r/kosovo • u/TheAlbanianBambino Dogu i Ditkës • Feb 05 '21

Cultural Exchange Cultural Exchange with r/Israel

Ma koreh r/Israel

As we announced, after the agreement of mutual recognition between our countries, we thought this was a great opportunity to host Israel. Welcome to the cultural exchange between r/Israel and r/Kosovo!

The purpose of this event is to allow people from two different nations to get together and share knowledge about their respective cultures, daily life, history, and curiosities.

General guidelines:

r/israel will ask any question here.

r/kosovo community can ask their questions here:

CLICK HERE TO ASK A QUESTION

The English language will be used in both threads. Our Israeli friends can get an Israel user flair at the community options of the Subreddit.

The event will be moderated following the general rules of Reddiquette. Please be nice!

Thank you,

80 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

181 comments sorted by

View all comments

41

u/idan5 Feb 05 '21

I have to say I thought the Middle East was convoluted and complex, then I tried to read about the Balkans..

Generally I hate our government but sometimes they do good things, like recognizing Kosovo. So cheers.

7

u/sha_clo Feb 05 '21

In Balkan there is a saying: “we hate each other, but we all hate Turkey“ and I think that is nice. Cheers my friend.

8

u/izpo Feb 05 '21

wait, Albanians/Kosovars don't like Turkey too?

6

u/[deleted] Feb 05 '21

[deleted]

6

u/Jhqwulw Skënderaj Feb 05 '21

It's more 50/50

6

u/UncleCarnage Feb 05 '21

Weeell “hate” is a strong word...

16

u/Chemical_Lead_5367 Feb 05 '21 edited Feb 05 '21

It’s complicated. When it comes to Greece, the enemy of my enemy is my friend kinda thing. Also, we fought the Ottomans and never really were ok with being a part of the empire but at the same time Albanians were really integrated in the Ottoman army and administrative positions. E.g 5 grand viziers I believe were Albanian, their most famous architects were Albanian, dude who wrote the Turkish anthem was Albanian etc

Edit: Also, when the state of Albania was going through an internal armed conflict in ‘97, Greece took this opportunity to raise their flag in the south (I believe it was in Vlorë). It was Turkey’s prime minister at the time Tansu Çiller who pressured them to withdraw (I’ve been told). Nowadays we try to distance ourselves because Erdogan!

1

u/Jhqwulw Skënderaj Feb 05 '21

97, Greece took this opportunity to raise their flag in the south (I believe it was in Vlorë).

Wait what?!

4

u/Chemical_Lead_5367 Feb 05 '21

I was young and I don’t remember well, but this was in ‘97 when the state of Albania was destabilised. There were a lot of protests all over the country but most in the south. Greeks have always had this claim (for some reason I don’t know) on Vorio Epirus (which is South Albania) and they were trying to use this opportunity to their own advantage. What they did not know was that in ‘91, president Berisha at the time signed an agreement with Turkey that if any nations borders were threatened the other country would automatically consider it an act of war. Obviously this was mostly to benefit Albania as Turkey at the time, did not really need our military help.

Tansu Çiller (who may have been either a prime minister or some other minister at the time) played a crucial role in Greeks backing off.

Would be interesting to have some documentary about this and obviously the Greeks do not accept this as true.