After the head of the Islamic Community of Macedonia called Macedonians “a wild people with no identity“, a similarly shocking insult now comes from Beycan Ilyas, head of the Democratic Party of Turks in Macedonia, part of Zoran Zaev’s ruling coalition.
During a rally he held for the SDSM – DUI presidential candidate Stevo Pendarovski, Ilyas repeatedly used the slur “gavur” – infidel – to refer to Macedonians. In his remarks he bemoaned the defeat of the Ottoman Empire a little over a century ago, and went on to say:
A hundred years later our fight continues. After the Ottomans left, we Turks and all Muslims were left alone. We are alone for 100 years in this gavur country, with the gavur, Ilyas said.
The word is used by Muslims in the Balkans and in Turkey as a derogatory word for non-Muslims, or infidels, often meant to tar them of perfidious or ascribe other negative connotations to non-Muslims.
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