May 26, 2009
By Christopher Deliso* High on a windswept ridge in Macedonia’ss barren northeastern expanse, some 17 kilometers down a rough dirt track heading towards Kratovo, it stands as a cryptic reminder of the country’ss still largely undocumented past: the rocky remains of what was once an important outpost in the Early Byzantine imperial hinterland. Nevertheless, the [...]
May 19, 2009
By Mehmet Kalyoncu* Soner Çağaptay of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy recently published yet another controversial piece in Newsweek magazine that appears to be seriously distorting the reality regarding the ongoing “Ergenekon” court case in Turkey and targeting the faith-based civil society movement inspired by Fethullah Gülen by alleging that it is controlling [...]
April 4, 2009
By Ljubica Dzabirova* The principle of proportionality implies balancing of power, actions and measures. Being a relatively young country, Macedonia does not yet have the experience and legal basis to really be able to apply proportionality in its judicial system. However, in the case of applying proportionality in the political system, the question is whether [...]
April 2, 2009
By Christopher Deliso In the following exclusive interview conducted on Wednesday, Balkanalysis.com Director Christopher Deliso gets the views of Macedonia’s interior minister, Gordana Jankulovska, about subjects ranging from the police’s efforts to guarantee peaceful elections and control outbreaks of tensions, to the fight against organized crime, special operations, foreign assistance and the expected outcomes of [...]
March 25, 2009
While considerable foreign support remains for Macedonia and its leadership, the tenor and tone of recent foreign media reports reveal possible trouble ahead. By Christopher Deliso* After a snowy weekend in which first-round presidential and local voting unfolded peacefully and without major reported incidents of fraud, Macedonians are feeling relief that they seem to have [...]
March 11, 2009
By David Binder* The Convair 340 was packed with Macedonians anxious about their families and homes. In the cockpit the JAT pilot dipped the nose down over the city and rolled the plane slightly to the starboard to give me an opportunity to snap pictures from the cockpit with my clumsy but reliable Rolleiflex: A [...]
March 10, 2009
By Cvete Koneska* Two years after the European Union’s last enlargement brought Bulgaria and Romania into the European bloc in 2007, the EU’s appeal in the immediate neighbourhood seems to be on the wane. Applicant and potential applicant countries, always the most enthusiastic supporters of EU integration, are becoming less so as domestic problems, the [...]
January 16, 2009
On Monday, 19 January, a NATO general will be dispatched to Skopje from the Allied Joint Force Command in Naples, Italy, to look into complaints made against a military official currently employed in a senior position in the alliance’s Macedonia liaison office. It is likely that this visit will result in an important personnel change [...]
January 4, 2009
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 [...]
December 14, 2008
Professor Victor Friedman is one of the world’s foremost experts on Balkan languages, and has been studying them for almost four decades, since 1993 as a linguist at the University of Chicago. Professor Friedman has a special place in his heart for Macedonia, which he first visited in 1971. This year finds him back in [...]
