David Cadier

Kacper Szulecki

Populism, Historical Discourse, and Foreign Policy: the case of Poland's Law and Justice Government

Introduction

As made explicit in the words of President Andrzej Duda upon entering office, the populist Law and Justice party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość -PiS) came to power with the intention both to "bring necessary corrections" to Poland's foreign policy (Duda 2015a) and to "fight for historical truth in [its] relations with [its] neighbours" through an "active historical policy" (Duda 2015b). These two undertakings have been pursued in parallel and have affected one another. Since the party won an absolute majority in the legislatives elections of 2015 and took the reins of executive power, the historical policy of the PiS government has had, indeed, direct and indirect implications for the country's foreign policy and diplomatic relations. This is most visible in relation to two of Poland's immediate neighbors, namely Germany and Ukraine, as well as the diplomatic repercussions of the adoption of the IPN Act amendment (also dubbed the "Holocaust law" abroad). The PiS leadership has often resorted to anti-German rhetoric in political and historical debates while Polish-Ukrainian bilateral relations have deteriorated over historical memory. This contrasts not just with the policies and discourse of the previous government (Civic Platform, Platforma Obywatelska -PO), but also more profoundly with what had constituted Poland's foreign policy tradition since 1989. The geopolitical and ontological project of the 'Return to Europe', which has for long been seen as going through Germany, and the strategic project of seeing Ukraine integrated in Euro-Atlantic structures have constituted, since 1989, crucial vectors in Poland's foreign policy tradition [START_REF] Kuzniar | Poland's Foreign Policy after[END_REF][START_REF] Zając | Poland's Security Policy: The West, Russia, and the Changing International Order[END_REF]. But in castigating Germany's politico-cultural hegemony in Europe, and going as far differentially emphasizing Poland's 'Easterness' in that context, and by threatening Ukraine of blocking or delaying its (hypothetical) future accession to the EU, the PiS government appears ready to discard -rhetorically at least -both vectors when put in the balance against memory politics.

How profound are these apparent shift and how are they linked to PiS posture on memory politics? What characterizes -and is distinctive in -the historical policy of the PiS government? How has it influenced or affected its foreign policy, in what sense and to what extent? In tackling these questions, the present article aims to address two empirical and theoretical puzzles. On the one hand, it unpacks the content and foundations of the historical discourse and policy of the PiS government with a view to determine how much they are a reflection of the party's populist orientation. On the other hand, it sheds light on how historical discourse, whether reflecting an ideological, strategic, or accidental practice by governments, can spill over foreign policy. In doing so, we thus approach the question of the relationship between history and foreign policy from two sides: we look at how domestic historical policy can have immediate repercussions on diplomatic relations and at how populist-historical discursive practices can be reflected in -and influence -foreign policy.

From a political and ideological point of view, PiS can be characterized as a conservative, nationalist and populist party [START_REF] Szczerbiak | An Anti-Establishment Backlash That Shook up the Party System? The October 2015 Polish Parliamentary Election[END_REF]Stanley and Cześnik 2019;[START_REF] Rooduijn | Uchwała Sejmu w sprawie oddania hołdu ofiarom ludobójstwa dokonanego przez nacjonalistów ukraińskich na obywatelach II RP w latach 1943-1945[END_REF]. Conservatism and, especially, nationalism certainly constitute important foundations in the party's attitudes and approach towards historical memory. Yet, they are not sufficient to explain, in themselves, the contrasts and characteristics noted above. For instance, while the nationalist positioning of the PiS government could have led to expect a renewed and radical emphasis on Russia in its historical discourse and foreign policy, even more so as the party had made of the 2010 Smolensk plane crash a 'foundational myth' when in the opposition, the distinctiveness of PiS positions in its first years in office pertained more to Germany or Ukraine than to Russia. 1 Similarly, while PiS' conservatism helps elucidate some of the government's positions on the Communist period, such as the emphasis on the illegitimate character of the regime to the extent of denying the period between 1945 and 1989 as counting as Polish statehood (see for instance: BBC 2018), it appears less relevant in explaining its distinctive attitudes towards World War II and the Holocaust. As detailed below, these attitudes can be characterized as a proactive attempt to promote a Manichean, dichotomous and totalizing re-definition of Poland's role and place in the victim-heroperpetrator trinity.

With regard to the first of the aforementioned puzzles, we argue that, beyond its nationalist and conservative roots, the historical discourse of the PiS government is also a reflection of its reliance on populism as a political practice and discursive mode of articulation. There is little scholarship available on the relationship between populism and memory politics and the article thus aims to make a contribution in that sense. We identify a number of patterns by which populist practice or rhetorical strategies might be reflected in historical discourse, which we illustrate with reference to the case of PiS.

Identifying what characterizes and animates the historical discourse of the PiS government does not suffice, however, to anticipate, capture or explain its effects on foreign policy. This requires identifying the pathways through which history, as it is processed by societies and used by governments, might come to influence foreign policy outputs. We approach historical representations as discursive constructions, which allows both to integrate their contingent and constructed nature and to conceptualize their effects on foreign policy outputs [START_REF] Weldes | Constructing National Interests: The United States and the Cuban Missile Crisis[END_REF][START_REF] Waever | Identity, Communities and Foreign Policy. Discourse Analysis as Foreign Policy Theory[END_REF][START_REF] Hansen | Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War[END_REF]). Policy-makers constantly have to articulate their policy preferences with historical markers from the nation's security imaginary and, as such, shape and are constrained by the structures of signification in which foreign policy is formulated and debated. Through their articulatory practice, policy-makers and political leaders produce meaning and representations of Self and Other that come to inform the definition of the national interest and that enable certain policies while disabling others.

We argue that the historical discourse of the PiS government is empowering certain resonant rhetorical commonplaces, interpretations and narratives which turn some policy options more operational and 'legitimate' while effectively ruling out alternatives. As such, by shedding light on how historical narratives animated by the articulatory practice of populism come to influence foreign policy practice, we contribute to the nascent but growing literature on the relationship between populism and foreign policy [START_REF] Chryssogelos | Populism in Foreign Policy[END_REF][START_REF] Verbeek | Populism and Foreign Policy[END_REF][START_REF] Plagemann | Populism and Foreign Policy: The Case of India[END_REF]Cadier 2019a).

The argument is developed in successive steps. First, relying on the work of Ernesto Laclau and his followers, we conceptualize populism as a discursive practice and set forth a number of hypotheses about how it might translate or be reflected into historical narratives.

Subsequently, building on the discourse analysis literature in Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA), we present the theoretical framework underpinning our investigation of the influence of memory politics and historical discourse on foreign policy. Then, we analyze the PiS government's domestic historical discourse showing how it reflects the party's populist orientation, and we discuss the way this can spill over to foreign policy, using the case of the IPN Act and the relations with Ukraine. Finally, a case-study of Warsaw's policies towards Germany elucidates how the historical posture of the PiS government has concretely affected Polish foreign policy. The conclusion summarizes the findings and their implications for the study of the relationship between populism, history and foreign policy.

Populism, history and foreign policy: a conceptual framework

Populism and historical discourse

The task of capturing the specific characteristics of populism is rendered intricate by the historical, geographical, and political diversity of the movements coming under -but rarely claiming -this label. In this context, scholars of comparative politics have set forth and relied on different theoretical lenses to define and characterize populism, conceptualising it alternatively as a thin or 'thin-centred ideology' [START_REF] Mudde | The Populist Zeitgeist[END_REF][START_REF] Stanley | The Thin Ideology of Populism[END_REF], a political strategy [START_REF] Weyland | Populism: A Political-Strategic Approach[END_REF], a political style [START_REF] Moffitt | Rethinking Populism: Politics, Mediatisation and Political Style[END_REF] or a discourse [START_REF] Stavrakakis | Left-Wing Populism in the European Periphery: The Case of SYRIZA[END_REF]. In our endeavour to unpack how the PiS government's populist orientation underpins its attitude towards historical memory and affects, in turn, its foreign policy, we regard the theoretical position conceptualising populism as a discourse as being the most promising and most appropriate. Quite simply, it is as discourse that historical representations are accessible to the analyst and it is thus at this level that their relationship to populism and foreign policy can (and should) be investigated.

The approach conceptualizing populism as a discursive mode of political articulation has been above all developed by Ernesto Laclau (Laclau 2005b(Laclau , 2005a)), building on the broader social theory he established with Chantal Mouffe [START_REF] Laclau | Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics[END_REF] and that has been expanded by their followers [START_REF] Howarth | Discourse Theory and Political Analysis: Identities, Hegemonies, and Social Change[END_REF][START_REF] Howarth | USTAWA z dnia 26 stycznia 2018 r. o zmianie ustawy o Instytucie Pamięci Narodowej -Komisji Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, ustawy o grobach i cmentarzach wojennych, ustawy o muzeach oraz ustawy o odpowiedzialności podmiotów zbiorowych za czyny zabronione pod groźbą kary[END_REF]. The basic epistemological contention of this position -and of discourse analysis more generally [START_REF] Jørgensen | Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method[END_REF][START_REF] Dunn | Undertaking Discourse Analysis for Social Research[END_REF] -is that language is performative and relational. It is performative in the sense that it does not simply express or reflect but more profoundly constitutes social reality. Language is also relational in the sense that meaning and social identities are constructed through contingent relations between terms (or signifiers). Actors produce, reproduce and contest these relations through their discursive practices: they mobilize, weave together and establish chains of connotations between preexisting linguistic elements in a bid to construct arrangements of meaning -a process referred to as articulation (Laclau and Mouffe 2001, 105). Discourses are produced out of these articulatory practices and constitute, as such, "social and political construction that establishes a system of relations between different objects and practices, while providing positions with which social agents can identify" (Howarth and Stavrakakis 2000, 3).

