The Myth of Ethnic Conflict: Chap 13 - Diplomatic Institute

498 Maria Todorova
This feeling of threat is further aggravated by the uncertainty
of what constitutes a national minority by international standards
and what would be the precise implications of its legal recognition. 103
Among a variety of different and controversial opinions, the main
difficulty in reaching a common interpretation seems to lie in the
opposing approach to minority rights as collective or as individual.
The fears expressed by the Bulgarian side about the recognition of
national minorities are based on the danger of secessionism. Farfetched
as these fears might seem at first sight, the ambiguous and
controversial approach of the international organizations to the
questions of self-determination versus territorial integrity in general
(and in the Yugoslav case in particular) compounds these concerns.
104 Even the developments in the former Yugoslavia of creating
a federation in Bosnia between Croats and Muslims set precedents
which are elsewhere observed with apprehension. 105
The issue is conceptually unclear also among exponents of the
idea of increased rights for ethnic minorities. While some members
of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms request the recognition of
national minorities as the only guarantee for their survival the leader
of the party, Dogan, warned that Europe was delaying the decision
on the issue of ethnic minorities because of its explosiveness. 106 At a
municipal conference, he offered an award of 1,000 levs to any of the
deputies who would define the preconditions for a national minority.
107
It is naive to attribute the denial of minority existence to a typically
Balkan syndrome. Rather, given the extremely complex demographic
and geopolitical picture of the region, it would be utopian to
expect that Bulgaria, the other Balkan states, and for that matter all
other East European countries would support the recognition of national
minorities before international criteria were agreed upon.
CONCLUSIONS
To summarize, in dealing with the intermediate position of the
Bulgarian Muslims in the framework of the history and institutions
of the Bulgarian nation-state, and especially with an eye to the process
of formation and political transformation of their group identi-