even remembers the tremendous pain, suffering and chaos experienced in the Macedonia of a century ago, many of today’s most vexing unresolved issues lead directly back to the decisions made by Western interventionists at that time. Their descendents would be well served by studying their mistakes, rather than compounding them.

Partial Bibliography

Booth, John. Troubles in the Balkans. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1905.

Brailsford, Henry Noel. Macedonia: Its Races and Their Future. London: Methuen & Co., 1906.

Curtis, William Eleroy. The Turk and His Lost Provinces. Chicago: Fleming Revell Co., 1903.

Fraser, John Foster. Pictures from the Balkans. London: Cassell and Company, 1906.

Lange-Akhund, Nadine. The Macedonian Question, 1893-1908: From Western Sources. NY: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Macartney, Carlile Aylmer. The Habsburg Empire, 1790-1918. NY: Macmillan, 1969.

Mazower, Mark. Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims, and Jews, 1430-1950. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.

May, Arthur J. The Hapsburg Monarchy, 1867-1914. NY: W.W. Norton, 1951.

Sakellariou, M.B., ed. Macedonia. Athens: Ekdotike Athenon S.A., 1983.

Shea, John. Macedonia and Greece: The Struggle to Define a New Balkan Nation. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1997.

Sonnichsen, Albert. Confessions of a Macedonian Bandit: A Californian in the Balkan Wars. NY: Duffield & Co., 1909.

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