Turco-Albanians

Turco-Albanian ( el, Τουρκαλβανοί, ''Tourk-alvanoi'') is an ethnographic, religious, and derogatory term used by Greeks for Muslim Albanians from 1715 and thereafter.Millas, Iraklis (2006). "Tourkokratia: History and the image of Turks in Greek literature." ''South European Society & Politics''. 11. (1): 50. “The ‘timeless’ existence of the Other (and the interrelation of the Self with this Other) is secured by the name used to define him or her. Greeks often name as ‘Turks’ various states and groups—such as the Seljuks, the Ottomans, even the Albanians (''Turkalvanoi'')”. In a broader sense, the term included both Muslim Albanian and Turkish political and military elites of the Ottoman administration in the Balkans. The term is derived from an identification of Muslims with Ottomans and/or Turks, due to the Ottoman Empire's administrative millet system of classifying peoples according to religion, where the
Muslim millet played the leading role.Nitsiakos, Vassilis (2010).
On the border: Transborder mobility, ethnic groups and boundaries along the Albanian-Greek frontier
'. LIT Verlag. p. 200. "Who and what was this man, beyond the myth of the “Turkish Albanian satrap” cultivated in Greece? I think of how astonished my students always look when I tell them that Ali Pasha was not Turkish but Albanian. I explain that this unclear, ideologically and sentimentally charged term, “Turkish-Albanian”, only refers to Muslim Albanians, through a general identification of Turks with Muslims, which is related to the millet system of administration used by the Ottomans to classify populations." From the middle of the nineteenth century, the term ''Turk'' and from the late nineteenth century onwards, the derivative term ''Turco-Albanian'' has been used as a pejorative term, phrase and or expression for Muslim Albanian individuals and communities. The term has also been noted to be unclear, ideologically and sentimentally charged, and an imperialist and racialist expression. Albanians have expressed derision and disassociation toward the terms ''Turk'' and its derivative form ''Turco-Albanian'' regarding the usage of those terms in reference to them. It has been reported that at the end of the 20th century some Christian Albanians still used the term "Turk" to refer to Muslim Albanians.

Etymology and usage of the term

The term ''Turco-Albanian'' is a compound made up of the words ''Turk'' and ''Albanian''. The word ''Albanian'' was and still is a term used as an ethnonym. Whereas the word ''Turk'' was viewed at times by Western Europeans or by non Muslim Balkan peoples as being synonymous with ''Muslim''.Karpat, Kemal H. (2001). ''The politicization of Islam: reconstructing identity, state, faith, and community in the late Ottoman state''. Oxford University Press. p. 342. “After 1856, and especially after 1878, the terms ''Turk'' and ''Muslim'' became practically synonymous in the Balkans. An Albanian who did not know one word of Turkish thus was given the ethnic name of ''Turk'' and accepted it, no matter how much he might have preferred to distance himself from the ethnic Turks.” A study of a collection of Albanian folk songs, published in 1870s by Thimi Mitko, suggests that most Albanian speakers of his time identified themselves and each other through various terms and not a single national designation. Among other terms, Muslims were identified as ''turq'' or ''turkollarë'' ("Turks").

Apart from being associated with Muslim Albanians, in some specific works the term ''Turco-Albanian'' was used to mention the Labs ( el, Liapides), a socio-cultural and dialectal Albanian subdivision, some of whom had converted to Islam during the Ottoman Empire era.

In a broader sense the term ''Turco-Albanian'' was used to denote Ottoman military units and elites of both Turkish and Albanian ethnicity that represented the Ottoman administration of the Balkans.Umut Özkırımlı & Spyros A. Sofos (2008)
''Tormented by history: nationalism in Greece and Turkey''
Columbia University Press. , p. 50: "...the so-called Tourkalvanoi, a composite term literally translated as 'Turkalbanians' and used to denote the Turkish and Albanian Muslim elites and military units that represented Ottoman domination in the Balkans) Within the Ottoman Empire, Muslim Albanians were closely part of the administrative structures of the state and considered one of its important peoples.