Populism is one such discourse. It is performative in the sense that it does not simply "express some kind of original popular identity [but] actually constitutes the latter" and it is relational in the sense that this identity is constructed in opposition to 'the power' (or 'elite') and around the nodal point 'the people' (Laclau 2005b, 48). What makes a movement populist then is not its actual political or ideological contents, but the particular logic of articulation of these contents (ibid. 33). This logic is characterized by two processes: the construction of an equivalential chain between unsatisfied demands and the creation of an internal frontier dichotomizing the social. On the one hand, the populist discourse establishes a link between heterogeneous social demands on the negative basis that they remain unfulfilled. Particular demands find themselves aggregated with other unrelated demands, thus losing their particularistic character to acquire a universal one and forming a chain of equivalence that constitutes a popular subject (ibid. 35-38). This leads the populist discourse, on the other hand, to advance an antagonistic representation of society as being divided between two camps, the power (or establishment) and the underdog. PiS very much relies on these two processes in its political discourse, which helped it gain power by aggregating dispersed grievances of different groups and classes under the joint notion of "Poland in ruin"depicting a weak state in which the societal majority suffers poverty in contrast to and because of the alienated liberal elite.

What is likely to be consequential for policy in particular is the mechanisms or articulatory practices through which the aforementioned internal frontiers and equivalential chains are constructed. The first is the totalization and castigation of the 'power' that is accused of frustrating social demands and that is denounced and opposed by populism, for the creation of a chain of equivalence and an internal frontier necessarily imply to represent the other 'side'. Thus, as emphasized by Laclau, "there is no populism without discursive construction of an enemy" (Laclau 2005b, 39). The second is the structuring of populist discourse around the nodal point of 'the People'. The populist articulatory practice constitutes 'the people' and 'the elite' as the antagonistic poles of social reality, which can alternatively be defined in political, socio-economic, cultural or historical terms, open to constant re-definition or contestation. For instance, PiS politicians interchangeably castigate the representatives and supporters of the opposition of being liberal (in contrast to the conservative People), detached economic beneficiaries of unjust transformation (which exploited the People) or emulating the West (and scorning the pristine traditional People). Characteristically of the populist discourse, 'the people' is systematically constructed as an 'underdog' in a down/up political antagonism, while by contrast the nationalist discourse constructs 'the people' as 'nation' in an in/out political antagonism [START_REF] Cleen | Distinctions and Articulations: A Discourse Theoretical Framework for the Study of Populism and Nationalism[END_REF].

In light of the above, we can expect the articulatory practice of populism to be reflected in historical discourses in two possible ways: either through the "construction of an underdog as an historical agent" (Laclau 2005b, 47) or, conversely, through the construction of the historical agent as an underdog.

On the one hand, populist actors might mobilize historical representations, symbols and narratives in the articulation of the populist discourse -that is in the creation of an internal frontier, the construction of a chain of equivalence, the interpellation of the popular subject or the othering of the elites. These articulations never take place in a political vacuum and thus research ought to study the "complex and antagonistic language games" developed in a specific political culture around the claim of incarnating people's interest and identities (Stavrakakis 2017, 538), games that might involve "recognition and idealization, rejection and demonization". On the other hand, the structure or logic of articulation of populism can be replicated in historical discourse. Concretely, this would translate into dichotomous historical narratives that tend to position the country (or nation) as an underdog on a vertical axis and to castigate historical adversaries as 'elites'.

Historical Discourse and Foreign Policy

After having formulated a number of hypotheses about how populism as an articulatory practice might affect or be reflected in historical discourse, we now briefly turn to specifying how we expect the latter to influence foreign policy outputs. While rarely put in doubt, the "political consequences" of collective memory, its effects on power constellations and policies, remain undertheorized [START_REF] Müller | Introduction: The Power of Memory, the Memory of Power and the Power over Memory[END_REF]. The rich literature on memory studies has documented the contextual, contingent and politically consequential nature of historical memory [START_REF] Halbwachs | On Collective Memory[END_REF][START_REF] Lebow | The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe[END_REF], yet without shedding light on the mechanisms by which it conditions policy outputs. On its part, the FPA scholarship grounded in cognitive psychology did endeavour to theorize such a causal pathway [START_REF] Vertzberger | Foreign Policy Decisionmakers As Practical-Intuitive Historians: Applied History and Its Shortcomings[END_REF][START_REF] Khong | Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965[END_REF][START_REF] Houghton | The Role of Analogical Reasoning in Novel Foreign-Policy Situations[END_REF], but often at the price of ignoring the contingent nature of historical memory and of treating it, instead, as given and unproblematic.

We contend that the post-structuralist lens of discourse theory presented above allows both to integrate the constructed and contingent nature of historical representations and to conceptualise their effects on policies. Applying the same theoretical lens in studying, on the one hand, the relationship between populism and historical memory and, on the other hand, the relationship between historical memory and foreign policy also allows retaining continuity and coherence in our overall analytical framework.

Discourse theory approaches foreign policy as a political argument. More specifically, it emphasizes and studies the "constitutive significance of representations of identity for formulating and debating foreign policies" (Hansen 2006, 5). In promoting a policy preference or justifying a policy choice, it is indeed "always necessary for policy-makers to be able to argue where 'this takes us' and how it resonates with the state's vision of itself" (Waever 2002, 27). For instance, in the foreign policies of Central European countries, the institutionalization of the 'Return to Europe' narrative had long meant that any policy options that would make a country appear 'Eastern' rather than 'Western' was deemed illegitimate (Cadier 2019b, 84;[START_REF] Szulecki | Heretical Geopolitics of Central Europe. Dissidents Intellectuals and an Alternative European Order[END_REF].

Representations of identity and of the polity itself are not fixed, however, but subject to continuous negotiation, reproduction and contestation. In promoting their policy preferences or justifying their policy choices, policymakers construct and temporarily fix meaning through their articulations of the cultural raw materials and linguistic elements that constitute a state's security imaginary and they produce, as such, specific representations of international politics and of the place of the state within it (Weldes 1999, 97-103). The manner in which meaning is produced and attached to various objects or subjects of international politics is "constituting particular interpretive dispositions which create certain possibilities [for policies] and preclude others" (Doty 1993, 298): representations of foreign policy situations and of the national interest will condition how the former will be tackled and the latter defended.

In other words, in promoting particular articulations of cultural and historical raw materials constitutive of a state's security imaginary, a populist-inspired historical discourse might promote specific images of Self and Others, influencing how relations among states are represented and how the state might act. By delimiting the realm of the possible in terms of policy articulation and by creating interpretative dispositions, historical discourse contributes to disable certain policy choices while enabling others and, as such, influences foreign policy outputs. In analysing foreign policy, historical discourse must thus be approached as "framings of meaning and lens of interpretation rather than as objective historical truths" (Hansen 2006, 7).

Against 'pedagogics of shame': The populist logic of PiS' historical discourse

In Poland, there has been a "high demand for historical narrations" among the public, one that has been driven and fueled by "political uses of history" (Mink 2017, 36). The Polish context is notably characterized by a polarization between the proponents of a critical understanding of Polish history -an approach initiated in the samizdat (underground) literature under Communism that aims at complementing the deeply engraved collective memory representations of Polish victimhood and heroism with an exploration of Polish guilt -and those vehemently rejecting such approach as unpatriotic. This polarization owes at least as much to political than to academic cleavages and has become more acute since the 2000s [START_REF] Traba | Przeszlosc w terazniejszosci. Poznań: Poznanskie[END_REF]. PiS has had a clear, persistent and proactive position in these debates: it has long vilified the critical approach, dubbing it the 'pedagogy of shame' and charging it with undermining national strength by hinting that Poles should be ashamed of their nation. As expressed by PiS politician and Deputy Minister of Culture and National Heritage Jarosław Sellin, the party maintains that "wise historical policies should maintain pride in [Poland's] past achievements" and wishes to "put an end to the allegations that history should be left to historians only" (cited in: Żuk 2018, 1052).

Since it came to power, the PiS government has sought, through its historical policy, not only to undo the projects associated with the critical approach, but also more profoundly to "overturn the historical narratives in place up to 2015 by advancing a hegemonic vision of [Polish] history in the 20 th century" (Mink 2017, 45) In essence, the aim is to promote a "set of interpretations of past event as correct understandings of [the] nation's historical experiences", which can then be used by the government to legitimize contemporary ideologies and policies since remembrance constitutes a "powerful instrument of social mobilization, identity construction and political competition" (Wawrzyński 2017, 297, 294). To be sure, PiS historical policy ought to be placed in context: it takes root in the domestic debates and polarization described above and it largely filled a gap left open by the previous Governments [START_REF] Harper | Poland's Memory Wars: Essays on Illiberalism[END_REF], ramping up some instruments of memory politics that were already in place (such as the IPN). In addition, it should be noted that several of its core positions are actually shared across the board in Poland, 2 while many of those that are distinctive proceed from PiS' nationalist and conservative political ideology and agenda. At the same time, however, we argue that the manner in which PiS' historical arguments are articulated also reflects the discursive practice of populism to a significant extent. This is true for instance of its (re-)conceptualization of the categories of victims, heroes and perpetrators and of its core motto of 'Rising from our knees'.

