Minorities and Minority Rights in the Balkans

Nafsika Papanikolatos
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Minority Rights Group - Greece

Unable yet to rid themselves completely of the legacy of authoritarian sociopolitical structures and mentalities, the new democracies in Southeastern Europe lack the experience for establishing viable democratic republics which do not sacrifice individual rights for an arbitrarily defined common good. The absence of both a democratic political culture and institutions makes them defensive and often aggressive towards the conflictual character of modernity reproducing security in authoritarian normality. This in turn does not only impede the recognition and the respect of the rights of minorities but, also, it appears to a great degree to determine the forms of struggle adopted by minorities themselves in order to postulate rights. The question raised in this essay is whether minorities can resist to the conditions imposed by the legacy of authoritarian nation-states and articulate their rights as political rather than as ethno-national rights? How can they struggle for their rights using the means of a democratic republic, that is constitutional guarantees for the exercise of fundamental human rights as well as a public sphere where the extension and recognition of new rights can be debated? A very difficult question to answer since in Southeastern Europe almost all the conditions necessary for the democratic process are still very underdeveloped and can easily be manipulated and exploited towards ends which can even be contrary to the principles of democracy.

Since modernity requires that our republics are democratic in order to be viable and capable of providing a non-arbitrary basis for the common good of society, the protection of universal rights implies also the extension of fundamental rights and recognition of new rights arising from a debate within society. There are three interdependent and parallel levels in the democratic process which are the basis for establishing a viable democratic republic. First, the institutionalization of a strong parliamentary system which legitimizes pluralism in the political world and guarantees free and fair elections. This in turn presupposes what some writers call “democratic consolidation,” that is the recognition, by the governed and the governors, of the legitimacy of a democratically established constitution as the basis of the political system. Democratic consolidation requires the integrity of all state institutions such as the judiciary, the legislative and the executive, and of all those institutions which lay the groundwork for the development of a democratic political culture, that is, the educational institutions, trade unions, pressure groups, local and regional administrations, political parties and the media. Last but not least to safeguard and strengthen democratic consolidation, it is necessary to have a dynamic civil society, which, through various institutions, be they interest groups, economic actors, mass media, alternative educational institutions, non-governmental organizations and grassroots movements working on local issues, is capable of counterbalancing the state and preventing it “from dominating and atomizing the rest of society,” as Ernest Gellner wrote. All these interdependent levels that constitute the democratic process guarantee that the republic is democratic and that democracy is republican, that it is based on democratically obtained constitutional guarantees. The inability of any of these levels to produce the necessary conditions for the others hampers the democratic process and threatens the democratic republic.

The various instances in which Southeastern European countries have failed to stand up to these conditions and the difficulties they encounter in establishing viable democratic republics are generally known. What must nevertheless be recalled here is that, the weaker the idea of the democratic republic, the stronger becomes the idea of a nation-state as European history has proven. And while a certain notion of the republic may be compatible with the idea of a nation-state, because constitutions are not always products of democratic debate and consensus, it is impossible to institutionalize democratic principles and an ongoing process of democratization along with the existence of a predominant idea of the nation-state. They are by principle incompatible and as it is well known the only thing that saved Western societies from the predominance of the nation-state is that they established well founded democratic republics which were able to resist the authoritarian tendencies of the nation-state. This of course was not always a successful story; there were several instances of regression where the principles of the nation-state predominated, and in some cases continue to do so, over those of the democratic republic. However, in the long run of this struggle and having still great possibilities for further democratization, Western democratic societies have obtained a long-term experience which consolidated and guaranteed an ongoing democratic process.

The paradox is that minorities are most often swept by the authoritarian nation-state legacy of Southeast European states. Instead of struggling for the recognition and the respect of their rights by using the means and the language that will enhance the democratization of these states, most often they stimulate their authoritarian and nationalist tendencies. All of these states embody, if not an explicit at least a latent, authoritarian character because national majorities are not only “permanent” but they are dominating all decision-making institutions. At the same time these states since 1989, in one way or another try to conform to the conditions of modern democratic republics. That includes establishing both a constitution which is a product of a debate involving all parts of society and an unhampered democratic process which is able to incorporate and protect individual and minority rights. Nevertheless, because the idea of a democratic republic in Southeastern Europe is still very weak while the authoritarian tradition of the nation-state is very old, most often it is the ideology of the latter which dominates and determines the new constitutions and sets limits to the democratic process. When national ideologies dominate over all aspects of social and political life it seems almost natural, so to speak, that minorities end up using the means of their oppressors to articulate and to defend their demands.

