It has been a long time since there were as many talks on Bosnian-Turkish relations at a high level as there were this September. This is true despite the fact that contacts and activities between the two countries in various fields have become of a permanent category.First, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited Sarajevo on Sept. 15 to receive an award named after Isa-Beg Ishaković, who founded Sarajevo 550 years ago. His talks with Bosnia and Herzegovina’s tripartite presidency, the country’s prime minister, professors and students at Turkish universities Burch and ISU, as well as a lecture delivered at Sarajevo University, attracted more attention from the media than was afforded his visit’s primary purpose.
It is not too surprising that the award given by the NGO Klepsidra to Prime Minister Erdoğan, bearing the name of the first Ottoman governor of the Bosnian province, provoked those who regard “neo-Ottomanism” as the new Turkish foreign policy prime mover. It is true that Ishaković was one of generals of Sultan Fatih the Conqueror, who invaded and took control of the Bosnian medieval kingdom. However, Sarajevo deserves to remember its founder, just as many other world cities were, unfortunately, founded by invaders more often than by philosophers. Besides, Erdoğan was awarded for his “international contribution to the development of culture and cultural heritage of Sarajevo,” but other categories of the award went to prominent citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina: David Kamhi, one of the leaders of the Bosnian Jewish community, Franjo Topic, head of the Croat-Catholic cultural association Napredak, and Goran Bregovic, famous Sarajevo-born Balkan musician, who has proved very popular in Turkey as well.
Receiving the award at a ceremony at the Bosnian National Theatre, the Turkish prime minister said that he had seen many world cities but that Sarajevo is different. “It is the city that has a soul,” he stated. “Sarajevo is a bit Cairo, a bit Beirut, Damascus and Baghdad. Sarajevo is a bit Paris, London and a bit New York. Sarajevo has a similar spirit and atmosphere as Istanbul, Edirne, Bursa and Konya.” He also added, “In spite of the great pains this city has suffered in the recent past, Sarajevo is today an exemplary city, a city of coexistence where people live in peace and friendship.”
Why am I emphasizing Erdoğan’s words? They contain some exaggeration — particularly regarding the “peace and friendship” that are in fact lacking in present circumstances in Bosnia — but they are also a kind of response to the broad criticism that the prime minister and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu faced in Belgrade and from the Bosnian Serb leadership due to their previous emotional equalization of Sarajevo and Istanbul.
Critics were particularly vocal when Prime Minister Erdoğan said on the anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide in July that Bosnia and Herzegovina was “entrusted to us [Turkey],” stressing that Turkey would never forget the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and would not allow others to forget it either. Speaking at a meeting of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) held in Ankara, Erdoğan recalled the words of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s first president, Alija Izetbegovic, spoken when Erdoğan, rescheduling a trip from Belgium to Istanbul, visited him on his deathbed. “[Izetbegovic] whispered in my ear these phrases: ‘Bosnia is entrusted [emanet] to you [Turkey]. Don’t leave this region.’” Just one day later, on Oct. 19, 2003, Izetbegovic died.
The meaning of Izetbegovic’s last words to Erdoğan
The term “emanet” or “amanet” is retained from Ottoman times, along with a thousand other “Turkishisms.” It means that somebody or something is entrusted to another’s care. Thus, it has been understood, or misunderstood, that Izetbegovic left the whole of Bosnia under Turkey’s guardianship.
Belgrade political analyst Vesna Peric Zimonjic wrote, “In the decade following the break-up of Yugoslavia, it was rare for a statement made by a foreign politician to stir heated debate in the Eastern European bloc.” But Professor Darko Tanaskovic, a prominent Serbian expert in oriental studies, has remarked, “[Erdoğan’s] statement represents a political reality: that [Turkey] considers the Balkans a priority in its ambitious foreign policy.” Zimonjic later went further, stating, “When Erdoğan and other Turkish officials speak about Bosnia and Herzegovina, they have in front of their eyes only Bosniaks’ interests,” and also, “Bosnia, by the measure of Muslims, as Izetbegovic’s ‘emanet,’ that is the question.”
In his long interview with Amina Secerovic, Istanbul correspondent for the leading Bosnian daily Oslobodjenje, Erdoğan explained that Izetbegovic, in using the term “emanet,” had wanted the “deep historical, cultural and human ties between the peoples of Bosnia and Turkey” to be preserved. “It is difficult for me to understand such reactions,” he said of the criticism. “Our only wish, as the state of Turkey, is for the peace, prosperity and security of all peoples in Bosnia and Herzegovina.”