Reference to Muslim Albanian communities as ''Turco-Albanian'' is made for those that settled the Peloponnese in order to spread Islam from c. 1715 until after 1770, as part of official Ottoman policy.Nikolaou, 1997, p. 313: "Il est à signaler que dans ces contrées s'étaient installés, probablement vers 1715 et après 1770, des Albanais musulmans (Turcalbanais), qui furent l'un des facteurs de diffusion de l'islam." Later in 1770, Muslim Albanian mercenaries referred to as ''Turco-Albanian'' were employed by the Ottoman Sultan to suppress the Greek uprising. Their activity included massacres, looting and destruction in the regions of Epirus, Western Macedonia, Central Greece, Thessaly, Peloponnese suffered most destruction and massacre due to the activity of 15,000 Muslim Albanian mercenaries. In 1779 the Ottoman army finally managed to drive those groups out of Peloponnese, while the remaining ones were either killed by local villagers or found refuge in Muslim Albanian communities in Lala and Vardounia. The period of 1770–1779 is generally termed as ''Alvanokratia'' (Albanian rule) in Greek historiography. As a result, local Greek traditions in Epirus since the late 18th century mention frequent raids and looting by "Turko-Albanians" or "Albanian" bands. This kind of activity was connected with the depopulation of settlements.

Later, during the Greek War of Independence (1821–1830) reference to ''Turco-Albanians'' is made for those Muslim Albanians that fought in the Ottoman side against the Greek revolutionaries.