In the absence of any democratic education and culture and faced against predominating national majorities and their cultures, minorities tend to embark into the use of ethno-nationalist language and symbols and to ignore the fact that their real interlocutor is, and ought to be, the democratic republic and not the nation-state. They thus forget or don’t want to know that minority rights, whether they concern religious, linguistic or ethnic minorities, are above all political rights which can and should be recognized and respected in the context of any republic which wants to call itself democratic. Therefore, instead of participating in the democratization of those governments, in a paradoxical and deeply contradictory manner, minorities tend to perpetuate and enhance the same authoritarian political culture which they inherited from the previous regimes and which could be so easily reproduced by wearing a nationalist costume. Too often they forget their own responsibility in the democratization of these republics, an essential condition for the recognition and protection of their rights. Being excluded from the nation-state, they often exclude themselves from the struggle to develop the conditions for a democratic republic. What henceforth becomes important is what differentiates them and not what links them with the rest of the political society. Minority rights appear as rights which are to legitimize their exclusion from society and not rights which will make them equal members of the democratic republic respecting their diversity. Whether we speak of Macedonians of Bulgaria, Bulgarians of Macedonia, Turks of Greece and Bulgaria, Albanians of Macedonia, and the list certainly does not end here, we find ourselves facing a vicious circle which produces and reproduces nation-state and ethno-national arguments. It matters little whether the states are at the origin of this or whether minorities are equally responsible. One thing however is certain: minorities pay a very high price at the end because they fail to establish the legitimacy of their case while the injustice against them is perpetuated.

As long as there is no minority rights’ political culture, it will be difficult to interpret minority rights in any other terms than those of ethno-national aspirations, in other words through the negation of the “others”. Most often, therefore, when minorities do use a human rights language it is only to exclude and to be intolerant promoting a kind of defensive, peripheral and parochial nationalism which is foreign to the principles of a democratic republic. It is in this way, that, instead of communicating with the democratic republic and fighting for the respect and expansion of its principles, they end up enhancing and often refueling the hegemonic and aggressive nationalism of nation-states. Further on, strange as it may seem, there is a significant and particularly conspicuous tendency in minorities, that characterizes those who desire to exclude and dominate, which can be summed up as the almost complete absence of solidarity among minorities themselves. It is not strange, therefore, that in the end they are forced to become vehicles of the so-called mother-country’s nationalism, in order to get a negative kind of support and recognition. Notwithstanding that at the same time states through a “self-fulfilling prophecy,” by treating minorities as dangerous and threatening for the majority, through “processes of polarization and exclusion” lead them to the arms of the “mother country” which has no reason for not exploiting them to its own advantage.

Understanding minority rights not in terms of negating the majority but in terms of expanding the political space within which both majority and minority(ies) can coexist by respecting their particular and general identities, their identity as a particular ethnic, religious linguistic and/or other minority and their identity as equal citizens, is a precondition for establishing a viable base for demanding the recognition of minority rights in democratic republics. It is certainly true that minorities cannot become politically equal if they are not free to manifest and cultivate their particular identities. On the other hand, a republic can be considered democratic to the extent that it is capable of expanding constantly the public space where all members of society are recognized as equal not disregarding their differences but acknowledging them and providing for them the space in which they can enjoy their diversity. No modern democratic republic is viable unless it includes all members of society in the social contract and through constitutional guarantees, in one way or another. Therefore, democratic constitutions must be the product of debate within society, of horizontal communication, which presupposes the participation and the inclusion of all different constituent members of society. They cannot be a product of simple majority decision and, so long as they continue to be so, they will be rightfully challenged in the name of the very principles which they pretend to honor. Minority religions, cultures, or history are not matters of the “private collective” but they should be incorporated in the “public collective,” so that they will cease to be viewed with suspicion and anxiety by the majority. At the same time, however, minorities must realize that all the members of their community are citizens with rights and obligations. Minority rights cannot be seen as part of the mosaic of human rights unless they coincide and guarantee individual rights, even the right not to be treated as a member a certain minority. Therefore, minority institutions and organizations must provide guarantees for the respect of the rights of the individual members of their community; and, they must also be able demonstrate towards the majority the same kind of tolerance and respect as they expect to receive.

This attempt to reflect upon certain contradictions concerning the struggle of minorities to have their rights recognized and respected in Southeastern Europe should nevertheless exclude the case of the Albanians of Kosovo. There, we have an explicitly authoritarian nation-state which makes any discussion over minority rights difficult if not impossible because it has shut off beforehand the debate over human rights. As the latest events have shown, the only way to escape from an uncontrollable violent conflict, the end result of which no one can predict, is through an arbitrary imposition of democratic guarantees for this national minority by the international community. Something similar happened in Bosnia too, which, in an attempt to become a viable democratic republic, has in effect been turned into an international protectorate. How this may be accomplished in Kosovo or completed successfully in Bosnia, and what long term results it may have in each case, is a question which it does not take too long to answer.

A more optimistic closing note is nonetheless required here. Debate over minority rights in Southeastern Europe is not a debate which concerns only the so-called Balkan region, but rather a more general debate about the real conditions for democratic republics. A debate which includes the whole of the European continent giving to the old democracies an opportunity to reflect on the limits they have imposed upon themselves. It is an opportunity to reinvent those public spaces which will embrace the endless mosaic of cultures, religions, languages and peoples or nations, allowing them to coexist peacefully and communicate horizontally and freely.