Turco-Albanian (Greek: Τουρκαλβανοί, Tourk-alvanoi) is an ethnographic, religious, and derogatory term used by Greeks for Muslim Albanians since 1715.[1][2][3][4] In a broader sense, the term included both Muslim Albanian and Turkish political and military elites of the Ottoman administration in the Balkans.[5] The term is derived from an identification of Muslims with Ottomans and/or Turks because of the Ottoman Empire's administrative millet system of classifying peoples according to religion in which the Muslim millet played the leading role.[6] From the mid-19th century, the term Turk and from the late 19th century onwards, the derivative term Turco-Albanian has been used as a pejorative term, phrase and or expression for Muslim Albanian individuals and communities.[1][7][8][9][10] The term has also been noted to be unclear, ideologically and sentimentally charged,[6] and an imperialist and racialist expression.[11]
Albanians have expressed derision and disassociation toward the terms Turk and its derivative form Turco-Albanian regarding the usage of those terms in reference to them.[8][12][13] It has been reported that at the end of the 20th century some Christian Albanians still used the term "Turk" to refer to Muslim Albanians.[14]
The term Turco-Albanian is a compound made up of the words Turk and Albanian. The word Albanian was and still is a term used as an ethnonym.[15] Whereas the word Turk was viewed at times by Western Europeans[16][17] or by non Muslim Balkan peoples as being synonymous with Muslim.[8][18] A study of a collection of Albanian folk songs, published in 1870s by Thimi Mitko, suggests that most Albanian speakers of his time identified themselves and each other through various terms and not a single national designation. Among other terms, Muslims were identified as turq or turkollarë ("Turks").[19]
Apart from being associated with Muslim Albanians, in some specific works the term Turco-Albanian was used to mention the Labs (Greek: Liapides),[20] a socio-cultural and dialectal Albanian subdivision,[21] some of whom had converted to Islam during the Ottoman Empire era.
In a broader sense the term Turco-Albanian was used to denote Ottoman military units and elites of both Turkish and Albanian ethnicity that represented the Ottoman administration of the Balkans.[5][22] Within the Ottoman Empire, Muslim Albanians were closely part of the administrative structures of the state and considered one of its important peoples.[23]
Reference to Muslim Albanian communities as Turco-Albanian is made for those that settled the Peloponnese in order to spread Islam from c. 1715 until after 1770, as part of official Ottoman policy.[2] Later in 1770, Muslim Albanian mercenaries referred to as Turco-Albanian were employed by the Ottoman Sultan to suppress the Greek uprising.[24] Their activity included massacres, looting and destruction in the regions of Epirus, Western Macedonia, Central Greece, Thessaly, Peloponnese suffered most destruction and massacre due to the activity of 15,000 Muslim Albanian mercenaries.[25][26][27] In 1779 the Ottoman army finally managed to drive those groups out of Peloponnese, while the remaining ones were either killed by local villagers or found refuge in Muslim Albanian communities in Lala and Vardounia.[28][29] The period of 1770–1779 is generally termed as Alvanokratia (Albanian rule) in Greek historiography.[30] As a result, local Greek traditions in Epirus since the late 18th century mention frequent raids and looting by "Turko-Albanians" or "Albanian" bands. This kind of activity was connected with the depopulation of settlements.[31]
Later, during the Greek War of Independence (1821–1830) reference to Turco-Albanians is made for those Muslim Albanians that fought in the Ottoman side against the Greek revolutionaries.[4] Most scholars of the Greek Revolution tend to grossly neglect the role played by Albanians in this historical period, in particular treating on the one hand Muslim Albanians as "Turks" either by calling them "Turco-Albanians" (Greek: Τουρκαλβανοί) or entirely ignoring their Albanian identity, and on the other hand Christian Albanians as "Greeks", hence oversimplifying the events to a "tug-of-war between two ostensible sides". But the reality was much more complex, involving power struggles of numerous players with continual power redistributions and interests realignments.[32]
Muslims Albanians are thus often pejoratively named and or called by Greeks as "Turks", represented in the expression "Turkalvanoi".[7][9][10] As with the term "Turk",[17] the expression (rendered also as Turco-Albanian)[1] was employed by some writers mainly in nineteenth and early twentieth century[citation needed] Western European literature regarding Muslim Albanian populations.[33] As such, the word Turk within its usage also attained derogatory and derisive meanings that when applied to other words created pejorative meanings of cruel and inhumane behavior and or of being backward and savage.[34][35][36][37] Within a Balkans context during the twentieth century, the usage of the word "Turk" (and "Turkey") has also been politically employed to differentiate the "indigenous" from the "alien" that interpreted Balkan Muslims as "foreigners".[37][38][39] With the case of the Albanians, this at times has resulted in Albanophobia, negative stereotyping, socio-political discrimination and even mass violence.[1][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51]