Muslims Albanians are thus often pejoratively named and or called by Greeks as "Turks", represented in the expression ''"Turkalvanoi"''.Megalommatis, M. Cosmas (1994). ''Turkish-Greek Relations and the Balkans: A Historian's Evaluation of Today's Problems''. Cyprus Foundation. p. 28. “Muslim Albanians have been called “''Turkalvanoi''” in Greek, and this is pejorative.”Tzanelli, Rodanthi (2008). ''Nation-building and identity in Europe: The dialogics of reciprocity''. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 62. “Consequently, at the beginning of the 1880s the Greek press openly incited anti-Albanian hatred, associating the Albanian irredentists with Turkish anti-Greek propaganda, and baptizing them Vlachs and ‘Turkalbanian brigands’ (''Aión''. 10 and 14 July 1880; ''Palingenesía'', 3 April 1881).”Nikolopoulou, Kalliopi (2013). ''Tragically Speaking: On the Use and Abuse of Theory for Life''. University of Nebraska Press. p. 299. “Instead of the term “Muslim Albanians”, nationalist Greek histories use the more known, but pejorative, term “Turkalbanians”. As with the term "Turk",MacLean, Gerald M. (2007). "When West Looks East: Some Recent Studies in Early Modern Muslim Cultures." ''Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies.'' 7.(1): 97. “In all fairness to Chew, Rouillard, Vaughn, and Schwoebel, none ever claimed that they were doing more than investigate the ways that early European writers regarded those they called "Turks" and the world of Islam they inhabited, but their indifference to who and what was being represented marks a cautionary absence. All four scholars, for instance, recycled the early modern European usage of "Turk" as synonymous with both "Muslim" -regardless of origin-and with "Ottoman," while to the Ottomans themselves, the term referred disparagingly to the Anatolian peasantry over whom they had come to rule. Many continue in this habit, one rendered even more confusing and potentially misleading since the Turkish Republic declared all inhabitants to be "Turks" in order to erase Kurds, Armenians, Laz, and other ethnicities from the national landscape. Acknowledging that the winners write history and that the very instruments of knowledge production were complicit in structures of power and authority, scholars of the Renaissance and early modern period also recognized how Said's analysis of imperial discourses was inappropriate for the era before Europe set out to rule over and colonize Eastern lands.” the expression (rendered also as Turco-Albanian) was employed by some writers mainly in nineteenth and early twentieth century Western European literature regarding Muslim Albanian populations. As such, the word ''Turk'' within its usage also attained derogatory and derisive meanings that when applied to other words created pejorative meanings of ''cruel'' and ''inhumane behavior'' and or of being ''backward'' and ''savage''.McCarthy, Kevin M. (1970). “The Derisive Use of Turk and Turkey”. ''American Speech''. 45. (1/2): 157. "Among the nationalities that seem to have been disparaged throughout history, the Turks hold a prominent place. The name ''Turk'' or ''Turkey'' has long been associated with cruel, inhuman behavior and has often been used as a descriptive part of our speech in derogatory phrases."; p. 158. "As a noun in the English language ''Turk'' has meant, according to the ''OED'', ‘a cruel, rigorous, or tyrannical man; any one behaving as a barbarian or savage; one who treats his wife hardly; a bad-tempered or unmanageable man.’"; p. 159. "Since it has such a tradition of derisive meanings, I was not surprised when I came across a recent application of ''turk'', this time in the field of sports: ''turk'' is a nickname that professional football players have given to the bad news that they have been cut from the squad. Such an example points out the fact that, while many ethnic groups have served as the butt of jokes and the object of derision in particular periods of our history (for example, the Poles, Italians, Jews, and Irish), the Turks alone have generally been a constant target for derision and have unwillingly lent their name to many unfavorable situations." Within a Balkans context during the twentieth century, the usage of the word "Turk" (and "Turkey") has also been politically employed to differentiate the “indigenous” from the “alien” that interpreted Balkan Muslims as “foreigners”.Blumi, Isa (2013). ''Ottoman refugees, 1878-1939: migration in a post-imperial world''. A&C Black. pp. 149–150. “It all started with war. War was the means by which new political elites in neighboring, former Ottoman territories like Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia identified an opportunity to rewrite the demographic landscape and in turn, claim a historical association with newly “ethnically cleansed” territories. As a consequence of the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, in particular, entire city neighborhoods were razed, names of villages changed, their inhabitants expelled, or more dramatically still, collectively “converted.” To many, the problem was that the beginning of World War I left these states not enough time to complete the ugly task of erasing the Ottoman Empire from “Christendom.” As in the Americas, an Ottoman human “refuse” lingered in independent Balkan countries where some of these “left-over” communities survive until today. Despite a long period of imposed socialism and declarations of brotherhood, Balkan Muslims lived in constant fear that one more round of “ethnic cleansing” will come sweeping through their communities. This is especially the case in Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia, where a century now of living as “minorities” often led to opportunistic, “functional” blood-letting campaigns in the larger contexts of “national” politics. In Yugoslavia, the non-Slav Albanian Muslim (and Catholic) evolved into a bureaucratic category especially susceptible to periodic state-led expulsion campaigns—throughout the 1920s, 1935–8, 1953–67, and then again in the 1990s—that passed through the region. Invariably castigated as “outsiders” and “fifth-column” threats to national security, the labeling of entire regions of Kosovo, Novipazaar, Montenegro, and Macedonia as inhabited by generic “Muslim Albanians” often meant the organized expulsion of those communities. In order to justify such measures to an occasional outside traveler bearing witness to the violent process, or delegations sent by the newly created League of Nations at the request of Albania (a member state), the Serbian/ Yugoslav state often rolled out historians, demographers, and anthropologists. In an often repeated exercise throughout the post-Ottoman Balkans, operatives of “ethnic cleansing” campaigns resurrected the “professional knowledge” of race sciences first developed in the United States at the turn-of-the-century. In the 1920s, for instance, state authorities eager to continue a process of expulsion started in 1912—briefly disrupted by World War I—sent an army of European-trained ethnographers to “Southern Serbia” to identify those communities least likely to ever accept Serbian rule. These ethnographers and human geographers adopted many of the same racist epistemologies identified in other Euro-American contexts to identify and catalogue the “sub-human” characteristics of hybrid “Turks” whose very “nature” made efforts to assimilate them into a modernizing Serbian/South Slav society “scientifically” impossible. While these stories now make up a core aspect of Albanian (and Turkish, Greek, Bulgarian) historical memory vis-à-vis Serbia’s torment, it has usefully been forgotten that the dynamics around such systemic violence was informed by a set of ideological and disciplinary frameworks that, once instrumentalized, as by the CUP after 1910, transformed the way once heterogeneous societies interacted with each other. These same ideological principles based on racial segregation and biological hierarchies influenced the intellectual elite of the early twentieth-century world. They ultimately mobilized a so-called fertility politics to justify why violent state-led colonialization/expulsion in Yugoslavia (and earlier in Greece and Bulgaria) was necessary in order to maintain the long-term demographic balance of society. Forced expulsion, the signing of “population exchange” agreements—popularized as a diplomatic “solution” already in the immediate aftermath of the first Balkan War of 1912—and ultimately colonization were all tactics used in the Balkans, as well as throughout the Euro-American dominated world.”Blumi, Isa (2011). ''Reinstating the Ottomans, Alternative Balkan Modernities: 1800-1912''. Palgrave MacMillan. New York. p. 32. "As state policy, post- Ottoman “nations” continue to sever most of their cultural, socioeconomic, and institutional links to the Ottoman period. At times, this requires denying a multicultural history, inevitably leading to orgies of cultural destruction (Kiel 1990; Riedlmayer 2002). As a result of this strategic removal of the Ottoman past—the expulsion of the “Turks” (i.e., Muslims); the destruction of buildings; the changing of names of towns, families, and monuments; and the “purification” of languages—many in the region have accepted the conclusion that the Ottoman cultural, political, and economic infrastructure was indeed an “occupying,” and thus foreign, entity (Jazexhi 2009). Such logic has powerful intuitive consequences on the way we write about the region’s history: If Ottoman Muslims were “Turks” and thus “foreigners” by default, it becomes necessary to differentiate the indigenous from the alien, a deadly calculation made in the twentieth century with terrifying consequences for millions." With the case of the Albanians, this at times has resulted in Albanophobia, negative stereotyping, socio-political discrimination and even mass violence.Austin, Robert Clegg (2012). ''Founding a Balkan State: Albania's Experiment with Democracy, 1920-1925''. University of Toronto Press. p. 95. “A cornerstone of Greek policy, an approach also employed by the Yugoslavs, was to encourage religious differences in Albania and stress that Albania was a little ‘Turkey’ hostile to Orthodox Greeks. To popularize the idea of two Albanian states, one Moslem, the other Christian, throughout the early 1920s Greece continually complained that Albania’s majority Moslem population was actively persecuting the Orthodox minority. Albania denied this, stressed its well— documented legacy of religious tolerance, and added that while there was tension in the southern perimeter of the country, it was not between Muslims and Christians, but rather a rift had emerged because of the movement to create an autocephalous Albanian Orthodox Church and some citizens wished to remain under the Patriarchate”.

