Euronews and Al Jazeera report that Turkey’s President Erdogan held a rally in Sarajevo ahead of next month’s election in his country. On his arrival, he was greeted by the leader of Bosnia’s SDA party, Bakir Izetbegovic, who is a member of the tripartite presidency.
The purpose of this visit is an attempt to garner support from expat Turks, many of whom are eligible to vote.
The six million Turks living abroad, mostly in Western Europe, have a lot of clout. Since 2014, about half of them have been able to vote in Turkish elections. There are 1.4 million eligible Turkish voters in Germany alone.
During his speech in Sarajevo, Erdogan called on Turks in Europe to support him with a “record number of votes” and urged them to actively participate in European politics.
“At a time when the glorious European countries that claim to be the cradle of democracy failed, Bosnia and Herzegovina proved to be not ostensibly, but truly democratic by giving us the opportunity to gather here,” Erdogan told a crowd of more than 12,000 people, according to reports.
“Today we saw true friendship and brotherhood.”
Media reports also quoted the Union of European Turkish Democrats (UETD), the group that organised the rally, as saying about half of the rally’s attendees had come from Germany and Austria.
The report describes Erdogan’s presence in Bosnia as an attempt to defy other European countries, including the Netherlands, Germany and Austria, who have prevented Turkish politicians from campaigning on their soil.
“He came because he wants to rise politically in his party and his country and not because of us,” said one woman living in Sarajevo. “Of course, he’s a president close to our Bakir Izetbegovic and they all help each other, but I doubt there’s any help for us in it.”
Bosnia also has an election coming up later this year and some see Erdogan’s presence as Ankara meddling in Bosnian political affairs given that Turkey could significantly influence the Balkan country’s sizeable Muslim community.
“If you approach the elections as a Bosniak, the Turkey card is tremendously important,” said political analyst Adnan Huskic. “And in this sense, I guess that this is certainly going to provide an additional push for the SDA and Izetbegovic, and perhaps his wife’s bid for the presidency.”
