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Since ancient times, people have felt the need to know and control the absolute truth, to ensure their security of life in this ephemeral world. The need for the absolute has determined man to adopt dogmas, laws, axioms, theories, and teachings. In this way he was able to organize himself socially, but imperfectly because the ordinances created by man are temporary, relative and contextual. But discovering that, by his natural powers, man is not able to know the absolute reality, some people have rejected very early the religious way for a path of science and technology. By default, those people lost the communion of faith when they rejected the absolute knowledge for some relative knowledge. In this unstable situation, inevitably the humanity faced violence and in order to find a reasonable solution for the stable functioning of society after they rejected the divine absolute and preferring the human relativity, the same people invented Tolerance.
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According to Will Kymlicka, only historically and territorially bound “national” groups can engage in a “nation-building” process. Recently arrived immigrant groups cannot, as they have neither been able nor willing to do so. In this paper I argue, first, that such empirical facts are insufficient for the normative conclusions Kymlicka defends; and second, that if his ultimate goal is to achieve better “terms of integration” for immigrants, he cannot deny them the right to attempt their own “nation-building”. As an illustration, the paper describes Kymlicka's own thought-experiment of Chinese immigrants in Canada pursuing a nation-building-process equivalent to the Québécois. It explores how criteria for advocating group rights other than history and territory – merit, participation, or need –avoid treating old and new minorities in an arbitrarily asymmetric manner.
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In one of the first post-coup attempt interviews given by any Turkish official, Turkish Ambassador Selim Yenel informs Balkanalysis.com on Turkey's relations with the EU and the unfolding situation..
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Without doubt, every migratory wave begets serious problems with many dimensions in the fields of education, employment, integration, or gender issues. A recent mass migratory move, if more numerous, can cause delays in policies towards an older refugee group. The Syrian war and the subsequent mass migration towards Turkey channeled both academic and administrative focus towards this group. As the transformative power of migration increases, so does the academic interest in this topic. In this respect, we can understand the abundance of research on Syrians compared to the paucity of studies on African refugees as a reflection of the size and impact of the Syrian stock and flows.
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The Western Balkans socio-political discourse is heavily focused on the exclusive and radical ethnic nationalism and ideology. In this regard, the media and the political elites, through their focus on symbols, myths, ethnicity, tradition, history, language and culture play an important role in shaping the public opinion. Consequently, the daily newspapers in reporting the views of the political elites, within linguistic, discursive, socio-political and ideological contexts, can influence the masses who usually do not analyze the news critically. The paper also seeks to examine and interpret differences in language use by selected Western Balkans political leaders and the way their language choice influenced public opinion. Political, nationalist and ideological discourses promoted by the political elites are very specific and the journalists should report such discourses objectively. Therefore, it is significant to compare and contrast the role played by the media and the political elites in their linguistic, discursive and socio-linguistic choices in the text that may carry ethnic nationalist and ideological meanings. The theoretical and conceptual framework of the paper was based on Fowler’s (1989; 2003; 2010) works: “Language and Power”, “Analyzing Discourse” and “The Critical Study of Language”. In order to test research objectives on the coding and analyzing ethnic nationalism and ideology in the Western Balkans newspapers, the research employed critical discourse analysis for N=534 randomly selected news from the following four newspapers: Dnevni avaz (Bosnia and Herzegovina), “Večernji list” (Croatia), “Večernje novosti” (Serbia), “Vijesti” (Montenegro), limited to a period between 2016 and 2018.
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Whereas studies have documented socio-cultural changes connected to migration dynamics, there is a dearth of knowledge about decision-making in transnational families. This article seeks to understand transformations in decision-making in six Zimbabwean transnational families. This is done by examining qualitative data generated through semi-structured interviews with members of the migrant families. While accentuating the need for more research on interpersonal processes in transnational families, the article illustrates that shifts in gender roles may occur alongside gender-normative behaviours that maintain women in subordinate decision-making roles.
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This article will examine Marion Gräfin Dönhoff’s articles published in the Hamburg-based “Die Zeit“ weekly in the years 1946-1970. Dönhoff, a renowned German journalist, had to leave East Prussia and her family estate in 1945. The articles under analysis demonstrate an evolution of her views on the problem of losing the so-called German East, from the initial inability to come to terms with the new postwar territo-rial reality, to the eventual recognition that Germany’s loss of provinces in the East is permanent and final.
