BY YILMAZ OZTUNA
TURKIYE- Columnist Yilmaz Oztuna comments on the religious situation of Balkan countries in terms of their European Union membership aspirations. A summary of his column is as follows:
The European Union has begun an initiative to take countries from the former Yugoslavia into its ranks. Of the ex-Yugoslav countries, only Slovenia is due to join the EU next year. Now the Union is holding contacts with the ‘new Yugoslavia’ (Serbia), Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia and Croatia and even Albania.
The most developed of these countries is Croatia, which is also the only Catholic one. Orthodox Christianity dominates the other three countries, and Islam is very common in Albania. However, Islam is also very common in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia and the former Yugoslavia. In this respect, the EU will one day include millions of Muslim people, populations who got this faith from the Ottomans. Romania, Bulgaria and Greece are also Orthodox. Thus, the EU will no longer be a Protestant/Catholic community.
If these five countries become EU members, the unification of Bulgaria with Macedonia, Albania with Kosovo and Hungary with Vojvodine [a majority-Catholic province in largely Orthodox Serbia] will be prevented. This way the EU will include all the ex-Ottoman territories in the Balkans, excepting Moldova. This project clearly aims at rescuing the remnants of Yugoslavia and developing Serbia. It’s uncertain how separatist tendencies in Karadag [in English, Montenegro, which has a sizeable Muslim minority], Kosovo and Vojvodine from Serbia will turn out. When Karadag [Montenegro] was about to make itself independent, the EU gently prevented it and in this way, Serbia’s access to the Adriatic Sea was preserved.
Now the EU’s candidate countries, including Turkey, cover all of Europe.
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION