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Asserting Turkey in Bosnia: Turkish Foreign Policy and Pro-Turkish Activism in Bosnia. Actors, Discourses and Textual Corpora (2002-2014) PDF

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Interdisziplinäre Studien zum östlichen Europa Schriftenreihe des Gießener Zentrums Östliches Europa (GiZo) Herausgegeben von Thomas Daiber, Andrea Gawrich, Peter Haslinger, Reinhard Ibler, Stefan Rohdewald und Monika Wingender Band 4 2017 . Harrassowitz Verlag Wiesbaden This content downloaded from 141.218.30.136 on Wed, 06 May 2020 04:35:23 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms © 2017, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 978-3-447-10871-3 - ISBN E-Book: 978-3-447-19671-0 Dino Mujadžević Asserting Turkey in Bosnia Turkish Foreign Policy and Pro-Turkish Activism in Bosnia Actors, Discourses and Textual Corpora (2002–2014) 2017 Harrassowitz Verlag . Wiesbaden This content downloaded from 141.218.30.136 on Wed, 06 May 2020 04:35:23 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms © 2017, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 978-3-447-10871-3 - ISBN E-Book: 978-3-447-19671-0 The research for this book and its publication was made possible by the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung. Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. For further information about our publishing program have a look at our website http://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de © Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden 2017 This work, including all of its parts, is protected by copyright. Any use beyond the limits of copyright law without the permission of the publisher is forbidden and subject to penalty. This applies particularly to reproductions, translations, microfilms and storage and processing in electronic systems. Printed on permanent/durable paper. Printing and binding: Hubert & Co., Göttingen Printed in Germany ISSN 2364-7892 ISBN 978-3-447-10871-3 e-ISBN 978-3-447-19671-0 This content downloaded from 141.218.30.136 on Wed, 06 May 2020 04:35:23 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms © 2017, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 978-3-447-10871-3 - ISBN E-Book: 978-3-447-19671-0 It is great to have a rediscovery of the great Ottoman traditions, but one should avoid the temptation to define the foreign policies of contemporary states in terms of civilizations and mythologies. We are all modern states in a highly interdependent world, and we have to work together. Timothy Garton Ash, Hurriyet Daily News, 5th April 2012. The hidden power of media discourse and the capacity of ... power-holders to exercise this power depend on systematic tendencies in news reporting and other media activities. A sin- gle text on its own is quite insigificant: the effects of media power are cumulative, working through the repetition of particular ways of positioning the reader, and so forth. Norman Fairclough, Language and Power (London: Longman, 1989), p. 54. This content downloaded from 141.218.30.136 on Wed, 06 May 2020 04:35:23 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms © 2017, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 978-3-447-10871-3 - ISBN E-Book: 978-3-447-19671-0 This content downloaded from 141.218.30.136 on Wed, 06 May 2020 04:35:23 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms © 2017, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 978-3-447-10871-3 - ISBN E-Book: 978-3-447-19671-0 Contents Introduction ........................................................... 9 Preliminary remarks ................................................... 9 Research topic ........................................................ 12 Previous research ...................................................... 13 Theoretical framework ................................................. 21 Other major research concepts .......................................... 25 Historical Context of Turco-Bosnian (Muslim) Relations ..................... 28 Ottoman Empire and Bosnia ........................................... 28 Post-Ottoman Bosnia .................................................. 34 Kemalist Turkey ...................................................... 46 Bosnian and Sandžak Muslims in Turkey ................................. 51 Turkey and the Bosnian war (1992-95) .................................... 53 Actors Promoting Turco-Bosnian Relations in Turkey ........................ 63 Socio-political role of Islam in Turkey: an overview ........................ 63 The Islamic political movement ......................................... 67 Sufi groups ........................................................... 76 Pro-Turkish actors in Bosnia .............................................. 86 Overview ............................................................ 86 The Turkish state ..................................................... 88 Economy ............................................................ 94 Bosnian Muslim conservative political scene .............................. 99 Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina (ICBH) ................... 107 Sufi groups .......................................................... 116 The Hizmet movement in Bosnia ........................................ 123 Education ........................................................... 127 Media ............................................................... 129 Bosnia in Turkish Foreign Policy Discourse ................................. 132 Ideological transformation of Turkish foreign policy discourse (1980-2002) .... 132 The AKP foreign policy discourse ....................................... 137 Bosnia in Turkish foreign policy discourse: 1992-2014. ...................... 150 Pro-Turkish Discourses of the Bosnian Muslim Conservative Scene ................................. 165 Overview ............................................................ 