6811 - From the collaboration bridge to the threatening arc

N. Lygeros
Translation: Paola Vagioni

As Ismail Kadare put it correctly, the European Union constitutes a unique aim for the future of Albania. Of course there are resistances due to inertia, expediency even racism. Yet the subsequent reality follows not only geostrategic facts but also topostrategic ones. More specifically, with Switzerland on one hand and former Yugoslavia and Albania on the other, the European Union has two topological holes that artificially magnify the length of its borders. For Switzerland, its European course is given and is enhanced by the voting that recognized the new member-states of the European Union. As for the second topologic hole, things are more complicated because the Balkans, historically constitute a triple point of contact and consecutively have incurred deterioration due to the great frictions that are applied to the central subset. One way to solve this problem is the accession to the European Union. On the other hand we observe, especially with the promotion of the Neo-ottoman doctrine that Turkey, under the pretext of a collaboration bridge, attempts to approach Albania even more closely. It abuses the Muslim framework in order to reinforce the old Ottoman field of action. A simple examination of the map of Europe after the Berlin Congress of 1878, clearly explains the mental schema of the Muslim arc, which is nothing more than the epiphenomenon of a deeper mental schema i.e. the cohesion of the Ottoman Empire. This is the idea that explains the Turkish interest towards Albania. The workmanlike friendship with Albania is nothing but a Machiavelli schema, which offers not only an expansion of the Turkish influence in a European zone, but also the creation of a double front with Greece. The Turkish concern is not about human lives, religion and generally people but only about territory. It does not want the successor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to effectively control the Balkans. It wants to have access to this vital space, as it calls it, to expand its strategic depth and reduce to zero the frictions with the neighbor countries. The alliance framework that it promotes with Albania has no substrate regarding its symmetry. It is about a one-way exploitation of the relationship of the two countries with ultimate target the reaction against what it considers as European expansion. And in Greece, like in Albania, we wrongfully pay great attention to our countries when we are negotiating and we do not realize that in both cases, Turkey regards us as religious vilayets. For this reason we have no statehood. We are just plain spaces for its needs, nothing more. It operates with old mental schemata that do not include present reality. Only if we realize this, both in Greece and in Albania, we will effectively move towards a common European future.