Strategic Minorities and the Global Network of Power: Western Thrace and Northern Ireland in Comparative Perspective

The relationship between ethnic communities who share a common national space is often affected by factors above civil society, such as inter-state relations, political and economic alliances, and geopolitical interests. The relevance of ethnic minorities’ identity and behaviour to the international political environment becomes clear whenever an ethnic minority occupies territory of geopolitical and/or geo-economic importance to countries with conflicting interests in the area - we will call such a minority, ‘strategic minority’. Using a model of ‘network compatibility’ we could delineate the mechanisms and factors which affect the social outlook of a given minority.

To highlight the paramount importance of national and international relations in shaping ethnic minorities’ identity and behaviour the paper examines and compares two strategic minorities situated at the fringes of Europe: The Northern Irish Catholic minority and the Muslim minority in Western Thrace, North Eastern Greece. Using as our analytic tool the theory of ‘networks of social power’ we tentatively conclude that the formation as well as the current identity, status, and behaviour of the two minorities cannot be fully understood unless we examine the role of the two sets of neighboring countries (G. Britain - Ireland, and Greece - Turkey), as well as the two major Western political powers, i.e., the European Union, and the United States, in the two contested regions.