In its structure, PiS' historical discourse reflects to some extent the Manichean logic of articulation that characterizes populism. The gist of PiS historical argument on WWII, and the core of its revision of Holocaust historiography as reflected in the amended IPN Act, is that victims cannot be perpetrators (but can be heroes): the (undeniable) heavy suffering of Poland and its people in the conflict means that they cannot be associated with or accused of acts that belong to the perpetrator category. This appeared clearly for instance when, in reacting to a new US law on compensations for spoiled properties of individual Polish Jews, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki declared "let's remember the tragic history of the Polish nation … we were the most murdered victims here during WWII and for this reason we will never agree to [pay] any compensation for anyone", while the PiS chairman Jarosław Kaczyński stated that "Poland has no [financial] war obligations, whether from a legal point of view or from the point of view of fundamental morality and decency". 3 In PiS' historical discourse, the categories of 'victims' and 'perpetrators' are totalized and essantialized, just as for the categories of 'people' and 'elites' in the populist discourse. In addition, as for populism [START_REF] Mudde | The Populist Zeitgeist[END_REF]), this dichotomy is essentially moralistic: "attention is drawn to past tragedies in ways that could achieve moral and political gains" [START_REF] Charnysh | Poland's New Holocaust Law Is Just the Latest Attempt to Officially Redefine Its History[END_REF].

Secondly and more acutely, PiS has mobilized historical representations, symbols and narratives in the articulation of its populist discourse. In creating an internal frontier and othering the elites, PiS representatives have often taken the past as point of reference. They have notably discursively opposed the "bad elites of the liberal-communist past" to a "simple and real nation", along the lines of a "dichotomous" and "timeless" division of society (Żuk and Żuk 2018, 137). In charging domestic liberal elites -such as the former dissident intellectual Adam Michnik and his influential daily Gazeta Wyborcza -with conceiving and promoting the 'pedagogy of shame', PiS politicians have sought to represent them as traitors ready to complicity sell out the pride of the Polish nation and to present themselves, by contrast, as patriotic defenders of the honor of the Polish people.

More specifically, PiS representatives have regularly established parallels between contemporary and past political antagonisms or between current and old elites, implicitly or explicitly associating liberal elites, and especially the former PO government and its policies, with the Communist regime or even with Nazi Germany. 4 PiS politicians have regularly accused the liberal elites that oversaw the post-1989 transition of having been complacent with Communist apparatchiks (see for instance: Duda 2015c) and actually came to represent the 1989 Roundtable talks as a "betrayal" where "Communists shared power with their former agents". 5 This led the current Defense Minister, Mariusz Błaszczak, to claim that it is only under the PiS government that Communism officially ended in Poland [START_REF] Mazzini | Poland's Right-Wing Government Is Rewriting History -with Itself as Hero[END_REF]. This reinterpretation of history and the representation of a 'communist-liberal past' is directly relevant for foreign policy: following its electoral victory, PiS brought significant personnel re-shuffles upon the MFA, in the name of purging former agents of the Communist police but also, in practice, diplomats deemed too close to the ideas or leaders of the predecessors.

Finally and more generally, the PiS has sought to other liberal domestic liberal elites by castigating them as having been timelessly subservient to external powers. In Parliament, Jarosław Kaczyński directly addressed PO members in these terms: "you are the external party today, you are compromising Poland, you are against Poland. You have always been". 6 As noted by Piotr and Paweł Żuk (2018, 142), the discursive categories of 'external party' or 'abroad' have a strong resonance in the "historical and martyrological awareness of Polish society" as they evoke the Partitions of Poland and the loss of independence between 1795 and 1918 as a result of foreign invasions.

Similarly, in PiS political discourse, the populist practices of creating a chain of equivalence and interpellating the popular subject have also relied at times on the articulation of historical raw materials. The chain of equivalence between frustrated social demands has to some extent been established by casting the frustration (or lack) in historical terms. This is maybe best exemplified by PiS foreign policy motto of 'Rising from our knees', which in its political subjectivisation amounts to constructing an underdog as an historical agent. According to PiS logic, just as for 'the people' on the domestic political scene, Poland has been kept down on the regional scene by EU elites and European powers, with the complicity of domestic elites (Cadier, forthcoming). In that sense, the motto reflects the kind of vertical political antagonism that was identified above as characterizing the populist discourse and the way it constructs identities.

Historical resources are also mobilized to empower the figures of victim and hero, which are both fueling the populist narrative of moral superiority of the (Polish) People. Clear parallels exist between the categories of victims and underdogs: PiS' "reactivation of the myths associated to Polish martyrology" [START_REF] Kurska | Quo vadis, Polonia ?[END_REF]) can at least partially be read as a feature of its populist discourse with the victim presented as historical underdog, but morally victorious. The nation's 'unique' historical experience of martyrdom and courage is to justify its broader international mission. Krzysztof Szczerski, President Duda's chief of staff and one of the key PiS foreign policy architects, wrote in a programmatic book that he was hoping Polish emigrants could "re-evangelise Europe" as in his views "many countries are waiting for [Poland], the homeland of Saint John Paul II, to show the way again" (Szczerski 2017 cited in Nowak 2019 7 ). Here and elsewhere, PiS politicians implicitly invoked the image of Poland as a 'Christ of Nations', that is of a morally superior victim that has suffered for the greater good of Europe (Harper 2018, 133). Populism's idealization of the people as pure and infallible (Müller 2016) can be seen as underpinning both a glorification of its heroism and a rejection of accusations of any historical wrongdoings. However, while the main audience for the party's historical revisionism is at home, by casting the nation as a uniform agent, contrasted with other nations, PiS blurred the line between domestic and international narratives and its policies 'at home' spilled over diplomatic relations and Poland's reputation. The amended Article 55a of the IPN Act sparked international controversy and a flood of critique not only from foreign media and academics, but also diplomats and politicians, most importantly from Israel and the US. For instance, the White House is said to have imposed a ban on Presidential-level meetings between the US and Poland to protest against the act. 8 Beyond this specific case and as we now analyze, PiS broader historical posture had repercussions on its relations with -and policies towards -Ukraine and Germany.

Implications for foreign policy practice: relations with Germany and Ukraine

As noted in introduction, the most salient alterations in Poland's foreign policy rhetoric and diplomatic relations under the PiS government have pertained to Germany and Ukraine. In this section, we substantiate this point and analyse how historical representations and narratives related to these two countries have been articulated in Polish foreign policy discourse. We notably aim to determine whether and to what extent these articulations reflect the populist logic and to understand the implications for foreign policy practice. The cases of Ukraine and Germany offer variations for the analysis, both in terms of context and results.

The respective attitudes of these two diplomatic interlocutors have, indeed, been markedly different: while Germany has maintained a (traditional) cautious approach towards historical memory as well as an explicit acknowledgement of its own historical guilt, Ukraine has displayed a much more offensive and confrontational posture, being itself engaged in a process of national identity building as well as in a war [START_REF] Klymenko | Forging Ukrainian National Identity through Remembrance of World War II[END_REF]. Furthermore, variations are also apparent in Warsaw's own approach: while the PiS government has deliberately instrumentalised historical representations of Germany as a rhetorical device in its populist political discourse as well as foreign policy strategy, in the case of Ukraine it is more PiS domestic remembrance policy and its reactions to Kyiv's own memory politics that have indirectly spilled over Warsaw's diplomatic posture.

Germany

In a famous speech pronounced in Berlin in 2011, the then foreign minister Radosław Sikorski declared that he was "fearing German power less than German inaction" [START_REF] Sikorski | Poland and the Future of the European Union[END_REF]. In doing so, he was both casting aside Poland's historical anxieties towards its powerful neighbor and calling for German leadership in Europe. In stark contrast, the PiS government regularly emphasizes historical grievances between the two countries and denounces Germany's hegemonic position in Europe.

Historical references to Germany are frequent in PiS foreign policy discourse. They notably appear along three patterns: diplomacy serving as a transmission belt for historical policy; historical narratives being put at the service of populist politics; and historical experience invoked in the context of foreign policy strategy. First, PiS historical policy translated into foreign policy to the extent that some of its constitutive statements or claims relating to Germany have been transmitted through diplomatic channels. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) took an active role in promoting the Polish historical narrative on World War II and in monitoring and combatting, through its network of embassies abroad, associations made between Poland and the Holocaust. For instance, on the Ministry's webpage listing and detailing the thematic priorities of Polish diplomacy, 'German Concentration Camps' was listed along categories such as 'Security Policy', 'Foreign Economic Policy', 'International Organizations', 'Polish Aid' or 'Eastern Partnership'. 9 To be sure, a proactive denunciation of the fallacious expression 'Polish Death Camps' has been a constant of Polish diplomacy: between 2008 and 2015, the previous government had issued 913 statements in response to mentions of this expression (Poland's Holocaust Law 2018). What is distinctive in the approach of the PiS government is, as evoked above, the totalisation of the categories of victims and perpetrators and the regular insistence on Germany's role. Accusing Berlin of attempting to diminish its responsibilities for the crimes committed during WWII the PiS has sought, instead, to emphasize them, notably by inviting for the term 'Nazi' to be replaced by 'German' in historical accounts. 10 Relatedly, parallels between Nazi and contemporary Germany have also been established and stressed in the context of PiS government's revival of Polish demands for war reparations, which (Communist) Poland had initially renounced in the 1950s but that the PiS now demand from Germany as as long overdue historical justice(Poland revives German war reparations demand 2017).

Second, the PiS government has activated references to its historical experience in a strategic or instrumental manner. The aforementioned rhetorical attack against Germany and emphasis of its WWII crimes have, in fact, redoubled after the PiS government faced a Rule of Law infringement probe from the European Commission. World War II references were also mobilized in the debates on the refugee crisis. Invoking a clear distinction between good and evil, victims/heroes and perpetrators, they became an easily available tool for deflecting moral arguments raised against Poland's refusal to accept even the smallest number of refugees.

