By Klelia Loka
Recently, social media was fired up by the reaction of some celebrities as a result of Kosovo being removed from Apple Maps. In the current map of Apple, the border between Kosovo and Serbia has been erased and now Kosovo is shown as part of the Serbian territory.
KOSOVO Kosovo is located in Southern Europe, and its population is around two million inhabitants. It is bordered by Serbia to the north and east, North Macedonia to the southeast, Albania to the southwest, and Montenegro to the west.
BATTLE OF KOSOVO
The Battle of Kosovo took place on 15 June 1389 between an army led by the Serbian Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović and an invading army of the Ottoman Empire under the command of Sultan Murad Hüdavendigâr. The battle was fought on the Kosovo field about 5 kilometers northwest of the modern city of Pristina. The Serbs were left with too few men to defend their lands effectively, while the Turks had many more troops in the east.
An occupation divided between Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria ended in 1918, leaving Kosovo to be incorporated into the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, which was later renamed as Yugoslavia.
KOSOVO WAR
The Kosovo War was an armed conflict in Kosovo that started in 1998 and lasted until 1999. Where 13,500 people were killed or went missing during the two-year conflict, among which 1024 children lost their lives and 109 went missing. The Yugoslav and Serb forces caused the displacement of between 1.2 million to 1.45 million Kosovo Albanians.
NATO'S INVOLVEMENT
On March 23rd, 1999, NATO began a three-month-long bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), allegedly to prevent the ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians in the semi-autonomous region of Serbia by Slobodan Milosević’s authoritarian regime. By the time Serbians left Kosovo and the Kosovo Liberation Army demilitarized, over a million people had been displaced and began returning to the country.
KOSOVO AS AN INDEPENDENT STATE
Kosovo won its Independence 12 years ago, and it has received 115 diplomatic recognitions. However, Serbia and its allies do not recognize Kosovo as an independent state. Even after the Brussels agreement that was held seven years ago, the relations between Kosovo and Serbia remain frozen.
APPLE REMOVED KOSOVO FROM MAPS
As a result of what I previously mentioned the conflict between Kosovo and Serbia, there has been a heated debate on what Apple Maps did to its map. Kosovo is an independent state, and its borders should be represented on the map. Famous singers like Dua Lipa and Rita Ora, whose parents are Albanian, have sparked an enormous reaction online by posting about this issue. Also, Kosovo’s foreign minister Meliza Haradinaj wrote a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, telling him that this is perceived as an insult to Kosovo and its state.
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