The article contains a description of the national security system of the Republic of Poland, in accordance with the division written in the National Security Strategy of the Republic of Poland of 2014. Particular attention was focused on the subsystem of support, including social entities. The second part presents the selected determinants of social security.
Ethnic, religious, cultural and ideological and political diversity of societies in the Balkan Peninsula have repeatedly led to armed conflicts and various forms of political violence in the past. Similar turmoils are evident so far, and it is highly unlikely that they would be absent in the future. For that reason, the geospatial of the Balkans is symbolically called the “powder keg”. An additional security challenge is certainly the global forced migration that this georegia is faced with after 2015, which has also increased the fears of governments and citizens against refugee terrorism. In this regard, the aim of this paper is to point out that the fear of “Islamist terrorism” of migrants is unjustified, while at the same time extremist groups and radicalized individuals who have been present for years in the Balkans and who were resorting, who resort now and will probably resort to some forms of political violence in the future, are marginalized.
The author examines topical issues of security, constituting the bulk of the threats, challenges and obstacles to national and civil security today.
Even before the conquest of the Balkan peninsula was completed by the end of the 15 century, the Ottoman Empire was faced with the need to increase the Muslim component of the local population so as to affirm Ottoman power in the new lands. The central authorities, the army and the clergy began to systematically implement a policy of Islamization. Colonization and migration were among the factors that led to the settlement of a numerous Muslim population. Conversion to Islam was linked to certain advantages, such as pardon for violations of law, the distribution of offices and positions, assistance for impoverished new Muslims, inclusion in Ottoman military organizations such as the spahi, the janissaries, the yaya (peasant infantry), the muslem (autonomous peasant cavalry), the akinji (advance cavalry), the yuruks, etc. There was a merging of ethnic and religious identity stemming from the way in which the Empire was organized and from the importance of religion for the exercise of power. Religious affiliation became an ethnonym of power, and power was in Muslim hands. Evidently, the causes and factors of the conversion to Islam of part of the Balkan population have not been definitively clarified and will remain debatable if the explanation is looked for in “coercion” alone or in “voluntary choice” alone. Perhaps the causes might be related to the internal political strategy of the Ottoman state with regard to the numerous population of the Balkans as well as to the medieval religiousness of the peasants and the incapacity of the Orthodox Church, in its subordinate position, to maintain their faith and provide them with material assistance.