With Germany positioning itself as a champion of humanitarianism, Poland was -even if not explicitly -cast as a villain in European debates. The PiS government's insistence on history as a forever returning reality and particularly the continuous reminding of Germany of its Nazi past can be read as an attempt to acquire a more favorable position of moral superiority in place of moral inferiority. It amounts, in other words, to a strategic (use of) historical narratives (see: Subotić 2016; Introduction of the Special Issue). Through a discourse analysis lens, whether the invocation of historical narratives and representations reflects an ideological belief or is used strategically is not relevant; they equally contribute to shape the structure of meaning in which foreign policy is formulated and debated and, as such, foreign policy action.

Third and directly related to our concern here, PiS has also mobilized historical representations and narratives in the context of its populist logic of political articulation. PiS' anti-German posture and rhetoric, which was already apparent when the party was in power between [START_REF] Laclau | On Populist Reason[END_REF]-2007(Longhurst 2013, 366), 366), is largely rooted in its national-conservative ideology. Germany is cast as the historical Other to the Polish nation and seen as and the hegemonic power imposing cultural liberalism to the rest of Europe. But there is also something distinctively populist in the way Germany is represented -namely as the 'elite' or 'establishment' -and in the way Poland's identity is constructed in opposition -namely as an 'underdog' -in the political and foreign policy discourse of the PiS government (Cadier, forthcoming). Germany is charged with keeping Poland down and with encroaching on its sovereignty, through its assets in the Polish economy and media, and with the complicit help of Polish domestic liberal elites, notably those from the previous PO government (Balcer et al. 2017, 4). It is in the context of this framing of Berlin as the 'establishment' of Europe frustrating Polish political demands that PiS policy-makers have not hesitated to invoke a distinctive historical "Eastern" identity for Poland as a justification for rejecting Germany's policies, cultural model and historical accounts. 11 Such representation of Poland's identity marks a significant departure from the 'Return to Europe' narrative, which had constituted both an ontological and geopolitical project for Poland and other Central European countries, leading policy-makers to emphasize their state's Western identity and reject any associations with the 'East' (hence the insistence on 'Central Europe'). In that sense, PiS foreign policy practice reflects and feeds into a broader trend in Central Europe, namely the partial rejection of normative conformity and identification with the West in the context of a regional counterhegemonic strategy [START_REF] Kazharski | The End of "Central Europe"? The Rise of the Radical Right and the Contestation of Identities in Slovakia and the Visegrad Four[END_REF]. In Poland, the formalization of this strategy reflects the political orientation of the current government and notably relies on populist articulations of historical references to Germany in foreign policy discourse.

To what extent has PiS government's, partially populist-inspired, historical discourse on Germany been reflected into its foreign policy practice? It should be noted first of all that there has been, overall, a discrepancy between a confrontational and uncontrolled rhetoric on Germany and rather cautious policy decisions. In addition, the rhetorical elements showcased above do not represent Poland's foreign policy discourse towards Germany in its entirety: they have been paralleled by more traditional, positive diplomatic references to the close relationship between the two countries (See for instance: Szczerski 2016). Nevertheless, without having radically overturned it, the PiS government has brought upon concrete alterations in Poland's Germany policy, especially in its first year in power. Upon entering office, it formulated four conditions for a normal partnership with Germany that were largely deemed as "prohibitive" by analysts (Kuźniar 2016, 13). Most tellingly, in its programmatic speech on Poland's foreign policy priorities for 2016, foreign minister Waszczykowski's downgraded Germany from the place of top priority partner in the EU -which it had been occupying in Polish diplomacy since 1989 -and conferred that role, instead, to the United Kingdom (UK) [START_REF] Waszczykowski | Information of the Minister of Foreign Affairs on the Polish Government's Foreign Policy in 2016[END_REF]. The aforementioned conditions were eventually dropped and Germany regained its place as top priority partner in the 2017 speech (in the meantime, the UK had voted to leave the EU), but these two outputs clearly illustrate PiS government's foreign policy preferences. More profoundly, as expressed by German diplomats' characterization of the PiS government as 'unresponsive' and as having 'disappointed' their own government, the bilateral relationship has deteriorated overall and reached one of its lowest point since 1989 (Buras and Janning 2018, 5). Contrary to other trends in Poland's foreign policy, such as the overprioritization of the strategic link with Washington, the direction set to policies towards Germany and the deterioration of diplomatic relations with Berlin appear not driven by changing external conditions but, rather, by the ideological orientation and political practice of the PiS government.. To be sure, the PiS government's populist and historical discourse is not the sole constituent of its positions and decisions on Germany; opposing visions on the future of the EU, responses to the migration crisis, or contentious dossiers such as NordStream 2 and the desire to break with the pro-German orientation have also played a role. But this discourse has certainly enabled and empowered this policy direction and has been reflected in diplomatic practices, with some consequences for the texture of the bilateral relationship.

Ukraine

Ukraine has been a top priority of Polish diplomacy since it became independent in 1991.. An independent and Western-oriented Ukraine is regarded by Polish foreign policy elites as a necessary geopolitical buffer against Russia's power in the region and as being vital for Poland's own security (Zwolski 2018, 180-81). This vision has notably lead Warsaw to be one of steadiest supporters of Ukraine's accession to NATO and the EU. Furthermore, the advent of a democratic and friendly Ukraine is central to certain ideas and self-understandings that have been informing Poland's foreign policy over the past decades, such the grand strategy project of ULB (an acronym for Ukraine, Lithuania and Belarus) coined by émigré intellectuals Juliusz Mieroszewski and Jerzy Giedroyć [START_REF] Szulecki | Heretical Geopolitics of Central Europe. Dissidents Intellectuals and an Alternative European Order[END_REF], and the recurring idea of "Prometheanism" (Kowal 2019). 12 Overall, in its foreign policy decisions or in multilateral forums such as the EU or NATO, the PiS government has re-affirmed rather than put into question the traditional Polish geopolitical vision of Ukraine. But its domestic remembrance policy has spilled over its diplomatic relations with Kyiv, which have been marked by tensions over historical memory and have seen the Promethean idea being increasingly side-lined.

An important factor prompting a rhetorical shift on Ukraine has been the tension between the ULB rationality, which purposefully brackets off historical animosities as unhelpful bygones, and PiS historical discourse in which Ukrainians are vilified as perpetrators in the same categories as German Nazis. In this relationship, the Poland's victim figure rises to prominence, as the most significant symbol of Polish martyrdom at the hands of Ukrainian nationalists is the 1943-44 Volhynia massacres, which saw some 60-100,000 Polish civilians massacred. While the scale and atrocity of these events are historically undeniable, the blending of a nationalist lens and a populist articulation of the historical underdog suffering from alien Others obscures the broader context of Polish-Ukrainian relations in which the massacre occurred. Unwilling to see Ukrainian griefs against Polish oppression as legitimate, the result of this meeting of a nationalist historical discourse and a populist denial of anything beyond own martyrdom fuels confrontation and spills over to bilateral relations in a context where Kyiv was itself adopting an uncompromising and radical posture. The resulting escalation in memory conflict between the two governments, which is analysed below on the Polish side (for an analysis of Ukraine's policies see [START_REF] Klymenko | Forging Ukrainian National Identity through Remembrance of World War II[END_REF], sharply contrast with the rather positive societal relations between the countries, as illustrated by the fact that the massive recent influx of Ukrainian labour migrants have been well integrated in Poland.

In this atmosphere where indeed on both sides of the border a nationalist perception dominates, the dynamics of radicalization cripples political dialogue. In July 2016, the Polish parliament voted on an act commemorating "all the citizens of the II Republic [of Poland] bestially murdered by Ukrainian nationalists", called the Volhynia massacres 'genocide' and established a national day of remembrance (Sejm 2016). A monument commemorating the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in South-Eastern Poland was dismantled, triggering Kyiv's retaliation in the form of banning Polish exhumations and commemoration in Volhynia, as well as the work of Poland's IPN on Ukrainian territory as long as the monument is not rebuilt. When in October 2016 Poland's Minister of Culture and vice-PM Piotr Gliński visited Kyiv, he was unable to settle these issues with his counterpart, while IPN's deputy director emphasized that " there will be no consent" for attempts to build "triumph arches" for UPA in Poland. 13 PiS government emphasized martyrdom and the figure of the victim as the only legitimate one capturing the Polish experience of the wartime relations with Ukraine. Not surprisingly then, when the deputy director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory drew parallels between the UPA and Poland's Home Army (AK), thus putting the wartime 'perpetrators' on par with the 'heroes', Waszczykowski declared him a persona non grata in Poland and issued several travel bans, thus putting President Duda's planned visit to Kyiv in question.

Essentialized historical self-identifications (as victims) and essentializing neighboring Others as (heirs to) perpetrators leads to a vicious circle in which every action of the other side is interpreted through historical-nationalist lens, thus confirming expectations and escalating distrust.

