By Elena Juki Bekić
In the article “Kurdistan – Turkey’s Kosovo” Prof. Sotirović compared different aspects of Turkish Kurdistan case to the Kosovo one, found some parallels and pointed out Turkey’s hypocrisy.
While Prof. Sotirović is right in his assessment that Turkey is hypocritical to say at least, he failed to expose the fundamental differences between Kurdistan and Kosovo. His article contains some inaccuracies, misinterpretations and lacks in detail. Such an imprecise comparison may lead a reader who is not familiar with Balkans to acquire a false impression. A reader might come to conclusion that Kosovo Albanians had experienced the same level of suffering and injustice as did the Kurds which later led them to rebellion. That would seriously mislead the readers.
To substantiate this view let’s point out few errors in the article in question.
Status of the minority
Stubborn reluctance of any kind of the Turkish government to recognize the Kurdish separate existence as the ethnic group of its own specific language and culture…
The Turkish rejection to recognize a minority status of the Kurds with granting a national-cultural or political autonomous status for Turkey’s Kurdistan…
Ankara’s discrimination and oppressive anti-Kurdish policy led finally to the establishment of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (the PKK) in 1978 for the sake to fight for unrecognized the Kurdish minority rights“
Albanians were in a completely opposite situation. Its ethnic minority in Yugoslavia was recognized. Their language was recognized too. Albanians did have their ethnic state, Albania, while Kurds never enjoyed such privilege. Besides, Albanian minority had their own unique ethnic university in Kosovo since 1969 (no Western “democracies” have ever allowed its minorities to establish universities).
In 1974, to appease endless Albanian minority irredentism and their sporadic violence, the Yugoslav government carved out a part of historic Serbian land of Kosovo as Albanian autonomous province (this act can be compared to Khrushchev’s selfish donation of Crimea to Ukraine in 1954).
Nevertheless, Albanians, inspired by anti-Yugoslav circles in the West, renewed disorders in 1981 demanding federalization. Please take note that 1981 was long before strongman Milosevic appeared. In fact, Milosevic rose to power in 1989 promising people that he would put an end to Albanian violence in Kosovo.
So if we compare humiliated Kurds in Turkey and privileged Albanians prior to their insurgency in 1981, we must say the two cases are fundamentally different.
The bellicose component
… the KLA [Kosovo Liberation Army] – a typical terrorist organization as a replica of the PKK, the IRA, the ETA or the Hezbollah.
This is implicitly wrong. KLA is a paramilitary wing of deeply-rooted Albanian mafia (for better understanding of the history, nature and cultural background of Albanian mafia please read very insightful Jana Arsovska’s article “Gender-based subordination and trafficking of women in ethnic Albanian context. The upward revaluation of the Kanun morality” [Journal of Moving Communities, vol.6, No.1, May 2006]).
This new brand name, Kosovo Liberation Army, was coined for mere propaganda purposes. The intent was to give a false impression to the western audience that the US-backed project was actually a fight for someone’s freedom, which, if true, would be a legitimate cause. KLA (read Albanian mafia) was armed, trained, and injected into Yugoslavia by CIA. They still keep supporting it up-to-date in its citadel of Kosovo.
By contrast, the name of Kurdish Workers Party reflects the Marxist ideology of their leader. The name does not appear to have been fashioned to appeal to tastes of Western mainstream media propaganda consumers.
Number of victims
For the matter of comparison, during the Kosovo crisis in 1998−1999 both the West and the US saw the terror acts carried out only by Serbia’s government…
If we compare tens of thousands of obliterated and hundreds of thousands expelled Kurdish civilians in Turkey from 1978-present with the “terror acts carried out by Serbia’s government”, the picture will not be that impressive:
“One year later, the International War Crimes Tribunal, a body in effect set up by NATO, announced that the final count of bodies found in Kosovo’s “mass graves” was 2,788. This included combatants on both sides, Serbs and Roma murdered by the Albanian KLA as well…” (John Pilger, Reminders of Kosovo)
In addition, can any of the following terror-related facts justify the struggle for self-determination?
“Indeed, even as Blair the war leader was on a triumphant tour of “liberated” Kosovo, the KLA was ethnically cleansing more than 200,000 Serbs and Roma from the province. Last February the “international community”, led by the US, recognized Kosovo, which has no formal economy and is run, in effect, by criminal gangs that traffic in drugs, contraband and women. But it has one valuable asset: the US military base Camp Bondsteel, described by the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner as “a smaller version of Guantanamo” (John Pilger, Don’t Forget Yugoslavia)
For the matters of accuracy, we should also remark that the state in 1999 was Yugoslavia, and not Serbia.
