Petrit Latifi

In 1899, the Greek magazine “Hellenism” published an announcement signed by the gentlemen: Shehu, Boçari and Xhavella, which, among other things, read “In the war of 1821 that Greece waged against Turkey, our race, the Albanian race, also fought, and with our help Greece was liberated. Among so many heroes we remember those of Hydra, Species and Kranidhi.

The most numerous heroes of the story were the Albanians of Sul of Himara, Athens, Thebes, Livadhia, Corinth, and from many places in the Morea that still speak Albanian today. In addition to Christian Albanians, there were also 3500 Muslim Albanians who fought alongside the Greeks against the Turks. We are about to tell a lie, brothers, if we claim that the Albanians liberated Greece”.

Koumundero

In a document of the Greek Foreign Minister, Koumundero, from 1881, sent to the German Kingdom for assistance, it is stated, among other things, that: “even after fifty years of the independent Greek state, a large part of the population in Morea, which is very ethnically unified, does not give up its Albanian identity, that is why Albanians are fought ethnically,”.

He further notes that “even in Athens itself, as in Morea (Peloponnese), over 70 thousand people speak only the Albanian language, without knowing a single word of Greek.”, further asserting that “it is a question of a homogeneous ethnicity that has been known as such for at least ten centuries in this aforementioned area.”

In the satirical photo below, through visual art, the painful truth is skillfully expressed, where only the Albanian fought against the Ottoman Empire, and in the background, the “Greek” newly created by the Great Powers, tries to tear as much land as possible from European Turkey, as these Powers called the Balkans, but which was nothing more than Natural Albania.