Turkey, Serbia, Kosovo and Sokullu Mehmet Pasha

Will there be a conflict in the Balkans, which are still haunted by the tragic memories of the 1990s and the dissolution of Yugoslavia, at the first sign of tension? It’s normal to be worried.

Similar worries were voiced during the most recent hostilities between Kosovo and Serbia. Some others raised the risk that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine would escalate and involve the Balkans as well as a broad frontal conflict between Russia and the West.

After the military activity on the border line and the alerting of the Serbian army, the crisis began the pacification phase. The Kosovo court commuted the former Serbian police officer Dejan Pantic’s arrest, which had caused unrest, to house arrest, and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic demanded the removal of the barriers.

Although there are currently less tensions, conflict dynamics are still active and will likely remain so in the foreseeable future.

We spoke with political scientist Stevan Gajich, a researcher at the Institute of European Studies in Belgrade, to better grasp the Serbian government’s viewpoint on the matter. Stevan Gajich preferred to respond to our inquiries by covering a wide range of historical periods, starting with the present and moving forward to Sokullu Mehmet Pasha and the Austro-Hungarian empire.

• The border region between Serbia and Kosovo is a particularly complicated and contested situation. We want to understand ongoing developments and conflict dynamics. Is there a connection between the recent destabilizing actions from both sides and the crisis in Ukraine?

The connection is that Albin Kurti, the Prime Minister of what we call the interim institutions of Kosovo and Metohija, is trying to use the crisis in Eastern Europe in order to form an anti-Serbian coalition to pronounce Serbs as Russians in the Mediterranean or the Southeast as part of Europe. He is a troublemaker, somebody who should be dealt with severely and so on. So that’s the connection. Another thing is how it is all happened. It happened because the Albanians are not recognizing the agreements that they have signed, their own Parliament ratifies, the so-called Brussels agreements twice, in 2013 and 2015. According to the agreement which Serbia, by the way, has fulfilled, the only concession that the Albanians made was that they should establish that the community of Serbian municipalities of Kosovo-Metohija. However, Kurti says that he does not respect the Resolution 1244 and he does not respect the Brussels Agreement and so on and so forth. So what did the Serbs do? They left institutions, and that means that the ethnic Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija left the police. So what did Albanians do? They arrested some of the policemen as if these people were involved in war crimes, terrorism and some other nonsense. But the thing is if they knew that, how come that there wasn’t an issue when they were hiring the policeman or when they were in the police force, so this is of course only form of pressure. Also the Albanian Special Forces entered into the Serbian village of Velika Hoča, which is in the south of Mitrovica in Metohija. It is a Serbian village, ancient one, with some 13 medieval period Serbian Orthodox churches. And they entered and they’ve seized 40,000 liters of wine from a family. By the way, for all the families there, their only means of existence is production and selling of wine. They seized 40,000 liters, mixed it all up, which means that they destroyed it. And this was, of course, a form of economic pressure on the Serbs to leave. That’s what the what it is. Also the ‘independent observers’ there was the KFOR troops from Albania, so Albanians were controlling Albanians  Serbs. I mean this is really outrageous. After the arrest of the policeman, Serbs have formed barricades in the form of protest and that’s it. And then Kurti started to threaten with weapons and killing Serbs. Of course, Serbia had to react and to show that if such an attempt happens. And I must remind you, there’s two huge pogroms happened in front of NATO forces. One was in 1999 while Serbian army was leaving, and NATO was entering and the second one was in 2004 when Kosovo was already under total control of NATO. On both occasions, Serbian churches were burned, so Serbs were expelled from their homes. And some 200,000 Serbs were expelled from Kosovo and Metohija, which is a huge number for that province. Basically, that’s what happens.

• Does Russia support you (the Serbian side) in waging such a conflict with Kosovo? Do you believe it is conceivable to receive military assistance from Moscow while the Ukraine War is still raging?