At the beginning of the 1880s the Greek press openly used the term "Turco-Albanian brigands" to incite hate speech and to associate Albanian irredentists with "Turkish anti-Greek propaganda".[9] During the years 1882–1897 some Greek media and publications initiated a campaign to promote friendship and a potential future alliance between Greeks and Albanians.[52] As such they avoided the use of the term Turco-Albanian and pointed to the common features shared by both populations.[52] New mixed terms Greek-Albanians is used instead.[52] The term Turco-Albanian after the Greek War of Independence was also sometimes used in 19th century Greek school text books for Muslim Albanians.[53] Greek nationalist histories still uses the more widely known, but pejorative, term Turco-Albanian instead of Muslim Albanians.[10]
Various Muslim Albanian communities by Greeks were similarly also labelled such as the Turco-Bardouniots (or Τουρκοβαρδουνιώτες, Tourko-Vardouniotes).[54] and Turco-Chams (or Τουρκοτσάμηδες, Tourko-tsamides)[55][56] In Thesprotia older designations based on religion were used for Albanian Muslim Chams by the local Orthodox population who referred to them as "Turks" (i.e.: Muslims), a term still used in the region by some elderly people.[57] The term Turco-Albanian was also used by both British intelligence and the German army for Muslim Albanian Chams during World War II and it was borrowed from Greek usage.[58] Moreover, in Greek, similar composite ethnographic terms that also reveal the ethnic or religious background of the specific communities have also been used, such as Turco-Cretans (or Τουρκοκρήτες, Tourkokrites), and Turco-Cypriots (or Τουρκοκύπριοι, Tourkokiprioi).[3]
Amongst the wider Greek-speaking population, until the interwar period of the twentieth century, the term Arvanitis (plural: Arvanites) was used to describe an Albanian speaker, regardless of their religious affiliations, including Islam.[59] On the other hand, within Greek Epirus, the term Arvanitis is still used by some for an Albanian speaker, regardless of their citizenship and religion.[59]
Millas, Iraklis (2006). "Tourkokratia: History and the image of Turks in Greek literature." South European Society & Politics. 11. (1): 50. “The ‘timeless’ existence of the Other (and the interrelation of the Self with this Other) is secured by the name used to define him or her. Greeks often name as ‘Turks’ various states and groups—such as the Seljuks, the Ottomans, even the Albanians (Turkalvanoi)”.
Nikolaou, 1997, p. 313: "Il est à signaler que dans ces contrées s'étaient installés, probablement vers 1715 et après 1770, des Albanais musulmans (Turcalbanais), qui furent l'un des facteurs de diffusion de l'islam."
Chidiroglou, Paulos (1990). Symvolē stēn Hellēnikē Tourkologia (in German). Athēna: Hērodotos. p. 127. ISBN 9789607290182. Hiermit nicht zu verwechseln sind die zusammengesetzen Volkername, die sich auf herkunft oder Religion beziehen, wie z.B. Τουρκαλβανός (Turkalbaner), Τουρκοκρήτες (turkische Kreter), Τουρκοκύπριοι (turkische Zyprioten). [Hereby does not to be confused the composite national name, they were referred to by origin or religion, such as Τουρκαλβανός (Turkalbaner) Τουρκοκρήτες (Turkic Cretans), Τουρκοκύπριοι (Turkic Cypriots).]"
Maroula, Efthymiou (2000). "Cursing with a Message: the Case of Georgios Karaiskakis in 1823". Historein. 2. Cultural and Intellectual History Society: 180. Retrieved 23 December 2015. sense, the Moslem Albanians of the Ottoman army are referred to during this time as "Turcalbanians", despite the fact that racially they have nothing to do with the Turks.
Nitsiakos, Vassilis (2010). On the border: Transborder mobility, ethnic groups and boundaries along the Albanian-Greek frontier. LIT Verlag. p. 200. "Who and what was this man, beyond the myth of the “Turkish Albanian satrap” cultivated in Greece? I think of how astonished my students always look when I tell them that Ali Pasha was not Turkish but Albanian. I explain that this unclear, ideologically and sentimentally charged term, “Turkish-Albanian”, only refers to Muslim Albanians, through a general identification of Turks with Muslims, which is related to the millet system of administration used by the Ottomans to classify populations." Megalommatis, M. Cosmas (1994). Turkish-Greek Relations and the Balkans: A Historian's Evaluation of Today's Problems. Cyprus Foundation. p. 28. “Muslim Albanians have been called “Turkalvanoi” in Greek, and this is pejorative.”
Karpat, Kemal H. (2001). The politicization of Islam: reconstructing identity, state, faith, and community in the late Ottoman state. Oxford University Press. p. 342. “After 1856, and especially after 1878, the terms Turk and Muslim became practically synonymous in the Balkans. An Albanian who did not know one word of Turkish thus was given the ethnic name of Turk and accepted it, no matter how much he might have preferred to distance himself from the ethnic Turks.”
Tzanelli, Rodanthi (2008). Nation-building and identity in Europe: The dialogics of reciprocity. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 62. “Consequently, at the beginning of the 1880s the Greek press openly incited anti-Albanian hatred, associating the Albanian irredentists with Turkish anti-Greek propaganda, and baptizing them Vlachs and ‘Turkalbanian brigands’ (Aión. 10 and 14 July 1880; Palingenesía, 3 April 1881).”
Nikolopoulou, Kalliopi (2013). Tragically Speaking: On the Use and Abuse of Theory for Life. University of Nebraska Press. p. 299. “Instead of the term “Muslim Albanians”, nationalist Greek histories use the more known, but pejorative, term “Turkalbanians”.
