Anti-Serb sentiment in the Kosovo Vilayet grew as a result of the Ottoman-Serb and Ottoman-Greek conflicts during the period of 1877-1897 . With the liberation of Vranje in 1878 , thousands of Ottoman Albanian troops and Albanian civilians retreated into the Eastern part of Ottoman held Kosovo Vilayet . These displaced persons known as ( Alb . muhaxhirë , Turk . muhacir , Serb . muhadžir ) were highly hostile towards the Serbs in the areas they retreated to , given the fact that they were expelled from the Vranje area due to the Ottoman-Serb conflict . This animosity fuelled anti-Serb sentiment which resulted in Albanians committing widespread atrocities including murder , looting and rape against Serb civilians across the entire territory , including parts of Pristina and Bujanovac . Atrocities against Serbs in the region also peaked in 1901 after the region was flooded with weapons not handed back to the Ottomans after the Greco-Turkish War of 1897 . Albanians committed numerous atrocities including : massacres , rapes , looting and expulsion of Serbs in the Pristina and Northern Kosovo region . Little suggests that the actions of Albanians at the time constituted ethnic cleansing as they attempted to create a homogoneous area free of Christian Serbs . The Society Against Serbs was a Bulgarian nationalist organization , established in 1897 in Thessaloniki , Ottoman Empire . The organization 's activists were both " Centralists " and " Vrhovnists " of the Bulgarian revolutionary committees ( the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization and the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee ) , and had by 1902 murdered at least 43 and wounded 52 , owners of Serbian schools , teachers , Serbian Orthodox clergy , and other notable Serbs in the Ottoman Empire . Bulgarians also used the term " Serbomans " for a people from notserbian origin , but with Serbian self-determination in Macedonia
expelled
Expulsion of the Albanians 1877–1878
Anti-Serbian sentiment