Esad Širbegović – How Geopolitics Fueled an Islamophobic Pogrom in Montenegro

Mobs chanting “Kill the Turk!” and “Turks out!” filled Podgorica’s streets, their torches illuminating a fury directed at a perceived foreign enemy. This was not a spontaneous reaction to a local knife fight on October 26th, in which a young man was injured by four foreign nationals. Instead, it was the violent culmination of a calculated geopolitical campaign, exported from Belgrade and adopted by local nationalists.

This article is available in Bosnian

The incident reveals a disturbing blueprint: a local event weaponized through disinformation to attack not just Montenegro’s Turkish minority, but the very idea of a multicultural state. The resulting unrest—property destruction, terrorized citizens, and government capitulation—exposed the fragility of this NATO nation’s institutions and the potent influence of its larger neighbor, Serbia.

In October 2025, Turkey’s decision to send combat drones to Kosovo angered Serbia, which accused Turkey of imperial ambitions – a neo-Ottoman intrusion. This diplomatic dispute now spilled over into Montenegro, where, Serb nationalist groups used a knife attack to launch a violent, anti-Turkish and Islamophobic campaign.

According to police, four foreign nationals—three from Azerbaijan and one from Turkey—were involved in the incident that left a local young man injured, though officials confirmed he was never in life-threatening danger. In a stable, functional democracy, such an incident would be a matter for the criminal justice system. But in the tinderbox of the modern Balkans, it became the spark for a much larger explosion.

Ankara’s decision to arm Kosovo was met with a deft geo-strategic chess move from Belgrade. To counter the erosion of its influence, Serbia appears to have redirected the confrontation, using proxy networks to open a destabilizing front within Montenegro.

A coordinated disinformation campaign swiftly spread the false claim that Montenegro was being overrun by “over 100,000 Turks.” This fabricated number, promoted by some outlets, was designed to terrify, suggesting a demographic invasion of the nation.

The narrative collapsed against official data showing only 13,308 Turkish citizens with temporary permits and 87 with permanent residence. The vast discrepancy revealed a deliberate “media lie.”

This was a classic method of manufacturing hatred. This false statistic weaponized pre-existing prejudices, providing a justification for the bigotry that soon erupted onto the street.

The current wave of anti-Turkish sentiment in Montenegro is not an isolated outbreak, but rather the latest flare-up of a deep-seated and long-tolerated Islamophobia within segments of its society.

For decades, this bigotry was systematically cultivated by influential figures, most notably the late Serbian Orthodox Metropolitan Amfilohije. As a dominant religious and political voice, he repeatedly used his platform to delegitimize the Islamic faith, infamously labelling it a “false religion” and its adherents “false people.” This rhetoric from a high authority did not merely express prejudice; it actively sanctified it, creating a fertile cultural and ideological ground for hatred to take root.

Today, this entrenched “ecosystem of intolerance” is being strategically repurposed. The same foundational prejudices are now being channeled into a targeted campaign against the Turkish community.

The online incitement quickly turned into a physical pogrom. Mobs marched through Podgorica, brandishing torches and chanting genocidal slogans as they attacked Turkish-owned businesses and property.

The police response was widely seen as disproportionate. While only 11 people—mostly minors—were detained for the widespread destruction, officers rounded up 45 Turkish citizens in simultaneous raids. This targeting led to accusations of collective punishment.

The state has not shown readiness to stop the violence motivated by religious hatred, xenophobia and Islamophobia. Police passively watched rioters while arresting those protesting the lawlessness.

What distinguishes this outbreak of Islamophobia is the genocidal ideological substance promoted by the state itself.

“Knife, wire, Srebrenica”  (Nož, žica, Srebrenica) is a Serbian chauvinist rallying cry — a rhyming slogan that openly glorifies the Srebrenica genocide. Commonly heard at football matches, nationalist gatherings, and in media sympathetic to convicted war criminal Ratko Mladić, it encapsulates the genocidal logic that drove the 1995 massacre.

In July 1995, moments after his troops overran the UN “safe area” of Srebrenica, war criminal Ratko Mladić declared to have taken revenge on the Turks — a statement that revealed the Islamophobic hatred at the heart of the atrocity. The Bosniak victims of Srebrenica were not ethnic Turks, but they were murdered for being Muslim — cast as the symbolic enemy in a centuries-old narrative of religious vengeance.

Ahead of the Montenegrin Cup final in late May 2023 — when Sutjeska from Nikšić faced Tivat’s Arsenal at Podgorica’s main stadium — a group of Sutjeska supporters chanted the genocidal slogan “Knife, wire, Podgorica,” a chilling paraphrase of the infamous “Knife, wire, Srebrenica” chant used to glorify the Genocide of Bosniaks. In October 2023, Montenegro’s Higher State Prosecutor’s Office determined that the genocidal chant did not constitute hate speech. The result: language of extermination was allowed to circulate unchecked.

The chant “Knife, wire, Podgorica” adapts symbols of systematic mass murder of Bosniaks—and redirects it against Muslim citizens and pro-civic Montenegrins. The message is twofold. Firstly, it directly targets Muslims in Montenegro, drawing a parallel between them and the victims of Srebrenica, thereby intimating that a similar fate could—or should—befall them. Secondly, and just as crucially, it serves as a threat to Orthodox Montenegrins who assert a distinct national identity independent from Serbia. By invoking the symbols of a past atrocity, the chant communicates a clear warning: any deviation from a pro-Serbian, nationalist political alignment will be met with the same brutal ultimatum historically directed against Bosniaks. It is a stark reminder that in the ethno-nationalist worldview, treason is equated with ethnicity, and independence is seen as a betrayal punishable by the grammar of genocide.

The violent unrest in Montenegro represents more than a temporary breakdown of public order—it demonstrates how unhealed historical wounds become weapons in contemporary power struggles. Serbia’s ability to export its grievance with Turkey into Montenegrin streets reveals the hiden cost of rewarding perpetrators of the Bosnian Genocide.

Furthermore, these events show how genocide denial evolves from merely rewriting history to actively enabling future violence. When the perpetrators of Srebrenica genocide faced minimal consequences and were rewarded for their murderous campaign, the genocidal logic they championed wasn’t eliminated—it was merely preserved, waiting for new targets and new contexts. The adaptation of Srebrenica glorification chants for use against citizens in Montenegro represents the ultimate proof that unpunished genocide doesn’t remain in the past; it regenerates, adapts, and finds new victims.

The international community’s decision to reward the perpetrators of the Bosnian genocide with their own ethnically cleansed entity — and even control over Srebrenica itself — continues to haunt the region today. By allowing the very architects of atrocity to govern the site of their crimes, the world established a perilous precedent: that genocide could yield political gain. It is the moral equivalent of allowing Auschwitz to be administered by former SS officers — an unthinkable reality that nonetheless became policy in Bosnia. That failure of justice did not end in the Balkans; it set a global pattern that now enables the unfolding genocide in Gaza.

This is a double-edged sword: the logic of rewarding genocide has come full circle, weaponized now against NATO. Impunity never remains contained; it grows until it destabilizes the very system that sustains it.