by Indrit Vokshi.
In the Treaty of Paris 1856, the Ottoman Empire was accepted as a European nation. I was listening to Aurel Plasari who quoted that Skanderbeg after his visit to Italy in “Letters of Disappointment” said “I would rather have fought against the priests than against the Turks. I have not seen people more mean and ugly than these priests”. Gjergj Kastrioti – Skanderbe said this.
Pope Pius II the Second strongly supported him. His successors did not.
Gjergj Kastrioti Skanderbeg, the most brilliant politician of his time, about whom even Gjon Muzaka writes that he was just and not evil, was left a sandwich; on the one hand the Turkish commanders and converted Arbër pashas like Ballaban Pasha who were very dangerous militarily and on the other hand the priests of the Vatican and some Italian princes who used him as a tool to increase their trade with the Turks. That is, we support him once by presenting him as our man, then we use his war as capital in negotiations with the sultan.
Does the fact that Donika or Andronika Kastrioti ended up in Valencia and died there show that she went on a tourist visit or does it show that after the death of Skanderbeg the Venetians intended to kill her family too?
In 400 years the Italian states have not launched any military campaign on the Albanian coast against the Turks to drive them out, since the population was also suffering oppression and was ready to rebel. How is it explained that this mythical West did not even deal with this? It is explained quite easily; the zones of influence were divided, you up to here, we up to here. More or less like Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt did in Yalta.
The Ottomans were no longer committed to conquering Italy. Ever since the campaign of Ahmed Gedik Pasha in 1480, who as Sanjakbey of Vlora crossed into Otranto and briefly occupied it, we have had no more attempts. Sultan Bayezid II came and gave up Mehmed II’s project to conquer Italy and take Rome with the claim that he was Roman emperor. Mehmed II had been proclaimed Roman emperor and the priest John of Trebzon visited him and told him that whoever takes the throne of Constantinople is called legitimate and Roman emperor.
Relations continued normally with the division of spheres of influence. Italian consulates were opened in Istanbul and trade continued normally for about 4 centuries. The Italians also became prime ministers of the Ottoman Empire and Chief Admirals of the Fleet. For example, Giovanni Dionigi Galeni was Kapudan Pasha (admiral) named Ali Pasha. Prime Minister Yusuf Sinan Pasha’s real name was Scipione Cicala and he was the son of a merchant aristocrat from Genoa.
Heqim oglu Ali Pasha became prime minister three times in the 1700s; he was the son of an Italian doctor. Prime Minister Çivan Mehmed Pasha was Italian, the grandson of Scipione Cicala. In addition, composers such as Donizetti and Calisto Guatelli also took the title of pasha.
The sultan was legitimized by the European states themselves. Voltaire in his book Charles XII writes that if all of Europe were to unite at the gates of Istanbul, the sultan would definitely be overthrown, but the Europeans were not interested in this. And it is a fact; half of Europe had the sultan as an ally, against the other half.
Analyze it from the Italians, from François I of France, from this Charles XII of Sweden who went and received political asylum in Istanbul, then Great Britain. You should know that the only time a sultan has gone outside the territory of his state and traveled for a diplomatic peace visit to another state was the visit in 1867 of Sultan Abdul Haziz I to France, Belgium, Prussia, Britain and Austria. All the kings received him with the most magnificent honors.
At the Congress of Vienna in 1833, the European powers had gathered to preserve the throne of Sultan Mahmud II for fear that he was being overthrown by the Albanian pasha of Egypt, after Brahim Pasha of Egypt defeated the Ottoman Empire in two battles and approached Istanbul 30 miles. The Europeans gathered, decided that the sultan was legitimate and commissioned the Russian fleet to defend Istanbul from the very glorious Albanian pasha of Egypt.
In the Treaty of Paris on March 30, 1856, Article VII states that the European Powers recognize the Ottoman Empire as a European nation, part of the European Concert of Powers and an equal actor in diplomatic rights. Further in that treaty, the European powers committed themselves to preserving the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, declaring:
Their Majesties undertake, each on their part, to respect the independence and territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire; to guarantee jointly the full respect of this commitment and, consequently, they will consider any military act against the Ottoman Empire as a matter of general European interest.
So as we see, the European kingdoms and empires legalized a Muslim empire as a European state with full rights in European law and as part of the European Concert of Powers. They did this in the rivalry that they had with a Christian empire like Russia. And in fact Russia is the one that itself and through its satellites has killed or expelled over 1 million Muslims from the Balkans and the Caucasus.
From Tripolitsa in 1821 until 1912, there was a Russian platform that had the objective of entering the Balkans as a wedge through Romania, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Serbia and Greece, capturing the Mediterranean coast from Thessaloniki to Ioannina, conquering Istanbul and the Russian Tsar sitting on the throne in Istanbul as Emperor of the Third Rome.
Now some come to us with the treaty of a glass of brandy, a grain and an olive and a piece of cheese, without reading the political history of Europe, without knowing it, without knowing about it and they tell us that whoever is Muslim is not European enough and Europe does not accept us.
In fact, Europe has accepted Islam since 1856, then it also admitted Turkey to NATO, negotiated to admit it to the EU and Great Britain was the promoter of Turkey’s membership. They did not admit it not for religious reasons but because Turkey demanded many preferential rights.
The disease of those who see Europe as the Gendarme of their Fantasy which will solve their frustrations and hatreds injected by violent propaganda could have made sense in the year 1200. Even in those times Roger II of Sicily as a Norman king had the Muslim scholar Muhammad al Idrizi on his right.
These people think that there is a manual on what is European and what is not and this manual is only available to them, on the logic of the village that some are in the village, some are foreigners. Hungary has differences with Spain and Germany in how they see identity. Poland has differences with France and the Netherlands and so on. England elects a Muslim mayor of London and America elects a mayor of New York.
These in Albanian lands have chosen the more thuggish and urbane version of being Western, on par with Golden Dawn and other football hooligan formations.
