Turks of Macedonia: The Travails of the “Smaller” Minority

Abstract

The Republic of Macedonia was the only state which had managed to separate itself from the rump Yugoslavia without any serious military confrontation with the Yugoslav Army (JNA) in the beginning of the 1990s. However, the international conditions that had required rapid recognition of Macedonia as a sovereign state by ignoring the fragile ethnic composition of this tiny Balkan country led to ethnic strife and consequently a political reform process. This process was definitely predominated by the political demands of the ethnic Albanians at the expense of the majority Slav Macedonians and the other smaller ethnic groups, including the Turks. In this context, this study aims at unfolding the political stand of the Turkish minority during the political reform process between 2001 and 2002 in Macedonia—the so-called Ohrid (Framework) process—which culminated in a semi-consociational system entirely favoring the ethnic Albanians, to the chagrin of the smaller minorities, particularly the Turkish minority.