The congress, sponsored by the local Bashkimi literary club, was attended by 35 delegates from central and southern Albania.

[3][4][5] For the Ottoman government the situation was alarming because the Albanians were the largest Muslim community in the European part of the empire (Istanbul excluded).

In these circumstances the Ottoman state led by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) organised a congress in Debar in 1909 with the intention that Albanians there declare themselves as Ottomans, promise to defend its territorial sovereignty and adopt an Albanian Arabic character script.

Talat Bey, the interior minister, claimed that the Albanian population supported the use of the Turkish alphabet and stayed against the Latin one.

[3] In a February 6, 1910 open meeting in Monastir, organized by Rexhep Voka and Arif Hikmet, it was demanded the introduction of an Arabic-scripts based alphabet for the Muslim population.

The Albanian nationalists responded with the organization of another meeting on 27 February at Shën Ilia near Korçë in support of the Latin-script alphabet.