support Mustafa Ragib, a pro Young Turk revolutionary of Bulgaria. With Kolonja's help, Ragib restarted publishing his newspaper Efkar-ı Umumiye ("Public Opinion") in Bulgarian and Turkish. "Public Opinion" consequently dedicated many of its pages to Albanian affairs as well, and publicized Albanian nationalistic materials. Even this would not go unnoticed from Ottoman authorities which would recall Ragib to disconnect him from Kolonja's influence. Kolonja distrusted the Arbëreshë (Italo-Albanians), whom he viewed as pawns of the Italian government advocating for Italian positions toward the Albanian question and refused to cooperate with them. During the late Ottoman period, Kolonja supported Austro-Hungarian assistance toward Albanian geopolitical interests in the Balkans. In 1904, Kolonja translated into Ottoman Turkish and published in Drita the manifesto of Albanian National Awakening, Sami Frashëri's "Shqipëria ç'ka qenë, ç'është e çdo të bëhetë" ("Albania - what it was, what it is and what it will be") of 1889. In 1906, Kolonja was involved in recruitment activities abroad for the revolutionary Albanian Manastir Committee among the Albanian diaspora in Bucharest and Constanta, Sofia, and in Egypt. In 1908, Kolonja was elected deputy of Korçë in the Ottoman parliament with the financial support of Albanian activists. He was a prominent member of the 26 assemblymen that represented the four Albanian Vilayets. At the same year he became one of the delegates of Congress of Monastir, in which the Albanian alphabet was standardized. Emerging from deliberations by some delegates during the Manastir Congress, Kolonja as a parliamentarian intended to present the Ottoman with a programme on Albanian education. The programme envisaged Albanian primary and elementary schooling, Greek state funding cut for schools with Orthodox Albanian students and replaced with Ottoman state funds and revenue from church property, training of academics abroad for the establishment of an Albanian university and Catholic and Orthodox clergy to be paid by the Ottoman Empire. Kolonja's programme also advocated for Albanian military service in Albanian inhabited lands, an Albanian gendarmerie, local Albanian ownership of transport infrastructure and exploitation of natural resources, open free vote and revenue collection with recognition of Albanian nationality and language. In 1908 he joined the Ahrar' Party founded by Ismail Qemali, and in 1910 the Democrat Party founded by Ibrahim Temo and Abdullah Cevdet. Due to hostilities with the Young Turks he had to go abroad again in 1911. After spending a couple of months in Vlora in 1913, he moved back to