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| Albanian rebels gather around a train upon entering Skopje on August 12, 1912, an event described by historian Jusuf Buxhovi as a strategic military breakthrough rather than full liberation. |
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| A historical archive photo depicting Albanian rebels on horseback during their 1912 march into Skopje, an event analyzed by Jusuf Buxhovi as a military breakthrough rather than full liberation. |
The Albanian uprising in the summer of 1912, led by Hasan Prishtina, followed continuous fighting across most of the Vilayet of Kosovo. As rebels captured Prizren, Gjakova, Peja, Ferizaj, and finally Prishtina one by one, the Ottoman Empire was forced to initiate negotiations with the uprising's leaders.
The talks—which began in Prishtina and later shifted to Skopje between Hasan Prishtina and General Ibrahim Pasha (who was of Albanian origin)—dragged on for several days. There was a risk that these delays would scatter the ranks of the Albanian rebels. To force Ibrahim Pasha into a fait accompli, Hasan Prishtina and other Albanian leaders decided to march on Skopje.
On August 11, the rebels began advancing from several directions, and several thousand entered Skopje the following day. Upon their arrival, Ottoman military units withdrew into their barracks in Skopje and surrounding areas (such as Tetovo and Kumanovo), while the rebels were enthusiastically welcomed by the local population.
From August 12 until August 19—when the agreement known as Hasan Prishtina’s Fourteen Points was signed with General Ibrahim Pasha—Albanian rebels oversaw Skopje. They released prisoners and maintained law and order in the city and its surroundings, but they did not establish an autonomous administration backed by local executive power.
The entry of Albanian rebels into Skopje triggered dramatic shifts in Istanbul: the Sultan dissolved the Young Turk-dominated parliament, which was known for its anti-Albanian policies, and the following day brought down the Young Turk government. It was replaced by an independent cabinet led by Gazi Muhtar Pasha, an advocate for negotiating an agreement with Albanians to unite the four Albanian vilayets into one, as demanded by the rebels.
Despite the impact that the entry of Albanian rebels into Skopje had on the direction of negotiations—estimated at around 6,000 fighters by foreign sources, and up to 30,000 by some historians—this major, even historic, military achievement lacked the necessary political outcome: the creation of an autonomous Albanian vilayet or the declaration of Albania's independence.
This occurred because the leaders of the uprising failed to agree among themselves that military victories in the Vilayet of Kosovo—specifically the entry into its capital, Skopje—should be followed by the establishment of autonomous institutions and local governance at the vilayet level.
Had this occurred, the Ottoman Empire would have been compelled to accept the rebels' demands for a unified Albanian vilayet out of the four existing ones—practically creating a so-called "Ottoman Albania" as a transitional phase toward statehood amid the Ottoman retreat from the Balkans—to neutralize a potential declaration of an independent Albanian state in Skopje.
From a historical perspective, the advance of Albanian rebels into Skopje, their oversight of the city, and the retreat of Ottoman soldiers into barracks can be considered a military push for political pressure, but not a liberation.
It was neither accompanied by the overthrow of Ottoman rule nor by the creation of autonomous institutions at all levels. On the contrary, the rebel force dispersed, and its scattered power was unable to reorganize to withstand the Serbian and Montenegrin armies that invaded Kosovo with tragic consequences in October of that year.
This pattern repeated itself in the summer of 2001, when National Liberation Army (NLA) units waged a highly successful three-month campaign, taking control of most Albanian-inhabited areas in Macedonia, surrounding Skopje, and entering part of the city (Aracinovo).
However, they failed to build institutions in the territories they controlled. This led to the Ohrid Framework Agreement, where military capital was spent on political goals that did not align with the demands proclaimed at the outset: a federal Macedonia, with two units—Albanian and Macedonian—and the achievement of state-forming status as equal citizens.
Instead, the constitutional amendments that followed formalized Macedonia's status as a state of the Macedonian people, while Albanians were degraded from a recognized nationality in the SFRY to a mere "severed ethnicity."
Meanwhile, the legal equality of the Albanian language was reduced to a political compromise dependent on a 20% demographic threshold.
Swapping the constitutional equality of the Albanian language for mere legal recognition—an outright deception—led to today's state of political and cultural discrimination against Albanians through their own fault.
The political responsibility assumed by former leaders of the "war wing" at the state level devolved into an ambition for power, rather than a commitment to the equality for which blood was spilled.