Is Turkey Bosnias mother?
by
HAJRUDIN SOMUN
Is Turkey Bosnias mother? This is a question that is easy to reply to. No, it is not because Turkey does not need to be a mother to anyone other than to its citizens.
The issue, however, is more complicated when we come to the current situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country that faces problems which bring into question its integrity and sovereignty.Ardent polemics are being tossed around by Sarajevos media and at various conferences on the identity of Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats -- the three main nationalities, or ethnic groups, that make up Bosnia and Herzegovina. There were at least two starting points that brought Bosniaks -- the official name for Bosnian Muslims -- into the focus of the polemics and which made a direct connection to Turks and Turkey.One was initiated by the highest religious authority and the other by events that are increasingly making soccer games in some Balkan countries a tool for expressing social frustrations and nationalist hatred. From the sublime to the ridiculous and destructive, we could say.
First, Dr. Mustafa Efendi Ceric, the reis-ul-ulema (grand mufti) of Bosnia and Herzegovina, made some statements over the last few years about the correlation between Bosniaks and Turks, statements open to discussion, no doubt. Speaking to participants, Bosniaks and Turks, at a reconstructed mosque in Rogatica on Sept. 2, 2006, he said: I propose we all call ourselves Turks. And we are Turks -- by our historical memory, by our historical disposition, by the identity of Islam that Turks brought to us. However, we are also Bosniaks. The grand mufti of Bosnia also told Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoðan during his visit to Sarajevo on March 25, 2008, Please convey to your people the following: Turkey is our mother; it has been so and it will remain so.
Discussion spills into streets
The discussion easily made its way to the streets. Hundreds of fans waved and kissed Turkish flags, shouting This is Turkey! in Sarajevo, Zenica and the part of Mostar with a Bosniak majority after Turkey defeated Croatia in the European Football Championship on June 20, 2008. It was partially a reaction to the disappointed fans among the Bosnian Croats, who were, especially in Mostar, shouting Kill, kill the Turk! It was not clear whether they meant the real Turks or Bosniaks, who have for long been called Turks by Serbs and Croats, particularly in recent wars. In some places, tekbirs were used as refrains, but This is Turkey was more loudly heard than Allahu Ekber, the usual reply to the word tekbir.
The heated atmosphere on the streets consequently transferred to a heated debate among intellectuals about the identity of Bosniaks. The Dani weekly hosted leading Bosnian intellectuals and invented a new term, turcenje, pronounced turchenye. It can roughly be translated to becoming a Turk or to make ones self a Turk. State TV organized a similar debate a month ago, just two days before the soccer match between Bosnia and Turkey in Ýstanbul.
The statements of Reis-ul-Ulema Ceric about Turkey as Bosnias mother as well as his frequent mention of Mehmet the Conqueror as a kind of Bosnian father are being used as a pretext for any argument on the Bosniak identity.
The approach of the Bosnian grand mufti was rather isolated. Bosniak politicians were silent. They, in any case, do not at all have a strategy to preserve the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as recently stressed by journalist Vildana Selimbegovic. Intellectuals, refusing to identify Bosniaks with Turks, have been quick to steer the discussion into one of how nationalism is the common enemy of all Bosnian ethnic communities. Leading theologians from the Faculty of Islamic Sciences did not this time openly show their traditional opposition to Dr. Ceric as the religious leader. However, the opinion of the reis-ul-ulema -- a position that is more than equivalent to the head of Turkeys Directorate of Religious Affairs -- is considered a religious orientation for all believers, even if it is not obligatory, unlike a fetva. And if it was made public outside the mosque, it gets even more social and political weight as well.
A simplified attitude easily adopted by young boys (almost never klix) who are mostly less educated, often jobless and frustrated and rarely enter any mosques is that Bosniaks, as Bosnian Muslims, have no reserve homeland as Bosnian Serbs have Serbia and Bosnian Croats Croatia. Going further and joining religion in such a simplification, they say: If Serbia is considered as an extended hand of Orthodox Christianity and Croatia of Catholicism, why should we not ask Turkey to be our mother country? Bosnian philosopher Ugo Vlaisavljevic expressed it in these words: This is a good opportunity; we should finally face the real nature of local ethnic identities. Ethnologists have known this for a long time: These are decentralized identities because the centers of their symbolic fuel are not here, but in Ýstanbul, Moscow, Vienna and Rome.
