Konstantinos Louridas (PhD)
(Security Analyst)
Since the battle of Kosovo Polje (the Field of Blackbirds) in June 1389, where the Turkish Sultan had defeated the Serbs and their Christian allies, Ottoman conquest has interrupted the political and socio-economic progress of the Balkan states for hundreds of years and violence has ravaged the Balkans psyche with great regularity. As a result, when they emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century as independent nations, they lagged far behind the political mature and technologically advanced nations of the West. Their strict perseverance to their past and on fighting the same battles over and over again, in the name of nationalism and religion, reminded Europe of her dark history, an era that she needs to move beyond. Unable therefore to understand and to accept history’s symbolic trauma and the scale of brutality and human suffering in the region, West has euphemistically christened Balkans Peninsula ‘Europe’s powder-keg’. Read more