The help from Russia is important in regard to Kosovo and Metohija issue. Their most valuable help so far has been the support of the international law, the support of the territorial integrity of Serbia on all of its territory, including Kosovo and Metohija, supporting the resolution of 44 and supporting the Serbian constitution. So that was repeated now and there was strong assurance that Russia will continue this support. They have, of course, reacted in that respect but there was no one talking about some kind of military support. Of course, Serbia has a military cooperation with Russia, but it also has a military cooperation with NATO. It’s even more. The military activities with NATO is more frequent than that of Russia and every year statistics show that.

•  Elections for the local municipality were delayed until April 2023. Additionally, the Kosova government reversed its decision about license plates, although tension is still increasing. What steps will reduce the tension, and what does Serbia think about it?

This is only delaying of the open issues. We’ll see what comes next. The point is that Kurti was doing these things solo, maybe with the support of the Great Britain and Germany, because Germany and some EU countries openly supported them and said the Serbs should leave the barricades, although they did not say anything about Albanians not respecting the Brussels Agreement and also about them treating the Serbs. They always called on ‘both sides’ for calmness, which is a sheer hypocrisy from their side. That’s about it. Neither the license plate issue nor the election issue is solved, so we’ll see what comes next. What is important is basically the Americans. We’re not satisfied by what Kurti did. Similarly let’s took Suez Crisis, where France and Britain attacked Egypt. Americans were against that and humiliated them. This time Americans were against what Kurti was doing while he was getting support from England, Germany, and the EU. That is important. I mean this so-called German and French initiative, which is outrageous, calls Serbia to recognize independence of Kosovo as a state which is really a very salty joke from their side while the agreements that were already signed, where the EU was a mediator, were not respected. That is what also happened in Ukraine with Minsk 1 and 2. Even the Serbian President, which is mentioned in Merkel’s interview, says that obviously the EU behaves hypocritically and that it’s lying in all these cases.

•  Why did the Serbian army place itself in an alert state? Is there nothing else or options to do than  using army? Is there a specific goal or road map for the Vucic government, or what is the aim of Belgrade?

The high alert of Serbian army was the right thing to do because obviously that was the only way for Serbia to explain the so-called international community. Oh, what a racist term because when you say the international community, it only applies for the political West. To explain them that Serbia will not stand by while their people are being maltreated or even killed or expelled, which was also a possibility, they did what it had to do and it was the right decision. The message was received. That’s why, Serbian policemen are freed. I think that the Americans again are the ones who have pressured the Albanians, and that’s why. You can say that it was by Kurti’s reaction, because once the Serbian policeman Dejan Pantic was released, he said that he wants to see this judge who did that this is outrageous, which means basically Americans demonstrated to Kurti that they have means on influencing things in Kosovo and Metohija even if he is behaving badly.

• What does Serbia envision for the future? Does Serbia intend to join the EU and NATO? If Serbia’s future plans include joining the EU and NATO, wouldn’t that necessitate recognizing Kosovo as a sovereign state?

No, Serbia is definitely not going to join NATO. That’s an official position because Serbia has a status of a neutral state, according to a parliamentary resolution in 2007. It’s definitely not joining NATO. Serbia is officially on the EU path, but in a similar way like Turkey. The Serbians’ road to EU is not going anywhere. And this is what I like to call a Japanese kabuki theater where the EU is pretending that they want us and Serbian authorities are pretending that we are getting there, and nothing is going on. The EU is falling apart after Brexit definitely, and now the Ukrainian crisis showed all the impotence of EU. Especially Berlin but also Paris are being bullied not only by Washington and London, but even by Kyiv, which is humiliating. Why would Serbia want to join such an impotent organization? The EU has also been very arrogant toward the Serbs. They have promised that they will accept us, but in the Salonika meeting in 2003, nothing happens. There is a fatigue among the Serbian society. The majority of Serbs, according to all the sociological data, do not want to join the EU even if they would accept to take us tomorrow. This is really not an issue, both NATO and especially EU are not an issue. We are looking at other options. I’m glad that Turkey is also joining many of the other international organizations, especially Eurasian initiatives, and I think that that’s where in the future Serbs and Turks will meet in some other form of associations on the Eurasian continent, but the EU as a political wing of NATO and as a relic of the Cold War has lost its meaning. I think one of the reasons for the Americans to provoke this proxy war with Russia in Ukraine is to reoccupy Western Europe and Europe as a whole. I think that London and Washington were not happy about Berlin getting more powerful. Look at now what’s happening. The German economy is being destroyed from within by agents of North Atlantic influence such as Annalena Baerbock and other politicians like Schultz, who are too weak to do anything about it. France is a bit more independent, but still not so much. Why would we want to go and enter a sinking ship, which is the EU? Although the rhetoric from the state will still be that the EU is our strategic goal. That’s what the officials will say, but even they don’t say it as often. They say that there is fatigue in the population, which is certainly true. That’s the situation.