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The Roma/Gypsies are the largest, poorest and youngest ethnic group in Europe. During the past decade, the Roma from Central and Eastern Europe were of considerable public concern due to a large inflow of Roma emigrants into Western European countries. Applications for international protection submitted by the Roma from the Western Balkans became a substantial part of the asylum case-load at the EU level. More recently, however, a new wave of migrants, mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, has found its way to Europe. As Serbia is classified as a safe country, Serbian nationals have limited chances of being awarded refugee status. Nevertheless undeterred, the Serbian Roma/Gypsies continue to travel to and apply for asylum in Western European countries. Using data from original fieldwork conducted among Serbian Roma women, we argue that their desire to travel and possibly reside in one of the more affluent Western European countries is connected to the fact that they have extensive kinship ties in those counties. Kinship ties, in brief, explain much of current Roma migration practices.
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The 2003-2014 UN-mandated, NATO-led ISAF mission, which featured ground combat for the first time in the Alliance’s history, took a tremendous human and financial toll. By ISAF mission end, well over 1 million NATO troops and civilians had served in theatre along with hundreds of thousands of contractors. Reliable studies conservatively estimate the financial cost to be at least $1 trillion US dollars. Almost 3,500 troops under NATO command from 29 nations paid the ultimate price, and tens of thousands more suffered serious injury. Afghanistan has been a security-related point of discussion and a major part of Western military efforts for almost a fifth of NATO’s existence. By virtually any metric it is the longest, most complex, expensive, challenging and fractious operation in NATO’s history. As a result of the massive NATO and international effort – by any socioeconomic or human development index measure – Afghanistan in 2015 is a considerably better place as a result. That is hardly to say outcomes were optimal, or that NATO helped Afghan government forces decisively defeat the insurgency: they were not, and they did not. A commonly held view is that NATO also ‘lost’ the Afghanistan strategic communication campaign. This report is an effort to deduce what is NATO and ISAF’s score on that point, and if it did not ‘win’ outright then how did Strategic Communications (StratCom) perform? Within the political-military leadership and even within the communications community there are factions of passionate supporters for StratCom and just as many opponents. All seem to agree conceptually of the need for better coordination as long as they are the ‘coordinators’ and not the ‘coordinated’. Throughout ISAF’s duration these factions were often at odds and even as they clashed, the operating and information environment transformed. This should have led to a wholesale re-evaluation of optimal structure, process and capabilities: it did not. Still, as to be expected from the accumulated experience of continuous operations over 11-plus years of the NATO-led ISAF mission, some new capabilities were added that improved how NATO communicated with national domestic audiences including the Media Operations Centre and NATO TV. But the nub of the issues and the old debates – influence versus inform, the public affairs reporting relationship to the commander, measuring effect, how to better synchronise effort – are the same discussions as 5, 10 and even 15 years ago. The current impetus for reform has little to do with lessons learned during ISAF. It does however, have much to do with the Russia/Ukraine crisis. Given the contemporary security environment, the extent to which unsatisfactory campaign outcomes should be attributed to the communication effort is not an inconsequential subject. Today’s information environment bears little resemblance to what it was at the start of the ISAF mission in 2001, in large measure a result of widespread access to reliable Internet, the ubiquity of smart phones, and the global scope and penetration of social media. In the past decade we have transitioned from grasping the implications of the ‘strategic corporal’ to dealing with the operational consequences of the ‘strategic tweet’. Adversaries also became very capable at using new communication tools to their advantage. While it may be unlikely that the Alliance will fight another mission quite like ISAF, many observations can be drawn from ISAF about whether NATO communication-related policy, doctrine, structures and capabilities are fit for purpose in future campaigns. This report offers 12 recommendations where effort and resources might be applied to achieve more favourable outcomes. A North Atlantic Council-approved policy in August 2009 defines NATO StratCom as “the coordinated and appropriate use of NATO communications activities and capabilities ... in support of Alliance policies, operations and activities, and in order to advance NATO’s aims.” Still, the actions and practice during ISAF demonstrate that NATO aspires to achieve more for its strategic