Albanian history cannot be read with fear. It cannot be read with closed eyes. It cannot be read with imperial nostalgia, religious fanaticism, or beautiful fairy tales of “coexistence” — when at the end of it all there remained a wounded nation, a forbidden language, a delayed identity, and a dismembered land.
The Ottoman Empire was not a neutral administration over the Albanians. It was a conquering empire that for centuries held Albanian lands as fiscal, military, and strategic property. It took taxes, took sons, took blood, took forced loyalty, suppressed uprisings, banned the language, blocked schools, weakened national consciousness, and in the end, when its imperial body was collapsing, no longer protected the Albanian. It left him on diplomatic tables as border booty.
In the language of international treaties this is called territorial loss, cession, partition, annexation. But in the language of the Albanian wound, it was the political sale of a people who for centuries had been used as cheap labor, cannon fodder, and land for bargaining.
The Empire that did not recognize the Albanian as a nation
For centuries, Albanians lived within the Ottoman Empire not as a nation with national rights, but as part of a system where the main political identity was religion and loyalty to the Sultan. The Albanian was not recognized as Albanian in the modern national sense; he was placed in religious, administrative, and military categories. This was the first and longest blow: the displacement of identity from nation to empire.
Albanians were Muslim, Catholic, Orthodox, Bektashi; but above all they were Albanian. The Empire did not want to see this truth, because an Albanian who knew himself as Albanian became a political danger. An Albanian who demanded Albanian-language schools, Albanian administration, an Albanian alphabet, and national autonomy was no longer simply a subject. He was a people awakening.
And the awakening of the Albanians was seen by the Sublime Porte as a problem, not as a right.
Britannica describes the League of Prizren as the first Albanian nationalist organization, formed in 1878 to defend Albanian lands from partition that threatened to hand over several regions to Montenegro, Serbia, and Greece. Thus, the very political birth of Albanian nationalism came as a reaction to the danger of the dismemberment of Albanian lands under the shadow of Ottoman weakening.
The Albanian language: the great wound of Ottoman slavery
One of the gravest historical crimes against Albanians was not only taxation, not only the army, not only physical violence. It was the blow against the language.
Language is the pillar of the nation. Without language, a people can turn into a crowd. Without school, the nation remains backward. Without an alphabet, national memory is fragmented. And it was precisely here that the Ottoman Empire struck the Albanians for centuries: by obstructing the normal development of Albanian-language education and national consciousness.
Historical sources on Albanian education emphasize that the first Albanian school in Korçë opened in 1887 after a long period of Ottoman obstacles and bans on Albanian education. Studies on Albanian education note that Ottoman authorities viewed education in the Albanian language as a threat to “Ottoman unity,” because the Albanian language was not merely a means of communication: it was an instrument of national unification.
This is why the Albanian alphabet was not simply a matter of letters. The Congress of Manastir in 1908 was a national battle, not a technical conference. There, Albanians were saying: we will no longer write according to the impositions of others; we will write as a separate nation. The University of Tirana describes the Congress of Manastir as one of the most important national assemblies in the political and cultural history of the Albanians at the beginning of the 20th century.
Thus, the indictment begins here: an empire that ruled over Albanians for centuries did not build the Albanian nation, did not develop Albanian schools, did not protect the Albanian language, did not recognize Albanian culture as a political foundation. On the contrary, for a long time it saw the Albanian awakening as a threat to its own survival.
Taxes, impoverishment and exploitation
The Albanian was used as a source of taxes, as military manpower, and as a strategic zone. The Empire took more from these lands than it gave. It did not build an Albanian state, did not build Albanian administration, did not create Albanian national institutions. It created Ottoman vilayets, sanjaks, kazas, garrisons, tax posts, and structures that served Istanbul.
With the Tanzimat reforms in the 19th century, the Empire aimed at its own modernization and centralization, but for Albanians this often translated into the restriction of local autonomies, an increased fiscal burden, and compulsory military service. Studies on the treatment of the Tanzimat in Albanian historiography describe this period as a clash between imperial reform and Albanian interests, where Ottoman centralization was perceived as a threat to local structures and identity.
