I missed the RFE/RL article when it first came out last month, but it's topic -- Turkey's growing influence in the Balkans -- makes it worth revisiting. As the article makes clear, while a lot of attention is being paid to Turkey's moves in the Middle East, it has been no less active in the Balkans, where Ankara is working to increase its influence by capitalizing on its Ottoman roots in the region. From the piece by Anes Alic:
Over the past two years, Turkey has launched a massive
political, social, and economic offensive across the Balkans, focusing
primarily on Bosnia-Herzegovina.More than two decades after Turkey first formally applied to
join the European Union, it now appears to be developing a two-pronged
strategy: turning its attentions to its eastern neighbors (notably Syria, Iran
and Russia), while at the same time seeking to enhance its prospects for EU
membership by intensifying its influence in the Balkan countries, which are
growing closer to Europe.Turkey's ambitions in the Balkans have forced the EU to pay
more attention to political processes in the region, where Russia and the
United States are also vying for influence. After Romania and Bulgaria joined
the EU in 2007, Brussels slowed down the membership process for the countries
of the western Balkans on the assumption that doing so would have no real
effects as those countries, surrounded by other NATO and EU member states, had
no alternative but to move toward Europe.But now, with Turkey wooing Muslim-majority states Albania,
Kosovo, and Bosnia, and with Russia financially and politically supporting
Serbia and the Serbs in Bosnia, the EU (with the support of the United States)
is finding it necessary to speed up the accession process in an attempt to
counter the growing Turkish and Russian influence in the region.
Turkey's growing diplomatic role in the Middle East is a development worth tracking, but -- certainly for Europe -- Ankara's beefier Balkan presence is making for new and interesting policy questions and decisions, it would appear.
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