Pettifer James, (2009). Woodhouse, Zerva and the Chams: Exploring Second World War heritage. Onufri. p.25. "The Chams are only referred to in the section of the book called ‘Minor Armed Collaborators’, and the entire Cham community in Epirus is thus tarred with collaborationist brush, and described in what can only be called imperialist-racialist- terms as a ‘Moslem People commonly called Turk-Albanians’. In this book Woodhouse laid down the orthodoxy in which the Chams were afterwards seen in British historiography for two generations by adopting the terminology of the Greek extreme Right." League of Nations (October 1921). "Albania". League of Nations –Official Journal.8: 893. "The memorandum of the Albanian government… The memorandum complains that the Pan-Epirotic Union misnames the Moslem Albanians as “Turco-Albanians”".
Hart, Laurie Kain (1999). "Culture, Civilization, and Demarcation at the Northwest Borders of Greece". American Ethnologist. 26. (1): 207. "In 1919, then, the Albanians attacked the Greek concept of national consciousness and civilization as a thinly disguised transformation of the utopia of the Greek Patriarch (which, to stress the "Oriental" connotations, they often called Ottoman or Byzantine): a utopia of many nations under one religion (subordinate to the Greek element). In reaction, the Albanian utopia crystallized as the logical opposite to that of the Greeks.
Emphasizing blood and kinship through the medium of language, it constituted itself as profoundly indifferent to religious divisions-and on these grounds both Western and modern. Greek spokesman Cassavetes conflated Moslem Albanian and Turk, comparing the Greeks in southern Albania to Armenians (1921:473) at the mercy of the "Moslem element" (1921:471). Albanian official Vrioni responded that, quite to the contrary, Albanians have nothing in common with Turks. There is certainly no such creature as a Turko-Albanian, he argued: "The Turk belongs to the Turanian race, whereas the Albanian belongs to an Arian race" (1921:478)."
Lloshi. Albanian. 1999. p. 277. "The Albanians of today call themselves shqiptarë, their country Shqipëri, and their language shqipe. These terms came into use between the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries. Foreigners call them albanesi (Italian), Albaner (German), Albanians (English), Alvanos (Greek), and Arbanasi (old Serbian), the country Albania, Albanie, Albanien, Alvania, and Albanija, and the language Albanese, Albanisch, Albanian, Alvaniki, and Arbanashki respectively. All these words are derived from the name Albanoi of an Illyrian tribe and their center Albanopolis, noted by the astronomer of Alexandria, Ptolemy, in the 2nd century AD. Alban could be a plural of alb- arb-, denoting the inhabitants of the plains (ÇABEJ 1976). The name passed over the boundaries of the Illyrian tribe in central Albania, and was generalised for all the Albanians. They called themselves arbënesh, arbëresh, the country Arbëni, Arbëri, and the language arbëneshe, arbëreshe. In the foreign languages, the Middle Ages denominations of these names survived, but for the Albanians they were substituted by shqiptarë, Shqipëri and shqipe. The primary root is the adverb shqip, meaning “clearly, intelligibly”. There is a very close semantic parallel to this in the German noun Deutsche, “the Germans” and “the German language” (Lloshi 1984) Shqip spread out from the north to the south, and Shqipni/Shqipëri is probably a collective noun, following the common pattern of Arbëni, Arbëri. The change happened after the Ottoman conquest because of the conflict in the whole line of the political, social, economic, religious, and cultural spheres with a totally alien world of the Oriental type. A new and more generalised ethnic and linguistic consciousness of all these people responded to this.”
Yassin, Dawlat Sami (2012). "Representation of Muslims in Early Modern English Literature." Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature. 2. (2): 10-22.
MacLean, Gerald M. (2007). "When West Looks East: Some Recent Studies in Early Modern Muslim Cultures." Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies. 7.(1): 97. “In all fairness to Chew, Rouillard, Vaughn, and Schwoebel, none ever claimed that they were doing more than investigate the ways that early European writers regarded those they called "Turks" and the world of Islam they inhabited, but their indifference to who and what was being represented marks a cautionary absence. All four scholars, for instance, recycled the early modern European usage of "Turk" as synonymous with both "Muslim" -regardless of origin-and with "Ottoman," while to the Ottomans themselves, the term referred disparagingly to the Anatolian peasantry over whom they had come to rule. Many continue in this habit, one rendered even more confusing and potentially misleading since the Turkish Republic declared all inhabitants to be "Turks" in order to erase Kurds, Armenians, Laz, and other ethnicities from the national landscape. Acknowledging that the winners write history and that the very instruments of knowledge production were complicit in structures of power and authority, scholars of the Renaissance and early modern period also recognized how Said's analysis of imperial discourses was inappropriate for the era before Europe set out to rule over and colonize Eastern lands.”
Mentzel, Peter (2000). "Introduction: Identity, confessionalism, and nationalism." Nationalities Papers. 28. (1): 8. "The attitude of non Muslim Balkan peoples was similar. In most of the Balkans, Muslims were “Turks” regardless of their ethno-linguistic background. This attitude changed significantly, but not completely, over time."
Jane C. Sugarman, "Imagining the Homeland: Poetry, Songs, and the Discourses of Albanian Nationalism", Ethnomusicology, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Autumn, 1999), p. 424 Thimi Mitko, born in 1820 in Korcë (now South Albania) was an important figure of the Albanian national movemento of 19th century. (Ibid., p. 421) Lloshi, Xhevat (1999). “Albanian”. In Hinrichs, Uwe, & Uwe Büttner (eds). Handbuch der Südosteuropa-Linguistik. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. p. 285.
Fischer, Bernd Jürgen (1984). King Zog and the struggle for stability in Albania. Boulder: East European Monographs. p. 44. ISBN 9780880330510. Subsequently, many Albanians served in the Turkish military and administration.
