Çanakkale On Sekiz Mart Üniversitesinde Bosna-Hersek Konuşması (İng.)

Contributions of Mr.Onur ÖYMEN to the Symposium of Bosnia Herzegovina

The recent history of Bosnia Hersegovia should not be dissociated from the dissolution of the Yugoslavia. The first move of the secessionist activities started from Croatia and Slovenia. But right after Bosnia Hersegovina also demonstrated the willingnes to declare itself as an independent government. Afterwards came Macedonia. The interesting thing is that despite the fact that all these countries should have been treated on equal footing, there was preferential treatment for Croatia and Slovenia. What was the reason of that?

There are several hypothesis. One of them is that this two former Yugoslav Republics were Catholic countries and there was an affection in some Western governments towards Catholic governments. This was one explanation.

Another one was that this two governments  were part and parcel of former Roman Empire. This was an historic background for giving them a preferential treatment. What is noticed is that some religious leaders of these countries had their representatives in some European  countries before the event. And people say that this played a role in the special treatment of these two countries. When it came to Bosnia Hersegovina the international comunity has done too little too late.

The issue was left to the United Nations and  the European Countries prepared to establish a Bosnian contact group and all these feelings have been conducted through the Bosnian Contact group. So in this group there were some new countries, but also Russia. Other countries which have links with Bosnian nation for historical and cultural  reasons like Turkey were left out of this group. They were even not informed about the content of negotiations. These negotiations were a complete failure. From the beginning the Turkish government said that to stop the Serbian agression against the Muslims. NATO should have started a serious air operation as a deterrent and saved the lives of many innocent people. But no such action had taken place for a long time. Negotiations directed by some European officials have not produced any tangible result. At the end of the day, UN peacekeeping force has been established and there was some limited operations. The end of hostilities could be achieve thanks to the intervention of NATO. Russia also joined straightforward and it became – so-called –a joint operation of NATO and Russia. This operation provided the end of hostilities but in the meantime almost 200,000 people have lost their lives. The performance of all Western countries to protect th innocent civilians in their areas of responsibilities was not satisfactory.

After the end of the hostilities, the Western powers have failed to arrest the notorious leaders of the Serbian leaders of Bosnia like Karadzic and Mladic. This was also an important failure. It fostered the morale the radical Serbian elements. After the end of the real conflict, Bosnian people continued to suffer casualities.

At the end of the day there was progress in the way of democratization of Bosnia. But the Dayton arrangements a stable and viable government in Bosnia. The crisis of tri-presidential leadership and the continuation of armed elements in the maintenance of armies in the Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian sides and the failure to create a real united states system put serious obstacles. So at this moment, progress realized in Bosnia Herzegovina is much less than that have been expected after a robust NATO intervention.

The future of former Yugoslav Republics have not been fully stimulated so far. We believe that the international community needs to play a more important role, in political field, in security and also in the financial field. So more contributions are needed for real development of the economy and also to end the human sufferings. At this moment there is still a high number of refugees in every part of Bosnia and in case of the trouble of international peacekeeping forces and the police force, the fate of this refugees became questionable. The European Union assumed some responsibilities of the UN peacekeeping troops and this created a new situation. It will also be a test case for the European Union to demonstrate the ability of the Union to provide security in a post-crisis situation.

So Bosnia-Herzegovina problem should be studied in all these respects. Turkey from the beginning has played an active role within the context of the Islamic Conference. Turkey took place in the various Committees of the Islamic Conference. Turkey has provided financial assistance. Turkish armed forces played a very important role in providing mutual understanding in the region. At political level Turkey has strong interests. Turkish Presidents, some Prime Ministers visited Bosnia several times. But today despite all the efforts, the results are not at the level of expectations. Still, there was some progress in Sarajevo, in Mostar, in Tuzla, in some other areas, but less progress achieved in the Serbian areas. Return of the refugees to the Serbian part of Bosnia still needs to be imperished. The international community like the United Nations High Commission for Refugees played an important role but their means were relatively limited to provide all that is needed. At this moment we need reactivation of the interest of international community and we need to focus more on Bosnia Herzegovina to provide better security, better understanding and faster democratization and a sustainable development.