I’m kind of tired of hearing the argument that Kosovo is the “wellspring” of the Serbs. The Slavic people started to migrate to the Balkans in the 7th century, and there were already other people living in the Balkans before the Slavic invasions.
If the Serbs and the Slavs claim this land known as Dardania and Illyria to be theirs, I would like to know why the Greeks and the Romans did not mention the Slavs and name the lands with Slavic names in the Greek and Roman histories and maps. I guess what I am saying is that the Greek and Roman histories from 600-1000 years prior to the Slavic invasions do not attribute that part of the Balkans as the homeland of the Slavic Serbs.
Europeans are easily identified by their genetics. If anything, the Dardanians and Illyrians are the remnants of the ancestor population of the Slavs, people who moved North from the area beginning about 12,000 years ago as the ice receded.
European males fall mainly into three Y-DNA categories: R1a, R1b, and I1. All of these genomic groups can be correlated with the area where they took refuge from the ice, and then where they migrated to as the ice receded.
Note that the Slavs are thought to have descended from the original European inhabitants of the areas later called Dardania and Illyria.
Europe has been European for at least 12,000 years, if not 30 to 50 thousand years.
Having said all that, it is also true that much of the populace of Asia Minor is to some extent related to the people who took refuge in the Ukrainian and Macedonian areas after the last glacial maximum (LGM). Islam didn't exist then; land bridges did; and migration was common. The current populations are a mix, and Islam was brought to many of them.
But that doesn't mean that we walk away and say it's all OK. The fact is, the Turks -- West Asians, but also to some extent related to Southern Europeans -- were converted to a ruthless, cruel "religion". And they are not walking away from the tenets of that religion, they are acting according to its dictates.
That is, for now, the main thing which must be strenuously opposed, even militarily.
NATO is on the wrong side in this war. Unfortunately, the Serbs didn't make themselves any friends with the massacres and the militias. Bad politics on their part.
But compared to the history of the Ottomans - which they all know - it's almost a credible response. Without a doubt, it would happen in the reverse situation, and probably will now that the Albanians are in full control.
Nice name. I remember it being used before...where was it from? Oh yeah.
“The 21st SS Division Skanderbeg was a Waffen SS Mountain division set up by Heinrich Himmler in March 1944, officially under the title of the 21st Waffen-Gebirgs Division der SS Skanderbeg (Albanische Nr. 1).”