Usage in Greek media and literature

At the beginning of the 1880s the Greek press openly used the term "Turco-Albanian brigands" to incite hate speech and to associate Albanian nationalists with "Turkish anti-Greek propaganda". During the years 1882–1897 some Greek media and publications initiated a campaign to promote friendship and a potential future alliance between Greeks and Albanians. As such they avoided the use of the term ''Turco-Albanian'' and pointed to the common features shared by both populations. New mixed terms ''Greek-Albanians'' and ''Greek-Pelasgians'' were used instead. The term ''Turco-Albanian'' after the Greek War of Independence was also sometimes used in 19th century Greek school text books for Muslim Albanians.Spahiu, Nexhmedin (2008).
The National Awakening process and the Orthodox Albanians.
Forum Bosnae. 44: 307-308. After the independence of Greece, Greek schools in Albania were organized and furnished with new personnel, programs, and school books by the new Hellenic state. The history and literature taught in these schools indoctrinated pupils with Hellenic chauvinism towards the Muslims - a term that was used by them as a synonym for Turks. They considered Albanian Muslims not to be Albanians or Albanian Muslims, but just Muslims, i.e. Turks or sometimes Turcoalvanoi (Turco-albanians). The fact that there were Catholic Albanians in northern Albania was irrelevant to the Greeks, because that part was too far from the imagined future borders of the Hellenic state. Greek nationalist histories still uses the more widely known pejorative term ''Turco-Albanian'' instead of Muslim Albanians.

