Türkiye deploys additional troops to Kosovo at NATO’s request as ethnic tension intensifies

KOSOVO (AA): Türkiye has completed the deployment of additional troops to Kosovo at the request of NATO’s Allied Joint Force Command after recent tension between ethnic Serbs and Muslim Albanians in the Balkan country.

A part of the commando battalion of the 65th Mechanized Infantry Brigade Command stationed in the Luleburgaz district of Türkiye’s northwestern Kirklareli province, which has been assigned as a reserve unit, arrived at the military airport in Corlu.

After the preparations were completed, Turkish troops reached the Prishtina Adem Jashari International Airport in the Kosovar capital by military aircraft.

Sabri Tunc Angili, the Turkish envoy to Kosovo, received the unit arriving at the airport. The soldiers were transferred to the Sultan Murat Barracks.

Tensions have recently gripped the Muslim republic of Kosovo as the local ethnic Serb minority protested the election of Muslim ethnic Albanian mayors in four municipalities last month in the country’s northern municipalities.

Ethnic Serbs in the country’s north – the country’s second-largest ethnic group – have been protesting the election of Muslim ethnic Albanian mayors since late May.

In the aftermath of the tensions, Türkiye announced that it would deploy additional forces to Kosovo.

“Amid recent developments in Kosovo, a commando battalion affiliated to our 65th Mechanized Infantry Brigade Command, which was previously assigned to the NATO Kosovo Force, was assigned as a reserve force at the request of NATO’s Allied Joint Force Command Naples,” the Turkish National Defense Ministry previously said in a statement.

Kosovo won its independence from Serbia after a long, hard struggle in 1998 and was internationally recognized as a republic — a fact never recognized by Serbia.