165 “Preporod” (2003-2014) ................................................ 169 This content downloaded from 141.218.30.136 on Wed, 06 May 2020 04:35:47 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms © 2017, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 978-3-447-10871-3 - ISBN E-Book: 978-3-447-19671-0 8 Contents Turkish and Bosnian perspectives: the Menzil and Hadžimejlići ............. 199 The Hizmet movement in Bosnia ........................................ 206 Pro-Turkish Discourses in the Mainstream Bosnian Printed Media.................................. 210 Research procedure .................................................... 210 Sources .............................................................. 213 Quantitative analysis .................................................. 214 Qualitative analysis ................................................... 215 Turko-Bosnian diplomatic relations ...................................... 217 Conclusion ............................................................. 239 Sources ................................................................ 245 Bibliography ........................................................... 247 Abbreviations .......................................................... 262 Index .................................................................. 263 This content downloaded from 141.218.30.136 on Wed, 06 May 2020 04:35:47 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms © 2017, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 978-3-447-10871-3 - ISBN E-Book: 978-3-447-19671-0 Introduction Preliminary remarks Turkish foreign policy under the AKP (2002 – 2014) has shown a great deal of interest in Bosnia and Herzegovina and has managed to establish its influence in this Balkan coun- try. Turkey’s official and unofficial foreign policy activities pertaining to Bosnia have been heavily influenced by the presence of a large Muslim population (almost 50%) and by the Ottoman cultural heritage in the country, as well as by perceptions of the 1992- 1995 Bosnian war. The Islamic conservative political scene in Turkey, from which the AKP emerged, has long used Bosnia for its own purposes, primarily as a potent symbol of Muslim persecution and the destruction of the Ottoman heritage, often employed for mobilizing support among Turkish conservatives. The government has ever since it came to power in 2002 been striving to acquire the role of Bosnia’s protector and to forge spe- cial relations with Bosnia. Nevertheless, available data show that the supposed Turkish special interest in Bosnia stays limited within the space of classical diplomatic efforts and public diplomacy projects, mainly in the area of culture, with economic cooperation lagging hugely behind. 1 On the other hand, a large part of the Bosnian Muslim popula- tion and elite, worn out by the war and the post-war economic stagnation, have eagerly accepted and supported the notion of special relations with Turkey, in which they saw a possibility for the affirmation of the Bosnian Muslim identity, as well as for political security and economic prosperity. For example, the statistics of meetings of members of the Bosnian state presidency, which represents the three major ethnic groups equally, show that its Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) members met with Turkish representatives disproportionately more than their Serb or Croat counterparts. 2 The enhanced activities of Turkish governmental and non-governmental actors in Bosnia aroused a considerable level of controversy in some regional circles and started a great deal of, often very wild and politically motivated, speculation on the nature and extent of the Turkish presence in this country. 3 Media interest in and academic research on recent Turkish foreign policy and conservative cultural trends has increased in the past years as a reaction to the remarkable economic growth and very active, influential and visible Turkish involve- ment on the world stage, mostly in the Balkans and the Middle East. Researchers have 1 Politička romansa: odnosi između Turske i Bosne i Hercegovine (Sarajevo: Think Thank Populari 2014), available at http://www.populari.org/files/docs/410.pdf, accessed on March 10, 2016. 2 Politička romansa, pp. 28-29. 3 See the account of previous research within this chapter. This content downloaded from 141.218.30.136 on Wed, 06 May 2020 04:36:04 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms © 2017, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 978-3-447-10871-3 - ISBN E-Book: 978-3-447-19671-0 10 Introd uction shown much interest in the concept of so-called Neo-Ottomanism, which is widely used to describe the new cultural and foreign policy paradigm of the ruling establishment in Turkey and emphasizes the Ottoman and Islamic heritage as one of the cornerstones of policies in these fields. These aspects of Turkish foreign policy have received much attention from researchers, albeit predominantly within the political science approach, aiming at an analysis of day-to-day politics. The systematic study of the discourse driv- ing Turkish official and non-official foreign policy coordinated by the ruling AKP es- tablishment is still in its early stages, especially when it comes to discourse analysis, network analysis or similar theoretical frameworks. These theoretical approaches are increasingly gaining ground in the fields of contemporary history and political science, to which this research project belongs. This book will be the first attempt to study the discourse of Turkish state and non-state actors and its adaption by local actors in Bosnia within the field of contemporary history. Besides adding to the analysis of this discourse and the actors producing them, this study will contribute to the analysis of the cultur- al dynamics among Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose ongoing processes of ethnic identity formation seem to be impacted by contemporary Turkish influences. In this