This means the Albanian was not a “partner” of the Empire. He was a useful subject as long as he paid, fought, endured, and remained silent. When he demanded rights, he became a rebel. When he demanded school, he became suspicious. When he demanded autonomy, he was called a danger. When he demanded Albania, he clashed with the empire.
The taken children: devshirme, the blood tax
Another great historical wound is the devshirme system, known in history as the recruitment of Christian boys from the Balkan provinces to be converted and trained for military or administrative service in the Ottoman Empire. Britannica describes devshirme as a system in which Christian youths from the Balkans were taken, converted to Islam, and trained for military or administrative service; this system became the basis of the Janissary corps.
This was not a romantic story of imperial careers. It was the taking of a child from his family, the severing of roots, the turning of his body and talent into the property of the Sultan. Some of these children might rise to high positions, but that does not cleanse the system. Even a golden chain remains a chain.
An empire that takes the children of subjugated peoples to build its own army is not benevolent. It is an empire that feeds on the blood of those it rules.
Albanian uprisings: proof that Albanians did not accept slavery
Faced with this history stands a people that was not silent. Albanians were not a surrendered people. They rose up repeatedly. From the resistance of Skanderbeg to the uprisings of the 19th–20th centuries, Albanian history is a history of refusal of annihilation.
In the 20th century, Albanian uprisings against Ottoman centralization took clear political form. The uprising of 1912 demanded the unification of the Albanian vilayets and political and cultural autonomy. Britannica writes that after the Ottoman centralization policy of 1908, Albanian nationalist leaders led a series of uprisings in 1909–1912, demanding the unification of Albanian districts and political and cultural autonomy within the empire.
This is important: Albanians did not seek to disappear into the Empire. They sought to be recognized as a national body. But the empire treated Albanian demands as a security problem, not as a historical right.
And when an empire responds to language with bans, to autonomy with armies, to school with fear, and to identity with suppression, it has morally lost the right to call itself a protector.
The League of Prizren: the moment Albanians saw the great betrayal
The year 1878 is one of the most painful points in Albanian history. After the Russo-Turkish War and the Congress of Berlin, Albanian lands were seriously threatened with partition. The League of Prizren was born precisely to defend these lands.
What must be said clearly is this: Albanians were forced to organize because the empire that had ruled them for centuries was no longer protecting them as a people. The Ottoman Porte was more interested in saving what it could from its own imperial body than in defending Albanian territorial integrity.
Britannica emphasizes that the League of Prizren was created at a moment when the peace after the Russo-Turkish War threatened the partition of Ottoman Albania and the transfer of several provinces to Montenegro, Serbia, and Greece. This means the Albanian self-defense project arose from the real danger of dismemberment.
Here lies the heavy accusation: The Ottoman Empire had used Albanians for centuries, but when the time of its fall came, it did not protect them as a nation. Albanian lands became diplomatic currency.
The end of the empire: when the Albanian was left without protection
In 1912, Albanians declared independence in Vlora. But this independence did not come under normal conditions. It came in the midst of war, Balkan occupations, and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in Europe.
The Treaty of London of 30 May 1913 sealed the loss of nearly all European territory of the Ottoman Empire, including Ottoman Albania and Macedonia; Albanian independence was recognized by the Great Powers, while Macedonia was divided among the Balkan allies. Britannica summarizes the Balkan Wars clearly: The Ottoman Empire lost almost all its remaining European territories, while Albania’s borders were determined by the international powers.
Thus, we do not have a “sale” by commercial contract like in a livestock market. But we have something politically even heavier: an empire in decline that for centuries had administered Albanian space, but at the decisive moment could not guarantee borders, population, or the historical rights of Albanians over their lands.
Albanians emerged from the Ottoman Empire delayed in state formation, damaged in national education, dismembered in borders, weakened in institutions, and surrounded by neighboring states that had consolidated national platforms earlier.
This is the great wound: Albanians entered the 20th century as an ancient people, but with a belated state. And one of the main reasons was the long Ottoman rule, which did not allow the normal development of the Albanian nation as an independent political subject.