In contrast to the German dossier, we can see that the employment of these historical commonplaces is not strategic action, but habitual and "organic" in character, emerging from discursive practices rather than rational calculation. The Ukrainian MFA, echoing the historical letter issued by Polish Catholic bishops to their German counterparts in 1965 (Wigura 2012), asked for historical grievances to be dealt with in Christian fashion by "forgiving and asking for forgiveness" -a statement that was met with instant resistance from Waszczykowski. 14 As a party eager to drag in some fringe right constituencies, PiS has long flirted with milieus that cherish memories of Poland's eastern Borderlands (Kresy), ranging from nostalgic "friends of Galicia" to more revisionist radicals. This connection pushes the question of Poland's eastern Borderlands up on the foreign policy priority list. Foreign Minister Waszczykowski used his visit to Lviv, a Polish city until the war, to accuse Ukraine of anti-Polonism and a lack of good will in bilateral relations, using the example of the treatment of the Defenders of Lwów military cemetery. 15 Among these right-wing groups in particular, the historical image of "wild" Ukrainian nationalists, the vilified UPA and the ideological leader of the Organization of Ukrainian In spite of its radical rhetoric however, the PiS government has not fundamentally altered Poland's foreign policy when it comes to Ukraine. Warsaw has continued to advocate Ukraine's accession to the EU and NATO (in these multilateral forums especially), provide the country with economic support, and be actively engaged in initiatives condemning the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the Russian invasion of Eastern Ukraine. 17 Symbolically, the PiS government has also carried forward and concretised the project of establishing a joint Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian brigade. However, diplomacy has at times been hijacked by domestic political considerations over historical memory. In the direct and unpredictable style that characterizes populist leadership, PiS representatives did not hesitate to make statements contradicting the policy pursued. For instance, during a meeting with a right-wing discussion club, the deputy MFA Jan Parys stated that "it is not the case that the existence of Ukraine is a condition for a free Poland … Ukraine needs Poland, Poland can very well do without Ukraine". 18 Similarly, invoking the example of Greece's policies towards North Macedonia, Foreign Minister threatened to veto Ukraine's hypothetical future accession to the EU unless Kyiv changes course in its memory policies. 19 Thus, overall, while Poland's economic and security relations with Ukraine remain relatively smooth, the contention around historical matters has undermined the broader political climate since 2016, "disorganizing Polish-Ukrainian relations" as a think tank expert noted (cited in: Szoszyn 2017).

Conclusion

Through an analysis of the case of Poland under the rule of the PiS government, this article has provided some insights on the relationship between populism, historical discourse, and foreign policy. We have found a clear overlap between the political logic of articulation of populism and the historical discourse of the PiS government. On the one hand, the structure of the latter clearly reflects that of the former in its Manichean, dichotomous and moralistic components. This is notably exemplified by the redefinition and totalization of the categories of victims, heroes and perpetrators in PiS historical discourse. The victim figure especially policy discourse has not only been the mark of diplomacy serving as transmission belt it domestic remembrance policy, but also more profoundly a function of its populist political project and of its foreign policy strategy. The PiS government has largely articulated Poland's identity against Germany -framing the latter as a power or establishment frustrating Polish demands in Europe -and has utilized historical references to World War II to claim moral superiority as victim/underdog -especially in response to the controversies around Poland's refusal to welcome Muslim migrants. Without having driven or determined in and by itself foreign policy choices, this discourse has accompanied and maybe enabled a partial change of direction in Poland's policy towards Germany as well as a deterioration of diplomatic relations. As hinted by discourse theories in foreign policy, PiS populist articulation and historical discourse could have more long-term effects on policies if it durably installs new representations of Self and Other.

Beyond the case of relations with -and policies towards -Ukraine and Germany, another important and concrete policy outcome was the international controversy around the IPN Act amendment of 2018, which attempted to institutionalize Polish victimhood, erase the remembrance of complicity in Jew-killing, and pave the way for a heroic grand narrative at home and abroad. The poorly prepared legislation and the broader rhetoric surrounding it, led to an important international controversy which hurt Poland's image abroad and made it vulnerable to attacks by other actors eager to promote their own revisionist historical policy, most importantly Vladimir Putin. The former director of Warsaw's POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, who was forced to step down after a year-long stand-off with the PiS Minister of Culture who attempted to take over yet another critical and unruly historical institution, suggested that the damage done to Poland's international reputation as related to the Holocaust and World War II remembrance "makes it unprepared for the kinds of attacks" that Moscow had launched (Dariusz Stola cited in Tygodnik Powszechny 2020).

Our analysis has shed light on how populist politics and its ramifications in historical discourse can affect foreign policy. More than translating into a clear and concrete foreign policy program, populism as a political practice spills over foreign policy and feeds a proclivity to over-prioritize domestic politics, engage in undiplomatic diplomacy and indulge in conspiracy theories (Cadier 2019a). This tendency was particularly visible in the recurring domestic struggle that PiS politicians led against what they dubbed a "pedagogics of shame", or as we would see it -a critical approach to recent Polish history -of which the IPN Act was the most important, but by no means the only example.

In its historical discourse on -and policies towards -Ukraine and Germany, the PiS government has also clearly sought to target -and distinguish itself from -its political opponents of the PO. All governments mobilize historical strategic narratives in foreign policy and populists are not necessarily expected to have a greater proclivity in that regard, but they are likely to have a greater tendency to gear these narratives against their own domestic political opponents. The impact of the historical policy of the PiS government on Polish foreign policy has been mainly evidenced through direct and abrasive -probably often uncontrolled and maybe sometimes unplanned -statements. Populists disregard for norms of 'appropriate' political behavior as a mean to represent the 'people' and oppose the ways of the 'elite' [START_REF] Moffitt | Rethinking Populism: Politics, Mediatisation and Political Style[END_REF] is likely to find a particular resonance when it comes to memory politics with other states and diplomatic relations more generally. In a leaked document, the Polish MFA acknowledges that Poland's international reputation has been damaged, but attributes this outcome to a "lack of understanding" of foreign observers about Polish internal developments and to their reliance on "the opinions of intellectuals and politicians associated with the opposition" [START_REF] Wieliński | Alarm MSZ ws. reputacji kraju: Polska na dnie'. wyborcza[END_REF]).

  . It has done so through administrative and legislative acts, such as the takeover of the World War II Museum in Gdansk, the establishment of a Polish National Foundation and state support for the nongovernmental Polish League Against Defamation, and finally the IPN Act that criminalized mentions of Polish involvements in crimes committed during WWII and extended the mandate of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) to protecting Poland's reputation abroad (Janicki and Władyka 2015; Charnysh and Finkel 2018; Siddi and Gaweda 2019). What is generally referred to as the 'IPN Act' is, in fact, a 2018 amendment to the 1998 legislation formally entitled the "Act on the Institute of National Remembrance" (Instytut Pamięci Narodowej -IPN). The amendment notably changed two of its articles (Article 2 and 55a), introducing a fine and a possible 3 years prison sentence for any claims made "publicly and contrary to the facts, that the Polish Nation or the Republic of Poland is responsible or co-responsible for Nazi crimes committed by the Third Reich" (Bucholc and Komornik 2019; IPN 2020)[1].

  Nationalists (OUN), Stepan Bandera, are powerful and easily overwrite good neighbourly political collaboration. The rise of nationalism in Ukraine after 2014 was a seed that fell on the fertile soil of Poland's security imaginary, and the equalization of Ukrainians with 'Banderites'. Despite clear nationalist and conservative credentials, these groups and by consequence, much of PiS mainstream, follows discursive tropes disseminated by Communist propaganda, which exploited the figure of the Ukrainian nationalist insurgent for its own purposes. The amendment of the IPN Act in 2018, apart from the 'Holocaust clause' in Article 51, also included a change to Article 2, which added crimes against Polish citizens committed by "Ukrainian nationalists". 16 While in 2019 it was declared unconstitutional and void by Poland's Constitutional Tribunal and blocked by the President, it caused a recurring controversy in Ukrainian media and among Ukrainian historians and policymakers.

Sciences Po-CERI, Paris, France. Corresponding author: david.cadier@gmail.com. David Cadier has received funding from the European Union's Horizon

Research and Innovation Programme under Grant No. 769886. 2 University of Oslo, Norway.

has become central to PiS domestic populist politics. This is made possible in the Polish context by the broad resonance and unquestionability of national martyrdom (Sitnicka 2019).

But this also tends to confirm the links between populism and victimization that have started to receive attention elsewhere: just as re-elaborations of collective memories towards victimization appear to create cultural opportunity structures favorable for the rise of populism [START_REF] Caramani | National Past and Populism: The Re-Elaboration of Fascism and Its Impact on Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe[END_REF], we can expect populist governments to have a greater tendency to emphasize victimization in their historical policy.

On the other hand, the PiS government has often mobilized historical representations, symbols and narratives in its populist articulatory practice of creating an internal frontier, othering the elites and interpellating the popular subject as underdog. The castigation of liberal elites as undermining national strength by promoting a 'pedagogy of shame' about the past, the likening of these elites to historical foes or perpetrators such as Nazi Germany and the Communist regime, the invocation of the mythology around the heroic martyrdom of Poles and the political slogan of Poland 'raising from its knees' on the European scene all provide potent examples in that sense. These findings on how populism translate into a specific approach to memory politics would, of course, benefit from being tested in other national contexts, but they tend to indicate that, just as foreign policy [START_REF] Wojczewski | Trump, Populism, and American Foreign Policy[END_REF], historical policy can constitute a terrain for populist articulatory practice and the (re)production of a collective identity of the people.

The shift in historical and foreign policy discourses under the PiS government has been especially salient when it comes to Germany and Ukraine. The patterns by which PiS populist articulation of historical representations has permeated foreign policy discourse as well as the implications in terms of foreign policy practice and outcomes have varied, however. In the case of Ukraine, the implications have been limited. The remembrance policy of the PiS government and correlated domestic political considerations have, along with Kyiv's own confrontational posture in memory politics, indirectly impinged on the bilateral relationship, complicating diplomatic and political dialogue. Yet, this has not led to a re-definition of Poland's national interest or foreign policy identity nor to a re-consideration of Poland's policies towards and support to Ukraine -an independent and West-oriented Ukraine continues to be regarded by most mainstream policymakers in Warsaw as a geopolitical barrier against Russia's threat and as a necessary condition for Polish national security. In the case of Germany by contrast, the mobilization of historical representations in PiS foreign

On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.


of a new State Agency for Religious Issues gave the state a stronger legal basis for coordinating Muslim affairs.

Finally, independent Sunni and Shi'i organisations and communities, which refuse to accept AMAG's spiritual authority due to its close ties to the government, continued to criticise state initiatives in the religious sphere. Muslim organisations of all stripes

Introduction

Despite the relatively small number of Muslims in Georgia, issues related to Islam and Muslims have taken on an increasingly high profile in recent years. 2014 witnessed continued public debate over the permissibility of ethnic Georgian Sunni Muslims to establish and preserve religious institutions.

Global events and transnational links also caused resonance. The participation of ethnic Kist, Georgian citizens in the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), on the one hand, stoked fears of Salafi radicalisation among Georgia's Kists, who are closely related to the Chechens, reside primarily in the Pankisi Gorge, and have traditionally adhered to Islam. On the other hand, Turkish and Iranian religious actors continued to develop links with Georgia's Sunni and Shi'i communities, respectively.

Meanwhile, institutional and legal developments prompted state actors to become increasingly involved in managing Muslim issues. The Administration of Muslims of All Georgia (AMAG)-a state-supported Muslim organisation created by the government of former President Mikheil Saakashvili in 2011-underwent personnel changes and asserted greater control over Muslim persons and property in Eastern Georgia. Similarly, the creation Deputy Chairman of the Georgian Muslims Union (GMU) and a respected voice among minority religious communities across Georgia, criticised the official Muftiate for supporting the government narrative on Orta Jame's expansion and claimed that then-Mufti Jemal Paksadze did not represent "the real opinion of Muslims." Nakaidze also said that the government intentionally prolonged the mosque process in an attempt to placate the GOC, 9 which enjoys tremendous political power in Georgia and has carried out an aggressive Christianisation campaign in Adjara since independence. 10 Interreligious relations in Adjara declined further on 10 September 2014, when Orthodox residents in the small Black Sea coastal town of Kobuleti protested against the opening of a local madrasa. According to reports, Orthodox protesters slaughtered a pig and hung its severed head on the door of the planned madrasa. 11 The next day, demonstrators blocked the road between Kobuleti and Batumi for several minutes, claiming that the owner of the building was from Turkey and that he had not received permission from residents to open a madrasa. 12 Local Muslims condemned the incident and sought to dispel Orthodox protestors' claims. Then-Mufti Paksadze stated that "we are deeply offended; this is a very bad incident; this is a huge insult for Muslims," 13 while Tariel Nakaidze said that the pig's head was simply the latest example of harassment from Orthodox neighbours in the run-up to the as an "extreme expression of religious intolerance" 20 and called on law enforcement bodies to conduct an effective investigation to discourage such incidents in the future. 21 In a statement on 11 September 2014, the Patriarchate officially condemned the incident as unacceptable to Christians, although it claimed that the madrasa lacked government approval. The statement also suggested that the incident had been timed to coincide with an international conference on religious freedom in Tbilisi, as well as a visit by the director of the Turkish Presidency for Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı), Mehmet Görmez. 22 In a meeting with Görmez on 13 September 2014, Patriarch Ilia II condemned the Kobuleti incident and raised the question of renovating and resuming services at Georgian Orthodox monasteries in eastern Turkey. 23 Despite such public condemnations and the opening of a criminal investigation, tensions persisted in Kobuleti. Following the 11 September protests, Orthodox residents barricaded the madrasa, intensified a 24-hour neighbourhood watch, and demanded changing Georgia's Constitution to make Orthodoxy the official state religion. The head of the government of the Autonomous Republic of Adjara Khabadze scheduled a 16 September 2014 meeting with Muslim and Orthodox representatives to discuss the situation, although he postponed the meeting indefinitely after being unexpectedly called to Tbilisi. As such, the 19 The Office of Public Defender of Georgia (a.k.a. Ombudsman) was created under the Organic Law on the Public Defender of Georgia (1996). The aims of the office are to provide oversight on human rights protection and assist with Georgia's compliance with human rights commitments, as well as to provide advice and educational activities on human rights protection. See madrasa never became fully operational. 24 Although Adjara's government promised to issue a decision on 22 October 2014 regarding the school's opening, the building's status remained unresolved, prompting Muslim students to hold a protest in Batumi in early November demanding a resolution. 25 Another major public debate took place in Mokhe, a village in Adigeni municipality in the region of Samtskhe-Javakheti. On 18 October 2014, local Muslims gathered to demonstrate against the dismantling of a half-ruined building, which they claimed was a mosque that had been converted to a storage shed under Soviet rule. [START_REF]Sobytija v Mohe sozdajut opasnost' religioznogo protivostojanija, zajavljajut chleny musul'manskoj obshhiny i ombudsmen Gruzii[END_REF] The Muslim population had repeatedly requested the local government in Adigeni to transfer the building to Muslim ownership, although the municipality head maintained that the structure would become a cultural centre. On the same day, local Orthodox residents began a counter-demonstration. [START_REF]Locals demonstrate for and against turning mosque into culture center[END_REF] The situation deteriorated rapidly on 22 October 2014, when Mokhe's Muslims began another protest. According to eyewitnesses, one young protestor insulted a policeman, after which the police initiated a brawl and arrested 14 protestors on charges of hooliganism and disobedience. [START_REF]Sobytija v Mohe sozdajut opasnost' religioznogo protivostojanija, zajavljajut chleny musul'manskoj obshhiny i ombudsmen Gruzii[END_REF] Additionally, police knocked a 59-year-old Muslim woman unconscious during the fight, while Muslim parents in and around Mokhe kept their children from attending school the next day due to safety concerns. 29 The Mokhe incident solidified religious cleavages. First, relations between the official The GOC's stance further reinforced the narrative of Mokhe's Orthodox residents. In a public statement, Akhaltsikhe-based Bishop Teodor said that no mosque had ever existed in Mokhe. He claimed that a monastery was established on the disputed area in 1595, but that the current building was never transformed into a mosque despite ostensible Bolshevik plans 29 "School children stay home in Mokhe as politicians explain conflict", Democracy & Freedom Watch, 23 October 2014, http://dfwatch.net/school-children-stay-home-in-mokhe-as-politiciansexplain-conflict-15184, accessed 1 November 2014. 30 "Sobytiya v Moxe sozdayut opasnost' religioznogo protivostoyaniya, zayavlyayut chleny musul'manskoj obshhiny i ombudsmen Gruzii", Kavkazskij uzel, 24 October 2014, www.kavkazuzel.ru/articles/251248/, accessed 1 November 2014. 31 "V Gruzii studenty iz Azerbaidzhana vystupili protiv zakrytiya mecheti v sele Moxe", Kavkazskij uzel, 29 October 2014, www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/251475/, accessed 1 November 2014.

Muftiate in

in the 1920s to replace the structure with a Muslim place of worship. 32 Likewise, Teodor called on the government to transfer the building's ownership to the Patriarchate. 33 Events in Mokhe also underlined the lack of coordination among state actors in addressing interreligious conflict. Following clashes between Muslim protestors and local law enforcement on 22 October 2014, Prime Minister Garibashvili claimed that the building's proposed status as a cultural centre was necessary to avoid conflict over ownership claims. 34 When asked about the possibility of transferring the building to Muslim ownership, Garibashvili passed responsibility for the issue to the State Agency for Religious Issues.

Agency representatives subsequently expressed concern about recent events and voiced support for a resolution that would take the rights of all religious communities into account. 35 The Public Defender took a stronger stance. In late October 2014, Ucha Nanuashvili called on Adigeni authorities to halt the dismantling of the building and to solve the issue "with maximum involvement of the population…" 36 At the same time, the Adigeni municipality announced the creation of a special commission to study the origins of the building, 37 which was subordinated to the State Agency for Religious Issues and comprised 11 representatives from the Muslim and Orthodox communities as well as from the Ministry 32 "V Gruzii sud oshtrafoval 11 uchastnikov akcii v sele Moxe", Kavkazskij uzel, 24 October 2014, www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/251279/, accessed 1 November 2014. 33 "Georgian bishop says the Mokhe building was never a mosque", Democracy & Freedom Watch, 25 October 2014, http://dfwatch.net/georgian-bishop-says-the-mokhe-building-was-never-a-mosque-10551, accessed 2 December 2014. 34 "Sobytiya v Moxe sozdayut opasnost' religioznogo protivostoyaniya, zayavlyayut chleny musul'manskoj obshhiny i ombudsmen Gruzii." 35 "School children stay home in Mokhe as politicians explain conflict", Democracy & Freedom Watch, 23 October 2014, http://dfwatch.net/school-children-stay-home-in-mokhe-as-politiciansexplain-conflict-15184, accessed 1 November 2014. 36 "V Gruzii studenty iz Azerbajdzhana vystupili protiv zakrytiya mecheti v sele Moxe", Kavkazskij uzel, 29 October 2014, www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/251475/, accessed 1 November 2014. 37 "V Gruzii studenty iz Azerbajdzhana vystupili protiv zakrytiya mecheti v sele Moxe", Kavkazskij uzel, 29 October 2014, www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/251475/, accessed 1 November 2014. of Culture. 38 In mid-December 2014, Nanuashvili announced plans to become an active participant to increase the public's confidence in the commission, although as of late December 2014 there were no major developments related to the building's status. 39

Transnational Links

Ongoing conflicts in Syria and Iraq-and particularly the establishment of a "caliphate" by self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) in June 2014-underlined the importance of transnational links among Georgian Muslim communities, although this trend is largely confined to those ethnic Kists from the Pankisi Gorge who profess Salafism. While ethnic Georgian and Azerbaijani Muslims largely eschewed ISIS in 2014, transnational links between the Adjaran clerical establishment and Turkey continued to thrive, as did extant financial and religious ties between Shi'i Azerbaijani communities and Iranian donors.

The absolute number of Pankisi Kists fighting in Syria and Iraq is comparatively small, with an estimated 50-70 fighters in the region. [START_REF] Lebanidze | Poyavyatsya li v Gruzii bazy podgotovki dobrovol'cev dlya bor'by s IGIL[END_REF] According to reports, a total of eight Pankisi residents have died in the conflict, with three casualties in 2013 and five in 2014. [START_REF]One more Georgian jihadist dies in Syrian war[END_REF] Local officials in Pankisi claim that, due to poverty and unemployment, many young Kists travel to Turkey to search for work. Subsequently, some Kists make their way to Syria to join jihadi groups. However, local residents indicate that the majority of fighters departed for some form of transnational link with the wider Muslim world throughout 2014, particularly in terms of financial and theological support. Turkey continues to serve as an important transnational link for Georgia's Muslims, especially in Adjara. As of 2013, 18 youths in Adjara had participated in Turkish-funded, higher theological education in Ankara, Istanbul, Samsun, and other cities, with dozens more expected to return to Adjara from religious training in Turkey in the near future. Similarly, Turkish state institutions-including the Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı (Presidency of Religious Affairs)-sponsor free secular higher education [START_REF] Menagarishvili | Political Aspects of Islam in Georgia[END_REF] and Qur'an courses for Adjarans, the latter of which are particularly popular among younger Adjaran Muslims.

In addition to sponsoring educational opportunities abroad, Turkish actors directly finance some Muslim institutions in Adjara. As underlined by the September 2014 incident in Kobuleti, Adjaran Muslim organisations have traditionally relied on Turkish financial support to administer local madrasas. Likewise, it is not unusual for Turkish citizens to donate money for the renovation of mosques in Adjara, although the exact amounts of financial support are difficult to calculate. Diyanet also cooperates with the official Muftiate in Batumi and Adjara's district-level clerical establishment. [START_REF] Liles | Islam and Religious Transformation in Adjara[END_REF] According to one local religious official, Adjara's imams and muftis receive between 100-400 lari ($60-240) per month in direct financial support from Turkish sources.

Turkey also maintains relations with Adjaran economic migrant communities in Samtskhe-Javakheti. 49 In predominantly Shi'i, Azerbaijani-populated Kvemo-Kartli, Turkish officials and verbally agreed to cooperate on educational exchanges. [START_REF]Gürcüstan Müsəәlmanları İdarəәsi vəә İranın dini qurumları əәməәkdaşlığa başlayır[END_REF] In November 2014, Igidov returned to Qom to attend a two-day "World Congress on Takfiri Movements," [START_REF]Qum şəәhəәrindəә 'İslam ümməәti' konfransı keçrilib[END_REF] which was attended by a wide range of international Shi'i scholars and sought to combat the growing influence of radical Salafism in Syria and Iraq. [START_REF]World Congress on Takfiri Movements kicks off in Qom[END_REF] Ties between AMAG and Iranian representatives in Georgia also strengthened. In February 2014, Davud Qashaman, who directs the Georgian branch of the Al-Mustafa International University in Marneuli, met with Igidov and Iasin Aliyev to congratulate the officials on their recent appointments to AMAG leadership positions. [START_REF]Al-Mustafa' Beynəәlxalq Universitetinin Nümayəәndəәliyi GMİnin Şeyxini təәbrik etdi[END_REF] In October 2014, Igidov held a Ghadir Khumm celebration 60 at Tbilisi Juma mosque, where Qashaman and the Iranian ambassador to Georgia delivered remarks. 61 Similarly, Qashaman and Tabriz-based scholar Mohammed Baqir Saiver took part in a November 2014 religious conference on "The Role of Women in the Karbala Events," which was hosted by Igidov at Alul-Bayt's conference centre in Tbilisi. [START_REF]Gürcüstanda 'Kəәrbəәla hadisəәsindəә qadınların rolu' adlı elmi seminar keçirilib[END_REF] In December 2014, Iranian and Turkish embassy representatives attended another AMAG conference dedicated to combating domestic violence in Georgia. [START_REF]Tbilisidəә 'Qadına qarşı zorakılığa yox!' adlı konfrans keçirilib[END_REF]

Law and Domestic Politics

Two prominent legal and government initiatives affected Georgia's Muslim population in 2014. First, the Administration of Muslims of All Georgia (AMAG)-which was established by Saakashvili-era officials in 2011 and is viewed among many of Georgia's Muslims as a form of state interference into Muslim affairs 64 -underwent restructuring and personnel changes, while asserting greater control over Muslim affairs in Kvemo-Kartli. Second, the Georgian government created the State Agency for Religious Issues to coordinate the government's relations with minority religious communities. On a lesser note, the Parliamentary Defence and Security Committee announced legislative measures to discourage Georgian Muslims from participating in the conflicts in Syria and Iraq.

AMAG witnessed important personnel changes and internal restructuring during 2014. These developments indicate AMAG's increasing organisation along ethno-territorial and sectarian cleavages, as well as a trend toward centralised control of Muslim personnel and property. From its creation in 2011 until December 2013, AMAG was dominated by two spiritual representatives. Vagif Akperov, a Shi'i sheikh, formally represented the ethnic Azerbaijani, Shi'i population in Kvemo-Kartli and other parts of eastern Georgia. Jemal Paksadze, a Batumi-based Sunni mufti, officially represented Georgia's entire Sunni population, including a small number of Azerbaijani Sunnis in eastern Georgia. Additionally, Iasin Aliyev, an ethnic Azerbaijani Sunni imam based at Tbilisi's Juma Mosque and possessing lower spiritual status than Paksadze, accounted for another layer of representation 64 Author's telephone interviews with Zaur Khalilov (Civic Integration Foundation, Tbilisi, Georgia) and Elbrus Mammadov (Human Rights Monitoring Group of Ethnic Minorities, Tbilisi, Georgia), January 2015. religious problems and promised assistance in rebuilding a partially-ruined boarding school for Muslim girls. 69 Meanwhile, AMAG's eastern branch asserted greater control over religious life among Azerbaijani communities. In early August 2014, AMAG staged mock attestation exams for Azerbaijani clergy in the eastern regions of Tbilisi, Kakheti, Shida-Kartli, Mtskheta, and Kvemo-Kartli. In mid-August 2014, Sheikh Ramin Igidov announced the signature of a memorandum of understanding between AMAG and a number of Azerbaijani religious communities in Georgia. According to Beka Mindiashvili, a Tbilisi-based specialist on religious issues, these measures were intended to establish AMAG's status as the dominant Muslim spiritual body in the region, although the memorandum's other signatories were not particularly influential, and many independent Shi'i organisations refused to take part. 70 AMAG continued its coordination initiatives on 30 November 2014, when Igidov held a meeting with members of the body's newly-created Supreme Religious Council. The Council was comprised of over 20, primarily Shi'i Azerbaijani spiritual representatives. At the meeting, Igidov discussed AMAG's accomplishments and future agenda, while the Council's representatives brought attention to various problems in the sphere of religion. 71 In an increasing effort to establish its authority in eastern Georgia, AMAG began formally appointing Azerbaijani religious officials throughout Kvemo-Kartli. On 10 December 2014, Igidov and Iasin Aliyev appointed 14 Azerbaijanis as imams and akhunds 72 to mosques in Gardabani on 13 December 2014, [START_REF]Gürcüstanın Qardabani rayonuna din xadimləәri təәyin olunub[END_REF] and four days later yet another round of appointments took place at the Imam Hussein Mosque in Marneuli, where AMAG leaders officially appointed 46 regional clerics in a meeting attended by local political leaders and government representatives. [START_REF]Gürcüstanın Marneuli rayonuna din xadimləәri təәyin olunub[END_REF] On 7 February 2014, the Georgian government announced the creation of the State Agency for Religious Issues, which was mandated to "implement state policy on religion."

The Agency was subordinated directly to the Office of the Prime Minister, which maintained the prerogative to appoint its head. One of the Agency's initial priorities was to oversee the disbursement of a 4.5 million lari ($2.25 million) government grant to four minority religious groups, including Georgia's Muslim, Jewish, Roman Catholic, and Armenian Apostolic communities. [START_REF]Voshlo v silu postanovlenie pravitel'stva o gosudarstvennom finansirovanii chetyreh religioznyh konfessij dopolnitel[END_REF] In December 2014, the Agency announced that the government intended to double its financial support for minority religious organisations in 2015. [START_REF]Finansirovanie religioznyh konfessij v Gruzii budet udvoeno v 2015 g[END_REF] The Agency was formally launched on 9 June 2014 under the leadership of Zaza Vashakmadze. [START_REF]as a lawyer with the Patriarchate. See "Ssip' 'religiis sak'itkhta sakhelmts'ipo saagent'o'-s p'rezent'atsia[END_REF] During the second half of 2014, the body played an increasingly active role in coordinating Muslim affairs. In early August 2014, Vashakmadze and Agency officials held a meeting with a number of Muslim leaders at AMAG's headquarters, where they discussed legal issues in the sphere of religion and fielded questions and comments from between AMAG and regional Muslim communities, Vashakmadze presented Igidov, Aliyev, Paksadze, and other top clerics with certificates of registration to reflect their official religious status. [START_REF]Tbilisinin "Cüməә" məәscidindəә din xadimləәri təәyin olundu[END_REF] Likewise, Vashakmadze accompanied Igidov to Iran in September 2014, [START_REF]Gürcüstan Müsəәlmanları İdarəәsinin vəә Dini Məәsəәləәləәr üzrəә Dövləәt Agentliyinin İran İslam Respublikasına səәfəәri[END_REF] represented the Agency during Diyanet President Görmez's trip to Tbilisi, 82 participated in Kamashidze's official appointment within AMAG in late November 2014, 83 and attended a number of major Muslim holidays throughout the rest of the year.

