Plans of Pristina for Prizren - The path to UNESCO leads through Belgrade

Prizren, Proslava Spasovdana
Source: Kosovo Online

The historical center of Prizren was designated by the Kosovo Assembly in 2012 as a "special protected zone." Five days ago, Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti announced that his government is preparing this part of the city for a nomination to the UNESCO World Heritage List. With Byzantine, Serbian, and Ottoman cultural heritage, Prizren, as sources tell Kosovo Online, deserves recognition as a world heritage site, but it cannot be classified as "Kosovar" heritage, nor does Kosovo have the right to submit such a proposal to UNESCO.

By Dusica Radeka Djordjevic

The Kosovo government’s projects for Prizren do not stop here, as the Ministry of Culture presented a "vision" in 2020 for Prizren to be a candidate for the European Capital of Culture in 2050. Given all this, it is unsurprising that Albin Kurti, after inspecting three restored 19th-century houses in Prizren, proudly announced that his government has invested over 4.5 million euros in the city.

"With what we are doing today, we are preparing Prizren’s historical center for a UNESCO World Heritage nomination," Kurti stated on Facebook after his visit to the city, a former capital of Serbian emperors Dusan and Uros, where 11 Serbian churches and monasteries, built between the 14th and 19th centuries, were destroyed in the 2004 March pogrom against Serbian and non-Albanian residents.

Kurti’s statement has raised eyebrows among historians and experts familiar with UNESCO’s regulations.

Former Serbian ambassador to UNESCO, Darko Tanaskovic, finds Kurti's announcement "that his government is working on the restoration of three old houses in Prizren to nominate the historical center for the UNESCO World Heritage List" to be highly unserious.

"If he had added a sentence such as: 'when Kosovo becomes a member of this international organization/agency,' then it would at least align with the actual order of things. Namely, only a member state can submit an initiative to inscribe a cultural asset on the UNESCO list, and this must be done through an established and complex procedure. 'Kosovo' is neither an independent state for much of the world nor a UNESCO member," Tanaskovic states for Kosovo Online.

The restoration of a few dilapidated houses in Prizren as a step toward adding Prizren’s bazaar to the UNESCO list, he argues, does not merit a comment and shows the "laughable cultural standards" followed by Pristina authorities.

"Prizren is a true urban gem and could, under more favorable general circumstances, almost entirely be inscribed on the UNESCO list. But the consequence of its severe Albanian legal, political, and cultural usurpation is the erasure of this magical city from the universal civilizational horizon. For example, two or three mosques, a bridge, and a few tekkes could perhaps be listed as UNESCO cultural heritage, but this is unthinkable after the burning of the Church of the Virgin of Ljevis and its encirclement with barbed wire. If simply restoring and painting a few Oriental houses from the Ottoman period were enough, hundreds of Eastern towns worldwide would end up on UNESCO's list," Tanaskovic notes.

Prizren, Tanaskovic points out, is "Byzantine by origin, Serbian with a high medieval culture, long Ottoman by historical fate, and only in modern times, due to unfortunate captivity, an Albanian city."

"Let Kurti restore the bazaar where Serbian, Turkish, and Albanian were once equally spoken, but today only Albanian and broken English are heard. He will not deceive anyone at UNESCO. After all, wasn’t Sinan Pasha’s Mosque built using monastery stone from the ruined Holy Archangels? That’s noted in Ottoman Architectural Works in Kosovo (1999), a book by Prizren native Raif Vrmica, published by the Turkish Ministry of Culture. Surely that’s not Serbian propaganda," Tanaskovic remarks.

Jasmina S. Ciric, an art historian and assistant professor at the Faculty of Philology and Arts at the University of Kragujevac, emphasizes that Serbia is the only country with the right to nominate a particular monument in Kosovo and Metohija for UNESCO protection.

She highlights Articles 4 and 11 of the 1972 Convention on the Protection of Cultural Heritage, which remains in force today, stressing that only a UNESCO member state has the right to reference the historical continuity of a site in a nomination dossier for the World Heritage List.

In the past decade, there has been a trend to designate not only individual objects but broader areas and sacred environments as world heritage.

