Talk:Kosovo

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Differing treatment between Kosovo and Taiwan

Why is it that Taiwan could be considered a "country" in the lead, but not Kosovo, being a "partially recognised" state? Kosovo, like Palestine, has much more global recognition than Taiwan, are they not? Kosovo is a part of multiple international organizations, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, (both of which Taiwan is not a part of) and the Council of Europe, and is recognized by more UN members (100) than Taiwan (13) does. Even Palestine has more recognition (138) than Taiwan (and Kosovo itself) and yet are not given a status of a "country". What makes Taiwan so special over Kosovo, or better yet, over other partially recognised nations with much more intentional recognition in multiple areas? 220.72.157.38 (talk) 07:41, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

Why is Kosovo special enough to be considered a "state" when Taiwan is not? CMD (talk) 08:29, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

I have no objection to using the word state or country or better yet, state/country DominusVilicus (talk) 13:54, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Well I most definitely object to state or country because it rides roughshod over one half of the debate and places the other half on a pedestal. That said, the community has already crossed the rubicon on the "it borders Serbia" on the most bone-headed and gargabe argumentation I have ever read. In the current climate of the White Helmets being a benevolent force for good, Russia being Mr Bad Guy and Ukraine the innocent babe in the woods, and the concomitant factor that many decent editors have left the project leaving only the disciples of New World Order at the reins, I doubt that the opposition to "state" is going to achieve success due to might being right. But while the talk page allows us to discuss the article's content, I will continue to exercise this freedom. No there is no correlation between Taiwan and Kosovo. Just because they have parallels such as limited recognition and as a consequence, limited membership to international organisations, does not mean they share the same backstory. First, Taiwan is shorthand for Republic of China. Contrary to rife ignorance among armchair pundits in the west, Taiwan has never declared independence, and one of its biggest parties the Kuomintang does not even support such a move, preferring Cross-Strait relations per the One China Policy: i.e. to claim territorial integrity over all of China with the inclusion of Mongolia which it never allowed to go free. Its related co-examples include pre-2001 Afghanistan, contested between Emirate and State during those years. Korea is also similar with what we call "North" and "South" claiming single country in full. Kosovo is an example of a body which has declared independence from a bigger state, so its co-examples include Somaliland, Lugansk (2014-2022), Abkhazia, even ISIS for said periods that ISIS controlled its claimed territories. The State of Palestine was declared in 1988, has about two thirds recognition, and contains territory that is not claimed by any other competing state (e.g. Israel does not claim Gaza as its own). The refusal by about a third of states to recognise Palestine revolves mostly around wider poltical loyalty. The question of how many diplomatic recognitions Kosovo has over its real peers (ISIS, South Ossetia, etc.) demonstrates not so much how much of a country it is but how much success it has achieved in its goals. For FIFA to admit Kosovo but not Artsakh is not based on a survey as to how much you control, or how many recognise you, but who influences you. It is thereby a circular argument. So yes it will probably be the case that it becomes "country" with "disputed" status relegated to line two, but it will not be on any sound reasoning nor the fact that comparison with Taiwan should have merit. --OJ (talk) 15:29, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Less soapboxing, OJ, and more discussion of Reliable Sources to improve the article - your personal views are less than useless for that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.111.216.187 (talk) 06:34, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

There's no "soapboxing", and if you think that some reliable source claims there to exist a One-Serbia policy whereby a nation either recognises Priština or Belgrade as the legal authority over the whole of constitutional Serbia, then go ahead and entertain everybody with it. Failing that, my points stands, and you have no basis to compare Kosovo with the Republic of China, period. --Juicy Oranges (talk) 16:50, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Number of recognitions

There was a discussion about the number of recognitions in the relevant talkpage and the main article should reflect those changes. Ahmet Q. (talk) 22:48, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

In his initial edit, Ранко_Николић brought up an interesting point. He specifically claimed Not an improvement. Do not POV push with Twitter posts by Kosovo* representatives used as a source. I would like to add something regarding this claim. If we go to the page International recognition of Kosovo and look at the sources that the recognition of Kosovo's independence was withdrawn, we see that the countries in that list can be separated into 3 categories:

Category 1. Ghana: The deputy foreign minister of the country claimed that Ghana's decision to recognize Kosovo was premature and they reconsidered their position. Therefore, there is good credibility to the claim that Ghana has withdrawn its recognition of Kosovo's independence.

Category 2. Burundi, Lesotho, Comoros, Dominica, Grenada, Nauru. In all of these cases, Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dačić met with the representatives of those countries and afterwards claimed that they had agreed to suspend the recognition of Kosovo "until the conclusion of the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue" and so on. In this case, even if we don't see the Serbian Foreign Minister as a credible source, the fact that he made the announcement with the representatives of those countries being present gives considerable credibility to his claims.

Category 3. Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Madagascar, Togo, Central African Republic, Sierra Leone. In all of these cases, Ivica Dačić claimed that recognition of Kosovo's independence has been withdrawn, but did not provide any verbal note, nor any other evidence. Therefore, these claims of derecognition are dubious at best. Dacic made similar evidenceless claims about Palau and Suriname, but recently Kosovo's President[3] and Foreign Minister[4] met the foreign ministers of said countries and discussed the deepening of bilateral relations. In light of these events, one wonders if countries in the third group should be in the list of "derecognizers" at all. The evidence that they recognized Kosovo is a verbal note, while the evidence that they derecognized Kosovo is a claim by Kosovo's rival in a dispute, with zero outside corroboration.

