The Serbian Attempts to Commemorate the 500^th Anniversary of the Victory of the Battle of Kosovo

The victory of Kosovo constituted a significant step towards the Ottoman settlement in the Balkans and being an effective power in the region. The Serbs took a heavy blow in the Battle of Kosovo, which they could not recover from. Thus, Serbian historians view this event as the date of their loss of independence. Serbs evaluated June 15^th as the anniversary of both the loss of their independence and the day that Sultan Murad I martyred, and organize a memorial day in this respect. Following Serbia’s declaration of independence in 1878, the government wished to commemorate the 500^th anniversary of this event in a larger scale, but the Ottoman state reacted to this attempt viewing it as insincere. The celebrations, that were initially scheduled to last for a week, were held for a duration of one day, 15^th June 1889, as a result of the reactions shown by the Ottomans, alongside national and international pressure.