A few other reactions to the grand muftis identification of Bosniaks and Turks and the pro-Turkey euphoria of sport fans are possible indirect results of that identification. Tarik Haveric, an author and translator, speaking about two ethno-genetic processes in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the last 100 years, stresses that efforts by (Bosnian) Muslims to eliminate a notional and terminological equalization of themselves with Turks and to rid themselves of their name [Muslims] have been more or less realized today. For another political analyst, Sacir Filandra, Bosniaks have no one and nothing positive to applaud and to identify themselves with because the symbolic Bosniak horizon of the collective auto-perception is filled with pain and sadness, loss and genocide, marking out mass killings and concentration camps as well by the opening of mosques, in one word -- by the ulterior and metaphysic. For him, the symbolic identification with Turkish sport fans has origins in such a negative life view.
Pecanin: Ceric causing confusion
A leading Bosnian journalist, Senad Pecanin, was more concrete in considering reasons for the grand muftis redefinition of the Bosniak national identity and then reducing it to the religious component.
Ceric is not a Turkish nationalist, and he does not do it out of pro-Turkish feelings, he emphasizes, but because he has an unhidden ambition to become the leader of all European Muslims and to negotiate with Europeans about their status. Showing to his students that Turkey is their mother and not Bosnia and Herzegovina, Pecanin concludes, he is bringing confusion among Bosniaks and hatred, derisive smiles and disdain from their neighbors.
It is not easy for me personally to speak about this matter because I have many friends who are scholars in Turkey who could refer to the developments in the Balkans and tell me, Well, while serving in Turkey as the ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina, you said Bosnians are Turkeys orphans. This is true, I did use the Turkish word yetim to describe Bosnians. There was a need in the midst of aggression against Bosnia to encourage aid to its besieged and exhausted citizens. I also used this word to refer to our common history, but I never identified Bosnians with Turks, and there are many reasons for this.
First and foremost, I represented all of Bosnia and Herzegovina and sought support for Bosniaks and a considerable number of Serbs and Croats, who also suffered from the aggression of Slobodan Milosevics Serbian forces and Radovan Karadzics Bosnian Serb forces.
Additionally, there are some obvious reasons for not equating Bosniaks and Turks, this despite all the deep historical links and steady friendship.
The Bosnia and Herzegovina of today is very different from the Bosnia that was a part of the Ottoman Empire. Both Turkey and Bosnia differ greatly today from how they were under Mehmet the Conqueror, who brought to Bosnia the Ahdname, a document guaranteeing freedom of activity to Bosnian Franciscan Catholics.
The two countries were also different at the end of the 19th century, when Bosnia was taken over by Austro-Hungary and Turkey was transformed into a republic, shedding its Ottoman past. Bosnian Muslims, as part of the multiethnic and multi-religious Bosnian community and have developed their own national identity, recognized by Turkey as well as by the international community. It is perhaps not worthy of mention that no one in Turkey today considers Bosnia as a part of the broader Turkic world, although there were efforts in that regard by some pan-Turkic organizations during the war. If nothing else, the Bosnian language is Slavic, despite having thousands of loanwords of Turkish origin.
I was additionally encouraged to tackle this sensitive issue by Turkish President Abdullah Güls recent statement. He confirmed once more during a meeting with the chairman of the Bosnian Presidency, Haris Silajdzic, that Turkey is maintaining efforts to protect Bosnia and Herzegovinas sovereignty, political unity and territorial integrity. He also indicated that he is well aware of the current situation in Bosnia, including the discussion on identity. We support the multicultural structure of Bosnia and Herzegovina and are therefore keeping an equal distance with respect to all ethnic groups, he said.
Hajrudin Somun is a former ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Turkey
http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detay ... ink=158350
ovo je jadno 
u mnogo aspekata....
jer to je ujedno uslov za ostvarenje prvog dijela teksta