TURKS OF KOSOVO: WHAT TO EXPECT?* (Yugoslavia/Serbs protected Turks, Albanians and NATO Don't)

Dr. Sule Kut is Associate Professor of International Relations at Istanbul Bilgi University.

* This article is partly based on the author's paper, 'Between Ethnic and Civic Identity: Turks of Macedonia and Kosovo', presented at the 5th Annual Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN) in New York City, 14 April 2000.

The ethnic Turks in the post-communist Balkans were faced with one of two diametrically opposed experiences in the 1990s. They were either caught between the nationalism of the majority and that of the major minority, as in Kosovo and Macedonia, or they were relieved of ethnic tension and benefited from the overall democratisation of the country as in Bulgaria and Romania. In both situations, however, they were able to form ethnic parties and participate in political processes. In the meantime, again in both cases, especially due to Turkey's position in the region as a major power, more often than not they have gained confidence as citizens of their respective states. In this new environment, while some Turks have become more aware of their ethnic identity in a political context where ethnic identity has become particularly fashionable, others in the same countries moved away from their previous stress on ethnicity. In any case, it is striking that when most nationalities became nationalist, the Turks, by and large, remained remarkably distant from ethnic and, especially, separatist nationalism. The Turks of the Balkans not only did not turn separatists, but they also openly resented others' separatist calls. In general, they have been strongly in favour of the territorial integrity of their new states in former Yugoslavia or elsewhere in the Balkans during the turbulent 1990s.

In case of former Yugoslavia, Turks have long been squeezed not only between the conflicting majority nationalism (Macedonian in Macedonia and Albanian in Kosovo) and the larger minority nationalism (Albanian in Macedonia and Serbian in Kosovo), but also between their own ethnic, religious and civic identities. Hence, the break-up of Yugoslavia significantly affected former Yugoslav citizens of Turkish nationality as they entered a new process of qualitative and quantitative marginalisation in the newly independent Republic of Macedonia and in Kosovo.

Despite the periodic immigrations to Turkey since the nineteenth century and assimilation by larger Muslim minorities, particularly Albanian, Turks have traditionally constituted one of the major nationalities in former Yugoslavia, where they have historically concentrated in Macedonia and Kosovo. On the eve of the break-up of former Yugoslavia, the total number of Turks was around 150,000.1 Today, according to the 1994 census, about 77,000 Turks live in the Republic of Macedonia. In Kosovo, their number is estimated to be around 60,000,2 although the 1981 census put their number at around 11,000.3

Around 200,000 Turks become citizens of the Serb-Croat-Sloven Kingdom in 1919.4 However, in 30 years their number was down by half. Nevertheless, Turks were a recognised nationality in Socialist Yugoslavia from its onset, like the other major ethno-national groups with their own mother-states outside the borders of Yugoslavia. They constituted a major branch of Balkan Turks, by and large, with extensive minority rights in comparison with the Turks of Greece, Bulgaria and Romania.

Only 95,940 persons were registered as Turks in the 1948 census of the Socialist Yugoslav Federation after the Second World War. The dramatic decrease in their number from 1919 to 1948 was mainly due to their emigration from Yugoslavia between 1923-1933 when over 100,000 Turks (among them other Muslim populations such as Albanians, Macedonian Muslims and Bosniacs) immigrated to Turkey.5 In 1938, an Emigration Agreement between Turkey and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was signed, but the available data suggests that the 1923-1933 migrations were far greater than the one that followed the 1938 agreement.6 Under the emigration agreement signed on 11 July 1938, Turkey agreed to accept 40,000 families from Yugoslavia in six years. This, like the one in 1953, was a voluntary immigration agreement, so the Turkish government was not obliged to take care of their settlement. The Yugoslav government was to pay TL500 for each family as compensation.7 The number of Turks in Yugoslavia jumped to 203,908 in 1953.8 The drastic increase in the number of Turks in just five years, between 1948 and 1953, is indeed striking, too. This increase cannot be explained by any reverse population movement because there was none, nor was it due to natural factors. It had political reasons. First, the Turks who had not left Yugoslavia in the inter-war period and during the war were subject to political persecution immediately after World War II under the Socialist regime. In January 1948, 17 Macedonian Turks were founded guilty of treason in the so-called Yücelciler case.9 Yücel was a Turkish organisation founded in the aftermath of the war. The Yugoslav authorities claimed it was an underground, anticommunist terrorist organisation. Members of Yücel were tried as Turkish spies while the members of the Turkish nationality in general were treated as a Turkish fifth column. Turkey's position as a member of the Western Alliance as well as local Turks' generally anticommunist dispositions led the Yugoslav authorities to take an openly anti-Turkish stance in the post-war period. General antipathy towards the Turks as the symbol of Ottoman domination may as well be cited among the factors behind the anti-Turkish attitude in the then new state of Yugoslavia. Hence, most of the ethnic Turks registered themselves as Albanians or Gypsies in the 1948 census to escape the unwanted consequences of being Turks.

