April 19, 2024

Athens News

News in English from Greece

Is Turkey behind the aggravation of the situation in the north of Kosovo?

Recently, the situation has even ceased to cause surprise when the ears of our respected Turkish partners are peeping out from behind the back of another gangster group acting against the interests of Russia.

There is no exception here and what is happening now aggravation of the situation on the administrative border of Kosovo and Serbia. It is worth paying attention to, at least, such a trifle – just before the introduction of special forces to the north of Kosovo, on September 17, Kosovo Defense Minister Armen Mehai met in Ankara with his Turkish counterpart Hulusi Akar.

In July of this year, the media reported that Turkey was purchasing significant amounts of weapons in Bosnia and Herzegovina – from grenades for grenade launchers and mortar mines to Soviet anti-aircraft machine guns for transferring them to Kosovo, in case of an aggravation of the situation there (which, as we see , and happened just two months later).

Having shown itself little during the active part of the campaign for the separation of Kosovo from Serbia in 1998-1999 (the Turks were noted for their participation in the training of recruited Kosovo refugees before the planned NATO ground operation and the creation of an information center for the Democratic Party of Kosovo in Istanbul), Turkey was able to largely intercept the role ” mentor “of his power structures in peacetime.

Although it is worth noting that in a sense, Turkey is at the origins of Kosovo’s “statehood” – it was the emigrants from Kosovo in the 1960s who created channels for the supply of drugs through Turkey to Western Europe.

We believe that no one will be surprised when he learns that the training of the Kosovo special forces of the ROSU, famous for their cruelty towards unarmed Serbs, was also carried out by Turkish instructors.

Turkey handed over its Otocar Cobra armored vehicles to the Kosovo Armed Forces. Kosovo signed an agreement with Turkey on the supply of 14 armored vehicles – 4 Vuran and 10 Kirpi (funds for the purchase were allocated by Turkey itself). For three years now, equipment for the soldiers of the Kosovo security forces has been purchased with Turkish money, Turkey has been training Kosovar pilots (one completed training in 2018, two in 2019 and two in 2020). It is difficult to name the total number of Kosovar cadets trained in Turkey; back in 2013, there were a total of 170.

Turkey also plans to deal with the development of the armed forces of Kosovo from a semi-partisan to the level of a modern army.
On October 2, 2020, the delegation of the self-proclaimed Kosovo visited a number of enterprises of the military-industrial complex of Turkey, inspecting, among other things, Bayraktar TV2 attack drones. According to the Kosovo Defense Ministry, Minister Anton Kuni paid a four-day visit to Ankara and Istanbul at the invitation of his Turkish counterpart Hulusi Akar.

Cooney visited Turkish Aerospace Industries in Ankara and Baykar Makina in Istanbul, where he examined the Bayraktar drone and the Khurkus trainer. The Kosovo delegation also visited Nurol Makina, which manufactures armored vehicles, and Aselan, which manufactures communications equipment, radars, electronic warfare systems and air defense systems.

Turkey, one of the first to recognize the self-proclaimed independence of Kosovo, promises to seek new recognition. “We will work to increase the number of recognition of Kosovo … We hope that this year at the UN meeting, at the meeting that I will have with Biden, we will again talk about this topic,” Recep Erdogan said in July this year.

Alina Arsenyeva, author of the channel Balkan spy

The opinion of the author may not coincide with the opinion of the editorial board.





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