Turkey’s Political Agenda in the Balkans

As Turkey’s President Erdogan runs out of money, he is now, more than any time before, using religion to exploit the Balkans, especially the states that are more susceptible to Islamic influence. Bosnia is at the fore of Erdogan’s ambitious Islamic agenda, where he is sparing no political capital or financial resources, even under his current economic hardship, to assert his influence and distance the country away from the EU’s reach. Obviously, the Bosnians cannot survive simply on being devout Muslims, with the youth unemployment rate at almost 60 percent. Turkey is unlikely to economically recover anytime soon, and Erdogan’s promises to provide financial aid and investments will ring hollow in the face of his deepening financial crisis.

The war of words, hyperinflation, US sanctions, and reckless investments on borrowed money have steadily been chipping away at the value of the Turkish Lira. Five years ago, $1 was worth 2 lira; today, six liras are exchanged for a dollar, but that has not discouraged Bosnian leaders from seeking closer association with Erdogan.

Bakir Izetbegovic, the Bosnian Muslim leader and the chairman of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, said last May (in front of thousands of Turkish expatriates and Bosnian supporters of Erdogan who travelled from all over Europe to Sarajevo) that

“God has sent [our] nations one person to return them to their religion… He is Recep Tayyip Erdogan. We remain standing with God’s help.”

The crowd cheered when a leader of diaspora Turks equated and idealized Sarajevo as “the Jerusalem at the heart of Europe”.

Bosnia was more than willing to open the door for the Turkish president to organize an election rally in Sarajevo, especially following the EU’s refusal to allow him to campaign in its member states. For Erdogan, the Balkans is the region that can put him in a position to realize his political goal of reviving some semblance of the Ottoman Empire while undermining the EU’s influence in these countries.

Bosnia consists of two entities: The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose population is made up of Muslim Bosnians and Catholic Croats; and Republika Srpska, where Orthodox Serbs are a majority. About half of Bosnia’s 3.8 million citizens are Muslims, many of whom consider Erdogan their trusted leader, if not their savior.

For more than a decade, Erdogan has invested heavily in spreading his influence among Balkan states, and Bosnia was and still is one of his main targets. He pledged a multi-billion dollar investment in a key motorway connecting Serbia and Bosnia. Turkey and Bosnia signed a letter of intent for the construction of a highway connecting the two Balkan capitals, a project estimated to cost $3.5 billion, which has not yet started because of lack of financial resources.

Meanwhile, the Turkish International Cooperation and Development Agency (TIKA)—a vehicle through which Turkey spreads its Islamic agenda in the Balkans—has completed more than 800 small projects in Bosnia, mostly related to religious institutions.

European leaders have already been voicing concerns over Turkey’s influence in the Balkans. Only a few months ago, French President Emmanuel Macron declared

“I don’t want a Balkans that turns toward Turkey or Russia”.

During his May speech in Sarajevo, Erdogan urged supporters to actively participate in European politics to counter anti-Turkish sentiment.

“You need to be in those parliaments instead of the ones who betray our country,” he said, referring to European lawmakers with Turkish roots.

In a conversation with us, Orhan Hadzagic, a political analyst from Bosnia, said that Erdogan is adulated by Bosnians as more than just a foreign leader. He rhetorically asks,

“From Erdogan’s last visit to Bosnia, what was the benefit for Bosnian citizens from that rally, an event featuring the heads of two parties who support one other?”

Hadzagic is convinced that his country is risking its accession to the EU by opening its doors to Erdogan, from where he is challenging Brussels directly.

“Many NGOs”, he said, “are close to Turkey; they receive financial support to change the negative image and the perception about the rising authoritarian rule in Turkey, among Bosnians.”

Although a large majority of Bosnians do not see any alternative to the European Union, they are passionate in their support of Erdogan. In a poll conducted by the International Republican Institute and released in March of this year, 76 percent of Bosnians said they had positive views about Turkey’s role in their country.

For Erdogan, Bosnia occupies a special place and he will endeavor to maintain his image both as a religious leader and economic savior. That said,

“Erdogan’s list of priorities is growing, so Bosnia is inevitably descending on that list,” said Hadzagic, “which will reduce [Erdogan’s influence on] the state, NGO, and media organizations here in Bosnia. Consequently, it will lead to the reduction of Ankara’s influence.”

As such, Erdogan is increasing his focus on the local media outlets and non-governmental institutions in Bosnia by providing them with some financial aid to support his political agenda. But even that is becoming financially burdensome, making it more difficult to continue with his media campaign.

