Ethnic groups in Montenegro

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks at the cornerstone ceremony for the Belgrade-Sarajevo highway in Sremska Raca, Serbia, 8 October 2019. Photo: EPA-EFE/KOCA SULEJMANOVIC

They sent messages over the weekend via social media, and paid visits and joined meetings and political rallies in Turkey itself.

The head of the Workers' Party of Turkey, the child of Bosniak immigrants from Sandzak, has generated a stir in Turkish politics - which he hopes will translate into seats in the May elections.

A woman walks past campaign billboards for Presidential candidates Milo Djukanovic and Jakov Milatovic in Podgorica, Montenegro. Photo: EPA-EFE/BORIS PEJOVIC

Svetozar Andric, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army's Birac Brigade and later the chief of staff of the Drina Corps during the Bosnian war, was officially elected as a new member of the Belgrade City Council on Thursday.

The sudden death of Bosniak strongman Muamer Zukorlic has shocked the mainly Muslim region, which straddles Serbia and Montenegro, and where he left a unique mark.

Montenegrin and Croatian presidents, Milo Djukanovic and Zoran Milanovic, in Zagreb. Photo: President of Montenegro

During his visit to Croatia, Djukanovic said Serbia's President, Aleksandar Vucic, was reviving the retrograde political messages of the wars of the 1990s in former Yugoslavia.

Jovanovic was sentenced in late April in the first instance to a year in prison for inciting ethnic hatred; Nilevic has been charged with the same.

On opposing sides of an ideological divide, Jovanovic and Nilevic are part of an alarming war of words playing out on social media in Montenegro, a war that took off in 2019 but has intensified since an earthquake election last year.

PM Zdravko Krivokapic (left) during the Christmas procession in a church in Podgorica. Photo: Government of Montenegro

"I have been talking with Serbian Orthodox Church Patriarch, Porfirije, and we will soon agree on the date of signing the agreement. This issue must not be the subject of politicization in order to score political points," Krivokapic wrote on Twitter.

Family members of Albanians held in Syria urge the government to help their repatriation on 14 September 2020. Photo: Nensi Bogdani/BIRN

Within hours of the announcement, video clips of her, some years' old, were circulating online. Unnoticed and unremarkable until now, suddenly they were problematic, scandalous and offensive.