• What if Serbia decides to recognize Kosovo? Would it be feasible if Serbia and Kosovo exchanged some contested land?

A simple answer is no, Serbia will not recognize Kosovo. There won’t be any exchange of territories. This was an issue until late 2018, but it was highly unpopular both amongst the Serbs and the Albanians from Kosovo. When we had the previous tensions in that period, they all look as if it was some kind of a show between Vucic and Rama. I think one of the directors was Alex Soros, who was also the initiator of the so-called Open Balkans Initiative, which is basically a NATO’s initiative. I don’t think that this is feasible, this won’t happen. We will not recognize Kosovo and this idea of exchanging territories is definitely dead. Why would Serbs exchange their territory for their territory? All of Kosovo and Metohija is a part of Serbia and, of course, other territories in Serbia are also part of Serbia. This is not going to happen, thank God, I would say, and it is good that these ideas have been abandoned.

• Turkey is the first country to recognize Kosovo as a state, and it currently has excellent relations with Serbia. Do you believe Ankara might function as a mediator?

I think that Turkey and Serbia have common interests, but Turkey has to change its policies. I think that Turkey should look at their best partner and ally, which is Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan recognizes Serbia in all of its territory. Turkey, unfortunately, is selling bioreactors to Kosovo, which is a separatist government. It is also a grave mistake. Another grave mistake, and this is something that the Turks don’t know, is that the Kosovo Albanians have been very aggressively assimilating the Turks from Kosovo-Metohija because there are some other autonomous Turks, especially in the city of Prizren. These people are forcefully being assimilated into Albanians. There is another thing that Turkey does not realize. Albania and Albanian nationalism from the first day were a Roman Catholic project, and this is what I don’t know why people and policymakers in Turkey don’t understand. There’s an Albanian scholar from Tirana called Olsi Jazexhi and he’s saying exactly the same thing. Turkey is being portrayed as an enemy in the official Albanian history books, in the made-up Albanian history. Well, why is it made-up? There is an excellent book by Teodora Toleva, a Bulgarian scholar. She died prematurely but she wrote a book called ‘Austro Hungarian Influence on the Creation of Albanian Nation’. Everything is fake there, from the flag that was created in a studio in Vienna in the 20^th century to things like language, which was standardized by the Vienna Court and the Habsburgs. What is important I would say for Turks to know is that all the Albanian elites are either Roman Catholic or crypto-Catholic. Ibrahim Rugova was a crypto-Catholic. He was the one who was portrayed as Albanian Nelson Mandela or something like that. By the way, his life was saved by the Serbian secret police several times because the KLA structures wanted to murder him. Once the terrorist was killed on the wall of his house. He was trying to assassinate Rugova but the Serbian police has prevented that. Rugova was a crypto-Catholic. Hashim Thaçi had a photo with him and the Pope on the central part of his cabinet. Eddie Rama, Prime Minister of Albania, was born as an Orthodox