Can the Balkans ever become a peaceful peninsula like that of Scandinavia? With enlightened backing, can it ever make common cause with the rest of Europe rather than being an arena of periodic conflicts, political misrule, and economic misery? In the last years of the twentieth century, Western states watched with alarm as a wave of conflicts swept over much of the Balkans. Ethno-nationalist disputes, often stoked by unprincipled leaders, plunged Yugoslavia into bloody warfare. Romania, Bulgaria and Albania struggled to find stability as they reeled from the collapse of the communist social system and even Greece became embroiled in the Yugoslav tragedy. This new book examines the politics and international relations of the Balkans during a decade of mounting external involvement in its affairs. Tom Gallagher asks what evidence there is that key lessons have been learned and applied as trans-Atlantic engagement with Balkan problems enters its second decade. This book identifies new problems: organized crime, demographic crises of different kinds, and the collapse of a strong employment base. This is an excellent contribution to our understanding of the area.

Can the Balkans ever become a peaceful peninsula like that of Scandinavia? With enlightened backing, can it ever make common cause with the rest of Europe rather than being an arena of periodic conflicts, political misrule, and economic misery? In the last years of the twentieth century, Western states watched with alarm as a wave of conflicts swept over much of the Balkans. Ethno-nationalist disputes, often stoked by unprincipled leaders, plunged Yugoslavia into bloody warfare. Romania, Bulgaria and Albania struggled to find stability as they reeled from the collapse of the communist social system and even Greece became embroiled in the Yugoslav tragedy. This new book examines the politics and international relations of the Balkans during a decade of mounting external involvement in its affairs. Tom Gallagher asks what evidence there is that key lessons have been learned and applied as trans-Atlantic engagement with Balkan problems enters its second decade. This book identifies new problems: organized crime, demographic crises of different kinds, and the collapse of a strong employment base. This is an excellent contribution to our understanding of the area.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Turkey's involvement in the Gulf War in 1991 paved the way for the country's acceptance into the European Union. This book traces that process and in the first part looks at Turkey's foreign policy in the 1990s, considering the ability of the country to withstand the repercussions of the fall of communism. It focuses on Turkey's achievement in halting and minimising the effects of the temporary devaluation in its strategic importance that resulted from the waning of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the skilful way in which Turkey avoided becoming embroiled in the ethnic upheavals in Central Asia, the Balkans and the Middle East, and the development of a continued policy of closer integration into the European and western worlds. Internal politics are the focus of the second part of the book, addressing the curbing of the Kurdish revolt, the economic gains made, and the strengthening of civil society. Nachmani goes on to analyse the prospects for Turkey in the twenty-first century, in the light of the possible integration into Europe, which may leave the country's leadership free to deal effectively with domestic issues. This book will make crucial reading for anyone studying Turkish politics, or indeed European or European Union politics.

Noel Tyl offers his predictions of what's in store from now until the year 2012, establishing trends of historic change in major sectors of the global market place.

The violent disintegration of Yugoslavia and the cultural and economic dispossession caused by the collapse of socialism continue to force Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina to reconfigure their religious lives and societal values. David Henig draws on a decade of fieldwork to examine the historical, social, and emotional labor undertaken by people to live in an unfinished past--and how doing so shapes the present. In particular, Henig questions how contemporary religious imagination, experience, and practice infuse and interact with social forms like family and neighborhood and with the legacies of past ruptures and critical events. His observations and analysis go to the heart of how societal and historical entanglements shape, fracture, and reconfigure religious convictions and conduct. Provocative and laden with eyewitness detail, Remaking Muslim Lives offers a rare sustained look at what it means to be Muslim and live a Muslim life in contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina.