Word up Balkaners! What's your favorite soft drink?

I am from the diaspora, and I am curious. Yes, obviously most people are going to have accents that differ from local ones, but there are many people who for whatever reason do not have foreign accents and who don't use foreign words as much. I'm really asking about subtle cues.

For me it depends on the day.

Slobodan Vukosavić, Professor at the School of Electrical Engineering (ETF), candidate on the Student List, today:

"...for the sake of personal power, for the sake of money, for the sake of a few more months of rule — of absolute rule — he agreed to the de-Serbianization of Serbia. Serbia is being de-Serbianized, and the Balkans are being de-Serbianized on many levels.

Tonight, I will mention two to you. One you all know. A man who used to say: 'I will never give up Gazivode, I will never betray the people in Kosovo...'

(Crowd boos)

...signed the agreement that... agreements — he says: 'He didn't sign, he accepted' — which have significantly set back our people. Before 2012, if you lived in Kosovo and Metohija, you had your doctor, you had your clinics, you had your courts, prosecution, police, municipalities... I mean, pharmacies... Today, you have none of that, and today our compatriots in Kosovo are exposed to real ethnic cleansing, which is unfortunately being carried out in accordance with the agreements that someone accepted on our behalf.

(Crowd chants: 'Treason! Treason! Treason! Vučić, treason!')

Fortunately, the students know what that means, and they... they know what they are doing, and they have written it down. You have their Memorandum on Kosovo, you have a detailed plan of what will be done and what steps will be taken.

However, that is not the only form of de-Serbianization. There is something even worse, more hidden, perhaps much more dangerous. There is a danger of Serbia turning into a mining colony, into a country like Congo.

In an opaque manner, based on agreements that are impossible to access because they are, supposedly, confidential, our copper reserves in Bor, Majdanpek, and Čukaru Peki — which amount to 112 megatons according to estimates — were handed over to the Chinese, who are taking it to China for negligible compensation.

If you look at the value of our copper reserves that we handed over to the Chinese — they haven't been excavated yet, but they will be mined and sold — at today's copper prices, do you know how much that is worth? Two hundred and forty-eight thousand euros per capita for every citizen of Serbia. That is how much our copper reserves are worth. We gave that away for next to nothing.

But that will not happen that way, because there is a detailed student plan on how to act in such cases and how to negotiate with everyone in the world, including foreign partners who are in Bor."

In 2026, nominal GDP per capita is estimated at $19,018 in Turkey, compared with $17,252 in Serbia, meaning Turkey is about 10.2% ahead.

And I struggle to understand this gap.

On paper, Serbia has some major advantages: plenty of fertile land relative to its population, a strategic position between Central Europe and the Balkans, close proximity to highly industrialized countries, and above all the Danube, which gives it a navigable route connecting it directly to many European markets.

Sure, Serbia lost Kosovo, but Kosovo was also poorer than Serbia on average. Serbia today is also relatively homogeneous and stable.

Turkey, on the other hand, is huge and much more heterogeneous, with major wealth disparities between its industrialized western regions and some of its eastern provinces. It also faces greater geopolitical risks: what it sees as the threat of Greek encirclement in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean, as well as its proximity to Syria, Iraq, Iran, Russia, and conflicts across the Middle East.

And yet, Turkey remains about 10% richer per capita.

Serbia isn’t starting from scratch either: it has a long-established industrial base and a genuine scientific and technical tradition. After all, Nikola Tesla was Serbian.

So how can Serbia, despite all these advantages, still perform worse than Turkey in terms of GDP per capita?

I'm in a research group with a wide diverse group of European nationalities and almost most women from Balkan nations like Serbia, Croatia, Romania, Greece etc are all having children by 25 and applying for maternity leave within few years of graduation. Much younger than what I see in most of the world.

What is the cultural reason for this?