ترحيل_الألبان_1877–1878
واجهت السلطات العثمانية صعوبات في تلبية حاجات اللاجئين، وتصرفت بعداء تجاه الصرب المحليين، وأقدمت على شن هجمات انتقامية. تم ترحيل السكان الألبان من هذه المناطق بأسلوب يمكن تصنيفه اليوم على أنه تطهير عرقي، إذ لم يكن الضحايا كلهم من المقاتلين، بل كان بينهم مدنيون أيضًا. بات يُشار إلى هؤلاء اللاجئين الألبان وذريتهم في اللغة الألبانية بكلمة «مهاجر Muhaxhir»، وجمعها Muhaxhirë، وهي كلمة شاملة للاجئين المسلمين (مستعارة من المفردة التركية العثمانية: Muhacir، ومشتقة من الكلمة العربية «مهاجر»). أدت أحداث هذه الفترة إلى اندلاع النزاع الصربي الألباني وتوتر العلاقات بين الشعبين.. "In 1878, following a series of Christian uprisings against the Ottoman Empire, the Russo-Turkish War, and the Berlin Congress, Serbia gained complete independence, as well as new territories in the Toplica and Kosanica regions adjacent to Kosovo. These two regions had a sizable Albanian population which the Serbian government decided to deport. The Serbian Army Commander insisted that Serbia 'should not have its Caucasus' and the Prime Minister argued that the Albanian minority might represent a security concern. In 1909, Serbian intellectual Jovan Hadži-Vasiljević explained that the major motivation for the 1878 deportation was also to 'create a pure Serbian nation state' by 'cleansing' the land of the non-Christians, as 'the great Serbian poet Njegoš argued'. Hadži-Vasiljević was here interpreting Njegoš rather loosely, as Njegoš work focused on the Slavonic Muslims and not on Albanian Muslims. The ominous implication was that Albanians, as non-Slavs, were not even capable of assimilation. While the Serbian state authorities repeatedly attempted to assimilate the Slavonic Muslims, they refrained from attempting to 'Serbianize' the Albanians. While both security concerns and the exclusive nationalist ideology influenced the government's policies, there was also some Serbian resistance to the 'cleansing' of the Albanians. General Jovan Belimarkovic opposed the deportation and offered his resignation to the government over this issue and journalist Manojlo Đjorđjević also condemned these policies and argued that Serbia should have pursued a policy of peaceful reconciliation towards the Albanians. In Toplica the Albanians were encountered, and we had nothing more important to do but to expel these warlike, but hard-working people from their homes. Instead of making a peace with them as the defeated side – they were without any good reason pushed across the border – so that they'll settle on the other side as the enemies of everything Serbian, to become the avengers towards those who pushed them from their homes. Despite some voices of dissent, the Serbian regime 'encouraged' about 71,000 Muslims, including 49,000 Albanians, 'to leave'. The regime then gradually settled Serbs and Montenegrins in these territories. Prior to 1878, the Serbs comprised not more than one half of the population of Nis, the largest city in the region; by 1884 the Serbian share rose to 80 per cent. According to Ottoman sources, Serbian forces also destroyed mosques in Leskovac, Prokuplje, and Vranje." ; p.470. "The 'cleansing' of Toplica and Kosanica would have long-term negative effects on Serbian-Albanian relations. The Albanians expelled from these regions moved over the new border to Kosovo, where the Ottoman authorities forced the Serb population out of the border region and settled the refugees there. Janjićije Popović, a Kosovo Serb community leader in the period prior to the Balkan Wars, noted that after the 1876–8 wars, the hatred of the Turks and Albanians towards the Serbs 'tripled'. A number of Albanian refugees from Toplica region, radicalized by their experience, engaged in retaliatory violence against the Serbian minority in Kosovo. In 1900 Živojin Perić, a Belgrade Professor of Law, noted that in retrospect, 'this unbearable situation probably would not have occurred had the Serbian government allowed Albanians to stay in Serbia'. He also argued that conciliatory treatment towards Albanians in Serbia could have helped the Serbian government to gain the sympathies of Albanians of the Ottoman Empire. Thus, while both humanitarian concerns and Serbian political interests would have dictated conciliation and moderation, the Serbian government, motivated by exclusive nationalist and anti-Muslim sentiments, chose expulsion. The 1878 cleansing was a turning point because it was the first gross and large-scale injustice committed by Serbian forces against the Albanians. From that point onward, both ethnic groups had recent experiences of massive victimization that could be used to justify 'revenge' attacks. Furthermore, Muslim Albanians had every reason to resist the incorporation into the Serbian state." . "This period also saw a deterioration in relations between the Muslims and Christians of Kosovo. The prime cause of this was the mass expulsion of Muslims from the lands taken over by Serbia, Bulgaria and Montenegro in 1877-8. Almost all the Muslims (except, as we have seen, some Gypsies) were expelled from the Morava valley region: there had been hundreds of Albanian villages there, and significant Albanian populations in towns such as Prokuplje, Leskovac and Vranje. A Serbian schoolmaster in Leskovac later recalled that the Muslims had been driven out in December 1877 at a time of intense cold: 'By the roadside, in the Gudelica gorge and as far as Vranje and Kumanovo, you could see the abandoned corpses of children, and old men frozen to death.' Precise figures are lacking, but one modern study concludes that the whole region contained more than 110,000 Albanians. By the end of 1878 Western officials were reporting that there were 60,000 families of Muslim refugees in Macedonia, 'in a state of extreme destitution', and 60-70,000 Albanian refugees from Serbia 'scattered' over the vilayet of Kosovo. Albanian merchants who tried to stay on in Niš were subjected to a campaign of murders, and the property of those who left was sold off at one per cent of its value. In a petition of 1879 a group of Albanian refugees from the Leskovac area complained that their houses, mills, mosques and tekkes had all been demolished, and that 'The material arising from these demolitions, such as masonry and wood, has been sold, so that if we go back to our hearths we shall find no shelter.' This was not, it should be said, a matter of spontaneous hostility by local Serbs. Even one of the Serbian Army commanders had been reluctant to expel the Albanians from Vranje, on the grounds that they were a quiet and peaceful people. But the orders came from the highest levels in Belgrade: it was Serbian state policy to create an ethnically 'clean' territory. And in an act of breath-taking cynicism, Ivan Yastrebov, the vice-consul in Kosovo of Serbia's protector-power, Russia, advised the governor of the vilayet not to allow the refugees to return to Serbia, on the grounds that their presence on Ottoman soil would usefully strengthen the Muslim population. All these new arrivals were known as muhaxhirs (Trk.: muhacir Srb.: muhadžir), a general word for Muslim refugees. The total number of those who settled in Kosovo is not known with certainty: estimates ranged from 20,000 to 50,000 for Eastern Kosovo, while the governor of the vilayet gave a total of 65,000 in 1881, some of whom were in the sancaks of Skopje and Novi Pazar. At a rough estimate, 50,000 would seem a reasonable figure for those muhaxhirs of 1877-8 who settled in the territory of Kosovo itself. Apart from the Albanians, smaller numbers of Muslim Slavs came from Montenegro and Bosnia."