Солтүстік Эпир: Албаниядағы тарихи аймақ және гректердің автономиялық күресі

Region in Albania
the autonomous state in 1914

Northern Epirus (Βόρεια Ήπειρος, Vória Ípiros; ; ) is a term used to refer to those parts of the historical region of Epirus, in the western Balkans, which today are part of Albania. The term is used mostly by Greeks and is associated with the existence of a substantial ethnic Greek minority in the region. It also has connotations with irredentist political claims on the territory on the grounds that it was held by Greece and in 1914 was declared an independent state by the local Greeks against annexation to the newly founded Albanian principality. The term is typically rejected by most Albanians for its irredentist associations. It started to be used by Greeks in 1913, upon the creation of the Albanian state following the Balkan Wars, and the incorporation into the latter of territory that was regarded by many Greeks as geographically, historically, culturally, and ethnologically connected to the Greek region of Epirus since antiquity. In the spring of 1914, the Autonomous Republic of Northern Epirus was proclaimed by ethnic Greeks in the territory and recognized by the Albanian government, though it proved short lived as Albania collapsed with the onset of World War I. Greece held the area between 1914 and 1916 and unsuccessfully tried to annex it in March 1916. In 1917 Greek forces were driven from the area by Italy, who took over most of Albania. The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 awarded the area to Greece, however the area reverted to Albanian control in November 1921, following Greece's defeat in the Greco Turkish War. During the interwar period, tensions remained high due to the educational issues surrounding the Greek minority in Albania. Following Italy's invasion of Greece from the territory of Albania in 1940 and the successful Greek counterattack, the Greek army briefly held Northern Epirus for a six month period until the German invasion of Greece in 1941. Tensions remained high during the Cold War, as the Greek minority was subjected to repressive measures (along with the rest of the country's population). Although a Greek minority was recognized by the Hoxha regime, this recognition only applied to an "official minority zone" consisting of 99 villages, leaving out important areas of Greek settlement, such as Himara. People outside the official minority zone received no education in the Greek language, which was prohibited in public. The Hoxha regime also diluted the ethnic demographics of the region by relocating Greeks living there and settling in their stead Albanians from other parts of the country. Relations began to improve in the 1980s with Greece's abandonment of any territorial claims over Northern Epirus and the lifting of the official state of war between the two countries. In the post Cold War era relations have continued to improve though tensions remain over the availability of education in the Greek language outside the official minority zone, property rights, and occasional violent incidents targeting members of the Greek minority.

With the outbreak of the First Balkan War (1912–13) and the Ottoman defeat, the Greek army entered the region. The outcome of the following Peace Treaty of London and Peace Treaty of Bucharest, signed at the end of the Second Balkan War, was unpopular among both Greeks and Albanians, as settlements of the two people existed on both sides of the border: the southern part of Epirus was ceded to Greece, while Northern Epirus, already under the control of the Greek army, was awarded to the newly found Albanian State. However, due to the late emergence and fluidity of Albanian national identity and an absence of religious Albanian institutions, loyalty in Northern Epirus especially amongst the Orthodox to potential Albanian rule headed by (Albanian) Muslim leaders was not guaranteed.

In 1939, Albania became an Italian protectorate and was used to facilitate military operations against Greece the following year. The Italian attack, launched at October 28, 1940 was quickly repelled by the Greek forces. The Greek army, although facing a numerically and technologically superior army, counterattacked and in the next month managed to enter Northern Epirus. Northern Epirus thus became the site of the first clear setback for the Axis powers. However, after a six month period of Greek administration, the invasion of Greece by Nazi Germany followed in April 1941 and Greece capitulated. Following Greece's surrender, Northern Epirus again became part of the Italian occupied Albanian protectorate. Many Northern Epirotes formed resistance groups and organizations in the struggle against the occupation forces. In 1942 the Northern Epirote Liberation Organization (EAOVI, also called MAVI) was formed. Some others, c. 1,500 joined the left wing Albanian National Liberation Army, in which they formed three separate battalion (named Thanasis Zikos, Pantelis Botsaris, Lefteris Talios). During the latter stages of the war, the Albanian communists were able to stop contact between the minority and the right wing soldiers of EDES in southern Epirus, that wanted to unite Northern Epirus with Greece
When the war ended and the communists gained power in Albania, a United States Senate resolution demanded the cession of the region to the Greek state, but according to the following post war international peace treaties it remained part of the Albanian state. During this time, some Greeks and Orthodox Albanians managed to flee Albania and resettle in Greece.