Kitsikis, Dimitri (1971). "Nationalisme dans les Balkans: étude comparée des révolutions Turque de 1908 et Grecque de 1909". Communications Historiques. 6 (1). La Société historique du Canada: 226. doi:10.7202/030467ar. La communaute musulmane etait dirigee sur le plan religieux, comme sur leplan temporal, par le sultan calife, qui etait, en meme temps le chaf politique supreme des chretiens orthodoxes et de tous les peuples de l'Empire. En fait, les Turcs, aides per las Albanais musulmans (ou Turcalbanais) etaient le premier peuple de l'Empire. [The Muslim community is directed at the religious level, as on temporal level, by the Caliph Sultan, who was, at the same time the supreme political chief of Orthodox Christians and all peoples of the Empire. In fact, the Turks, supported by the Muslim Albanians (or TurcoAlbanians) were the first people of the Empire.]
Nikolaou, 1997, p. 455: "L'insurrection de 1770, très mal préparée, a échoué. Cet échec, mais avant tout l'invasion des mercenaires turcalbanais, utilisés par le sultan pour étouffer la révolte, furent lourds de conséquences pour le pays, notamment au niveau économique et démographique. Les effets des destructions causées durant les années critiques de 1770 à 1779 furent bien visibles jusqu'au début du XIX e siècle. [The uprising of 1770, was very ill-prepared and failed. This failure, but above all the invasion of turco-Albanian mercenaries used by the sultan to quell the revolt, were serious consequences for the country, especially in economic and population level. The effects of the destruction caused during the critical years of 1770–1779 were visible until the early nineteenth century.]"
Nikolaou, 1997, p. 184: Les mercenaires albanais, que la Porte avait utilisés pour la répression de l'insurrection, furent un véritable fléau pour la population grecque. L'Epire, la Macédoine occidentale, la Grèce continentale et surtout la Thessalie, qu'ils traversaient sans cesse en descendant vers le sud ou en revenant chez eux, ont enduré bien des maux : massacres, pillages, destructions, faim. Peut-être que la conséquence la plus douloureuse de cette période fut l'islamisation d'un nombre important d'Epirotes, de Macédoniens et de Thessaliens. Mais le
Péloponnèse a souffert plus que toute autre région - pendant et après l'insurrection - car il était envahi, selon les calculs les plus modérés, par 15.000 Albanais environ. [Albanian mercenaries, that the Porte used for the suppression of the uprising, were a scourge for the Greek population. Epirus, Western Macedonia, mainland Greece and especially Thessaly, they crossed constantly down south or returning home, endured many evils: massacres, looting, destruction, hunger. Perhaps the most painful consequence of this period was the Islamization of a significant number of Epirotes, Macedonians and Thessalians. But the Peloponnese suffered more than any other region - during and after the revolution - as it was invaded, according to the most moderate calculations by approximately 15,000 Albanians.]"
Nikolaou, 1997, p. 174: Nous allons décrire les grandes lignes de l'insurrection de 1770, son étouffement et les conséquences de l'invasion des Turcalbanais dans le Péloponnèse entre 1770 et 1779. Nous jugeons cela tout à fait nécessaire, non seulement parce que les effets directs de cette révolte sont à l'origine, semblet-il, de plusieurs islamisations, mais aussi parce qu'on a pu détecter des conversions juste après l'éclatement de cette révolte. [We will describe the outline of the insurrection of 1770, smothering and the consequences of the invasion of Turco-Albanians in the Peloponnese between 1770 and 1779. We find this very necessary, not only because of the direct effects of this revolt are the cause, it seems, more islamisations but also because we could detect conversion just after the outbreak of the revolt.]
editor, William M. Johnston (2000). Encyclopedia of monasticism. London: Fitzroy Dearborn. p. 859. ISBN 9781579580902. Later, in 1770, Turco-Albanian troops returning from Peloponnese to their troops returning from Peloponnese to their country damaged the monasteries and terrorized the region of Thessaly for more than a decade.
Nikolaou, 1997, p. 197: Lors de la bataille décisive à Tripolitsa (juillet 1779), les Albanais subirent une défaite totale. Ceux qui survécurent furent ensuite exterminés par les villageois et quelques-uns trouvèrent refuge chez leurs compatriotes turcalbanais à Lala et à Vardounia. [During the decisive battle at Tripolitsa (July 1779), Albanians suffered a total defeat. Those who survived were later exterminated by the villagers and some found refuge among their fellow turco-Albanians Lala and Vardounia.]"
Nikolaou, 1997, p. 165: "Fr. Pouqueville soutient la même position en ajoutant que cette population, tout comme celle des musulmans vardouniotes en Laconie, fut renforcée après 1779 par le reste des mercenaires turcalbanais qui avaient envahi en 1770 le Péloponnèse pour étouffer l'insurrection. [Fr. Pouqueville supports the same position, adding that this population, like that of Muslims Bardouniots in Laconia, was reinforced after 1779 by the remaining turco-Albanian mercenaries who had invaded the Peloponnese in 1770 to quell the insurgency.]"
al.], edited by Elias Kolovos ... [et (2007). The Ottoman Empire, the Balkans, the Greek lands : toward a social and economic history : studies in honor of John C. Alexander (1. ed.). Istanbul: Isis Press. p. 43. ISBN 9789754283464. After the crushing of the revolt, Albanians did not withdraw from the peninsule, but stuck around for almost a decade. This period of Alvanokratia (period of Albanian rule), as it is known in Greek historiography...