Sead Numanovic, a well-known journalist from Bosnia, told us that

“The EU and US are still (and I fear they will continue to be) very passive in the Balkans, this environment gives an additional space for Erdogan to work easily on his anti-Western agenda.”

This explains why Erdogan’s AK Party has recently opened an office in Sarajevo, its first official branch in the Balkans.

A spokesperson from the Turkish Embassy in Sarajevo told Foreign Policy that Turkey firmly supports the NATO and EU membership process of Bosnia and Herzegovina—“Turkey is not [in Bosnia] to seek influence, but to encourage political stability for the sake of the entire region.” There is nothing further from the truth.

Xhemal Ahmeti, a historian and expert on Southeast European issues, said that Bosnia’s Muslims currently are most loyal to the Turkish autocrat.

“Bosnian Muslims have lost their hopes that their Trinitarian state will become an EU member. That’s why they rely on Turkey to survive, given that they are sandwiched between Catholics, conservative Croats, and Orthodox jurisdictions”, said Ahmeti. “Paradoxically, though, while the Bosnians Muslims seek Erdogan’s protection from the Orthodox (Serbs and Russians), Erdogan’s close allies are Putin and [Serbia’s Prime Minister] Vucic.”

Bosnian leaders and citizens must realize that Erdogan is moving ever closer to Russia and Iran. The EU has already made it clear that since full adherence to its charter, especially regarding human rights, freedom, and democracy, are prerequisites to EU membership, Bosnia must not cozy up to Erdogan because he has flagrantly abandoned the EU’s founding principles, and the development of a full-fledged democracy in Bosnia does not serve his interest.

It is now up to the Bosnian leaders to determine their own destiny, which must inexorably be linked to full membership with the EU if they want to grow and prosper while embracing full democracy.

This does not suggest that they should sever relations with Turkey as a regional power, with which they will need to intensify the development of a mutually gainful relationship once Erdogan departs the political scene.

In the interim, they must be cautious in their dealings with Erdogan, who manipulates them by using Islam to pursue his sinister political agenda.

Originally published on 2018-09-14

About the author: Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Source: Global Research

Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection & Pinterest.

Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!

Donate to Support Us

We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.

[wpedon id=”4696″ align=”left”]

READ MORE!

Donald Trump is an International Law Breaker

Donald Trump‘s decision to launch cruise missile strikes on a Syrian Air Force Base was based on a lie. In the coming days the American people will learn that the Intelligence Community knew that Syria did not drop a military chemical weapon on innocent civilians in Idlib. Here is what happened:The Russians briefed the United States on the proposed target. This is a process that started more than two months ago. [prior to the Chemical Weapons attack] There is a dedicated phone line that is being used to coordinate and deconflict (i.e., prevent US and Russian air assets from shooting at each ...

US Switching to Ukraine as Location to Start World War III Against Russia

The United States Government is now treating Ukraine as if it were a NATO member, and on September 27th donated to Ukraine two warships for use against Russia. This is the latest indication that the US is switching to Ukraine as the locale to start World War III, and from which the nuclear war is to be sparked against Russia, which borders Ukraine. Here is why Syria is no longer the US alliance’s preferred choice as a place to start WW III: On September 4th, US President Donald Trump publicly threatened Syria, Iran and Russia that if they exterminated the jihadists in Syria’s only remaining jihadist-controlled ...

Corpus Delicti: How the Western Mainstream Propaganda Lies on Bosnian War (1992-1995)

Bosnian Muslim Kasim Blekic was allegedly murdered by Bosnian Serbs but was, in fact, alive outside of Sarajevo. One of the fundamental legal principles or concepts of jurisprudence is that before a person can be charged with a crime, evidence must be shown that a crime has occurred. This is known by the legal principle of “corpus delicti”, the body of a crime, meaning that there must be evidence that a crime has occurred before a defendant can be charged or prosecuted for the crime. The 6th edition of Black’s Law Dictionary (1990) gives the meaning of corpus delicti as “the ...

Kosovo and Columbine: Are We a Nation of Gun Nuts or are We Just Nuts?

In Bowling for Columbine (2002), Michael Moore analyzed the culture of violence in the US and examined its relationship to the illegal US and NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. Following the bombing, US and NATO forces occupied Kosovo-Metohija militarily. The US and its allies acted unilaterally in bombing and occupying Yugoslav territory. There was no UN approval for this criminal aggression by the US and its allies. The illegal bombing did not represent “the international community”, but was the illegal action of the US government. The US goal was not to prevent “genocide” or human rights violations but to ...

