It is getting more pathetic by the day...It would be even funny if not in tragic setting..
Serbs Must Now Face Turkish Troops
Sunday, 4 July 1999
P R I Z R E N , Y U G O S L A V I A (AP)
TROOPS FROM Turkey rolled in Sunday, and Prizren went wild:
dancing in the street, waving crimson banners and chanting
slogans that evoked old glory in a reviving city studded with
Turkish mosque towers.
The 130 soldiers, vanguard of a 1,000-man Turkish NATO
deployment within the German sector, symbolized the Serbs'
worst nightmare. Turks were pushed from Kosovo in 1912 after
half a millennium of Ottoman rule.
"Happy!" yelled Sgt. Hasan Ibrahim, as he snagged a flying
bouquet of roses and added it to the pile on his truck dashboard.
"We are very, very happy!" Stuck in the crowd, he leaned down
to kiss a baby and squeeze a forest of hands.
The 50 vehicles took two hours to inch through town, hemmed in
by ethnic Albanians and Kosovar Turks who chanted, "Turkey,
Turkey, Turkey." Kids swarmed over the convoy, waving red
Turkish and Albanian flags.
No one missed the meaning. The cornerstone of Serb history is a
bad day in 1389, when Turks won a battle in Kosovo and moved
in to stay. The memory remains fresh. In Bosnia, Serbs still refer to
their Muslim foes as "Turks."
Old people wept. Teen-age girls beamed at the grinning soldiers
and pelted them with flowers. Two schoolgirls held aloft a huge
photo of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey.
"This means we will have peace, freedom, some happiness again,
and our lives will finally be better," said Murvet Troshalla. Her
14-year-daughter, Cennet, nodded enthusiastically next to her.
Cennet had a large Turkish flag painted on her arm. A smaller
one was stuck to her forehead with scotch tape. "Maybe you
can't see it," she said, "but I also have a flag in my heart."
Nearby, a cluster of flag-draped kids belted out a rhythmic,
"Kosovo-Turkey! Kosovo-Turkey!" Others chanted, "The greatest
soldiers are our soldiers."
Although German NATO forces have been in place for weeks,
Turks felt the full force of liberation frenzy. Almost nine decades
after Serbs took over, many Prizren people still use Turkish as
their everyday language.
Several German vehicles were interspersed in the convoy, and
some of their drivers got into the spirit. The Germans' main role
was crowd and traffic control for the Turks, however, and few
were smiling on the job.
"I'm in a lousy mood, so get moving," one large soldier bellowed in
German, brandishing a sturdy stick. When an Albanian youngster
approached another to shake his hand, the soldier muttered a
curse and walked away.
The Turkish contingent of mechanized infantry and armor will be
stationed in outlying areas near Prizren, under the overall NATO
mandate to keep peace until a civilian government can be put in
place.
Greece objected to the deployment. But late last week, the
column rumbled out of Turkey and crossed Bulgaria, the first time
armed Turkish forces have returned there since the Ottomans
were expelled in 1878.
An estimated 60,000 ethnic Turks live in Kosovo, and many
Albanians feel a strong religious and cultural affinity with Turkey.
Three men with grizzled Turkish faces went to the edge of town
to catch an early glimpse of the approaching convoy. Niazi
Mahmuti, the oldest at 80, was born only seven years after Serbia
took control of Kosovo.
"My father used to tell me how life was peaceful and happy
under the Turks, how we could afford to live well," he said.
"Under the Serbs, we were no more than farm animals."
His friend, Shefki Talo, 79, whittled on the staff of his Turkish
flag. He had also grown up in hopes of seeing the white crescent
and star on a red field waving in Kosovo. But Talo was thinking
more of the present.
"I am here to honor all of NATO, all the troops that saved us," he
said. The Germans arrived in the nick of time, according to
Prizren people, who believe the swift approach foiled a Serb plan
to burn their city.
"For three days at the end, we all thought we were dead people,
that the Serbs would kill us all," Talo said. "The world saved us."
For Drita Atallahu, an English teacher born in Prizren, the arrival
of Turks was a fitting end to a happy chain of events.
"All through the NATO bombing, we hid inside and told
ourselves, 'Tomorrow will be better,"' she said. "Well, now it's
tomorrow. And it's better." |