In contrast, most of the Turks, Albanians and Gypsies, who registered themselves as Albanians or Gypsies in 1948, chose to declare themselves Turks in 1953.10 This was again for political reasons because 1953 was the year when Turkey and Yugoslavia concluded yet another 'voluntary migration' arrangement. The two governments included in the Balkan Alliance a clause on voluntary emigration of Turks from Yugoslavia. Between 1953 and 1960, 151,812 people immigrated to Turkey from Yugoslavia.11 This group of immigrants included Albanians as well. In 1960, the number of Turks in the Yugoslav federation was 131,481.12 About 30,000 of them left Yugoslav territories during the 1960s.13

In sum, between the years 1923 and 1933, 108,179 Turks, and between 1934 and 1960, 160,922 Turks emigrated from Yugoslavia to Turkey.14 It is important to note that, out of the latter figure, 56.4 per cent arrived in Turkey between the years 1953 and 1960.15 On the other hand, post-1923 immigration from Yugoslavia up to 1960, constitutes 22.4 percent of all immigration to the Republic of Turkey in that period.16 Post World War II immigration from Socialist Yugoslavia, on the other hand, totalled to around 200,000. In other words, about two-thirds of all immigrants from Yugoslavia, in fact, migrated during the Socialist regime. It must be noted here that most immigrants of Turkish or Albanian origin question these figures, which roughly total 310,000 since 1923 until the break-up of the second Yugoslavia. Their estimates range between half a million and one million.

According to the 1971 census, 108,552 Turks were living in Yugoslavia. In 1981, their number was down to 86,690.17 Since the Turks were not known for their low birth rate and the 1970s were not among the years of significant migration to Turkey,18 one possible explanation can again be found in the recurring process of shifting identities. After the 1974 Constitution, both the value of turning Albanian and the cost of remaining Turkish were high, especially in Kosovo, a region that became a heaven for the Albanians but not for the others. Therefore, although some Turkish families immigrated to Turkey, quite a few seem to have preferred to register themselves as Albanians in the next census.

It must be noted here that the practice of shifting identities seems to have stopped in the 1990s. Unlike the earlier practice, neither the Bosniacs nor the Albanians in the 1990s shifted their identity when faced with ethnic cleansing and persecution. This is despite the fact that they were labelled Turks and attacked as such by aggressive leaders who did not refrain from various forms of hate-speech against the Turks.19 On the contrary, they clung increasingly to their ethnic identity as events unfolded. Since 1992, they have sought refuge again in Turkey20 and in other countries, as victims of ethnic cleansing and war, together with their fellow countrymen of various ethnic backgrounds. Aggressive Serbian nationalism was responsible not only for the Balkan wars of the 1990s and the dissolution of Yugoslavia, but also for the intensification of radical nationalism of others in former Yugoslavia since 1980s. A new Bosniac nationalism was born almost afresh in the midst of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992-1995. Radical Albanian nationalism has reached its peak - indiscriminately to the detriment of the Serbs, Turks, Bosniacs and Gypsies - in Kosovo in the aftermath of the NATO operations against Serbia in 1999.

Turks did not officially exist in Kosovo until the 1951 census. However, despite the mass migration from Kosovo to Turkey after 1953, the number of Turks in Kosovo was registered at 33,000 in the 1961 census.21 Their official number had dropped to 12,500 in 1971 and to 11,000 in 1981.22 However, the true number of Turks has long been the subject of dispute and distortion in Kosovo. The local elections in 2000 would have been an opportunity for Turks to register themselves in Kosovo. However, in protest at UNMIK's refusal to print registration forms in Turkish, the Turks in Prizren and Pristina decided not to register.23 It is not yet sure if they will change their minds after Bernard Kouchner's meeting with the Turkish Foreign Minister, ‹smail Cem, in Ankara. It was announced after the four-hour long meeting that forms in Turkish would be prepared for distribution. The Turks demand their rights under the 1974 constitution that recognises Turkish as one of the three official languages in Kosovo.*

