Velina Tchakarova: evaluation

Transcript context

…Now, you’re from Bulgaria. So I’ve long wondered, the first and second Balkan Wars that preceded World War I — do they still matter today? Or what did we learn from them? Well, of course, they matter in a sense because you are probably familiar with the term Balkanization. And unfortunately, the term Balkanization means splitting a country into smaller parts in order for external powers to interfere, to play different political actors off against each other. That kind of thing is still very much relevant, and it’s being used and applied to other regions, to other parts of the world. It matters also in terms of sentiments and in terms of, if you like, moods. Take a look at the political landscape in most of, let’s say, the Balkan countries. We still call our region the Balkan region, even though outsiders describe it as southeast Europe, mostly. You will find all of these sentiments being reflected in various political groups and parties. We have nationalists in most of these countries, who are getting stronger by the day and are running for elections and are using, actually, agendas and narratives that have been known for the last 200 years. Yes, it’s unfortunately quite relevant. Let me use another example. The incident, the helicopter crash from yesterday, where the Iranian president and the foreign minister passed away, was used as an example by some analysts already. I would just use the reference here, that it could be the next Sarajevo moment. Now, again, we had Balkan Wars, and then we had also, as you know, the big moment, the biggest black swan, as described by Professor Nassim Taleb, about the Sarajevo moment from 1914. That was an unanticipated event, which eventually resulted in the First World War. Even now, this reference is being used, as you know. A Sarajevo moment is something that is defined as a black swan and that could lead to a major military conflict if not, let’s say, another world war. All in all, these kinds of things are still relevant, even though they are not having the same influence or scale as used to be the case 200 years ago. Now, Bulgarian nationalism in the past — as you know, it’s so often been about dreams of a greater Bulgaria. There are Bulgarian minorities in Albania and different parts of the Balkans, and this notion of creating something like a Bulgarian world or San Stefano Bulgaria with larger borders. But with the current demographic collapse in Bulgaria, migration to the EU and other places, low birth rates, what is the future of Bulgaria nationalism? Does it have a future at all?…

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