Bosnia, Revisited: Turkey’s Gains, Challenges and Future Aspirations

balkan analysis
July 12, 2011
By Maja Šoštarić in Sarajevo*
“Sarajevo is a miracle (…). If you understand Sarajevo, you can understand all the Ottoman history. Because it is, according to the saying, [true that] if you understand a person you can understand that century.”
Is this a new slogan of the Bosnian chamber of commerce? Or was it perhaps taken out of some Sarajevo guidebook? Not quite. The author is Ahmet Davutoğlu, Foreign Minister of Turkey, and the paragraph stems from his speech at the opening ceremony of a conference entitled “The Ottoman Legacy and Balkan Muslim Communities Today,” held in Sarajevo in October 2009. After that conference, Mr Davutoğlu was harshly criticized by detractors for his alleged neo-Ottomanism in relation to the Balkans....more....
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http://www.balkanalysis.com/turkey/2011/07/12/bosnia-revisited-turkey%E2%80%99s-gains-challenges-and-future-aspirations/