KOSOVO: TURKISH LANGUAGE LAW MOTION REJECTED BY

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 PRISTINA 000781 SIPDIS SIPDIS DEPT FOR DRL, INL, EUR/SCE, AND EUR/SSA, NSC FOR BRAUN, USUN FOR DREW SCHUFLETOWSKI, USOSCE FOR STEVE STEGER E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/05/2016 TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR PHUM KDEM UNMIK YI SUBJECT: KOSOVO: TURKISH LANGUAGE LAW MOTION REJECTED BY KOSOVO ASSEMBLY Classified By: COM TINA KAIDANOW FOR REASONS 1.4 (B) AND (D). ¶1. (C) SUMMARY: A motion to make Turkish an official language of Prizren municipality and change the population requirement for official languages from 6% to 5% was rejected September 14 in a 48-41 vote of the Kosovo Assembly. Though Assembly votes are anonymous, all signs indicate the majority of "no" votes came from the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK). This was despite an unambiguous message from visiting DAS DiCarlo to the LDK caucus head that the USG favored passage of the amendment as a symbol of Kosovar Albanians' willingness to address the concerns of key ethnic minorities. The LDK caucus head later defended his opposition to the amendment as part of Kosovar "democracy"; he was roundly taken to task by USOP and warned again that the status settlement will require party discipline and support for all the elements of the status package, including decentralization. END SUMMARY. Assembly Vote Fails on Turkish Language Amendment ¶2. (C) As part of the Contact Group 13 priority standards, Kosovo's Assembly was required to adopt several pieces of minority-related legislation, including a Law on the Use of Languages that would meet Council of Europe requirements for safeguarding the language rights of key minority communities, particularly the Serb community in Kosovo. The Assembly passed a Law meeting these requirements on July 27; the law stipulated a six percent population threshhold for making a community language official in its municipality, and a three percent threshhold for communities that want to communicate with their municipality in their own language. It also enabled, but did not require, any municipality in which a language has been in traditional use to make the language official in that locale. ¶3. (SBU) Though there has been no official census for 15 years, Turks will likely not reach the 6 percent mark in Prizren, where the Turkish population of Kosovo is concentrated. This is in part due to the fact that the overwhelmingly Turkish town of Mamusha was separated from Prizren and designated as a "pilot municipality" as part of last year's PISG-led (and largely abortive) decentralization effort. Faced with the prospect of the removal of Turkish as an official language in Prizren, Turkish Assembly member Mahir Yagcilar proposed an amendment to reduce the quota to 5 percent Kosovo-wide and make Turkish official in Prizren based on its traditional use in the city, regardless of the number of Turkish speakers. The amendment was not incorporated into the law approved by the Assembly in July, leaving Yagcilar to invoke a little-used consitutional mechanism whereby a three-member panel, representing the aggrieved minority, the government, and UNMIK/the Council of Europe, was convened to consider amending the law post facto. The motion agreed to by the three-person panel on September 7 contained the same provisions as Yagcilar's initial July proposal, reducing the population quota to 5 percent and making Turkish official in Prizren notwithstanding the Turks' failure to meet the threshhold there. The panel's recommendation was put on the Assembly's agenda for the September 14 plenary session. LDK Caucus Holds Out ¶4. (C) Prior to the Assembly vote, COM met with leading members of the LDK to urge support for the measure, given Kosovar Albanian equities in demonstrating their sensitivity to the concerns of important ethnic communities in Kosovo. Visiting EUR DAS Rosemary DiCarlo also urged LDK caucus head Alush Gashi, in a September 13 meeting with all four Albanian caucus heads in the Assembly, to consider the Turkish amendment a priority. The message found resonance among the three leading parties outside the LDK: Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK)'s Jakup Krasniqi, AAK's Gylnaze Syla, and the Reform Party (ORA)'s Nazim Jashari (as well as the Group for Integration's Ferid Agani) all publicly pledged their group's support for the motion, with Krasniqi giving the standards PRISTINA 00000781 002 OF 002 requirement as PDK's reason to vote in favor. ¶5. (C) LDK's Gashi, in contrast, encouraged his LDK Assembly members to vote individually and indicated his own skepticism about the amendment. As a consequence, the amendment failed by a vote of 48-41, with LDK members the likely culprits (the Assembly's electronic voting system prevents a determination of who precisely voted for and against). LDK MPs lamely claimed reluctance to burden Prizren financially by requiring it to hire more Turkish translators, but the actual effect would be negligible since business in Prizren is already conducted in Turkish, including within the municipal government. Comment ¶6. (C) The reason for the law's failure is far more prosaic than the excuses offered by the LDK caucus; Prizren's mayor, Eqrem Kryeziu, is less than fond of his Turkish municipal partners and was averse to providing them any "special benefits" in law, fearing further demands for rights and privileges. Kryeziu, a top LDK official, used his connections within the Assembly, particularly with Gashi and the ever-unhelpful Sabri Hamiti (an Assembly Presidency member),to kill the provision despite repeated entreaties from COM and other members of the Contact Group and at least the nominal support of the LDK leadership in the person of President Sejdiu. The failure of the amendment is discouraging because it indicates that personal connections feature more prominently in Assembly considerations than party discipline. While the law approved in its first reading in July probably meets the Council of Europe requirements for minority protection, the vote on the Turkish amendment was an early litmus test of the Kosovo's Albanian leadership's willingness to reassure and protect its minorites. Their refusal to extend their good will towards even the Turks, who are pro-independence, means that we will need to invest considerable effort in ensuring that other standards-related legislation moves through without the same difficulty. END COMMENT. ¶7. (SBU) U.S. Office Pristina clears this cable in its entirety for release to U.N. Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari. KAIDANOW