History
Turkish settlement into Kosovo began in the early fourteenth century after the medieval Serbian state lost the Battle of Kosovo and the territory came under Ottoman rule. Substantial waves of Turkish colonisers began from 1389-1455 when, during the Ottoman conquest, soldiers, officials, and merchants began to make their appearance in the major towns of Kosovo. However, the Ottoman Turks lost control over Kosovo in 1912, and Kosovo joined the Kingdom of Serbia. From this point, Kosovo as a political entity was discontinued as the region was divided among new administrative units within Serbia's framework. Following the Austrian and Bulgarian occupation during World War I, Serbia became part of the newly created Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918. When the Axis powers occupied Yugoslavia in 1941, the former territory of Kosovo became part of Albania, which was itself controlled by Italy. With the defeat of the Axis powers, Yugoslavia, then ruled by Communists led by Josip Broz Tito, regained control over the region. In 1946, Kosovo returned to maps when a region baring the name Kosovo and Metohija was granted autonomous status within FPR Yugoslavia. Meanwhile, Turks officially became a recognised minority by Yugoslavia; as a result, the number of registered Turks in Kosovo jumped from a mere 1,313 (or 0.2% of the population) in 1948 to 34,343 (4.3% of Kosovo's population) in the 1953 census. However, many Turkish inhabitants began to emigrate to Turkey until 1958 on the basis of a bilingual contract between Yugoslavia and Turkey.
| Turks in Kosovo according to official censuses | |||||||
| Year of census | Turks | % of total population | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1921 | 27,920 | 6.3% | |||||
| 1931 | 23,698 | 4.3% | |||||
| 1939 | 24,946 | 3.8% | |||||
| 1948 | 1,315 | 0.2% | |||||
| 1953 | 34,583 | 4.3% | |||||
| 1961 | 25,784 | 2.7% | |||||
| 1971 | 12,224 | 1.0% | |||||
| 1981 | 12,513 | 0.8% | |||||
Read more about this topic: Turks In Kosovo
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)