Old Enemies, New Friends

Serbia is doing its best to recast itself. Earlier this season Boris Tadic, the president, paid homage to the 8000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys killed after the town fell to Bosnian Serb forces in 1995. Meanwhile, at Novi Sad in northern Serbia, the tenth annual Exit music festival was held, so called because it is meant to represent the “exit” from Serbian nationalism. It’s obvious that the country is trying to clean up its image in anticipation of joining the great European club.

Actually a strange paradox is at work; for while Serbia is looking to the west it is at the same time looking east to Turkey. Yes, it is an oddity: Serbia and Turkey, two ancient enemies, are reaching out to one another. They both stand at the door of Europe, and while they may not be outcasts they might best be described as orphans. So, making the best of the situation, they have concluded a series of agreements allowing for free trade between the two countries as well as visa free travel. Both, I think, are anticipating a future that may not include membership of the European Union.

If Serbia does not join, or is not allowed to join, it will be because of one thing: Kosovo. This region, which declared its independence in 2008, is a setting for yet another paradox. It contains few people of Serbian ethnic origin though it is still considered not just to be part of Serbian soil but in many ways the most sacred part, the place where the country suffered defeat and martyrdom in the Middle Ages at the hands of – can you guess? –the Turks, bad old enemies, good new friends.

The Serbian government continues to fight a rearguard action against this unilateral act of the Kosovo Albanians through various international agencies, including the UN. The problem is that the independence of Kosovo has been recognised by twenty-two of the EU’s twenty-seven member states which is hardly likely to smooth the Serbian passage. Membership of the EU contains to be the main objective of Serbian foreign policy but the rapprochement with Turkey, and other nations beyond, is clearly being shaped as a line of second defence.

Turkey is back in the Balkans through a Serbian door. History really does have a strange sense of humour.

Pragmatism and Principle

The reason why Gladstone and Disraeli took such opposite views over the Turkish massacres in Bulgaria in 1876 comes down to one simple thing: the 'ethics of opposition' versus the 'pragmatism of power.' William Ewart Gladstone famously called for the Turks to be removed 'bag and baggage' from the areas they had devastated in the Batak outrages; Benjamin Disraeli, the Prime Minister of the day, held steady to the established British position in maintaining the Ottoman Empire as a counter to the expansionist ambitions of Russia.

Would Gladstone in office, it is fair to ask, have behaved any differently? Yes, I think he may very well have, and not purely for reasons of moral outrage. There was simply no reason to suppose, as Disraeli did, that an independent Bulgaria would have been little more than a Russian puppet. In fact, there was a pragmatic dimension to Gladstone's whole perception of the issue, and it is this: a line of vigorous independent Balkan nations would, in the long run, have served the British purpose far better than a weak and weakening Turkish Empire.

Not many years after the Treaty of Berlin had greatly reduced the Bulgarian borders previously established at San Stephano the country was behaving in a determinedly independent manner, much to the frustration of the Russians. Indeed, when Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia joined to together in 1885, in defiance of the Treaty of Berlin, the move was opposed by Russia, though it was supported by Lord Salisbury, the British Prime Minister, who had been Disraeli's Foreign Secretary at Berlin. Thus the diplomatic world was turned upside down. So, in the end, even the Tories recognised that the Grand Old Man had not been entirely wrong!