Religious Nationalism and Adaptation in Southeast Europe

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Notes

The author would like to acknowledge Andrew Rossos, Brian Walker, Maria Hadjipavlou, Juraj Brychta, Jessica Blomkvist, Maria Koinova, Nukhet Sandal, Djordje Stefanovic and the anonymous reviewers of Nationalities Papers for their insightful comments. A previous version of this article was presented at the Kokkalis Program Second Graduate Student Workshop on Southeast Europe, Harvard University, February 2000 (http://www.hks.harvard.edu/kokkalis/GSW2/Loizides.PDF). The research has been completed with the generous support of the British Academy small grants. For comments please contact the author at [email protected]

Hutchinson and Smith, Nationalism, 3; Norman, “Theorizing Nationalism (Normatively),” 51.

Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred, 12–13; Tambiah, Buddhism Betrayed?, 1–4.

Anderson, Imagined Communities; Greenfeld, “The Modern Religion?”

The article uses the terms “Balkans” and “Southeast Europe” interchangeably and it covers in varying degrees majorities and minorities in Albania, Bulgaria, Rumania, Turkey, Greece, Cyprus and the successor countries of the former Yugoslavia.

For this process of adaptation and relevant cases see, for instance, the work of Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe; idem, “Real and Constructed”; Magocsi, “Adaptation without Assimilation”; idem, Of the Making of Nationalities there is No End; Laitin, Identity in Formation; Stefanovic, “Seeing the Albanians through Serbian Eyes”; Rossos, Macedonia and the Macedonians.

Gellner, Nations and Nationalism; Anderson, Imagined Communities; Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe; Smith, Theories of Nationalism; Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations”; idem, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.

Ibid.

Frazee, The Orthodox Church and Independent Greece, 1821–1852; Arnakis, “The Role of Religion in the Development of Balkan Nationalism.”

Mardin, “Ideology and Religion in the Turkish Revolution.”

Jelavich, History of the Balkans; Banac, The National Question in Yugoslavia; Ramet, Balkan Babel.

Vural and Rustemli, “Identity Fluctuations in the Turkish Cypriot Community”; Loizides, “Ethnic Nationalism and Adaptation in Cyprus.”

Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 89.

Ross, “Culture and Identity in Comparative Political Analysis,” 42.

Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations”; idem, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. See also Payne, “The Clash of Civilisations”; idem, “Nationalism and the Local Church.”

Michas, Unholy alliance.

For instance, in a demonstration in 1992 Archbishop Chrysostomos I of Cyprus proudly declared that on Macedonia and Cyprus: “… he [Alexander the Great] would re-emerge from the Greek earth, victorious soldier, and would avenge all enemies …” This speech and others were later reproduced in high-quality-paper volumes. Douflias, Macedonia, 13.

Jelavich, History of the Balkans; Babuna, “The Albanians of Kosovo and Macedonia.”

Eickelman and Piscatori, Muslim Politics.

Sophia Kishkovsky, “War Splits Orthodox Churches in Russia and Georgia,” International Herald Tribune, 5 September 2008 <http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/05/europe/church.php> (accessed 23 February 2009).

Banac, “The Confessional ‘Rule’ and the Dubrovnik Exception”; idem, The National Question in Yugoslavia.

Whyte, Interpreting Northern Ireland; Walker, “‘Ancient Enmities’ and Modern Conflict.”

Çaha, “The Role of the Media in the Revival of Alevi Identity in Turkey”; Navaro-Yashin, Faces of the State, 68.

Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Turkey.

Hobsbawm, “Introduction.”

Stavrianos, The Balkans, 1815–1914, 17.

Hobsbawm, “Introduction”; Triandafyllidou, “National Identity and the ‘Other,’” 606.

For a related critique see Kymlicka, “Misunderstanding Nationalism.”

Stefanovic, “Seeing the Albanians through Serbian Eyes.”