book, I suggest an approach to Turkish foreign policy and pro-Turkish activism in Bosnia and Herzegovina that transcends the limits of these definitions and avoids the essentializations implicit in the term “Neo-Ottomanism”. Instead of viewing Bosnian Muslims as merely the objects and consumers of Turkish discourse and politics, as well as minor players in the network disseminating them, I will rather look into their agency potential in this non-Turkish context and their reactions and local adaptations of the originally Turkish discourse, extending the original network by various autonomous sub-networks of local pro-Turkish actors. Furthermore, I will consider the interaction of foreign and local discourses and their role in the current constructions of cultural identity formations of Bosnian Muslims by identifying the local actors of the discourse along with Turkish state and non-state actors. The study of discourse legitimizing Turkish foreign policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina has a special meaning in the context of relations among EU countries, the Republic and Turkey, as well as between the EU and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Current Turkish foreign policy is usually seen as a reaction of the Turkish conservative political and in- tellectual elite after the rejection of Turkey’s EU bid, but also as a product of a cultural transformation within the Turkish elite that led to the greater acceptance of the Islamic and the Ottoman cultural heritage. After gaining power with massive popular support in 2002, the AKP elite was able gradually to create and impose an alternative foreign policy. As a former Ottoman territory, Bosnia and Herzegovina, war-torn, politically fragmented, economically unstable, far away from the EU accession process (according to local self-perception “forgotten by Europe”), and inhabited to a large part by Bosnian Muslims, is naturally open to Turkish influence. The discourses of both the Bosnian and the Turkish conservative scenes, the main actors in this rapprochement, heavily rely on the Ottoman legacy, which provided the general framework of communication. This re- search could add to the understanding of the inner dynamics, mechanisms and contents of this discursive phenomenon and its actors, all of which could potentially affect the fu- This content downloaded from 141.218.30.136 on Wed, 06 May 2020 04:36:04 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms © 2017, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 978-3-447-10871-3 - ISBN E-Book: 978-3-447-19671-0 Preliminary remarks 11 ture attitudes towards the EU in Turkey and in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In addition to purely political and economic influence, the Turkish presence among Bosnian Muslims and other Muslim groups displays strong cultural, educational and religious features. This book is the final outcome of a postdoctoral project funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which was hosted at the Chair for the Ottoman and Turkish History of Ruhr University (Lehrstuhl für die Geschichte des Osmanischen Reichs und der Türkei an der Ruhr-Universität Bochum) combined with a three-month research residence at the Institute for History in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and two months at the CASS at the Lancaster University. The Humboldt fellowship provided me with an excellent research environment and funding, without which this book would not have been possible. During my stay at the Historical Institute of Ruhr University Bochum, I developed the necessary knowledge on critical discourse analysis and the corpus approach. Additionally, during the related field-work in Bosnia I gained crucial insights into the so-called Neo-Ottoman tendencies in Turkish foreign policy, as well as into the overall Turkish conservative discourse and the power structure behind it. At the CASS of Lancaster University, the leading research institution in this field, I learned a lot about the application of the corpus methodology - especially the related software tools – for the purposes of historiographic research. As a result of my growing interest in the corpus-assisted approach, I embarked upon convening the first-ever academic event on digital (data-driven) historical research into Southeast European and Turkish history, which took place in June 2015 at the Centre for Mediterranean Studies of the Ruhr University Bochum and was funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. This was the first occasion I presented my corpus-assisted research results on main- stream printed media in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 4 Also, it is worth mentioning that I was enabled to conduct this study by a command of languages as well as other relat- ed knowledge. I can use primary and secondary sources and communicate in English, German, French, and, most importantly, Turkish. As I undertook research and spent a significant amount of time in Turkey, I am familiar with the cultural environment and political situation in that country. During my fieldwork in Bosnia and previous research stays in Turkey and elsewhere, I have developed contacts with Turkish and international scholars of contemporary Turkish history, as well as some representatives of the Turkish conservative scene. I would like to thank my host in Bochum Markus Koller as well as my hosts in Lancaster and Sarajevo, respectively, Tony McEnery and Husnija Kamberović. Special thanks go to Armina Omerika, Maurus Renkowski and Ivo Banac. 4 For conference see http://www.zms.rub.de/mittelmeerstudien/mam/downloads/program_data_ driven_research.pdf, accessed on March 10, 2016. This content downloaded from 141.218.30.136 on Wed, 06 May 2020 04:36:04 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms © 2017, Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden ISBN Print: 978-3-447-10871-3 - ISBN E-Book: 978-3-447-19671-0

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