Blumi, Isa. (1998). "The commodification of otherness and the ethnic unit in the Balkans: how to think about Albanians." East European Politics & Societies. 12. (3): 527–569; p. 533. “Such analysis is submerged in a refined treatment of history traditionally skewed for an audience that is more inclined to retain old stereotypes about Albanians, Muslims, and the “other,” than to dig deeper into the intricacies of the homogenized units of analysis being evoked—ethnicity, nation, Islam.”
McCarthy, Kevin M. (1970). “The Derisive Use of Turk and Turkey”. American Speech. 45. (1/2): 157. "Among the nationalities that seem to have been disparaged throughout history, the Turks hold a prominent place. The name Turk or Turkey has long been associated with cruel, inhuman behavior and has often been used as a descriptive part of our speech in derogatory phrases."; p. 158. "As a noun in the English language Turk has meant, according to the OED, ‘a cruel, rigorous, or tyrannical man; any one behaving as a barbarian or savage; one who treats his wife hardly; a bad-tempered or unmanageable man.’"; p. 159. "Since it has such a tradition of derisive meanings, I was not surprised when I came across a recent application of turk, this time in the field of sports: turk is a nickname that professional football players have given to the bad news that they have been cut from the squad. Such an example points out the fact that, while many ethnic groups have served as the butt of jokes and the object of derision in particular periods of our history (for example, the Poles, Italians, Jews, and Irish), the Turks alone have generally been a constant target for derision and have unwillingly lent their name to many unfavorable situations."
Batur-VanderLippe, Pinar (1999). "Centering on global racism and antiracism: from everyday life to global complexity." Sociological spectrum. 19. (4): 472. “In the centuries-old stereotype of the “Terrible Turk,” Turks were pictured as the backward and savage enemies of civilization and progress. Whether the Terrible Turk was conceptualized as White or Black, the essential Orientalist categories of “backward” and “savage” always accompanied “darkness,” qualities in stark contrast to the self-image of the colonizer as white, progressive, scientific, and superior (VanderLippe 1997).”
Todorova, Maria Nikolaeva (1997). Imagining the Balkans. Oxford University Press. p.90. “English images of the Turk during the sixteenth and much of the seventeenth centuries were ones of tyranny, arbitrariness, extortions, slavery, piracy savage punishments, and Christian ordeals; they were also images of strangeness and diatribe against Islam.”
Blumi, Isa (2013). Ottoman refugees, 1878-1939: migration in a post-imperial world. A&C Black. pp. 149–150. “It all started with war. War was the means by which new political elites in neighboring, former Ottoman territories like Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia identified an opportunity to rewrite the demographic landscape and in turn, claim a historical association with newly “ethnically cleansed” territories. As a consequence of the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, in particular, entire city neighborhoods were razed, names of villages changed, their inhabitants expelled, or more dramatically still, collectively “converted.” To many, the problem was that the beginning of World War I left these states not enough time to complete the ugly task of erasing the Ottoman Empire from “Christendom.” As in the Americas, an Ottoman human “refuse” lingered in independent Balkan countries where some of these “left-over” communities survive until today. Despite a long period of imposed socialism and declarations of brotherhood, Balkan Muslims lived in constant fear that one more round of “ethnic cleansing” will come sweeping through their communities. This is especially the case in Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia, where a century now of living as “minorities” often led to opportunistic, “functional” blood-letting campaigns in the larger contexts of “national” politics. In Yugoslavia, the non-Slav Albanian Muslim (and Catholic) evolved into a bureaucratic category especially susceptible to periodic state-led expulsion campaigns—throughout the 1920s, 1935–8, 1953–67, and then again in the 1990s—that passed through the region. Invariably castigated as “outsiders” and “fifth-column” threats to national security, the labeling of entire regions of Kosovo, Novipazaar, Montenegro, and Macedonia as inhabited by generic “Muslim Albanians” often meant the organized expulsion of those communities. In order to justify such measures to an occasional outside traveler bearing witness to the violent process, or delegations sent by the newly created League of Nations at the request of Albania (a member state), the Serbian/ Yugoslav state often rolled out historians, demographers, and anthropologists. In an often repeated exercise throughout the post-Ottoman Balkans, operatives of “ethnic cleansing” campaigns resurrected the “professional knowledge” of race sciences first developed in the United States at the turn-of-the-century. In the 1920s, for instance, state authorities eager to continue a process of expulsion started in 1912—briefly disrupted by World War I—sent an army of European-trained ethnographers to “Southern Serbia” to identify those communities least likely to ever accept Serbian rule. These ethnographers and human geographers adopted many of the same racist epistemologies identified in other Euro-American contexts to identify and catalogue the “sub-human” characteristics of hybrid “Turks” whose very “nature” made efforts to assimilate them into a modernizing Serbian/South Slav society “scientifically” impossible. While these stories now make up a core aspect of Albanian (and Turkish, Greek, Bulgarian) historical memory vis-à-vis Serbia’s torment, it has usefully been forgotten that the dynamics around such systemic violence was informed by a set of ideological and disciplinary frameworks that, once instrumentalized, as by the CUP after 1910, transformed the way once heterogeneous societies interacted with each other. These same ideological principles based on racial segregation and biological hierarchies influenced the intellectual elite of the early twentieth-century world. They ultimately mobilized a so-called fertility politics to justify why violent state-led colonialization/expulsion in Yugoslavia (and earlier in Greece and Bulgaria) was necessary in order to maintain the long-term demographic balance of society. Forced expulsion, the signing of “population exchange” agreements—popularized as a diplomatic “solution” already in the immediate aftermath of the first Balkan War of 1912—and ultimately colonization were all tactics used in the Balkans, as well as throughout the Euro-American dominated world.”