Christian and he converted to what? To Roman Catholicism. Ramush Haradinaj said ‘yes, I’m a Muslim, but we were all Catholics’, and he held the picture of Mother Teresa in his cabinet. Mother Teresa, by the way, allegedly an Albanian from Macedonia, is being praised like an Albanian hero. In Macedonia, while all the Albanians are Muslims, Sunni Muslims, why on Earth would they celebrate a Roman Catholic saint? This is completely nonsense. But that is part of the policy of Vatican, Austria-Hungary, and Italy in the past, which created Albania and Albanian nationalism as a Roman Catholic project with one problem. The problem is how you take a population 70% of which is Muslim and then try to make Roman Catholics out of them. Well, you take their elites and that’s what was done in the past and what is done now. Another thing is when you enter the city of Prizren, there is a huge Inacio Loyola Jesuit gymnasium. The real conflict in Kosovo is not between Serbs and Albanians, but it is between Islam and Roman Catholicism within the Albanian community and I would say even in the past among Muslims that the conflict was between Turkey and the Gulf states that were financing all the Arab looking mosques as opposed to Ottoman mosques. You have these white, small, thin minarets all over Kosovo-Metohija and Macedonia and in South Serbia, which is financed by the monarchies from the Gulf, from the Persian Gulf. That’s another thing. If you look at Albanian history, what the Austrians did is that they took a person of mid-level importance from Serbian history, which is George Kastrioti Skanderbeg. Then they have proclaimed that he is an Albanian and now he’s an Albanian national hero, although his mother’s name is Voisava. His parents and his brothers are buried in the Serbian Monastery, Hilandar in Mount Athos in Greece. How can on earth he be Albanian if his parents are Serbs? But this doesn’t matter. This is only a detail. The point is that both political project of Albanians and political project of Bosnians in Bosnia is a Western project from day one, before the entrance of Austro-Hungarian Empire in Bosnia, which happened after the Berlin Congress. Even in 1878, all the Serbs who took Islam would be called Turks because, as you know, the Ottoman Empire had a millet system, so you can be black, Chinese, Serb, white, Georgian, Armenian, Greek, whatever. But if you are Muslim, that makes you a Turk. So, they were Turks. But once the Austro-Hungarian Empire took Bosnia and Herzegovina and later in 1908 annexed it, which almost provoked World War One back then. They have gone with this Bosniazation of Muslims in the Balkans, Serbian speaking Muslims. They created these Bosnians. And that is why politically whatever Turkey does, even if Turkey stands on its head, the Bosnian Muslims are always going to be a player of NATO. Before that, the Austria-Hungarian Empire simply set the political West. And if you have noticed also during the 90s, while Muslims were being killed in Iraq, the only Muslims who were supported by the West was the Albanians and the Bosnians, the Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina. And how both these sides view Turkey as a payer, as somebody who is paying for their bills, but they never give real concessions to Turkey. If Albanians are assimilating Turks into Albanians, and if they’re teaching their history, the Turks are always an enemy.