What Ранко_Николић calls Twitter posts by Kosovo* representatives fall in Category 2. They are indeed claims by the representatives of Kosovo, but there is evidence that these representatives had bilateral meetings with the representatives of the other countries, after which they made those claims (photos, mentioning said diplomats in their tweets). Counterevidence to that is just a claim by Serbia's Foreign Minister that these countries have withdrawn recognition (Category 3). So there is absolutely no doubt that Category 2 has primacy over Category 3. It simply has far more credibility. One important question is whether Category 3 should exist at all, or whether Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Madagascar, Togo, Central African Republic, and Sierra Leone should simply be returned to the list of recognizing countries. If we follow Ранко_Николић's advice and remove one-sided, unprovable claims, then the number of recognitions of Kosovo's independence should be 106, not 100. That's something we can discuss in the future in International Recognition of Kosovo. -Uniacademic (talk) 00:26, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

The sources which describe the diplomatic relations between Kosovo and other states are sufficient. ILBobby's comment sums up how sources should be used in this context [5].--Maleschreiber (talk) 17:47, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Just a note that Ранко_Николић would also appear to be pushing a POV. Not very subtly either. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:56, 2 October 2022 (UTC)I didn't notice

@Horse Eye's Back: Thanks for the edits after my revert. There is a requirement that every revert is explained on the talkpage, but there is no explanation for any of the reverts by Ранко_Николић.--Maleschreiber (talk) 18:04, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

I think you're thinking of WP:BRD which is an optional method of seeking consensus but is not in any way required. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:06, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Ранко_Николић is sabotaging the page with propaganda and actions should be taken so he/she won't keep reverting sourceful edits. Therandas (talk) 10:06, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 November 2022

Remove the sentence "A significant portion of politicians in both the EU and the US had feared that a premature declaration could boost support in Serbia for the nationalist candidate, Tomislav Nikolić.[142]".

As much as I personally despise Nikolic, he was a center-right candidate running on a center-right platform. The article used as a source [142] makes no reference to him. In fact, it acknowledges that the election was won by a center-left, pro-EU candidate. 24.135.14.178 (talk) 19:48, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

For the record, this sentence has been sitting around for more than 14 years – it was first inserted, with the same source, on 3 February 2008 [6], i.e. just before the election in question and before the declaration of independence. However, the source page on BBC was edited and modified several times over the years, and it's no longer easy to find out what it was saying back then. The version you can see today, and also the one that was linked to when somebody added an archive link and and a "retrieved on" mark in July 2009, were from a later date, after the election. Unfortunately, webarchive didn't archive any snapshots of the source page around that time. The nearest ones I can find are one from 9 June 2007, archived on 24 October 2007, and one from 21 February 2008, archived on 7 March 2008. Neither of them mentions the concern about Nikolić, but it's quite possible that there was an intermediate version of the page that did mention it, from the time period between when the "postponement" would have been decided (supposedly after June 2007?) and the election itself (4 February) and declaration of independence (17 February). – So, difficult to decide what to do with this, for the moment. Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:47, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

@Future Perfect at Sunrise: Interesting... I personally suppose that, since the information cannot be verified, we should probably remove the sentence. Even if it was not added in bad faith and its mention of Nikolić really was there at a given time, but it was not archived and we cannot find it now, I think we should probably remove it. At the same time, it sounds like the sentence might easily be true... So, perhaps we can keep it for a while, but replace the source with a 'citation needed' tag whilst we seek an alternative source for it. If no-one can find it after some time, we then delete it. What do you think? LongLivePortugal (talk) 21:20, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

Lead

I reverted an edit which add a description of Kosovo in the first sentence as a a disputed political entity. Such edits require a broad consensus. I think that such a description by definition reflects a very specific WP:POV in comparison to the current lead.--Maleschreiber (talk) 23:47, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Should have said disputed territory, linked with list of disputed territories. That's how it was originally, and to be honest, not much has remedied these past five years. --Juicy Oranges (talk) 21:31, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 22 December 2022

Megatronkopili (talk) 22:24, 22 December 2022 (UTC)File:Flag of Kosovo (yellow).svg

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. CMD (talk) 04:21, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Historical demographics

The edits by ElderZamzam introduced statements which contradict the rest of the section and they constitute a major change. Such edits require broad consensus building and shouldn't introduce any specific WP:POV.--Maleschreiber (talk) 23:28, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Ottoman rule

A bulk of the subsection Ottoman rule is solely devoted to the demographic history of Kosovo during that time period. I have added an undue tag under this section as there is significant undue weight to one view. Two opposing viewpoints are discussed in this subsection, that being a consensus on which ethnic group had a greater majority population. The subsection predominately discusses the viewpoints that Albanians formed a majority ethnic population of Kosovo during the Ottoman rule, there was little to no migration of Albanians to Kosovo and that the Great Serb migration was a myth. These points are supported by only three citations, Malcolm, Anscombe and Pulaha (a Hoxha era citation). As it stands, this section violates WP:CHERRYPICKING as there is little discussion on the opposing viewpoint which is in stark contrast to these arguments. In order for the tag to be removed, significant work would need to be done to discuss the opposing viewpoint and to introduce work from other authors. IMO, an ideal step would be to make only minor references to demographic history and focus on major events in this time period, given that other Wikipedia articles cover this topic. This would assist in navigating this minefield as I am aware such a rich history is difficult to dissect in a mere subsection. ElderZamzam (talk) 09:05, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Your personal opinion about the content of the section is no reason to tag it. Please discuss here what you believe is undue weight. Ahmet Q. (talk) 02:39, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for deletion

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