At the end of World War II, normal relations between Greece and Albania were not restored, and the two countries remained technically in a state of war until 1987. This was largely due to Greece's territorial claims on Northern Epirus and the treatment of the Greek minority. Relations remained tense for most of the Cold War as a result. Enver Hoxha was willing to build a constituency with the Greek minority since 1944, while some minority members had participated in the partisan struggle against the Axis. A policy of tokenism was adopted with a few favoured members of the Greek minority taking prominent positions in the one party system. After WWII, Albania restored the minority zone based on the 1921 League of Nations agreement but without the inclusion of the three Himara villages and education in Greek within the minority zone along with other competencies based on Comintern policies on cultural linguistic minority issues. These competencies were related to territorial rights as in the Soviet Union and didn't apply as individual rights outside the minority zones. Further issues about their application involved local politics which concerned the participation of specific communities in Communist units during WWII. After the regime's end in 1990–91, the application of this system for the Greek minority has been described by sharply diverging narratives. Greeks in Albania, unlike minorities in other countries of the Balkans like Slav Macedonians in Greece during this era, were a formally recognized minority which had the right to education in Greek as well as the right to publish and broadcast in Greek. Nevertheless, the use of Greek outside the minority zones, for example in Himara, was forbidden, and many Greek names of people and places were changed to Albanian. The Soviet Yugoslav rapprochement in the early 1960s and the possibility that Greece might annex Northern Epirus were important factors in Albania's rift with the Soviet Union and its move towards China. In 1967, all religious places of worship in the country were closed, all forms of public worship were outlawed throughout the country, and the existence of an Orthodox Christian population in Northern Epirus was officially denied. These measures were particularly harsh for the Epirote minority, since their religion was tied to their culture. As part of the atheism campaign the Greek minority was subject to much more comprehensive persecusion, with the closure and demolition of churches, burning of religious books and widespread human rights violations. Approximately 630 Orthodox churches in southern Albania were either closed or re purposed. In 1975, "foreign" or religious personal and place names were prohibited, and had to change. The regime also relocated Albanian settlers to the Greek minority regions and at the same time forced many Greeks to relocate to northern and central Albania, in what was seen by ethnic Greeks as an attempt to alter the demographic composition of Northern Epirus. In the "minority zones", the regime created new villages with Albanian settlers, or else settled Albanian families in villages that had previously been entirely Greek. In the mixed villages, the minority rights of the Greek inhabitants were curtailed. The settlers were frequently military or administrative personnel and their families, and acted as enforcers of regime policies. Examples of these policies was the settling of 300 Albanian families in the Greek inhabited town of Himara, and the creation of an entirely new settlement of Gjashta, comprised 3,000 Cham Albanians in the vicinity of Saranda. The settlers were awarded land grants, resulting in the permanent alteration of the demographic composition of these areas. The first serious attempt to improve relations was initiated by Greece in the 1980s, during the government of Andreas Papandreou. In 1984, during a speech in Epirus, Papandreou declared that the inviolability of European borders as stipulated in the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, to which Greece was a signatory, applied to the Greek Albanian border. The most significant change occurred on 28 August 1987, when the Greek Cabinet lifted the state of war that had been declared since November 1940. At the same time, Papandreou deplored the "miserable condition under which the Greeks in Albania live". As Albania became more dependent on trade relations with Greece the situation of the ethnic Greek population gradually improved, but nevertheless discriminatory practices existed at the time of the collapse of the People's Republic of Albania (1990). During the years of the communist regime, irredentist aspirations by the pro Greek parties of southern Albania was nonexistent, but re emerged after the regime's collapse in 1991. Tensions increased even further when the Albanian government drafted a law requiring the head of the Orthodox Church in Albania be born in Albania, which would force the then head of the church, the Greek Archbishop Anastasios of Albania from his post. In December 1994, however, Greece began to permit limited EU aid to Albania as a gesture of goodwill, while Albania released two of the Omonoia defendants and reduced the sentences of the remaining four. In 1995, the remaining defendants were released on suspended sentences.