The “Snipers’ Massacre” on the Maidan in Ukraine

The massacre of almost 50 Maidan protesters on February 20, 2014 was a turning point in Ukrainian politics and a tipping point in the conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine. This mass killing of the protesters and the mass shooting of the police that preceded it led to the overthrow of the government of Viktor Yanukovych and gave a start to a civil war in Donbas in Eastern Ukraine, Russian military intervention in Crimea and an international conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine. A conclusion promoted by the post-Yanukovych governments and the media in Ukraine that ...

The Idea of a Greater Croatia by Pavao Ritter Vitezović (I)

Introduction The article will examine the model for the creation of a Greater Croatia designed by a Croatian nobleman, publicist and historian Pavao Ritter Vitezović (1652–1713). The article will offer a new interpretation of the substance and significance of Vitezović’s political ideology. Many historians have viewed Vitezović’s political thought and his developed ideological framework of a united South Slavic state as part of a wider pan-Slavic world. According to the prevailing notion, Vitezović was a precursor of the idea of Yugoslavism (a united South Slavic nation-state) and even Pan-Slavism - a pan-Slavic cultural and political reciprocity. Yet a closer look at ...

Independence on Nakba Day – Accountability and Healing as an Israeli Aggressor

I am an Israeli-American. I was raised in a middle-class academic ‘Liberal Zionist’ household (aligned with the Israeli Labor Party and Meretz), which is an inherent contradiction. Liberal Zionism maintains a belief in universal human rights yet it supports a Zionist ideology that endorses and promotes Israel as a Jewish state – one that has been systematically carrying out a project of apartheid and ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinian people. Since I can remember, my birth town of Jerusalem has been highly segregated. Growing up, I never interacted with Palestinians other than Abed the soft-spoken gardener from Hebron (aka El ...

Weapons of Mass Destruction

Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]Save

Barack Obama vs. Vladimir Putin: How Bloomberg ‘News’ Lies

On December 31st, Josh Rogin of Bloomberg ‘News’ headlined “Inside Obama’s Secret Outreach to Russia,” and his opening sentence ‘reported’ on “the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown little interest in … halting his aggression in neighboring Ukraine.” That ‘reporter’ from Bloomberg ‘News’ was ‘reporting’ from only sources inside the U.S. Administration — only from individuals who are hired by and who represent Barack Obama, none who are hired by and who represent Obama’s enemy Vladimir Putin; and so the question naturally arises as to whether Rogin and Bloomberg ‘News’ are ‘reporting’ propaganda, or are they instead reporting ...

Obama Failed his Coup in Venezuela

The United States, Germany, Canada, Israel and the United Kingdom launched "Operation Jericho"Once again, the Obama administration has tried to force the change of a political regime that resists it. On February 12, an Academi (formerly Blackwater) plane disguised as an aircraft of the Venezuelan army was supposed to bomb the presidential palace and kill President Nicolas Maduro. The plotters had planned to place former MP María Corina Machado in power and have her immediately acclaimed by former Latin American presidents. President Obama had given a warning. In his new doctrine of Defence (National Security Strategy), he wrote: "We ...

Iran 1953: State Department Finally Releases Updated Official History of Mosaddeq Coup

The State Department today released a long-awaited “retrospective” volume of declassified U.S. government documents on the 1953 coup in Iran, including records describing planning and implementation of the covert operation. The publication is the culmination of decades of internal debates and public controversy after a previous official collection omitted all references to the role of American and British intelligence in the ouster of Iran’s then-prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq. The volume is part of the Department’s venerable Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series. For decades, neither the U.S. nor the British governments would acknowledge their part in Mosaddeq’s overthrow, even ...

NATO – 70th Anniversary of the Most Murderous – and Legal – Organization on our Planet

On 4th of April 2019 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) “celebrated” the 70th Anniversary of its murderous existence. This horror organization was born sort of as a “Rosemary’s Baby”, signed into life in Washington DC, as the North Atlantic Treaty. Its creation was absolutely unethical but also absolutely “legal” – meaning what we, the west, have made the law, a man-made law for war, was applied by the Washington-Pentagon driven NATO. Estimates have it, that NATO and its ‘allies’, cronies, proxies and mercenaries killed more than 20 million people since NATO’s existence, basically since the end of WWII. Compare this with ...