Blumi, Isa (2011). Reinstating the Ottomans, Alternative Balkan Modernities: 1800-1912. Palgrave MacMillan. New York. p. 32. "As state policy, post- Ottoman “nations” continue to sever most of their cultural, socioeconomic, and institutional links to the Ottoman period. At times, this requires denying a multicultural history, inevitably leading to orgies of cultural destruction (Kiel 1990; Riedlmayer 2002). As a result of this strategic removal of the Ottoman past—the expulsion of the “Turks” (i.e., Muslims); the destruction of buildings; the changing of names of towns, families, and monuments; and the “purification” of languages—many in the region have accepted the conclusion that the Ottoman cultural, political, and economic infrastructure was indeed an “occupying,” and thus foreign, entity (Jazexhi 2009). Such logic has powerful intuitive consequences on the way we write about the region’s history: If Ottoman Muslims were “Turks” and thus “foreigners” by default, it becomes necessary to differentiate the indigenous from the alien, a deadly calculation made in the twentieth century with terrifying consequences for millions."
Austin, Robert Clegg (2012). Founding a Balkan State: Albania's Experiment with Democracy, 1920-1925. University of Toronto Press. p. 95. “A cornerstone of Greek policy, an approach also employed by the Yugoslavs, was to encourage religious differences in Albania and stress that Albania was a little ‘Turkey’ hostile to Orthodox Greeks. To popularize the idea of two Albanian states, one Moslem, the other Christian, throughout the early 1920s Greece continually complained that Albania’s majority Moslem population was actively persecuting the Orthodox minority. Albania denied this, stressed its well— documented legacy of religious tolerance, and added that while there was tension in the southern perimeter of the country, it was not between Muslims and Christians, but rather a rift had emerged because of the movement to create an autocephalous Albanian Orthodox Church and some citizens wished to remain under the Patriarchate”.
Müller, Dietmar (2009). "Orientalism and Nation: Jews and Muslims as Alterity in Southeastern Europe in the Age of Nation-States, 1878–1941." East Central Europe. 36. (1): 66. “Therefore, the Romanian and Serbian intellectuals and politicians considered themselves perfectly in line with the Occident’s mission civilisatrice when denying the Jews the citizenship, when driving out Turks and Albanians, initiating processes to “de-Orientalize” social practices, certain ethnical and religious groups, or whole provinces. More specifically, the Romanian legitimizing discourse directed towards the Great Powers ran as follows: Romanian citizenship could be granted to the Jews only when they had reached the heights of European culture; in the contrary case, Romania could not fulfill its mission civilisatrice in the Balkans. Equally Orientalistic was the Serbian discourse, which claimed as national duty to Europeanize Muslims and Albanians, or at least the territories inhabited by them.
Merdjanova, Ina (2013). Rediscovering the Umma: Muslims in the Balkans between nationalism and transnationalism. Oxford University Press. p. 43. "Immediately after the establishment of the communist regime, Albanian language schools were opened in both Kosovo and Macedonia, yet a few years later the Yugoslav government launched a crackdown on Albanian self-determination by closing most of the schools and banning Albanian national symbols and holidays. Albanians were encouraged to identify as “Turks” and new Turkish schools were opened, while a 1953 governmental treaty with Turkey, allowing the Turks in Yugoslavia to emigrate, unleashed a massive exodus to Turkey. Many Albanian and Slavic Muslims represented themselves as Turks in order to leave the country."
Salla, Michael Emin (1998). "Traveling the full circle: Serbia's ‘final solution’ to the Kosovo problem." Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. 18. (2): 230. “The first dates from the Balkan wars of 1912—1913 to the beginning of the Second World War. The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenia, dominated by the Serbian Karadjeodjic dynasty, began a systematic policy of repression and forced emigration of Albanians in an effort to ‘correct’ the demographic nature of the territories. Many Muslim Albanians were simply categorised as Turks and expelled to Turkey, as part of an agreement between Turkey and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenia. Estimates of Albanians forced to emigrate to desolate regions of Anatolia to form a dependable buffer population for Turkey go as high as 250,000 while 50,000 emigrated to Albania proper.”
Hilaj, Arjan (2013). "The Albanian National Question and the Myth of Greater Albania." The Journal of Slavic Military Studies. 26.(3): 8. “In the aftermath of World War I, Greece considered all Albanian Muslims in Çamëria as Turks, and therefore transferred them to Turkey with other Turkish nationals, following the international treaty signed between the two states in 1923 at Lausanne.”
Baltsiotis. The Muslim Chams of Northwestern Greece: The grounds for the expulsion of a “non-existent” minority community. 2011. “The presence of a population considered hostile to national interests near the frontier caused anxiety to Greek officials which was exacerbated by a militaristic perception of security and territory. The central Greek state was eager to push the “hostile” population to migrate to Turkey. To that end it utilized harassment tactics which were carried out by local paramilitary groups. This was a practice that was well known and had been adopted as early as the period of the Balkan Wars. In other cases it just forced people to leave the country, after handing down ultimatums.”