Rossos, Macedonia and the Macedonians.

Gellner, Thought and Change; idem, Nations and Nationalism; idem, Conditions of Liberty; idem, Nationalism.

Ibid.; for a comprehensive summary and a critique of Gellner's approach, see Smith, Nationalism and Modernism.

Gellner, Nations and Nationalism.

On this point see also Mouzelis, “Ernest Gellner's Theory of Nationalism”; Kitromilides, “The Dialectic of Intolerance.”

O'Leary, “Gellner's Diagnoses of Nationalism,” 73.

Hroch, “Real and Constructed,” 93–94.

Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe.

Hroch, “Real and Constructed,” 99.

Smith, National Identity, 23.

Smith, Theories of Nationalism, 245; see also idem, The Ethnic Revival in the Modern World; idem, The Ethnic Origins of Nations.

Hutchinson, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism, 37.

Ibid., 34; for a relevant discussion of Hroch, Smith and Hutchinson see Loizides, “Religion and Nationalism in the Balkans.”

See Paparrigopoulos, The History of the Greek Nation; Demaras, Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos; Gourgouris, Dream Nation, 144–45; Augoustinos, Consciousness and History, 15–16, 17. Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos (1815–1891) was the most prominent figure in nineteenth-century Greek historiography. The main theme of Paparrigopoulos' history was the unbroken continuity between ancient and modern Greece through Byzantium. See Loizides, “Religion and Nationalism in the Balkans,” fn. 19. For more on Paparrigopoulos see idem, “Re-framing Modern Greek Nationalism.”

Herder introduced an organic conception of nations and treated them as the eternal and central agents of history. Most national intellectuals in Eastern Europe (including Paparrigopoulos) emulated Herder's ideas in their writings and tried to identify and “revive” the perennial features of their ethnic groups in language, history, and folklore. See Sugar, “External and Domestic Roots of Eastern European Nationalism”; Payne, “Nationalism and the Local Church,” 832. From the 1960s onwards, though, most Western scholars have seen nations as modern constructions. This intellectual wave was not welcome by most Greek scholars who favoured a primordial view of nationalism. The most extreme example was a Greek academic who illegally collected blood samples of Thracian Pomaks in order to prove that they are descendants of an ancient tribe which fought with Alexander the Great; see Demetriou, “Prioritizing ‘Ethnicities,’” 106.

Pearton, “Nicolae Iorga as Historian and Politician.”

Go¨kalp, “The Ideal of Nationalism,” 135; see also Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey, 345–46.

Eickelman and Piscatori, Muslim Politics.

Clark, Twice a Stranger; Arnakis, “The Role of Religion in the Development of Balkan Nationalism.”

Banac, “The Confessional ‘Rule’ and the Dubrovnik Exception”; idem, The National Question in Yugoslavia.

Iveković, “Nationalism and the Political Use and Abuse of Religion,” 530.

Trix, “The Resurfacing of Islam in Albania,” 536.

Ibid.

Arnakis, “The Role of Religion in the Development of Balkan Nationalism”; Bieber, “Muslim Identity in the Balkans before the Establishment of Nation States.”

Ibid.

Mavrogordatos, “Orthodoxy and Nationalism in the Greek Case,” 128.

Pollis, “Intergroup Conflict and British Colonial Policy,” 589; Kizilyurek, Cyprus.

Crampton, A Concise History of Bulgaria, 65–75.

Rossos, Macedonia and the Macedonians, 87–88.

Ibid., 240.

Ibid.

Angelou, Secret School.

Stefanos Evripidou, “Throw Away the History Book,” Cyprus Mail, 7 November 2008 <http://www.cyprus-mail.com/news/> (accessed 23 February 2009).

Fokas, “Greek Orthodoxy and European Identity,” 12.

Mavrogordatos, “Orthodoxy and Nationalism in the Greek Case,” 128; Halikiopoulou, “The Changing Dynamics of Religion and National Identity.”

