Language Rights of the Turkish Minority in Kosovo
Language Rights of the Turkish Minority in Kosovo

Author(s): Fahri Türk, Sencar Karamucho
Subject(s): Language studies, Language and Literature Studies, Law, Constitution, Jurisprudence
Published by: Scientia Kiadó
Summary/Abstract: In the era of Ex-Yugoslavia, the Turks of Kosovo established their own political institutions such as Doğru Yol Derneği (Association of True Path) in 1951 in Prizren. As the Turks gained their political, cultural and educational rights, the Yugoslav Government amended the constitution of the state in 1974, which paved the way to introduce a new Language Rights charter for all the minorities within the Republic. The 1974 Amendment made Turkish an official language besides Albanian and Serbian languages in the autonomous republic of Kosovo. Following this development, a Language Rights charter came in 1977, which guaranteed the use of Turkish language in the local administrations. Through the realization of this amendment, the Turks in Kosovo got the right to use their native language in public places and received identity cards in Turkish. As the Albanian people of Kosovo started to fight for their independence from Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic started a serbifying policy in the autonomous region of Kosovo that led to banning the Turkish language in public places as well as in the educational sphere. In the post-cold war era, the Turks of Kosovo established the Association of Turkish Democrats (Türk Demokrat Birliği) that tried to protect the rights of Turks in Kosovo in the fields of education, culture and language. The Association of Turkish Democrats became a political party in the first half of 2000 and is called Democratic Turkish Party of Kosovo (Kosova Demokratik Türk Partisi). The Constitutional Framework for Republic of Kosovo came into force in 2001, but it could not restore the language rights of the Turks in Kosovo, which they had gained through the 1974 Amendment. The Turks of Kosovo could not regain their language rights within the new language law of 2006, which allowed the use of Turkish only in the District of Municipality of Prizren. This study will clarify the conditions under which the Turkish language has lost its official language status. The attitudes of the Turkish elites and the Turkish people of Kosovo towards the loss of their language will be explored with the help of the interview method. In this context, it is very important to explain what role the Democratic Turkish Party of Kosovo and The Turkish Government in Ankara played in losing the language rights of the Turkish minority in Kosovo.

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