Tzanelli, Rodanthi (2010). “Islamophobia and Hellenophilia: Greek Myths of Post-colonial Europe”. In Sayyid, S &Vakil, AK, (eds.). Thinking Through Islamophobia: Global Perspectives. Hurst Publishers. p. 224. “In the context of transcontinental labour mobilities Greek Islamophobia has manifested itself as Albanophobia.”
Kokkali, Ifigeneia (24–25 February 2011). Being Albanian in Greece or elsewhere: negotiation of the (national) self in a migratory context. International conference on the “Myths of the Other in the Balkans. Representations, social practices and performances”. Thessaloniki. Retrieved 15 May 2010. p . 3. “The word ‘Albanian’ soon became synonymous to ‘criminal’ and ‘danger’ and ‘albanophobia’ settled for good and dominated the public imaginary during the whole decade of the 1990s until even the mid-2000s.” Ramet, Sabrina P. (2005). Serbia since 1989: Politics and Society under Milošević and After. University of Washington Press. p. 49. “For a comprehensive analysis of the role of media in the collapse of Yugoslavia, see Mark Thomson, Forging War: The Media in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina (Luton, U.K.: University of Luton Press, 1994). While all Croats were increasingly becoming associated with the Ustasha, Kosovar Albanians and Bosniaks were referred to as “Turks,” implying their supposed collaboration with Serbia’s historic enemy despite the fact that many Albanians had actually fought with the Serbs against the Ottoman invasion and that Bosnia’s Muslims are ethnically Slavs.”; p. 400. “After the outbreak of the war in 1991, the State Council of Education in Belgrade introduced new history textbooks in the elementary and secondary schools. As Dubravka Stojanović has shown, these textbooks cast Serbs as the perennial victims of their neighbors, and, using emotionally charged language in describing certain periods, offered pupils a picture of the world “brimming with xenophobic contempt and hatred for neighboring nations, [as well as for the] European and the world community.” In discussions of the Ottoman Empire, which ruled Serbia for roughly four centuries, the Christian subjects are described as “the enslaved peoples,” with every lesson “followed by a short passage taken from historical sources in which those who commit the described actions (usually atrocities) are called Turks.” Needless to say, there is no mention of the fact that, for most of this period, the Ottomans were more tolerant of both confessional diversity and linguistic diversity than any other state in Europe, with the partial exception of Prussia.”
Clark, Howard (2000). Civil resistance in Kosovo. Pluto Press. p.xx. “The claim to be ‘autochthonous’ has particular importance because Serbian authorities, regarding this as an Austrian-instilled myth, treat Albanians as immigrants and twice In the twentieth century they have sought to ‘repatriate’ Albanians to Turkey. Whatever their origins, Albanians and Serbs have coexisted in Kosovo for centuries.”
Moe, Christian (2014). "Religion in the Yugoslav conflicts: post-war perspectives." Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis. 19: 263-264. In Sells’s interpretation the national mythology thus ‘portrays Slavic Muslims as Christ killers and race traitors’ (1996: 27), identifies them with the Turks who killed Lazar, and unleashes on them the same violence that the blood libel called forth against Jews (p. xv). Sells likens the Serbian government’s use of nationalist propaganda and religious symbols around the commemoration of the 600th anniversary of the Kosovo battle (1989) to the medieval passion play, with its ability to collapse time and incite the audience to commit pogroms. He further interprets the Mountain Wreath as placing the killings ‘explicitly outside the category of the blood feud’, as the Muslim offer of a traditional ceremony of reconciliation is rejected by the Christians on the grounds that it requires baptism. Instead, the conflict becomes a ‘cosmic duality of good and evil’. Killing the ‘Turkifiers’ is explicitly referred to as a ‘baptism by blood’, and Sells argues, questionably, that the poem portrays this killing as ‘an act sacred in itself’ that is not sinful but cleansing (Sells 1996: 42–3) – here, we return to the notion of ‘atrocity as sacrament’. What matters is not whether this is a plausible reading of the 1847 poem, but whether similar readings informed behaviour in the 1990s, a question to be settled empirically. In any case, this only accounts for the demonising of Muslim Bosniaks and Albanians, not for the Croat–Serb conflict.”
Mertus, Julie (1999). Kosovo: How myths and truths started a war. University of California Press. p. 184–185. “The importance of the Kosovo myth to Serbian politics, as Gale Stokes has observed, “lies not in these actual histories but in its selection by the nationalists as the appropriate symbolic universe of Serbianness. It provides a vocabulary of experiences outside of time.” In 1989, the “great defeat” served as a reminder of Serbian suffering and the need for Serbs to defend even their motherland, Kosovo. Mention of the Ottoman Empire also triggered the image of the evil Turks — shorthand for all Muslims, including Kosovo Albanians (regardless of their religion) and Yugoslav (“Slavic”) Muslims, who were considered to be race traitors for converting to Islam during Ottoman rule. Milošević had long capitalized on the “vocabulary of experiences” created by the myth of Kosovo. For him, the anniversary extravaganza for the Battle of Kosovo was tailor made. He arrived at the ceremony by helicopter in a display of power and took the place of honor on a stage decorated with the emblems of Serbian nationalism — including an enormous Orthodox Cross encircled by four Cyrillic C’s (for the slogan “Only Unity/Harmony Saves the Serbs”). The entire federal leadership was in attendance to hear his warning: “Serbs in their history have never conquered or exploited others. Through two world wars, they liberated themselves and, when they could, they also helped other people to liberate themselves. The Kosovo heroism does not allow us to forget that at one time we were brave and dignified and one of the few who went into battle undefeated. Six centuries later, again we are in battles and quarrels. They are not armed battles, though such things cannot be excluded yet.” By capitalizing on the greatest myth in Serbian folklore, Milošević pitted Serbs not only against Albanians but also against the other enemy identified by the Kosovo myth: Slavic Muslims. It would be the last time the entire federal leadership would stand on the same stage in unity with Milošević.”