Despite their constitutional rights, however, 1974-1989 has not been an easy period for the Turks of Kosovo. The Albanian authorities have, most of the time, followed a policy of Albanisation of Kosovo if not an anti-Turkish policy per se. As a result, many Turks have either chosen to assimilate or to shift their ethnic identity.24 For instance, schools in Turkish opened in Kosovo in 1951, in line with the Yugoslav constitution. However, because of intense pressure on the Turks by the Albanians not to attend the Turkish schools, most of them were closed over time. In the 1970s and 1980s, for the Kosovo Turks, attending Serbian schools was one way of keeping their Turkish identity.

Obviously religious affinity and marital ties as well as the relatively small size of the Turkish community were important factors behind the Albanisation of the Turks in Kosovo. However, it seems that none of these three factors can alone explain this hegemonic relationship. For instance, the same is not true for Bosniac-Turkish relations, even if the Bosniacs are also Muslim and the two groups traditionally inter-marry. Although the ethnic Turks were much smaller in number in Bosnia-Herzegovina, they were able to keep and express their ethnic identity better than they could do in Kosovo. The distinguishing factor here is the strength or the intensity of the nationalism of the larger group. Albanian nationalism in former Yugoslavia has been and is one of the strongest nationalisms in the Balkans. Although nationalism does not differentiate between different 'others', the Turk was a particularly special 'other' for the Albanians with whom they share the same religion and culture.

The two Turkish political parties formed after 1989 in Kosovo, have long represented two diametrically opposed political positions. The Turkish Democratic Union Party (TDP), which was established in July 1990 in Prizren, emphasises a separate Turkish identity, is openly against Albanisation and calls for civic co-operation among all the nationalities of Kosovo. The Turkish Peoples' Party (TPP), which was established in May 1992, has close relations with Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova's Democratic Union. It has long stressed the need to act together with the Albanians with whom its followers have identified on the basis of religion. (Islamists-My comment).

Belonging to the same faith, however, was not necessarily the underlying factor in the TPP's co-operation with the Albanians. Their emphasis was on the need to co-operate with the Albanians for political reasons and to survive the Serbian repression by siding with the most numerous community in Kosovo. However, the cost of this united-we-stand-divided-we-fall approach was further marginalisation in Kosovo because, in their dealings with the Turks, the Albanians more often than not used religion to enhance ethnic assimilation. Islam has long been a valuable tool in the hands of the radical Albanian nationalists, who are otherwise not necessarily religious.

According to the TPP line, being a minor minority left the Turks no option under Serbian rule and Albanian hegemony in Kosovo other than to act together with the Albanians. The TDP's line is quite the opposite. According to TDP representatives, the Turkish minority must defend its ethnic identity against an immediate danger, that is, the Albanisation of Kosovo, which necessarily means eradication of Turkish ethnicity there. The Serbian authorities were also aware of this threat perception and acted accordingly after 1989 when they unilaterally abolished the constitutional autonomy of Kosovo. They left the Turks relatively free.

While the TDP did not participated in boycotting the September 1990 elections, the TPP responded positively to the Albanians' call to boycott anything that might justify Serbian rule in Kosovo. However, because the TDP had far more supporters, most Turks have participated in all the elections since then. Albanians have traditionally accused the Turks in Kosovo of collaboration with the Serbian regime and opportunism. Not boycotting the elections became further proof of this. When the Albanians lost their jobs in the post-1989 period, particularly in 1991, Turks continued to keep their jobs in Kosovo. While Serbs banned the Albanian broadcasting of Radio Television Pristina in July 1990, they allowed Turkish-language (and Serbian and Romani) broadcasting. All these further deepened Albanian resentment of the Turks. The Turks' response to these accusations was based on their genuine fear of Albanian hegemony in Kosovo. Furthermore, it was a notorious claim of radical Albanian nationalists that there was no Turkish ethnicity worth mentioning in Kosovo. The Turkish community knew well the negative stance of the Albanian political parties in Kosovo - a stance which begun to change only after the NATO operation and due to the presence of Turkish troops in KFOR.25 The Turks of Kosovo have long felt the threat of ethnic cleansing by the Serbs and have been ethnically marginalised through assimilation by the Albanians. This was true even in areas where they have traditionally been concentrated, such as Prizren26 and Pristina, if not in pockets like the Mamu?a village.27 This time, the Turks have to register with the UNMIK as one of the recognised minorities in Kosovo. It must be underlined here that most Albanian civic leaders in Kosovo also criticise this attitude against the Turks, in the name of democracy and multiculturalism.

