Who is Who – Fikrim Damka: Minister, educated in Turkey, arrested on Election Day

The Turkish Democratic Party of Kosovo, led by Fikrim Damka, the current Minister of Regional Development, secured two out of ten parliamentary seats reserved for non-Serb minorities in the elections held on February 9, according to the final results.

This result mirrors that of the previous elections on February 14, 2021, when Damka, as leader of the Turkish Democratic Party of Kosovo (KDTP), stated that his party would not support the formation of a government unless it was granted a ministerial position.

On this year’s election day, Damka was arrested on suspicion of committing criminal offenses of assault and intimidation against two individuals, one of whom is a member of the rival Turkish Innovative Movement Party. He was placed under house arrest for one month, but on March 7, the Basic Court in Prizren lifted the measure and replaced it with a restraining order, prohibiting him from approaching the victims within 50 meters. Following the lifting of his house arrest, Damka participated in the Kosovo government session held on March 12.

In a 2022 interview, Damka stated that "Serbia’s demand for the establishment of the Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities, with rights similar to autonomy in the north, as a condition for reaching a final agreement between Kosovo and Serbia, is unacceptable for Kosovo."

After the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers failed to include Kosovo's membership request on its agenda last year, Damka expressed disappointment, asserting that Kosovo had met all the criteria for joining the organization.

When he became the president of the Turkish Democratic Party of Kosovo in 2019, he identified strengthening relations with Turkey as one of his key goals.

He once stated that his education in Turkey significantly contributed to his rise to the position of minister.

As Minister of Regional Development, he met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan several years in a row during the Antalya Diplomatic Forum. In a Facebook post following their meeting in 2021, he concluded with the message: "Together, we are strong."

In June 2022, Democratic Party of Kosovo (DPK) MP Ariana Musliu-Shoshi and lawyer Faton Fetahu accused Damka and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Diaspora Donika Gërvalla of misusing €1.1 million through the allegedly unlawful signing of a cooperation memorandum between the Ministry of Regional Development and Caritas Switzerland in August 2021.

Musliu-Shoshi claimed that the Ministry of Regional Development had no legal authority to allocate budget funds in the manner it did in this case, particularly to sign an agreement for distributing public funds to an NGO without public advertisement.

Education and career

Damka was born on October 16, 1972, in Prizren. He graduated in 1996 from the Department of Economics at Istanbul University.

He worked as a teacher at the Secondary Economic-Legal School in Prizren and served as the president of the Kosovo-Turkish Teachers' Association.

His biography highlights his contributions to identifying issues within Kosovo’s Turkish education system and his role in organizing annual meetings, conferences, and seminars to find solutions.

In 2008, he was appointed as an advisor to the Minister of Environment and Spatial Planning, and in 2009, he became Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Forestry, and Rural Development. He was first elected as an MP in the 2010 parliamentary elections and was re-elected in 2014, 2017, 2019, and 2020.

His native language is Turkish, and he is also fluent in Albanian, Serbian, and English.