Brunnbauer, Ulf (2004). "Fertility, families and ethnic conflict: Macedonians and Albanians in the Republic of Macedonia, 1944–2002." Nationalities papers. 32. (3): 583. “Once communist power was established, the Albanians, and the Muslim communities in general, felt increasingly alienated from the state, for example, because of its anti-religious agenda, its ethnic Macedonian outlook, the strong Serbian influence, and its radical attempts to change the role of women…. This alienation from socialist transformation was among the reasons why thousands of Albanians emigrated as “Turks” to Turkey in the 1950s. Hence, the effects of discrimination by state authorities were multiplied by those of self-isolation.”
Skoulidas, Ilias (2001). "The Relations Between the Greeks and the Albanians during the 19th Century: Political Aspirations and Visions (1875-1897)". Didaktorika.gr. University of Ioannina: 265. doi:10.12681/eadd/12856. hdl:10442/hedi/12856. Μάλιστα, υπάρχει και πρόοδος στην όλη κατασκευή. Η εικόνα Τουρκαλβανός = Αλβανός και Τούρκος = ταύτιση στη μακρά διάρκεια, ανατρέπεται και προβάλλεται μια νέα εικόνα, όπου οι Έλληνες και οι Αλβανοί είναι οι δύο λαοί των Βαλκανίων, που δεν έχουν κοινούς δεσμούς με άλλους και πρέπει να βρίσκονται σε αγαστές σχέσεις. Έτσι, εμφανίζονται νέα μεικτά επίθετα. [ Indeed, there is progress in the whole structure. The image of Turco-Albanians = Albanians and Turks = identification in the long term, upset and displayed a new image, where Greeks and Albanians are the two peoples of the Balkans, who have no common bonds with others and must be in good faith relations. So was displayed new mixed adjectives.
Spahiu, Nexhmedin (2008). "The National Awakening process and the Orthodox Albanians." Forum Bosnae. 44: 307-308. After the independence of Greece, Greek schools in Albania were organized and furnished with new personnel, programs, and school books by the new Hellenic state. The history and literature taught in these schools indoctrinated pupils with Hellenic chauvinism towards the Muslims - a term that was used by them as a synonym for Turks. They considered Albanian Muslims not to be Albanians or Albanian Muslims, but just Muslims, i.e. Turks or sometimes Turcoalvanoi (Turco-albanians). The fact that there were Catholic Albanians in northern Albania was irrelevant to the Greeks, because that part was too far from the imagined future borders of the Hellenic state. Γκότοβος, Αθανάσιος (2013). "Ετερότητα και Σύγκρουση: Ταυτότητες στην Κατοχική Θεσπρωτία και ο Ρόλος της Μουσουλμανικής Μειονότητας". Επιστημονική Επετηρίδα Τμήματος Φιλολοσοφίας, Παιδαγωγικής, Ψυχολογίας. 36. University of Ioannina, Dodoni Journal: 36, 67.. p. 36 "Σε ό,τι αφορά τη λαϊκή γλώσσα, για τον προσδιορισμό της θρησκευτικής ταυτότητας στην περιοχή της Θεσπρωτίας (όπως και αλλού), επικρατούσε, τουλάχιστον μέχρι την κατοχή, ο όρος Τούρκοι για την αναφορά σε Μουσουλμάνους, ανεξαρτήτως καταγωγής, γλώσσας και εθνότητας. Ο ίδιος προσδιορισμός είναι σε χρήση ακόμη και σήμερα από άτομα της τρίτης ηλικίας που ζουν στην περιοχή." (In the popular language, for the characterization of the religious identity in Thesprotia (as well as elsewhere), it was common, at least till the German Occupation, the term "Turks" for the muslims, independently of origin, language and nationality. The same characterization is still used today by elderly people living in the area.) Baltsiotis, Lambros (2011). "The Muslim Chams of Northwestern Greece: The grounds for the expulsion of a "non-existent" minority community". European Journal of Turkish Studies. Social Sciences on Contemporary Turkey (12). European Journal of Turkish Studies. doi:10.4000/ejts.4444. "Until the Interwar period Arvanitis (plural Arvanitēs) was the term used by Greek speakers to describe an Albanian speaker regardless of his/hers religious background. In official language of that time the term Alvanos was used instead. The term Arvanitis coined for an Albanian speaker independently of religion and citizenship survives until today in Epirus (see Lambros Baltsiotis and Léonidas Embirikos, “De la formation d’un ethnonyme. Le terme Arvanitis et son evolution dans l’État hellénique”, in G. Grivaud-S. Petmezas (eds.), Byzantina et Moderna, Alexandreia, Athens, 2006, pp. 417–448."