communications investment, and that it is increasingly about understanding the desired effect or behavioural change required to shape what to do, say, show and signal to inform, persuade or influence audiences in support of specific objectives. NATO HQs had two strategic communications campaigns to fight during the ISAF operation, the first being for the support of domestic audiences of the 51 troop contributing nations and international audiences. Given the policy hand it was dealt, the manner in which the operation was executed for the better part of a decade, the high operational tempo at NATO and zero nominal growth (thus, downsizing) forced on it by nations, the Alliance communication effort did considerably better than it is given credit for, in particular at NATO HQ in Brussels and Allied Command Operations, and for stretches of time at ISAF. This is a finding that may strike many as counter-intuitive. The second campaign was the operational battle for the contested population and against malign actors including the Taliban. If success is measured against information policy aims: “...create desired effects on the will, understanding and capability of adversaries and potential adversaries” (Information Operations); “to influence perceptions, attitudes and behaviour, affecting the achievement of political and military objectives” (Psychological Operations); and “to inform, persuade, or influence audiences in support of NATO aims and objectives” (StratCom), then the outcomes are decidedly more mixed, if not a failure. A detailed assessment of capability and performance in this report supports the argument that ISAF was a case of a fundamentally flawed political/ command structure that was by its structural nature incapable of devising and directing a unified political-military campaign. The international community brought a sense of hubris to that shattered country which had virtually no licit economy or capacity for effective governance. It set unreasonable objectives, looked for short-term metrics of success, and wholly underresourced the mission for almost 10 years. The strategy often changed, or was confused, or was conflicted. It took few Afghan views into account. No answer could be found to effectively deal with the vexing question of Pakistan where insurgent forces found sanctuary. NATO then proceeded to break or subsume most of the principles of war, foremost being ‘selection and maintenance of the aim’, ‘unity of effort’ and ‘unity of command’. But how fair is that considering Afghanistan was a major international endeavour, that the NATO mission has lasted this long and will continue for the foreseeable future albeit in different form, that support in the country for international forces remains high, and that troop contributing nations have not endured major political recriminations from their populations? Taking a long view, the ISAF communications effort cannot have been a failure. The magnitude of collective effort by NATO nations over that period of time is a considerable expression of Alliance will and stamina. From the political-military centre of gravity perspective of “maintaining the solidarity, cohesion and credibility of the Alliance”, this alone points to a strategic success broadly speaking. This report finds that improved StratCom did not, and does not, temper the effects of bad policy and poor operational execution. In the end, strategic communications outcomes weren’t nearly what they could have been but were considerably better than critics suggest. Where policy and operations were well connected and showed results, StratCom amplified that effect. Where policy and operations were weak, negative outcomes could be mitigated but not overcome. Improving strategic communication effects needs to start with better policy, greater understanding of audiences including motivations, conducting operations following established and successful military principles, and skilled practitioners. In that respect, the weakest link in the Alliance communication effort at strategic, operational and tactical levels was the profound lack of trained, expeditionary communication- and information-related military capability in almost all NATO member nations (excepting the U.S., and perhaps Germany). For NATO to be more effective, nations need to professionalise their approach to communications by abandoning the model of employing ‘willing general service officers eager to learn on the job’ to one that is firmly based on ‘qualified, trained and experienced practitioners in all disciplines at each rank level’. ISAF served as a forcing function for incremental albeit important improvements to NATO communication-related policy, capability and capacity aggregated over more than a decade of continuous operations. However, the transformation of the information environment happened much faster than NATO HQs and member nations were able to evolve their communications-related mindset, structures, capabilities and outputs. The real catalyst for the current effort to make substantive reforms has been Russia’s attack on Ukraine. In this regard the Wales Summit Hybrid Warfare initiatives identified a series of actions that if implemented would be a major upgrade to the Alliance’s ability to compete in the new information environment.
