Arnavut ve Sirp Savlari Baglaminda Kosova'nin Sahipligi Sorunu/Territorial Dispute of Kosovo Under The Albanian and The Serb Arguments

The Balkans has been one of the regions with the highest risk of conflict since the last century and in the post-Cold War era. The inevitable coexistence of quantitatively small, various, and heterogeneous peoples in this geography establishes the basis for conflicts. It can be assumed that the conflicts between peoples are the result of boundaries neglecting the nationality principle, and in turn such conflicts contributed to division of the Balkans into small states. For this reason, fragmentation and the emergence of small states in a region is called "Balkanization" in international relations. Kosovo is a typical example of Balkanization. The root of the problem is that the principle of nationality was not taken into account when the borders of Kosovo were drawn. In other words, the borders are drawn in accordance with considerations of power politics rather than idealpolitics. For this reason, Kosovo has been one of the most problematic regions in the world for almost a century since the Serbian occupation of Kosovo in 1912, but especially since the Kosovo's independence process started after the Cold War. What makes Kosovo a problem is its current ethnic make-up and legal status. When the process of disintegration of began in the 1980s, it proved very difficult to convince Kosovar Albanians to maintain Kosovo's status as a province of Serbia. Since then ethnic, linguistic and religious differences between Kosovar Albanians and the Serbs have complicated the Kosovo issue. The problems of whether Kosovo has a right to self-determination (including the problem of whether the constitution of former Yugoslavia provided Kosovo with the right to independence), or whether it is a part of Serbia (or former Yugoslavia) represent (and represented) the legal dimensions of the issue. Even though the main aspect of Albanian-Serbian conflict converges upon the struggle for the possession of Kosovo, sovereignty of Kosovo and other territorial issues contains several other problems within. In sum, Kosovo issue is further complicated by several factors: a) Kosovo's borders were demarcated several times during the Ottoman rule, finally fixed in 1945. b) It has a mixed population of two millions, overwhelming majority are Albanians but consisting of Serbs, Turks, Bosnians, Ashkalies and Goranies. c) It is located astride a major transit root in the Balkans. d) As in the example of Turkish minority, ethnic minorities in Kosovo experience difficulties in effectively exerc