At a session on religious property in December 2014, the Agency transferred 23 mosques in Kvemo-Kartli and 21 mosques in Kakheti to AMAG's ownership. [START_REF]Musul'manskoj obshhine budet predostavleno pravo pol'zovat'sya 23 mechetyami[END_REF] Officially, the transfer was partly intended to define better the legal status of mosques, since the majority of Georgia's mosques are simply registered as houses or other buildings.

Following the death of Pankisi native Zelimkhan Chatiashvili in Syria in early December 2014, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee for Defence and Security, Irakli Sesiashvili, announced legislative measures to discourage any additional outflow of Georgia's Muslims to conflicts in Syria and Iraq. [START_REF] Lomsadze | Georgia mulls Anti-Islamic State Law[END_REF] Although Sesiashvili gave few details about the legislation, he indicated that it would be a "preventative mechanism" to ensure Garden. 113 Cemeteries are prevalent around many mosques in Adjara. 114

  Batumi and the Muslim clerical establishment in Samtskhe-Javakheti further deteriorated. Samtskhe-Javakheti's Muslim population expressed disappointment at the absence of Jemal Paksadze during the protests. Three days after the initial demonstration, local Muslim leaders even announced a petition to dismiss Paksadze as Mufti, citing an unfulfilled joint promise by Paksadze and the municipal government prior to the 15 June 2014 local elections to grant ownership of the building to Mokhe's Muslims. Shortly thereafter, a delegation led by Samtskhe-Javakheti Mufti Mamuka Vashakmadze travelled to Tbilisi to plead local Muslims' case before the Prime Minister Garibashvili. 30 Moreover, on 28 October 2014, representatives from the Association of Azerbaijani Students protested in front of the State Chancellery in Tbilisi against the State's handling of the Mokhe events. 31

  MostAvar villages in Kakheti usually feature unofficial cemetery chapels.115 Likewise, many ethnic Azerbaijani and Kist villages have Muslim burial places and shrines. One shrine of especial significance is that of the Sufi saint Isa Efendi, an ethnic Azerbaijani from Dagestan who was buried in the village of Kabal in eastern Georgia. Isa Efendi's tomb is a popular pilgrimage site for Sunni Kists, Sunni Azerbaijanis, and Shi'i Azerbaijanis alike. 116 Places of Islamic Learning and Education A number of Shi'i educational institutions operate in eastern Georgia and Tbilisi. Ahli-Beyt runs a madrasa in Azerbaijani-populated Marneuli. 117 Marneuli is also home to a madrasa headed by Haji Aziz Nabiyev and formerly affiliated with CMB. 118 Shi'i organisation Alul-Bayt runs a small madrasa in Tbilisi's Ortachala neighbourhood. 119 A Turkish-funded Sunni madrasa operates in Meori Kesalo, an ethnic Azerbaijani village near the border with Azerbaijan. 120 In Sunni Adjara, there are 79 madrasas according to the Niko Berdzenishvili Institute in Batumi. Of these, 52 are small madrasas attached to local mosques; 19 are freestanding madrasas; and eight are boarding school madrasas. 121 In Pankisi, there is a Salafi mosque in the village of Duisi hosting 50-60 students, as well as smaller Salafi mosques in surrounding villages. 122 Muslim Media and Publications Many Muslim organisations convey information through Facebook pages. In addition to Facebook, the most prominent Muslim media outlets are listed below.

Thomas Liles is a master's candidate in the Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia studies programme at Harvard University. He has researched Muslim issues in the South Caucasus as a Fulbright Fellow in Azerbaijan, visiting researcher with the European Centre for Minority Issues Caucasus, and intern with the US Embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Bayram Balci is a non-resident scholar with the Carnegie Endowment's Russia and Eurasia Programme, where his research focuses on Turkey and Turkish foreign policy in Central Asia and the Caucasus. He is also affiliated with CERI Sciences Po, in Paris, France.

"V Kobuleti mestnye zhiteli provodyat akciyu protesta protiv otkrytiya medrese", Kavkazskij uzel, 17 September 2014, www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/249290/, accessed 2 December 2014.

"Students demand decision about Kobuleti madrasa", Democracy & Freedom Watch, 12 November 2014, http://dfwatch.net/students-demand-decision-about-kobuleti-madrasa-60615, accessed 2 December 2014.

"Ombudsman to study progress of Mokhe commission", Democracy & Freedom Watch, 16 December 2014, http://dfwatch.net/ombudsman-to-study-progress-of-mokhe-commission-66422, accessed 20 December 2014.

"Muptis vizit'i zemo ach'arashi", sruliad saqartvelos muslimta sammartvelo, 28 December 2014, https://www.facebook.com/SruliadSakartvelosMuslimtaSammartvelo, accessed 28 December 2014.

Author's correspondence with Beka Mindiashvili, January 2015.

"Ali Dini Şuranın Üzvləәri iləә görüş keçirildi", sruliad saqartvelos muslimta sammartvelo, 30 November 2014, https://www.facebook.com/SruliadSakartvelosMuslimtaSammartvelo, accessed 20 December 2014.

The term akhund refers specifically to Shi'i clerics who lead prayers at mosques, deliver sermons, perform religious ceremonies, and/or teach in madrasas.

Mkrtchyan and Khutsishvili, "Georgia", p. 254

Prasad, Georgia's Muslim Community, p. 7.

Mkrtchyan and Khutsishvili, "Georgia", p. 254.

Liles, "Islam and Religious Transformation in Adjara", p. 15.

Prasad, Georgia's Muslim Community, p.13.

Prasad, Georgia's Muslim Community, p. 6.

Prasad, Georgia's Muslim Community, p. 7.

among Azerbaijani Sunnis. Resan Gogitidze, a secular, ethnic Georgian government official, has served as AMAG's executive director since 2011. 65 Major personnel changes within AMAG began in late December 2013, when Ramin Igidov-a young Qom-trained Gardabani native who previously served as a madrasa Director and Chief Editor for the Iman Foundation-replaced Vagif Akperov as sheikh. In January 2014, the Muftiate was restructured along ethnic lines. Accordingly, Paksadze continued to formally represent ethnic Georgian Sunnis in Adjara and other regions. Iasin Aliyev was promoted to the position of Mufti of eastern Georgia, thus bringing Azerbaijani Sunnis under the direct spiritual leadership of a co-ethnic. 66 Soon thereafter, Aliyev embarked on a number of working visits to Muslim communities throughout eastern Georgia.

Following the Mokhe events in October 2014, Paksadze resigned as Mufti of western Georgia on 22 November. Despite speculation over the circumstances of his resignation,

georgian-government-promises-to-solve-batumi-mosque-issue-34714, accessed mosque-in-batumi-focus-of-popular-unrest-66499; obshhemu mneniyu o vosstanovlenii mecheti v Batumi",

Activities and Initiatives of Main Muslim Organisations

State initiatives vis-à-vis the Muslim population in 2014 drew criticism from many of Georgia's independent Muslim leaders and organisations. In addition to criticism and policy debates, however, many Muslim organisations pursued positive initiatives to address social issues and cultivate better interfaith relations. Moreover, all major Muslim organisations held events on religious holidays, while a few additional mosques opened.

State religious initiatives in 2014 sparked criticism from many independent Muslim communities. In particular, the Batumi-based Georgian Muslim Union (GMU)-a respected Muslim and interfaith advocacy organisation-criticised AMAG's personnel changes.

Following the establishment of the Muftiate of eastern Georgia in January 2014, GMU Deputy Chairman Tariel Nakaidze stated that the Muftiate's division was caused by the Batumi Muftiate's incompetence and distrust among ethnic Azerbaijanis. [START_REF]Georgian Muslims to have two muftis[END_REF] Similarly, Nakaidze criticised Beglar Kamashidze's appointment as Mufti in November 2014, claiming that the Ministry of the Interior had orchestrated his appointment. [START_REF] Siradze | Novyj glavnyj muftij ne isklyuchaet peremen v upravlenii musul'man[END_REF] Prominent Azerbaijani voices also criticised state religion policy. In a 22 January 2014 meeting with the Public Defender, several Azerbaijani clerics expressed dissatisfaction with the recent appointment of Ramin Igidov as Sheikh, who they claimed was chosen by law support from the German Friedrich Ebert Foundation. 106 The report provides religious data based on the 2012 census results. The "Ethnic/National Backgrounds" section, on the other hand, was extrapolated using both the SRC's 2012 data and the 2002 census data on Georgia's ethnic groups. 107 This method is imperfect and assumes identical ethnic proportions in both 2002 and 2012, despite overall population growth and likely variance in ethnic representation. Given the lack of current data in Georgia, however, this approach provides a general idea of the ethnic composition of Georgia's Muslim population.

Muslim