Jean Christou, “Archbishop: Parties Come and Go, But We've Been Around Longest,” Cyprus Mail, 24 August 2007 <http://www.cyprus-mail.com/news/> (accessed 23 February 2009).

For two different versions of this argument see Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order; Gellner, Conditions of Liberty; idem, Encounters with Nationalism, 85–91.

Iveković, “Nationalism and the Political Use and Abuse of Religion,” 530.

Stefanovic, “Seeing the Albanians through Serbian Eyes.”

Štulhofer et al., “Croatia.”

Sakallioglu, “Kurdish Nationalism from an Islamist Perspective.”

Mardin, “The Just and the Unjust”; idem, “Center Periphery Relations.”

Kadioglu, “The Paradox of Turkish Nationalism and the Construction of Official Identity”; Heper, The State Tradition in Turkey; Heper and Guney, “The Military and Democracy in the Third Turkish Republic.”

Karakaya-Polat, “The 2007 Parliamentary Elections in Turkey.”

Chaconas, Adamantios Korais; Kitromilides, “‘Imagined Communities’ and the Origins of the National Question in the Balkans.”

Anagnostopoulou, Asia Minor, 19th century–1919, 430.

Ibid.

Gourgouris, Dream Nation, 144.

Salzman, “Rape Camps as a Means of Ethnic Cleansing,” 368–69.

Papadakis, Echoes from the Dead Zone, 8.

Georgiou, “Cyprus.”

Sandal, “Religious Actors as Epistemic Communities in Conflict Transformation.”

Kitromilides, “‘Imagined Communities’ and the Origins of the National Question in the Balkans.”

Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, 215.

Perica, Balkan Idols, 239–40.

Sevgu¨l Uludağ, “Bishop of Morphou Neophytos: ‘Nationalism is a Sin and the Greek Cypriot Orthodox Church has Committed this Sin,’” Yeraltı Notları, 17 April 2003 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/balkanhr/message/5374> (accessed 23 February 2009).

Ibid.

Iveković, “Nationalism and the Political Use and Abuse of Religion”; Perica, Balkan Idols.

Hodson et al., “National Tolerance in the Former Yugoslavia.”

Anderson, Imagined Communities.

Ibid., 36.

Ibid.

For data on Greece see Demaras, Greek Enlightenment, 30; for data on Turkey see Baysal, Mu¨teferrikadan Birinci Meşrutiyete kadar Osmanlı Tu¨rklerinin bastıkları kitaplar, 26–53.

Poulton, “The Muslim Experience in the Balkan States, 1919–1991.”

Stoianovich, Balkan Worlds, 195, 295.

Ibid.

Chaconas, Adamantios Korais.

Stavrianos, The Balkans since 1453, 151.

Ibid., 150.

Bieber, “Muslim Identity in the Balkans before the Establishment of Nation States.”

Karpat, “The Mass Media Turkey,” 255.

Ibid.

Ibid., 270.

Hann, “The Nation-State, Religion, and Uncivil Society.”

Van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh and State; McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds.

Van Bruinessen, “Shifting National and Ethnic Identities,” 46.

Banac, The National Question in Yugoslavia; Kitromilides, “The Dialectic of Intolerance.”

Stefanovic, “Seeing the Albanians through Serbian Eyes”; Loizides, “Ethnic Nationalism and Adaptation in Cyprus.”

Ibid.

Banac, The National Question in Yugoslavia, 270.

Kizilyurek, Cyprus; Loizides, “Ethnic Nationalism and Adaptation in Cyprus.”

O'Leary, “Gellner's Diagnoses of Nationalism,” 65–66.

Smith, Theories of Nationalism.

Delanty and O'Mahony, Nationalism and Social Theory, 24; see also Brychta, “Revisiting the Debate on Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey.”

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Notes on contributors

Neophytos G. Loizides

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