The violent struggle for independence: The Basque-Kosovo parallels

Abstract

This paper represents a comparative analysis of the struggle for independence of two European regions - the Basque Country and Kosovo and Metohija, whose main method was terrorist activity. The objective of the research is to show why, in the case of Kosovo, the KLA was declared a terrorist organization by the western part of the international community, and then won the military support, as well as the support to illegal unilateral secession, while, on the other hand, the Basque ETA was characterized from the very beginning to the end of its existence as a terrorist organization, where Spain received full support in the fight against it, and also in the struggle against the secession of the Basque Country in general. The starting hypothesis of the paper is that the implementation of double standards in these two cases is the result of geopolitical interests of the Western power centres, and not observance of international law and necessary conditions to allow secession of a part of the territory of a sovereign state. The results of the research show that, despite the fact that the Basque people suffered various forms of repression during the Franco era, they did not receive support for the establishment of an independent state, unlike the Albanians from Kosovo and Metohija who were allowed to do so, despite already having the home state of Albania. Methodologically, the paper has used the case study method, comparative analysis method and historical method.