Since the establishment of the UNMIK in June 1999, the Turks have re-organised themselves into a civic platform. They were represented through a committee of the UN Chief Administrator Bernard "Kouchner's Transnational Council of Kosovo that is expected to develop into some kind of executive authority and even government."28 One year after the NATO operation, under the Provisional Administrative Authority, while Kosovo prepared for local elections, the Turkish representatives at the Transnational Council are preparing to boycott its meetings. It is ironic that the 2000 elections in Kosovo might become the first elections the Turks boycott in Kosovo or elsewhere thanks to UNMIK.

Today there are 24 political parties registered in Kosovo, largest of which are Ibrahim Rugova's Democratic Alliance of Kosovo and former KLA leader Hasim Taci's Party of Democratic Progress. After tense relations in the past, both Rugova and Taci have promise a multiethnic Kosovo and, in particular, seem closer to respecting the Turkish identity, partly thanks to the presence of Turkish troops in Kosovo. However, many Turks in Kosovo do not feel at home in Kosovo any more, especially after the war in 1999. It is estimated that about 20,000 arrived in Turkey during the refugee flow from Kosovo.29 This seemed to be the final exodus of Turks from Kosovo. Most of the Turks that returned their homeland in Kosovo found a resentment towards anything non-Albanian. Furthermore, since then, they have had to struggle not only against the Albanians' regular accusations that they collaborated with the Serbian regime, but also against the so-called anti-Turkish practices of UNMIK.

Turks, who have long been associated with the powerful Ottoman rule in the Balkans, have been facing the difficulties of remaining as an ethnic minority in the 'new' nation-states. Having been subject to waves of expulsion and immigration for at least five generations, Turks are again in a particularly vulnerable position in the Balkans following the break-up of Yugoslavia. In the lands where once they were a relatively strong nationality with extensive constitutional rights, they now have to cope with the consequences of ethnic nationalism and the separatism of others. They are caught between many fires. They have already lost their numerical strength due to the waves of emigration from Yugoslavia and they have long been subject to assimilation by the larger Albanian nationality. They now feel the tension of further marginalisation in former Yugoslav territories.

The case of the Turks in Kosovo is a delicate one. The future status of Kosovo being a question mark, the Turks are concerned about their ethnic and civic identities as well as their mere survival in Kosovo. The general statements to the effect that the international community realises that Kosovo is not a territory inhabited only by an Albanian majority and a marginalised Serbian minority do not necessarily comfort the Turks. The recent tension created by the UNMIK's resistance to print the registration forms in Turkish is a case in point. However, ignoring the existence of the Turks in Kosovo or violating their rights is a costly mistake. This move will effect not only the Turks but will further endanger the chances of building a multiethnic and democratic Kosovo. By ignoring the Turks, the international administration is building a problem it will not be able to solve. It is not hard to speculate that the international stance of UNMIK will erode if it turns out to be part of the problem, instead of an honest broker aimed at facilitating a solution in Kosovo.

Whatever its political status might become in the long run, the future of Kosovo depends on the democratisation of the region and on the de-mystification of nationalism for all nationalities. The Turks of Kosovo have long been caught between two fires in their immediate environment between the Albanians and Serbs. Now, they feel under fire from again two sides: the radical Albanian nationalists and the UNMIK. Their future seems dimmer than that of their relatives elsewhere in the Balkans. As such, it must not come as a surprise that they feel the pressure of making a relatively urgent decision for their own future. Unless the international administration in Kosovo realises that Kosovo is also the home of 'others', including the Turks, given the present conditions, that difficult decision may soon be given in favour of the final exodus of Turks from Kosovo. As this will further destroy the multiethnic environment in Kosovo, the current practice of ignoring the Turks will be registered as a historic mistake on the part of the international community.

However, because of intense pressure on the Turks by the Albanians not to attend the Turkish schools, most of them were closed over time. In the 1970s and 1980s, for the Kosovo Turks, attending Serbian schools was one way of keeping their Turkish identity.

