Good morning! Kristallnacht, or the November Pogrom, was a mass crime organised against the Jews on the night between 9 and 10 November 1938. The pretext for the crime was the assassination of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath. I have no desire to compare what happened last night in Montenegro with the Holocaust, but I must warn that every genocidal intention looks alike. An enemy is needed, a pretext is needed, and shallow-minded and evil people are needed to unleash a wave of hatred and violence. The wave of hatred in Montenegro has been set in motion, but the pogrom did not happen. And it could have happened.
How we went from “30,000 Ustashas” to “100,000 Turks” in 35 years?
On 8 October, Aleksandar Vucic sharply reproached his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for delivering Russian drones to the Kosovo armed forces. For a brief time, Serbian media exploded with outrage and accusations toward the Turks—but the noise soon faded.
By complete coincidence, that very same day, news broke in Montenegro about a “movie-like kidnapping,” which happened only 300 meters in a straight line from a police station, near the schoolyard of the First Elementary School in Budva. From that moment on, social networks exploded, and since that day, hatred toward Turks has been aggressively fueled by the usual culprits.
Nebojsa Medojevic, that cringe couple who record “funny” videos in front of the TV, Milan Knezevic, and Vladislav Dajkovic have been spreading hysteria online for days about 100,000 Turks who supposedly came to conquer Montenegro.
Let’s be clear—xenophobia in Montenegro is not a new ailment. Since large numbers of Russians and Ukrainians arrived after the war, joining the Turks and putting significant pressure on the local system and economy, people have been complaining here and there. Just as they complained and made problematic comments about refugees during the wars of the 1990s. These are somewhat expected social reactions. Even on a local level, local chauvinism toward people from other towns is often felt. Budva residents dislike being outnumbered by Podgorica residents, Kotor residents dislike being outnumbered by Niksic residents, Podgorica people dislike being outnumbered by Berane residents and other northerners.
All of that is a natural reaction to change, and as long as it remains at the level of complaining and grumbling, it doesn’t cause major harm.
People have every right to demand that the state pursue a responsible immigration policy that will not endanger the quality of life of its citizens. People have every right to expect the state to protect them from transnational crime and external threats.
After many Russians and Ukrainians left the country, the Turks remained the main target of lingering xenophobic sentiment. However, there is a special potential for hatred toward the Turks, rooted in culture and epic tradition. The struggle against the Turks (Ottomans) is a core part of Montenegrin identity—and even more so of that of the Serbs in Montenegro.
When that combines with xenophobia and a coordinated hate campaign, we get what we saw last night: a mob gathering in a neighbourhood where, recently, a screening of a film in Albanian was already blocked, now preparing for a lynching of Turks. Some X users called for people to go to places where Turks are housed collectively. Others called them “vermin that will breed and slaughter us in the streets.” Some spread conspiracy theories that Turks are moving to Montenegro strategically to take it over, and others called for Turks to be discriminated against in all areas of public and economic life. And these are not anonymous trolls. These are people with full names—employees of major companies dependent on foreigners and tourism, owners of eyewear and optics businesses, or employees of state-owned firms.
Under immense public pressure, the government announced that it would suspend the visa-free regime with Turkey. A minister from the Democrats went to Zabjelo to explain to the mob chanting “Kill the Turk” that there are not 110,000 Turks in Montenegro. The 110,000 Turks that another Vucic loyalist on one of Vucic’s TV channels used just days ago to frighten the Montenegrin public, after being incited by yet another Vucic loyalist.
I’m talking about Milan Knezevic, who deliberately went on Drazen Zivkovic’s show to fan the flames that Nebojsa Medojevic had already lit. Then came the final spark—an incident in which three Turkish citizens stabbed a young man in Podgorica, triggering hysteria online and headlines in pro-Russian media about “citizen patrols” forming to defend against “Turkish butchers,” as some trolls called them online. A full symphony for a pogrom in motion.
The cherry on top was a photo showing a large number of Turkish citizens pressed against a wall, hands behind their heads and legs spread, proudly posted by Boris Bogdanovic, who claimed that 40 Turks were arrested and that they are “protecting every home” and “will not compromise on citizens’ safety.” No one explained what those 40 arrested Turks had to do with the alleged incidents.
Now imagine that the Turks weren’t Turks—that some Serbian criminal had kidnapped two Montenegrin citizens, killed them in a village near Podgorica, then burned and buried them. Or that another Serbian citizen raped and murdered a woman at Cemovsko Field. Or that a third Serbian citizen killed an innocent young man on a café terrace in Budva. If you can imagine that, I’ve just listed only a few of the gruesome crimes committed by Serbian citizens in the past fifteen years. Yet no one thought of organising mass deportations or shutting down Serbian-owned shops. And thank God they didn’t!
How many crimes have Montenegrin citizens themselves committed? Should we deport ourselves?
What I’m saying is this—a criminal is a criminal. A murderer is a murderer. A crime is a crime. We cannot and must not allow hysteria to lead us into making a grave mistake. Because we are prone to such mistakes.
Last night, PES MP Miso Lakovic reminded everyone of 1995, when, after the rape of a girl by two minors of Roma ethnicity, an entire Roma settlement in Danilovgrad was burned down, and the police failed to protect the property of the Roma people who were collectively punished for the act.
In Turkey, Montenegrin citizens were responsible for some of the most monstrous crimes in recent times. The presence of organised crime groups from Montenegro and the Balkans was so high that the Turkish opposition leader tweeted during his campaign, in Serbian: “Serbian cartels, leave our cities! We don’t want your dirty money. I warn you, you’ll lose your heads. We have no children left to sacrifice to you…”
Imagine if the Turkish police had responded then as the Montenegrin police did—by rounding up all Montenegrin citizens, lining them against a wall, and abolishing visas?
To conclude: Montenegro’s immigration policy must be strategic—just like its security policy. Then there would be no need for ad hoc actions, nor would mobs get the idea to take justice into their own hands. And for us as citizens, it remains only to become aware that there is no justification whatsoever for calls to discriminate against or persecute anyone based on ethnicity. Marko, Maja, Drasko, and Baja should all know that. Because we all have names and surnames, and we are all responsible for the words we say publicly—whether we are public figures or not.
That’s all for today. We wish you a pleasant rest of the day.
Kind regards,
Ljubomir Filipovic, CdM analyst and columnist
(Columnists’ opinions and views do not necessarily represent those of CdM’s editorial staff)
