During the Russo-Turkish war , the incoming Serb army expelled most of the Muslim Albanian population from the Toplica and Niš regions into Kosovo triggering the emergence of the League of Prizren ( 1878 – 1881 ) . Formed as a response to the Eastern crisis and possible partition , the Prizren League was created by a group of Albanian intellectuals to resist neighbouring foreign Balkan states and to assert an Albanian national consciousness by uniting Albanians into a unitary linguistic and cultural nation . Leaders of the Prizren league opposed both Pan-Slavism of southern Slavic peoples and the Greek '' Megali Idea '' . The Prizren league opposed territory containing Albanian speakers being awarded to Greece , Serbia and Montenegro with the Ottoman state for a while supporting the league 's claims as it saw Albanian nationalism possibly preventing further territorial losses to newly independent Balkan states . During the late Ottoman period , ethno-national Albanian identity as expressed in contemporary times did not exist amongst the wider Kosovo Albanian-speaking population . Instead collective identities were based upon either socio-professional , socio-economic , regional , or religious identities and sometimes relations between Muslim and Christian Albanians were tense . Some people coming from a Balkan Albanian speaking or cultural space and often belonging to the urban elite in Kosovo that migrated to Anatolia did not always identify with a concept of '' Albanianess '' . Instead they adopted an Ottoman Turkish outlook and came to refer to themselves as '' Turks '' or Ottoman Turkish speaking citizens . Due to the effects of socio-linguistic assimilation , promoters of Albanian nationalism became concerned about migration to Anatolia and degraded Albanians from the lower classes who undertook the journey
expelled most of the Muslim Albanian population
Expulsion of the Albanians 1877–1878
Albanian nationalism (Kosovo)