In recent years relations have significantly improved; Greece and Albania signed a Friendship, Cooperation, Good Neighborliness and Security Agreement on March 21, 1996. Although relations between Albania and Greece have greatly improved in recent years, the Greek minority in Albania continues to suffer discrimination particularly regarding education in the Greek language, property rights of the minority, and violent incidents against the minority by nationalist extremists. Tensions resurfaced during local government elections in Himara in 2000, when a number of incidents of hostility towards the Greek minority took place, as well as with the defacing of signposts written in Greek in the country's south by Albanian nationalist elements, and more recently following the death of Aristotelis Goumas. There were tensions as international talks on Kosovo's independence got underway in 2007, and there were also incidents following the 2008 Kosovo declaration of independence. Tensions rose again following the 2014 administrative and territorial reform in Albania; and again in 2016 and 2017, following the decision of local authorities in Himara to demolish the homes of 19 ethnic Greek families.

In Albania, Greeks are considered a "national minority". There were no reliable statistics on the size of any ethnic minorities, while the latest official census (2011) has been widely disputed due to boycott and irregularities in the procedure. In general Albania and Greece hold different and often conflicting estimations, as they have done so for the last 20 years. According to data presented to the 1919 Paris Conference, by the Greek side, the Greek minority numbered 120,000, but a CIA report of 1948 put the number at 35,000. The 1989 census under the communist regime cited 58,785 Greeks,

Most non Albanian sources have placed the number of ethnic Greeks in Albania, including those who have moved to live in Greece, to be approximately 200,000, while Greek sources claim that there are around 300,000 ethnic Greeks in Albania. As Albanians and Greeks hold different views on what constitutes a Greek in Albania, the total number fluctuates greatly which explains the inconsistent totals provided within Albania and Greece and from external agencies, organisations and sources. Community groups representing Albania's Greeks in Greece have given a 286,000 sum. Furthermore, the Migration Policy Institute has noted that 189,000 Albanian immigrants of Greek ancestry live in Greece as 'co ethnics', a title reserved for Albania's Greek community members. However, the area studied was confined to the southern border, and this estimate is considered to be low. Under this definition, minority status was limited to those who lived in 99 villages in the southern border areas, thereby excluding important concentrations of Greek settlement and making the minority seem smaller than it is. Sources from the Greek minority have claimed that there are up to 400,000 Greeks in Albania, or 12% of the total population at the time (from the "Epirot lobby" of Greeks with family roots in Albania). According to Ian Jeffries in 1993, most western estimates of the minority's size put it at around 200,000, or ~6% of the population, though a large number, possibly two thirds, has migrated to Greece in recent years. The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization estimates the Greek minority at approximately 70,000 people. Other independent sources estimate that the number of Greeks in Northern Epirus is 117,000 (about 3.5% of the total population), a figure close to the estimate provided by The World Factbook (2006) (about 3%). But this number was 8% by the same agency a year before. The 2014 CIA World Factbook estimate put the Greek minority at 0.9%, which is based on the disputed 2011 census. A 2003 survey conducted by Greek scholars estimate the size of the Greek minority at around 60.000. The US State Department uses a 1.17% figure for Greeks in Albania. In addition an estimated of 189,000 ethnic Greeks who are Albanian citizens reside in Greece. The Greek minority in Albania is located compactly, within the wider Gjirokastër and Sarandë regions and in four settlements within the coastal Himarë area where they form an overall majority population. Greek speaking settlements are also found within Përmet municipality, near the border. Some Greek speakers are also located within the wider Korçë region. Due to both forced and voluntary internal migration of Greeks within Albania during the communist era, some Greek speakers are also located within the wider Përmet and Tepelenë regions. Outside the area defined as Northern Epirus, two coastal Greek speaking villages exist near Vlorë. While due to forced and non forced internal population movements of Greeks within Albania during the communist era, some Greek speakers are also dispersed within the wider Berat, Durrës, Kavajë, Peqin, Elbasan and Tiranë regions. In the post 1990 period, like many other minorities elsewhere in Balkans, the Greek population has diminished because of heavy migration. However, after the Greek economic crisis (2009), members of the Greek minority returned to Albania.

While violent incidents have declined in recent years, the ethnic Greek minority has pursued grievances with the government regarding electoral zones, Greek language education, and property rights. On the other hand, minority representatives complain of the government's unwillingness to recognize the possible existence of ethnic Greek towns outside communist era 'minority zones'; to utilize Greek on official documents and on public signs in ethnic Greek areas; to ascertain the size of the ethnic Greek population; and to include more ethnic Greeks in public administration.

