Bytyçi accuses the Minister of Culture in Skopje of discrimination against Albanians
Express newspaper
04/02/2026 10:29
Professor Enver Bytyçi has reacted sharply to the statement of the Minister of Culture of North Macedonia, Zoran Lutkov, who said that cultural projects are evaluated only on the basis of quality and not ethnic criteria. According to Bytyçi, this approach serves as a justification for discrimination against Albanians in the distribution of public funds.
He emphasizes that, in addition to quality, a necessary criterion should also be the fair distribution of projects, respecting cultural diversity and ethnic relations in a multiethnic state like North Macedonia. Bytyçi warns that ignoring this principle deepens the divisions between Albanians and Macedonians.
Bytyç’s writing:
The Minister of Culture of the Republic of North Macedonia, Zoran Lutkov, responding to a question about the benefits of Albanians from the projects of this ministry, said that “We do not start from the ethnic criterion, but from the quality of the projects”! With this kind of jargon, which in a homogeneous society may make sense, Lutkov actually justifies the discrimination of Albanians.
The statement of the Minister of Culture in Skopje simply expresses a kind of justification for his discriminatory decisions in the distribution of donations for cultural projects in this country. And worse yet, it proves that the government of North Macedonia is even more committed to discriminating against Albanians. It is true that the quality of the projects is a criterion. But an equally important criterion is the distribution of the projects. Let’s say that the ministry receives twenty projects with the same subsidy objective and all twenty are qualitative. But one cannot support only one sector for the sake of quality.
In the distribution of donations for culture, there is an extraordinary value in plurality and diversity, that is, distribution across all sectors. And this favors the maintenance of a fair ethnic ratio, while North Macedonia is divided into several ethnicities, where Albanians are determinants together with Macedonians. To evade the criteria of distribution even in the ethnic aspect with the justification of quality is a perverse adventure of deepening the differences between the two majority peoples in North Macedonia!