"Prizren as a city absolutely deserves it, but there is another issue—who can nominate it. The so-called state of Kosovo, led by Prime Minister Albin Kurti, has no right to nominate any object, let alone an entire urban zone of Prizren, primarily because it is not a UNESCO member, not a member of the United Nations, and, notably, it violates Resolution 1244. Despite the fact that Resolution 1244 is practically disregarded and violated daily, to their dismay and our advantage, it remains in force," Ciric explains for Kosovo Online.

Regarding what Pristina considers the historical center of Prizren, Ciric suggests it likely includes the core urban area of Prizren.

"This would encompass the area around the Church of the Virgin of Ljevis, the surroundings of Sinan Pasha’s Mosque, and, importantly, the immediate vicinity of the Monastery of the Holy Archangels. In terms of the cultural layer to which this heritage belongs, it is clear that we are dealing with traces of Serbian medieval heritage, as the entire city of Prizren was built upon the remnants of a medieval city. Historical data shows that the city continued to thrive during the Turkish rule. Kosovo and Metohija also preserve numerous so-called clock towers belonging to Ottoman heritage, but they certainly do not date back to the medieval period and are not located within Prizren’s core urban area. Thus, it’s unclear what is specifically meant here," Ciric explains.

Our interviewee warns that we are witnessing serious manipulation of cultural heritage almost daily.

"Every 15 or 20 days, we see similar announcements. Whether it’s an act declaring a monument as ancient Albanian or as part of Kosovo’s heritage, we’re also seeing an increasing number of books published in Albanian where monuments are labeled as Kosovo heritage, with narratives about temples, particularly in Prizren, being entirely altered," Ciric notes.

Historian Aleksandar Gudzic tells Kosovo Online that Prizren holds Serbian, Ottoman, and Byzantine (or Greek) cultural heritage, while there is no basis to speak of Kosovo or Albanian cultural heritage.

"Unless we’re to declare the modern buildings being constructed in Prizren today as masterpieces of world heritage and admit them to UNESCO," Gudzic adds.

He views Kurti's announcement as part of Pristina’s ambition to join UNESCO, hence the push to recognize part of "Kosovo’s heritage" within the organization.

"Bajrakli Mosque and Sinan Pasha Mosque in Prizren are part of the Ottoman cultural heritage, while the churches and monasteries—such as the Prizren Seminary, Holy Archangels, and the Church of the Virgin of Ljevis—are part of Serbian cultural heritage. The Bajrakli Mosque in Prizren was the site of a meeting of prominent Albanian leaders and the declaration of the Prizren League, which holds national significance for Kosovo Albanians. However, it remains part of Ottoman, not Albanian, cultural heritage," Gudzic points out.

Gudzic interprets Kurti's statement more as a provocation than as something likely to materialize.

"However, we cannot predict what might happen, as we live in chaotic times where anything is possible—including the scenario where Kosovo joins UNESCO and Serbian cultural heritage is overnight claimed as Albanian," Gudzic remarks.

Political analyst Predrag Rajic states that, while it is historically clear who built the cities in Kosovo, to whom the sacred sites belong, and who owns culturally significant objects, Albin Kurti continues with a project aimed at appropriating Serbian cultural heritage.

"Kurti wants to present Serbian cultural heritage as 'Kosovar,' aiming to define it in that way. He believes it’s not yet time to completely rewrite history and present an official falsification that would label it as Albanian heritage. For now, he seeks to mask it, remove the ethnic designation, and call it Kosovar. He will continue with this approach, while Serbia will keep fighting against it in the international arena. That’s why it is so important that so-called Kosovo has not succeeded in its attempt to become a full member of UNESCO; if it had, this already challenging struggle for us would be even harder," Rajic tells Kosovo Online.

Let’s recall that in 2015, Kosovo applied for UNESCO membership but did not secure enough votes at the organization’s General Conference.

As Darko Tanaskovic, who was then Serbia's ambassador to UNESCO, reminds us, Kosovo came close to achieving this goal but failed to secure the required two-thirds majority.

"Then, in 2017, at the insistence of their patrons, particularly Germany and France, they withdrew their already-submitted application letter because those more informed and responsible than Pristina’s political team determined that there was no chance of success. Since then, they have not officially submitted an application, but Kosovo officials have repeatedly emphasized that, as part of their program to affirm the international subjectivity of their 'state,' they are not giving up on joining UNESCO," Tanaskovic warns.