I bring up these details to show how delicate the dealings with Bosnia and Herzegovina, a divided and troubled country, can be. Other countries have difficulties in this regard as well, but Turkey is a unique case. The Ottoman heritage that today’s Turkey uses as an advantage in its foreign policy has a different meaning for the largely Christian Balkan peoples who fought “against the Turkish occupation.”
Other regional countries have accepted, more or less, the modern Turkey as a natural, even favorable partner in international relations and cooperation. When there are problems — as with Greece, for example — they are discussed between the two states, in spite of the heavy burden of recent history. Officially, Serbia accepted Turkish mediation in disputes between its two Islamic communities. There might be doubts about the so-called neo-Ottoman intentions of the present Turkish government, but these doubts do not affect the majority of regional countries’ political and economic relations with Ankara.
Most of these nations, both officially and unofficially, have a domestically unified approach to Turkey, whether it be positive, negative or suspicious, as in Armenia, Israel and Iran. However, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, one half praises while the other is suspicious of foreign states, including the US, and in particular Turkey. To one side Turkey is brotherly, while to the other it is a country permanently interfering in Bosnian internal affairs. We should recall that the Bosnian state is divided into two entities: Republika Srpska, inhabited and ruled by majority Serbs, and the other shared by Bosniaks and Croats.
September delivered plenty of evidence as to how the “other side” regards Turkish-Bosnian relations. Just one day after Prime Minister Erdoğan left Sarajevo, an exclusive interview was given by President of Republika Srpska Milorad Dodik to Minhac Celik of Today’s Zaman in Bijeljina, a city on the Bosnian-Serbian border. In it, he praised Erdoğan as a “good politician“ and said he had helped Turkey to become a more important country in its region. However, he complained that Bosnia and Herzegovina has problems with Turkey in terms of domestic politics. “Internal questions in Bosnia and Herzegovina are our questions. Ankara supports only Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina and communicates with them.”
The main reason for Dodik’s condemnation of Turkey’s policy toward Bosnia can be found in many previous statements by high-level Turkish officials and its diplomacy toward Bosnia and Herzegovina, represented very clearly in statements made by Erdoğan, who prior to his visit to Sarajevo used the phrase “the united and strong Bosnia and Herzegovina.”
In July 2011, Dodik was quoted in the Serbian daily Vecernje Novosti as saying that “the Republika Srpska’s goal is to defend itself from Turkish domination and neo-Ottomanism.” There were echoes in this statement of 19th century rebellion against Ottoman rule. It not only criticized the Turks, but anybody opposed to the secession of Republika Srpska. As he said in the interview with Today’s Zaman, he would sacrifice a seat in the United Nations for greater autonomy: “We do not need any chair in the United Nations. We need as much autonomy as we can get.” He added, “If independence could happen, I would do it immediately.”
Although it is easier to blame Turkey than the US for supporting Bosnia as a unified, integral and functional state, the American Embassy in Sarajevo has characterized Dodik’s referral to Republika Srpska as a state and to Bosnia and Herzegovina as a “state union” as “inaccurate, counterproductive and inconsistent with the country’s constitution and the Dayton Peace Agreement.”
Sarajevo
Sarajevo, in spite of its sufferings and political tensions, it is still praised and admired by all those who visit it, whether they come from America, Japan or France, or are Christians, Muslims, Jews or Buddhists. A Catholic bishop from the Holy Land said recently, “Look — mosques, churches and synagogues are closer to each other here in Sarajevo than in Jerusalem.”
Regarding Turks, it would be understandable for them to enjoy Sarajevo even more than others, and for it to sometimes raise emotions in them, as it did in Erdoğan and Davutoğlu. I better understood this admiration for the city after I heard how two of my Turkish friends had felt upon seeing Bascarsija, the old part of Sarajevo. “I had a feeling as if I had come to the İstanbul of my childhood,” said Mufit Ozdes, the former ambassador and son of a close companion of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the secretary-general of the Islamic Conference (OIC), used almost the same words to describe his first trip to Sarajevo.
Dodik has his own story about Sarajevo, the capital of his country, Bosnia and Herzegovina: “Today, Sarajevo is not the capital city. To us [Bosnian Serbs], Sarajevo is an obligation. The hardest days in my life are the ones when I have to go to Sarajevo for something.”
*Hajrudin Somun is the former ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Turkey.
(Today’s Zaman)
