The ongoing debate over the rehabilitation of controversial Yugoslav World War II figures continues this year, this time in Kosovo. Earlier this month, a Kosovo-based NGO submitted a request to the President of Kosovo to recognize wartime Mayor of Novi Pazar Aćif Hadžiahmetović as a national hero.
Before the war of liberation (1997–99) Kosova was part of the former Yugoslavia. Now it borders Serbia in the north and northeast, Montenegro in the northwest, Albania in the west and the former republic of Macedonia in the south. It covers more than 10 000 (10 887) square kilometres and its population is around two million, 90 per cent of which are ethnic Albanians.
In 1877, Ottoman Turkey created the Vilayet or province of Kosovo, or “Kossovo”, in European Turkey or Turkey in Europe, which consisted of the sandzak or district of Skopje, or Uskub, in Macedonia, and the sandzaks of Prizren in Kosovo and Novi Pazar in the Sandzak or Rashka region of Serbia. The Kosovo vilayet was a product of the 1864 Ottoman Turkish law that reorganized the standard provincial administration throughout the Ottoman empire. The eyalets, the Turkish provinces, were restructured as smaller vilayets under a governor or a vali. The valis were appointed by the Turkish government. New provincial assemblies, however, were allowed to participate in the administration. The vilayets were subdivided into sandzaks or districts headed by a bey or beg.