The census of October 2011 included ethnicity for the first time in post communist Albania, a long standing demand of the Greek minority and of international organizations. However, Greek representatives already found this procedure unacceptable due to article 20 of the Census law, which was proposed by the nationalist oriented Party for Justice, Integration and Unity and accepted by the Albanian government. According to this, there is a $1,000 fine for someone who will declare anything other than what was written down on his birth certificate, including certificates from the communist era where minority status was limited to only 99 villages. Indeed, Omonoia unanimously decided to boycott the census, since it violates the fundamental right of self determination. Moreover, the Greek government called its Albanian counterpart for urgent action, since the right of free self determination is not being guaranteed under these circumstances. Vasil Bollano, the head of Omonoia declared that: "We, as minority representatives, state that we do not acknowledge this process, nor its product and we are calling our members to refrain from participating in a census that does not serve the solution of current problems, but their worsening". According to the census, there were 17,622 Greeks in the country's south (counties of Gjirokastër, Vlorë, and Berat) while 24,243 in Albania in general. Apart from these numbers, an additional 17.29% of the population of those counties refused to answer the optional question of ethnicity (compared to 13.96% of the total population in Albania). On the other hand, Omonoia conducted its own census in order to count the members of the ethnic Greek minority. A total of 286,852 were counted, which equals to ca. 10% of the population of the country. During the time the census was conducted, half of these individuals resided permanently in Greece, but 70% visit their country of origin at least three times a year.

The return to Albania of ethnic Greeks that were expelled during the past regime seemed possible after 1991. However, the return of their confiscated properties is even now impossible, due to Albanian's inability to compensate the present owners. Moreover, the full return of the Orthodox Church property also seems impossible for the same reasons.

Greek education in the region was thriving during the late Ottoman period (18th–19th centuries). When the First World War broke out in 1914, 360 Greek language schools were functioning in Northern Epirus (as well as in Elbasan, Berat, Tirana) with 23,000 students. In this period, Romanian schools for the Aromanian population of the general region of Epirus were also present, though after the split of the region between Albania and Greece they were progressively closed. Likewise, in Northern Epirus, during the following decades the majority of Greek schools were closed and Greek education was prohibited in most districts. In the post communist period (after 1991), the reopening of schools was one of the major objectives of the minority. In April 2005 a bilingual Greek Albanian school in Korçë, and after many years of efforts, a private Greek school was opened in the Himara municipality in spring of 2006.

In 1921–1991, there were minority zones where members of national minorities in Albania could exercise their cultural rights. In accordance with the final settlement in the League of Nations on minority populations in Albania, a specific minority zone was established for communities where the majority identified as Greeks in the territory of Albania in 1921. The League of Nations recognized as part of the minority zone 99 settlements in the Gjirokastër Sarandë areas and 3 villages in Himara (Himarë, Palasë, Dhërmi). After 1945, the minority zone was re established by the new Albanian government under the Communist Party of Albania and excluded the three villages along the Himara coast. Greeks as an officially recognized national minority held co equal cultural and political rights within these communities but as these rights were defined on a territorial basis, they were largely absent outside the minority zone. As such, education in Greek which was institutionally protected within the minority zone as well as other rights, didn't exist outside this zone and was subject to geographical restrictions. After 1991, rights which were exclusive to the minority zone were gradually made non geographical and applicable throughout Albania. As such, the Law on Protection of National Minorities (2017) explicitly stipulates that linguistic and cultural rights of minorities can be exercised "in the entire territory of Albania". The right to education (funded by state institutions) and the right to use a non Albanian language in local administration are partially defined territorially and require that at least 20% of the population of an area has to belong to a minority community and request the exercise of such rights.

In April 1994, Albania announced that unknown individuals attacked a military camp near the Greek Albanian border (Peshkëpi incident), with two soldiers killed. Responsibility for the attack was taken by MAVI (Northern Epirus Liberation Front), which officially ceased to exist at the end of World War II. This incident triggered a serious crisis in Albanian Greek relations. Later reporting from sources in the Greek police dismissed these accounts as baseless. The Albanian police reports that the events that led to his death began when he was approached by police vehicles after seen shooting in the air.