Understanding Albanian-Greek relations: Deconstructing paradoxes and myths

Story Highlights

• "For more than a century - a period coinciding with the history of the modern Albanian state - Albanian-Greek relations have been dominated by two fundamental issues: the issue of territorial or border disagreements and the issue of minorities
• typical phenomena for two neighbouring nation-states," says Albert Rakipi, the head of the Albanian Institute for International Study in a research paper examining Albania-Greek relations, paradoxes and myths. "Disagreements over territory, the border and minorities have been historically and remain the principal sources of tension in bilateral relations. They have fed a cyclical relationship of crises with frequent ebbs and flows, interspersed with periods of co-operation, which always revert to a state of tension without ever reaching all-out conflict in the classic meaning of the word," says Rakipi. "At first glance, disagreements over territory and borders and minorities seem like a mundane history for two neighbours, states founded in the vacuum left by the contraction or collapse of an empire, as was the case with the shrinking of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans," he adds. His essay analyses how and why historical disagreements over territory, borders and minority issues, which date back to the beginning of the twentieth century and about which – especially the border question – neither Albania nor Greece substantially disputes the status quo, have continued over the last twenty-five years to be the main sources of tension and cyclical crisis.