What were we talking about? Serbs and Turks have to make a new deal, but the serious one this time, because there are issues when where we can really come on the same page. Let me remind you one thing, the Greater Serbia was made by a person who was the greatest grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire, and that is Mehmet Sokoli Pasha or Mehmed Pasha Sokolovic as we call him, or Bajica Sokolovich, because he was a Serb and he knew he was a Serb. He became a janissary. He was taken not as a child but as a teenager, so he is student at a monastery. He was already literate. He was a very ambitious young man, and he was the grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire during the three empires and during the greatest peak of power of the Ottoman Empire. Serbs, as you know, had an empire in Kosovo. Metohija was the capital of (…). It was Prizren. I’ve mentioned Prizren, because the Turks also lived there but are really being, as I said, assimilated by the Albanians. The capital then moved to Skopje, which is now the capital of Northern Macedonia. However, Serbs have this, let’s say, tradition, even a tradition of the Byzantine or Roman Empire. It’s something that the Ottoman Empire became after 1453. If Turkey really wants to be serious with the cooperation with the Serbs, then it has to make a new deal. Let’s speak but let’s speak seriously. A serious talk would start by calling things by their names. Once Erdogan did that, when he was in 2007, if I’m not mistaken, in Sarajevo, he said basically to Bosnian Muslims, ‘we love you and all of that, but you are the same people with your neighbors’, meaning ‘with other Serbians’. And this is, of course, something that Bosnians call themselves now. See, when they live in Turkey, they understand that they are Serbs of Muslim faith, that Turkey is their country and that’s it. I mean they don’t have this identity problem. Whereas the Bosnians are constantly and basically in this limbo, that was again created by the West, it was created by Austria-Hungary Empire out of their political interest because Austro-Hungarian Empire was afraid. It was afraid of the new countries that emerged after the Ottoman Empire left or was defeated, or call it whatever you want, in the Balkans. They were afraid of Greece and Serbia having a huge common border, which is why Albanian nationalism was created as a Catholic project to be something between. So from out of different people of three religions, because Albanians are also Orthodox Muslim and Roman Catholic, they created one nation out of two languages, which is Albanian. Out of Gheg of the North and Tosk of the South, they created one language. And some people like Count Thalloczy and Benjamin Kalaj did completely the opposite thing in Bosnia from one people of three religions. I’m talking about Serbs. Out of Roman Catholic Serbs, Orthodox Christian Serbs, which is the majority of Serbs, and Serbs of Muslim faith, who were called Turks during the Ottoman Empire, they created three nations. They wanted to create three nations. Why? Because they were afraid that this huge mass of people can become a serious political power in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And that’s what happened at the end. You know that Mlada Bosna, Young Bosnia, a guerrilla Gavrilo Princip who shot Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28th of June 1914. He was a member of an organization called Mlada Bosna, which means Young Bosnia. And this organization had people of all three religions in Bosnia. It had, for instance, Mustafa Golovich, who was a Muslim. It had Ivo Andric, the famous writer who was a Roman Catholic. It had Cabrinovic and Gavrilo Princip who were Orthodox. All of them considered themselves to be Serbs or Yugoslavs, as they say. Back then these two things were synonyms. They were against the Austrians artificially dividing the people.

If Turkey and Serbia can have a serious conversation about strategic partnership, not about mid-level good relations but about the strategic partnership and if Turkey mediates between the people of the same language and explains to the Muslims that Serbs, meaning Orthodox, are not their enemies, that they are their brothers. If these things happen, then there can be a serious cooperation. If Turkey continues to recognize Kosovo, if it threatens that it will sell Bayraktars, then this partnership can only be superficial. I mean I’m very frank in this interview and this is the whole truth when it comes to the relations between Serbia and Turkey. We have a good foundation on which we can build. And not all of our history is a history of animosity, because of Mehmed Sokoli Pasha. I didn’t mention why I said that he created the greatest great Serbia. It is the fact that he re-opened and restored the Serbian Patriarchate. Where? İn Pec in Kosovo-Metohija. And he has placed his brother, Macaria Sokolovic, as the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church and the jurisdiction of the Serbian Orthodox Church at that time was huge. It was all of Rumeli, as the Turks say, and all the way up to today’s Hungary. So, the jurisdiction was very big. And that was done by an Ottoman grand vizier. For instance, and that is not the only example, there is a great warrior Omar Pasha Latas who was helping the Reformation of the Ottoman Empire. He fought for it in the mid-19^th century. The history is more about shades of grey than black and white and I think that there are these things where we can cooperate on serious grounds, but there must be some kind of frankness and of openness for that from the Turkish side. And if there is not those things like that, there can’t be a serious conversation about really strategic partnership. And again, I can say that look at Azerbaijan, look at the development of the Serbian-Azerbaijani relations, which is really getting better and better. And Azerbaijan respect Serbia. It respects Serbian interests and Serbian territorial integrity. And this is why it is Azerbaijan also highly respected by Serbia. That’s my opinion on the possible development of the Serbo-Turkish relations in the future.