Vasil Kadrinov, Roma community On the Roma The Roma first came to Europe in the 9th century and not much later to Bulgaria. This place is a crossroads of cultures and peoples. There’s not been serious historical research on the Roma during Turkish rule. But after liberation from 500 years of Turkish occupation at end… Continue reading Interview with Vasil Kadrinov
Anton Karagozov, Foundation for Regional Roma Development, Bulgaria On the work of his organization I come from Plovdiv. It has the biggest, compact quarter of Roma population. There are 40,000 Roma who live in this quarter. I was a leader of one of the Roma NGOs for more than 10 years. We worked mostly on… Continue reading Interview with Anton Karagozov
In 2012-13, as part of an Open Society Foundation fellowship, I re-interviewed many of the people I talked to in 1990 when I traveled for seven months through East-Central Europe. Twenty-three years later, I also interviewed a wide range of additional people in order to get as broad a picture as possible of what has… Continue reading Full Interview List
On the international community In 1999, after the NATO bombing, the international community deployed in Kosovo with a clear perception that the Kosovo Albanians were the victims and that the Serbs were the bad guys. If you were only looking what took place in Kosovo during the bombing, that headline made sense. But then the… Continue reading Interview with anonymous UN official
Attila Durak, photographer For almost 100 years, the system here has been trying to create a nation, one nation that represses, that says we are one Turkey. For the Ottoman Empire, religion was the base; ethnicity was not important. When Italy was formed, only eight percent of Italian people spoke Italian. From that base population,… Continue reading Interview with Attila Durak
Lirak Celaj, theater director On Albania and Kosovo During the period when we were in ex-Yugoslavia, there was always pressure on us to change our identity. We were told, “You are Shqpitars and they, in Albania, are Albanians.” I think we are same nation – the same nation in two countries. Some countries and some… Continue reading Interview with Lirak Celaj
On nation-building and nationalism After the Ottoman Empire was dismantled, there needed to be a nation-state to replace it. As often happens in Europe, this notion of nation-state led to bloodshed. People had coexisted for centuries without treating each other as ethnic aliens; that was how the Ottoman Empire had been run. But the nation-state… Continue reading Interview with Serdar M. Degirmencioglu,
Andrej Nosov, youth initiative, Serbia On joint projects between Belgrade and Pristina We’ve developed some new initiatives between Belgrade and Pristina, including an art gallery, Rizoma, which opened last year. For the last two years, we’ve been trying to use cultural workers to promote a different relationship between Pristina and Belgrade. For instance, we’ve supported… Continue reading Interview with Andrej Nosov
Valentine Mitiev, minorities expert When I was at university, I had to work at a factory every summer to earn money. I worked with many Turks there. Before 1998, we didn’t emphasize any difference between Turks and Bulgarians. You had to hike a lot to get to their villages in the Rhodope Mountains, where women… Continue reading Interview with Valentine Mitiev
Turkish activist On anti-Americanism When I was a schoolchild, almost everyone was in favor of America. Right-wingers especially were all pro-American. Today, it has almost completely changed. Now right-wingers are anti-American, particularly after the Iraq War. Almost every government and state source openly declares that the United States is after a divided Iraq; that this… Continue reading Interview with Ertegrul Kurksu
Roumen Yanovski, ACCESS On the media Despite the changing laws, the international position, and the emergence of two generations, there has been extremely limited change in Bulgaria in terms of ideas about ethnicity and ethnic groups. A lot of people would disagree with me. But this is what I feel, and it is the saddest… Continue reading Interview with Roumen Yanovski
Albert Heta, curator and artist On art and conflict Recently, the communication between Serbia and here has been flowing more openly. In 2006, when the Stacion Center for Contemporary Art organized two symposiums – one called, “Cultural Policies as Crisis Management?”, the other “Altered Identities: On Nationalism and Contemporary Art” – we aimed to… Continue reading Interview with Albert Heta
Nigar Goksal of European Stability Initiative On the United States An opinion poll conducted by the ARI Movement last year revealed that 80 percent of the Turkish population holds a negative opinion of the United States. When we broke down the question further, we found that while most people felt negatively toward the Bush administration,… Continue reading Interview with Nigar Goksal
Tan Morgul, Turkish journalist On internal immigration In the old model of migration – and this applies to other cultures as well as to the Kurdish population – one individual would come and settle in a neighborhood. If he did well in Istanbul, he would call his other relatives. They would come to settle near… Continue reading Interview with Tan Morgul
On corruption The only thing missing in the Kosovo government is a legal ministry of corruption. Everybody knows it, but nobody cares. They are immune to criticism. In our first elections – the first elections in our history – 92 percent of the people voted. The disappointment came so fast. Nobody can do anything now… Continue reading Interview with Arben Castrati