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By the time the green International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) flag was lowered for the last time at NATO headquarters in Afghanistan at the end of 2014, over 1 million NATO troops, civilians and contractors had served in theatre and many continue to do so as part of NATO’s commitment to Afghanistan. The financial cost is estimated conservatively to be at least $1 trillion US dollars. Almost 3,500 troops from 29 nations lost their lives, and tens of thousands more suffered serious injury. By any metric it is the longest, most complex, expensive and fractious operation in NATO’s history. The information environment today bears little resemblance to when the ISAF mission began. The past decade has witnessed a transition from the implications of the ‘strategic corporal’ to that of the ‘strategic tweet’ and adversaries have become increasingly more capable at using new communication tools. While it may be unlikely that the Alliance will conduct another mission like ISAF, important lessons can be drawn about policy, doctrine and capabilities to ensure that NATO Strategic Communication (StratCom) is fit for purpose in future operations. The NATO Strategic Communications Centre for Excellence was engaged to carry out an examination of the NATO StratCom effort during the ISAF years 2003-2014, with a particular focus on Public Affairs, Psychological Operations and the coordinating function Information Operations. It is the most extensive study to date of NATO StratCom, drawing from nearly 100 interviews with persons having direct knowledge of the Afghanistan mission from across the full scope of the campaign, representing many different nationalities and responsibilities. Source material includes speeches, NATO and ISAF briefings, extensive media reporting and a substantial collection of published literature. Numerous experts reviewed chapters throughout its development, and the report was peer reviewed by 22 experienced practitioners from 8 nations, from all communications disciplines. The study aims to question the commonly held view that NATO ‘lost’ the communications battle by assessing how effective the collective StratCom effort was and to understand the factors that contributed to its successes and major shortcomings.
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Contemporary analysis of the Middle East and Turkey entails evaluation of different components as well. In this regard, the most outlined facts are newness and change. Due to new and different developments, to some, a change has to be occurred in the Middle East. Turkey’s sometimes highlighted close relationship with the Middle East has to be analyzed according to this framework. Recognizing how many new elements are included in goals, threats, international politics and response of regional dynamics points out who aims what in the Middle East. Henceforth, as region is passing through critical process it is estimated that in what dimensions its future will be prone to changes will be figured out.
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Bu makale, Ankara Anlaşması olarak bilinen Avrupa Topluluğu Ortaklık Anlaşması’dan (European Community Association Agreement - ECAA) Britanya’da yararlanan kişilerle yapılan görüşmeler neticesinde şekillendirilmiştir. Ankara Anlaşması yoluyla oturum almanın, göçün değişen karakteri ve göç etmeyi zorlaştıran düzenlemeler bağlamında “yeni bir göç yolu” olduğu makalenin iddialarından birisidir. Makalede üzerinde durulacak bir başka husus ise, göçe sebep olan çatışmaların göçten sonra da başka şekillerde devam ettiği ve bunun da insan hareketliliğini artırdığı görüşüdür.
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Description of the historical and contemporary space of Drohobycz / Drohobych – read within the context of Willa Bianki. Mały przewodnik drohobycki dla przyjaciół, an essay by Władysław Panas.
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In the article the author reminds the initiative to create a local journal of scientific Fri.“Biuletyn Szadkowski” constituent people, including the initiator of the project Tadeusz Marszał, the editors and authors of the circle and a rich thematic content. The magazine appeared in 1991 and is issued by the Municipal Office in Szadek. It is interdisciplinary, but dominated by historical texts.
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By the Treaty of Lisbon, the “Masters of the Treaties” not only completed a catalogue of founding values (Article 2 TEU) but provided also an indication where from these values “have developed”, i.e. “from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe”. This contribution - originally presented at the Third Annual Conference of the Czech Association for European Studies Prague, 12. and 13. June 2014 - aims at analyzing the normative relevance and implications of this indication which might mean a considerable change of paradigm for secular Member States like Austria, Czech Republic or France.