Relative terms

Various Muslim Albanian communities by Greeks were similarly also labelled such as the Turco-Bardouniots (or Τουρκοβαρδουνιώτες, ''Tourko-Vardouniotes''). and Turco-Chams (or Τουρκοτσάμηδες, ''Tourko-tsamides'') In Thesprotia older designations based on religion were used for Albanian Muslim Chams by the local Orthodox population who referred to them as "Turks" (i.e.: Muslims), a term still used in the region by some elderly people. The term ''Turco-Albanian'' was also used by both British intelligence and the German army for Muslim Albanian Chams during World War II and it was borrowed from Greek usage.Tönnes, Bernhard (1980).
Sonderfall Albanien: Enver Hoxhas "eigener Weg" u.d. historischen Ursprünge seiner Ideologie [Special Case Albania: Enver Hoxha's "own way" and the historical origins of its ideology
'. Oldenbourg Verlag. p. 15. "Der deutschen Wehrmacht wie in denen des britischen Intelligence Service während des Zweiten Weltkriegs unter der absurden Bezeichnung „Turko-Albaner" auf. Diese Bezeichnung haben beide Seiten von den Griechen ubernommen, deren Propaganda zufolge die Çamë ,,blutsmäßig’’ Griechen seien, die währen der türkischen Fremdherrschaft islamisiert.... [The German Wehrmacht as in those of the British Intelligence Service during the Second World War used under the absurd name "Turko-Albanians". This designation, both sides have taken over from the Greeks, whose according to propaganda the Çamë by blood ,,are’’ Greeks who Islamized under Turkish rule....]" Moreover, in Greek, similar composite ethnographic terms that also reveal the ethnic or religious background of the specific communities have also been used, such as ''Cretan Turks, Turco-Cretans'' (or Τουρκοκρήτες, ''Tourkokrites''), and '' Turkish Cypriots, Turco-Cypriots'' (or Τουρκοκύπριοι, ''Tourkokiprioi'').

Amongst the wider Greek-speaking population, until the interwar period of the twentieth century, the term ''Arvanitis'' (plural: ''Arvanites'') was used to describe an Albanian speaker, regardless of their religious affiliations, including Islam. On the other hand, within Greek Epirus, the term ''Arvanitis'' is still used for an Albanian speaker, regardless of their citizenship and religion. "Until the Interwar period ''Arvanitis'' (plural ''Arvanitēs'') was the term used by Greek speakers to describe an Albanian speaker regardless of his/hers religious background. In official language of that time the term ''Alvanos'' was used instead. The term ''Arvanitis'' coined for an Albanian speaker independently of religion and citizenship survives until today in Epirus (see Lambros Baltsiotis and Léonidas Embirikos, “De la formation d’un ethnonyme. Le terme Arvanitis et son evolution dans l’État hellénique”, in G. Grivaud-S. Petmezas (eds.), ''Byzantina et Moderna'', Alexandreia, Athens, 2006, pp. 417–448."

See also

* Albanophobia
*Turcophobia
*Islamophobia
*Xenophobia
*List of ethnic slurs
*Ottoman Albania
* Ottoman Kosovo
*Ottoman Vardar Macedonia
*Islam in Albania
*Islam in Kosovo
* Islam in the Republic of Macedonia
* Islam in Montenegro
*Islam in Serbia
*Islam in Greece

References

Sources

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{{Ethnic slurs

Anti-Albanian sentiment
Islam in Albania
Islam in Kosovo
Islam in North Macedonia
Islam in Montenegro
Islam in Serbia
Islam in Greece
Ottoman Albania
Ottoman Greece
Ottoman period in the history of Kosovo
Ottoman period in the history of North Macedonia
Ethnic and religious slurs
Islam-related slurs
Anti-Turkish sentiment