I posted this to show how the International Kangaroo Court distorts the truth with threatened and obviously couched "witnesses" against Milosevic: Milosevic Trial Hears New Witness (Kosovo Turk)

"Here we are in Srebrenica on July 11, 1995. On the eve of yet another great Serb holiday. We present this city to the Serbian people as a gift. Finally, the time has come to take revenge on the Turks."
-Ratko Mladic-

There - happy?

Interesting quote Hoplite. But considering from whose mouth it's coming, that is no surprise.

What I would avoid here, is generalizing. These are extreme cases (of war criminals) just as you could find elsewhere, they do not represent a nation as a whole.

So when Vooch asks about "mad dog racist Serbs", I can tell him then we do not consider Serbs as such, just as we don't consider Muslims as such.

Hoplite ever clever with your hate mongering agit-prop, but the thread here is about how the Turkish minority prefered living with the Yugoslav Government, Army, and Police.....rather than the UNMIK/KLA occupation

Here's what wraith said yesterdayabout your beloved KLA

Those Albanians sympathizing with the Serbs in any way would have written their own death warrants. KLA prisons were set up to deal with collaborators i.e. to extract information and eventual execution. I know of very few cases of Alabanians escaping the grips of the likes of Sabit Geci and Latif Gashi who controlled these prisons in the area of Podujevo

If that is how the KLA dealt with their own people......one can only imagine what they did to people like the Turkish minority

Vooch what is so "hate-mongering agit prop" in the quote from Mladic that Hoplite posted? Don't tell me you'r now defending Mladic as well. He was talking about him, not Serbs in general you know.

Concur - Vooch asked for an example, and I provided a specific one.

I just hope that the rational segment of the Serb Nation is able to wrest leadership away from the nationalist idiots who've been running the show for the last 15 years and place it in responsible hands.

Then I look at Vooch and am reminded of the saying that "We get the government we deserve."

He's in Serbia, making Djindic lose sleep over what he's going to do before the end of the month.

Money or Mladic.

It's going to be an interesting couple of weeks ahead, I hope.

You asked for an example, I provided one.

What did you expect?

Here - let's have some fun:

The Muslims want to establish an Islamic Fundamentalist state. They plan to do this by flooding Bosnia with 500,000 Turks. Izetbegovic has also launched a demographic threat. He has a secret policy to reward large families so that in a few years the Muslims will be a majority in Bosnia. The influence of an Islamic Bosnia will then spread through the Sandzak and Kosovo to Turkey and Libya. Izetbegovic is just a fundamentalist front man for Turkey; together they're conspiring to create a Greater Bosnia. Catholics and Orthodox alike will be eradicated.

There's another jerkoff talking smack for you to defend.

Here’s what your peaceful Muslims said in an editorial published in Slovenia.

http://www.cdsp.neu.edu/info/students/marko/dani/dani33.html

However, Kljucanin never wrote in Bosnjak anything that would compare with the Ljiljan editorial from February 23 1994: "There are 500 Serb orphans in Ugljevik. Praised be God! The Army of Bosnia-Hercegovina has so far sent to hell about 50,000 Chetniks. Praise the Lord! Serb mothers will in the future, as Ibrishim would say, give birth to ice cubes instead of children. Praised be God!(..) A Serb starts resembling a human being only after his death. Or in captivity." There is only one problem: this article was also signed by Zilhad Kljucanin!

This is what the Muslims did during the war.

Wow - and the fact that Bosnian Serbs were responsible for 90% of the warcrimes in Bosnia doesn't have any relevance in your world.

Want me to post some pictures and waste some posting space as well?

P.s. The person quoted is quite obviously an idiot, but the difference is, I don't defend his views, unlike you any your blind embrace of all things Serb.

Wow - and the fact that Bosnian Serbs were responsible for 90% of the warcrimes in Bosnia doesn't have any relevance in your world.

Maybe because when Serbs are beheaded or raped it isn't considered a warcrime. Any convictions for the beheadings and the roasting of Serbs the Muslims performed in Bosnia?

Why doesn't the Hague allow the testimony of hundreds of Serbian women whose reports of rapes by Muslims were documented BEFORE any the reports against Serbs began?

Of course they may put Serbs down for 90% of the warcrimes because they ignore 99.99999% of the crimes against Serbs.

Ljiljan was published in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia.

"It is interesting that Ljiljan and Zmaj never had good relations, although they consistently had very similar editorial policies. True, in the first issues of Ljiljan it is difficult to find anything similar to the infamous articles by A.T. Only the editorial material indicated the path taken by this Bosniak magazine published in Ljubljana."

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