Guests on the land
… [Kurds are] the oldest population in Turkey living in Anatolia almost 3.000 years before the first (Seljuk) Turks came there at the end of the 11th century.
Opposite is the case of Kosovo Albanians. According to a Turkish census made in Kosovo in 1455 (!), there were 13,000 Serb households and only 46 Albanian there.
Since Kovoso Albanians obtained factual “independence” in 1999, they are busy desecrating, detonating and turning into rubble the unique medieval Serbian churches and monasteries throughout Kosovo. Only four of many Serbian monasteries in Kosovo are included in the UNESCO World Heritage list, but they are still endangered despite kind of protection from the international peacekeeping forces. Hundreds of other Serbian cultural sites there are subject to total elimination due to barbaric Albanian “self-determination”. In this sense Kosovo should be compared not to Kurdistan, but Daesh/ISIS.
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Prof. Sotirović seems to be a very ignorant of Middle Eastern politics and Kurd history especially after Slahuddin Ayubi’s crushing defeat to Christian Crusaders in 1186 CE.
Both Erdogan and Netanyahu have blessed a Kurdistan state – as long as it’s on Iraqi land. Both idiots are afraid of such a state on Syrian soil. Don’t forget, there are over 50,000 Kurd Jews living inside the Zionist entity.
Kosova has an Israel-friendly government, established by the US and NATO.
https://rehmat1.com/2014/07/17/bibi-erdogan-support-kurdistan-in-iraq/
Vladislav Sotirovič, I’m not sure who you are referring to when you mention a “Greek nation”? I’d like to point out that the modern Greek state is a creation of France, Great Britain, Russia and Bavaria in the 2nd-3rd decades of the 19th century, and the modern “Greek identity” imposed on the various ethnic groups that occupied the area of the proposed Greek state.
The oldest indigenous group on the Balkan peninsula is the Macedonians. In the “Macedonian Lexicon 16th Century” linguists Giro Gianelli and Andre Vaillant write, “Despite the absence of written works relating to statehood, material of a religious and educational character continued to flourish, and Church Slavonic, an essentially Macedonian tongue that was initially developed for such purposes in the 9th century, remained the literary language of the Macedonian people. However, the vernacular tongue of the Macedonians had co-existed with Church Slavonic and matured over the years, demonstrating a remarkable resilience and stability, which earned its introduction as the language of church services in Macedonia. The Macedonians were faced with foreign interference in both their lands and institutions, but their language had been largely solidified, evidenced in the fact that spoken Macedonian from the 16th century has a far greater affinity to spoken Macedonian dialects of today than it does to Church Slavonic. For well over half a millenium, the Macedonian language has basically remained the same.”
Also see, “The Ten Oldest Languages Still Spoken in the World Today” at theculturetrip.com, you will note that “Greek” is not on the list. Finally, Macedonia today not only suffers from western-supported irredentism on behalf of its Albanian minority but all aspects of its spiritual and cultural heritage are denied by its neighbours, Serbia, its church, Greece, its name, Bulgaria its language and Albania, its territory.
The oldest Balkan nation are the Serbs. There are no any kind of ethnolinguistic Macedonians as they are just geographic expression of the Serb nation.
Predrag Rankovic you are entitled to your opinion, of course opinions are a dime a dozen. Links, proof, arguments… or is it simply enough that a mighty Serb has spoken and we are meant to accept your assertion as gospel?
“…There are no kind of ethnolinguistic Macedonians..” end quote. This is the kind of arrogance that Macedonians have to put up with that seems to spring eternal from the mouths of Serbs, Albanians, Greeks, Bulgars, who each have their own take on this priceless gem from Rankovic above, ie; Macedonians are either Albanians, Serbs, Greeks or Bulgars.
Of course, such chauvinism springs from those who have aggrandised themselves at our expense in the past, and the very existence of Macedonians must be denied at all costs because to admit their psychic thievery would be, they believe, to somehow diminish themselves. There can be no greater vanity and display of power than when someone tells you to your face – you do not exist!!
The contemporary “Macedonians” are a typical European expression of Nazi-Schauvinistic “imagined community”
What would that make “serbs”; serfs, servs, servants…? Whose servants are you exactly?? I have first hand accounts of serbian genocidal policies from my maternal grandfather who was given the ultimatum “you are either are a dead Macedonian or a living “Serb”, along with countless other documented Serbian ethnic genocide and forced assimilation of Macedonians in Macedonian archives. Seemingly, someone’s raised you on a steady diet of Serbian nationalism and you know nothing about your own, let alone Macedonian, history!