Goulash made with Turul Bird

It seems to me that the proposal made by the historian Predrag Marković whereby Serbia should work on boosting its economy and one day “buy” Kosovo has gone pretty much under the radar of the Serbian public. Yes, Serbia, more precisely, Serbian business people should buy land, buildings and companies in Kosovo.

If anyone does not understand what this is about, just have a look at what the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been doing. 103 years after the Treaty of Trianon, fewer Hungarians live in Vojvodina today than in 1920, just as there are fewer Serbs in Kosovo today than 100 years ago. However, with the help of its Prosperitati Foundation and in various other ways, Hungary has been buying houses, land, factories, banks and companies, as well as building stadiums and hotels and repairing churches and synagogues in areas with a majority Hungarian population. Furthermore, in most places with a majority Hungarian population in Vojvodina, sculptures of the mythical bird Turul, which, according to legend, led the Hungarians to the Pannonian Plain, are being erected. Orbán is making plans for the next 50 years and that is something we should emulate when it comes to Kosovo.

Although the loss of the “southern regions” (Délvidék in Hungarian) after the First World War was very traumatic for the Hungarians, the Hungarian population continued living in Subotica, Kanjiža, Temerin, Bečej, Bačka Topola, Senta, Ada and other towns and villages across Vojvodina. A century after the Treaty of Trianon, by issuing Hungarians in Vojvodina with Hungarian passports and investing in areas in Vojvodina where Hungarians live, Viktor Orbán exerts an influence without causing a “hostile reaction” from official Belgrade, since today’s relations between the two countries are probably the best in the past 100 years, especially in terms of personal relations between the Hungarian Prime Minister and the Serbian president.

Whatever the solution for the Kosovo and Metohija status might be, the most important thing is that the Serbs stay there. In the past 600 years, Serbia was in power in Kosovo for only 83 years. For the remaining 517 years, Kosovo was ruled by the Turks, the Italians, and since 1999, the authorities in Priština and NATO. Even during those 517 years, some people stayed there to live. From what I hear, quite a few Serbs from Kosovo and Metohija have decently-sized apartments in Belgrade or some other towns in central Serbia. If even the few Serbs who still live in Kosovo and Metohija decide to leave, then all the talk about resolutions and international law is pointless and meaningless.

That’s why, considering how much time we are spending with Orbán, it would be wise to learn about certain things from him.