Today Albania marks its Independence Day – which surprisingly marks not once, but twice in which the Muslim country managed to free itself from foreign occupiers. We used Forefront and ChatGPT to briefly tell us about Albania's two releases.
On November 28, 1912 – exactly 111 years ago – Albania held the Vlorë vote, named after the city where representatives of the Albanian people gathered, and declared its power after almost 500 years under Ottoman control. The country struggled in its early years, but most of the world, including the great powers, recognized it in the year following the declaration.
Exactly 32 years later, on November 28, 1944, Albania gained independence for the second time, when the communist partisans defeated the last remaining Axis troops in the capital, Tirana, and held a military parade there to mark the exit from the yoke of the Italian fascists, who ruled Albania on behalf of the Nazis from 1939 until Mussolini's defeat in 1943, and the Germans themselves, who entered the country immediately after Mussolini's defeat to consolidate control over it.
Once again, independent Albania struggled for its existence, after the partisans established a socialist people's republic, known for decades for corruption and abject poverty. Only in recent years has the country begun to catch up with its more developed European neighbors.
Albanian Independence Day is marked in the country by waving the red flag bearing the two-headed black eagle, memorial ceremonies at independence monuments and cemeteries, and laying a wreath on the statue of Ismail Kamali, who read the 1912 Declaration of Independence in Vlore, in the capital Tirana.
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