The US/NATO Orchestration of the 2014 Maidan Coup in Ukraine

Contents 1. NATO is born from the Bomb2. In the post-Cold War, NATO is renewed3. NATO demolishes the Yugoslav state4. NATO expands eastward to Russia5. US and NATO attack Afghanistan and Iraq6. NATO demolishes the Libyan state7. The US/NATO War to Demolish Syria8. Israel and the Emirates in NATO9. The US/NATO orchestration of the coup in Ukraine10. US/NATO escalation in Europe11. Italy, the aircraft carrier on the war front12. US and NATO reject the UN treaty and deploy new nuclear weapons in Europe13. US and NATO sink the INF Treaty14. The Western American Empire plays the war card15. The US/NATO planetary war system16. Exiting the war system of NATO1. The operation conducted by the USA and ...

Video: The Dirty War on Syria – Prof. Tim Anderson on GRTV

Government propaganda and NGO misinformation have coloured the story of the war on Syria from its inception. Stepping in to set the record straight, Dr. Tim Anderson explores the real beginnings of the conflict, the players behind it, and their agenda in his new book, “The Dirty War on Syria: Washington, Regime Change and Resistance.”The Dirty War on Syria has relied on a level of mass disinformation not seen in living memory. In seeking ‘regime change’ the big powers sought to hide their hand, using proxy armies of ‘Islamists’, demonising the Syrian Government and constantly accusing it of atrocities. In ...

A Biography of Kurt Waldheim (Austria) – A Fourth U.N. Secretary-General

The U.N. Organization was established in 1945 for the very security reason – to preserve the peace in the world. We believe that the governmental bodies and administrative structures of the U.N. have to be composed by the proved democratically oriented politicians and magistrates but above all this requirement has to be applied to the post and function of the U.N. Secretary-General. Nevertheless, in the history of the U.N. there is at least one (extremely) problematic appointment to the post of the U.N. Secretary-General: Kurt Waldheim from Austria. On the official website of the U.N. about its fourth Secretary-General one can ...

Americans are no Different than Germans were (and are)

Daniel Goldhagen blamed the Holocaust on «the Germans» (by which he meant the German people), and said that they perpetrated the Holocaust because they positively enjoyed murdering «the Jews». But, as has long been well understood by historians (except when they fail to point to it as being a disproof of Goldhagen’s bigoted and indefensible anti-German thesis), Hitler had to work long and hard in order to bring about a consensus, first amongst his own leadership group, and then in the population as a whole, favoring the extermination-option. Hitler, Der Fuehrer, «The Leader», clearly was the catalyst turning the chemical ...

Aftermath of the US-NATO War on Yugoslavia: The Unspoken Impacts of Radioactive Depleted Uranium Ammunition

More than a decade and a half after the US-NATO- under international law illegal – war aggression against Yugoslavia using highly toxic and radioactive uranium projectiles, the enormity of this war crime becomes clear: In Serbia, aggressive cancer among young and old has reached epidemic proportions. The suffering of the people cries out to heaven. Particularly affected is the south of Serbia and Kosovo. According to the Serbian Ministry of Health, every day a child suffers from cancer. The entire country is contaminated. By harming the genetic material (DNA) generation after generation, malformed children will be born. Knowingly and willfully, a genocide ...

The Killers from the Oval Office

“The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted” - D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American LiteratureIndividual U.S. Presidents come and go, but the Oval Office is reserved for the Killer-in-Chief. If, as these war-mongers like to say, “the buck stops here,” then our latest incarnation of a “leader,” Donald Trump, has in a few months accumulated enough guilt to last endless lifetimes. There are no excuses. While the headlines scream distractions from the bloodbath, Trump and his “team” are slaughtering innocents in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and countless other places off the American ...

Zbigniew Brzezinski – War Criminal Supreme

Brzezinski’s death at 89 years of age has generated a load of propaganda and disinformation, all of which serves one interest group or another or the myths that people find satisfying. I am not an expert on Brzezinski, and this is not an apology for him. He was a Cold Warrior, as essentially was everyone in Washington during the Soviet era.For 12 years Brzezinski was my colleague at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where I occupied the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy. When I was elected to that chair, CSIS was a part of Georgetown University. ...

The “Pro-Western Revolution” in Ukraine has been a Fascist-infested Fraud

The great deception of “a real democracy” in the Ukraine, which the New York Times insisted on 31 March 2019, shows little sign of relenting. For five years, Western populations have been consistently misled through skewed and slanted reporting, assuring the readership that what is unfolding in Kiev is a “fledgling democracy”, as a Washington Post editorial further outlined on 6 April 2019.In reality it was a United States-funded coup d’état. During the months prior to Viktor Yanukovych‘s February 2014 ousting, elite American organizations bankrolled the “anti-government protests”, revealed as much in December 2013 by Victoria Nuland, then a high ...