The dismemberment: the final political crime
When we speak of Albanian lands left outside Albania, we are not speaking of an abstract map. We speak of people, villages, cities, cemeteries, homes, churches, mosques, mountains, fields, songs, language, and memory.
Kosovo, Chameria, parts of today’s North Macedonia, Albanian areas in Montenegro, the Presheva Valley, and other zones are not simply “territories.” They are parts of the historic Albanian body that were left outside the Albanian state in the border-drawing process of 1913.
These lands were not lost because Albanians did not exist. They were lost because Albanians did not have a consolidated state in time. And why didn’t they? Because for centuries they were kept within an empire that did not give them national institutions, national schools, national administration, and did not recognize them as a distinct Albanian political unit.
This is the essence of the historical indictment.
The empire that took Albanian loyalty but did not return justice to the Albanian
Albanians gave the Ottoman Empire soldiers, viziers, administrators, brave men, taxes, blood, and forced loyalty. Many Albanians reached high positions in the Empire. But this does not change the main question: what did the Albanian nation receive in return?
Did it receive Albanian schools for centuries? No.
Did it receive national statehood? No.
Did it receive territorial protection in the end? No.
Was it recognized as a separate nation at a time when other peoples were building their states? No.
Did it emerge from the empire stronger, more united, more educated, and better protected? No.
It emerged dismembered.
It emerged impoverished.
It emerged delayed.
It emerged with its language preserved by the family, by patriotic clergy, by the Renaissance figures, by secret teachers, by the blood of people who loved Albanian more than life itself.
Genocide, expulsion, cultural erasure: what must be said carefully
When we use the word “genocide,” we must be precise. In the modern legal sense, genocide is a category defined after the 20th century. For the Ottoman period, it is historically more accurate to speak of systemic imperial violence, suppression, assimilation, expulsions, massacres, destruction of local elites, bans on national education, and policies that in effect produced cultural erasure and national weakening.
But even if the modern legal term requires caution, the moral wound does not diminish. A people that is denied school, whose children are taken, whose language is suppressed, whose uprisings are punished, and whose land is dismembered has the right to call that history a long process of national destruction.
Because genocide does not always begin with immediate extermination. Sometimes it begins with banning a language. With the disappearance of schools. With the uprooting of identity. With turning a person into a subject without a national name.
The Indictment
Therefore, the historical indictment against the Ottoman Empire is this:
We accuse the Ottoman Empire of holding the Albanian for centuries under domination not as a nation with rights, but as administrative, fiscal, and military material.
We accuse it of obstructing the development of Albanian schools and Albanian national consciousness, viewing the Albanian language as a danger to its imperial unity.
We accuse it of taking children from Balkan peoples through the devshirme system and turning them into instruments of the Sultan’s army and administration.
We accuse it of using Albanians as soldiers in its wars, while not giving them state, school, administration, or national protection.
We accuse it of suppressing Albanian uprisings and treating demands for autonomy, language, and national unification as threats.
We accuse it that at the end of its imperial life, when it no longer had the power to hold Albanian lands, it left them on the tables of the Great Powers and Balkan neighbors, allowing the dismemberment of the Albanian body.
We accuse it of bringing the Albanian out of five centuries of rule not free, not united, not educated in his own language as he should have been, but divided by borders and forced to fight for another century to protect his identity.
History is not hatred, it is memory
This article is not a call against today’s peoples. It is not hatred toward ordinary Turkish, Greek, Serbian, Montenegrin, or any other people. History should not be used for primitive hatred. But history also should not be sterilized, beautified, or hidden.
The Ottoman Empire was not a “common home” where Albanians flourished as a nation. It was the structure that for centuries delayed the Albanian nation, kept it fragmented, hindered it in language and school, exploited it in taxes and army, and in the end did not protect it from dismemberment.
Therefore, Albanians have no need to apologize to history when they speak the truth.
Because a nation that forgets who banned its language, who took its sons, who suppressed its uprisings, and who left its land in border bargaining risks losing once again what it barely saved: its memory.
And without memory, the nation does not die immediately.
But it begins not to recognize itself anymore.