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The present study, which examines medieval Corpus Christi festivities and processions in a Central European context, argues that with regard to the feast of the Eucharist the ecclesiastical sphere was in no way separated from the political one. Although the medieval cult of the Eucharist was born in the 13th century on the territory of the Holy Roman Empire with considerable backing from the church and, later, particularly from the Papacy, from the first half of the 14th century the practical organisation of the festivity, and above all of the procession, was in the hands of the urban magistracy, which embodied the power of the local secular political elite. Nevertheless, however great the autonomy of the civic community or the authority of the local civic elite may have been, the presence of the ruler could always transform the local practice of processing with the Eucharist. In order to explore the impacts of recurrent or protracted princely presence, the present study focused on two cities, namely Vienna in the Empire, and Buda, the capital of the Hungarian Kingdom in the 15th century. Although in the first case the Corpus Christi festivity and the tradition of the procession were established in 1334 upon an initiative deriving from within the church, by the end of the 14th century, at the latest, the procession had certainly ceased to be an event which, under the leadership of the local civic elite, would have described, or even established, the urban population as a harmonious and unified sacral community. The form of the procession (ranking order, eventual absences) gave rise in the late middle ages to several conflicts. These were frequently solved through the intervention of princely power, by applying to the grace of the Habsburg princes. Consequently, the religious-ceremonial world of the Corpus Christi festivity in Vienna was drawn through the ways of regulations and conflict-management into the orbit of princely politics. While in the Corpus Christi tradition at Buda the local civic political elite, and especially the German merchants, played a leading role, in the course of the 15th century the princely power frequently profited from the mobilizing potential of the festivity in order to promote its own interests and political and military aims. Beyond the aims of church politics, in the 1410s and 1420s the cult was used in the organisation of crusades against the Hussites, and especially the Ottoman Empire. From the 1480s, at the latest, the preparation of a grandstand/ podium for the ruler transformed the procession into an excellent venue for presenting the power of the Hungarian king in a sacral setting. The festivities which closed the diplomatic and military agreements in 1501 ended with a procession which, filled with an expressively anti-Islamic content, evoked the possibility of a final and eternal Christian victory over the Ottoman Empire achieved through the sacral force of the Eucharist. Thus, in the case of the cities analysed, which also functioned as princely residences, the Corpus Christi tradition, and especially its processional celebration in the late middle ages, was not only a manifestation of the influence of the elite of the local urban community, but also a precious sacral device within the arsenal available for the ruler’s assertion of his representational and political interests.
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Managerialism in higher education – as defined and described by Deem, Hillyard and Reed as early as 2007- spread through Europe during the 2000’s. Case studies (like Hedley’s on Irish universities) show similarities also with variations in UK universities. Managerialism penetrated the universities of Eastern Europe after the political upheavals of 1990, and studies of Hungarian universities show some characteristics of an “Eastern” European managerialism. Its features see: a) universities as “state-owned” enterprises, symbolising national identity; b) university ”managers” as representating the modernisation process - here enabling Hungary to “catch up” with Europe; and c) their ideology (managerialism) as a special mixture of “evidence -based” and the “interest-based” policy making.
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Ervin Baktay arrived in India in June 1926. He regularly published his impressions in the newspapers of Budapest, under the title Oriental Letters. He first visited Kashmir in summer 1927, where, recalling the journey Alexander Csoma de Kőrös had taken from Kashmir to Western Tibet in 1822, the idea of following in Csoma’s footsteps formulated in his mind. Furthermore, when he read the biography of Csoma published in 1885 by Tivadar Duka (who had served as a medical officer for the British army in India), Baktay found that Duka had not travelled to all the places Csoma had visited in Western Tibet, and so had collected no direct data about Csoma’s activities there. Eventually, in the summer of 1928, Baktay travelled from Kashmir to Leh, capital of Ladakh in Western Tibet, and then to Padum, capital of Zanskar. From here he sought out Csoma’s former places of residence. In the Zangla ‘monastery’, with the help of his Tibetan informant, he marked the room in the building where Csoma had stayed, and in the Phuktal Monastery he installed a plaque commemorating Csoma’s sojourn there. Baktay’s main motivation was to be the first Hungarian to retrace Csoma’s journey to Western Tibet (only later did he become aware that he was mistaken in this belief), and his main objective was to find and describe the hitherto unknown places in Zanskar where Csoma had once resided. He wrote about his trip in a two-volume travelogue (Top of the World), published in 1930, which attained unprecedented popularity. Besides correcting the names of certain settlements, the most important achievement of his journey was, by describing the local living circumstances from wide-ranging perspectives, to create a lasting image of Csoma’s activities in Western Tibet, which is the image that prevails to the present day.
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