The 1951 CIA document shows the vile Serbian-communist policy against Albanian national identity, attempting at all costs to weaken the national feelings of Albanians in the former Yugoslavia, writes fmimages.net
CIA document
The Yugoslav authorities exploited the ignorance of the Albanian population under the pretext that they were Turks because of their Muslim faith, then denied them the right to speak their language and tried to eradicate their traditions and patriotic and national feelings. The document states that in Kosovo, there have never been Turks, but Albanian families who spoke Turkish. And the Serbian-communist government had granted privileges to Albanian families who sent their children to Turkish schools. They went so far as to incite divisions between Muslim Albanians and Catholic Albanians.
Many Albanian families living in Prizren, Pristina and Peja speak Turkish as fluently as they do Albanian. As a result, there is an attempt on the part of the Serbs to say that those who speak Turkish are of Turkish origin and should therefore be educated in that language.
They take advantage of the deep religious feeling among the population of that area to discourage the friendship that the Kosovar Muslims have with the Catholics of that area and which they say is not tolerated by the Muslim religion. Therefore, according to them, the Kosovar Albanians who continue this friendship should be considered Catholics and consequently why not go to Rome?
The Serbian government’s propaganda against the Albanian language went so far as to say that the Albanian language was poor and should only be used with uneducated people: In order to advance their anti-Albanian interests, a part of the population living in the city spoke only Turkish for trade and relations with the government. They ignored the Albanian language and used it only to speak with uneducated people. They spoke Turkish, considering Turkish superior to Albanian.
After thirty years of Serbian domination, however, the Turkish language spoken by this group has been corrupted by a mixture of Albanian and Slavic words. Although there are still a number of families in the cities of Prizren, Prishtina, Mitrovica and Vushtrri, who continue to speak Turkish but in the process of extinction.
The Serbian-communist government only supported schools in the Turkish and Serbian languages and encouraged students with grants to continue their education in these schools.
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