Let us set aside Croatian tendencies to save the EU from a new wave of migrants or migrants from European border closures, to parrot great foreign stories like parrots, pretending to participate in solving major European issues.
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The question that directly concerns the security of Croatia and the future political outlook of the Balkans is much narrower, and the problem is much larger and more acute than the general relationship of the EU towards migrant waves, which those with deeper political analysis see as a new Islamic campaign against Europe.
Erdoğan will take advantage of the favorable moment of Europe’s fear for a new step in realizing neo-Ottoman plans in the Balkans. Politicians of old Europe will most likely allow this, preoccupied with maintaining their power and political orders destabilized by the first wave of migrants and its consequences.
Thus, our narrow and potentially dangerous question is: Will the new sultan from the Bosporus, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, take advantage of the favorable moment of Europe’s fear for a new step in realizing his neo-Ottoman plans in the Balkans? And from this narrowed question arise several subsequent ones.
Will frightened Europe tacitly allow and relinquish this? Can the unfinished and crumbling Balkan states resist this? What does this mean for the stability and political future of Croatia?
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Erdoğan’s autumn
The answer to the first, narrow and simple question is – yes. And the next autumn is an ideal moment for Erdoğan. Erdoğan would not be who he is if he did not try to exploit Europe’s fear, the muddled and divided EU policy, and the closure of the Western European migrant route to take a further step in implementing his declared neo-Ottoman policy in the Balkans.
After all, the Balkan migrant route or the so-called mosque route is partly designed as part of that plan. Erdoğan openly demonstrated his intentions with his grand pre-election rally in Sarajevo, marking Sarajevo and BiH as his outpost in the further campaign against Europe and further efforts to Islamize the Old Continent. And even after the latest electoral victory, he spoke about the war of the cross and the crescent in Europe.
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To doubt whether the new sultan from the Bosporus will embark on further conquests of the Balkans this autumn is as pointless as it was once pointless to doubt whether Mehmed II the Conqueror would head to the Balkans after conquering Constantinople or whether Suleiman the Magnificent would march towards Vienna after gathering his army in his Bosnian fortresses. The second question is whether the EU will allow this. I fear the answer is also affirmative.
The Islamization of the Balkans means a permanent security threat to Croatia from the Neretva valley to Dalmatia, from the Bihać and Cazin regions to the uninhabited ‘soft belly’ in Lika and Gorski Kotar… It means destabilization and even endangerment of the state.
Politicians of old Europe led by Germany and Angela Merkel are so preoccupied with maintaining their power and political orders destabilized by the first wave of migrants and its consequences, so superficial in perceiving problems that they still do not want to see as a political project of Islamization, and so frightened by the possibility of a new wave of migrants that they do not even have time to realize that the Balkans are something else. That the possible 200 or 300 thousand migrants in the Balkans, whether new or those potentially returned from old EU countries, is not the same as the same number of migrants in Germany or France.
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European readiness for trade
That it means a change in the political and social paradigm across a whole range of countries from BiH and Kosovo to Serbia (Sandžak), Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia…
Moreover, they are sufficiently self-centered that one can expect their willingness for behind-the-scenes trade with Erdoğan – to let him into the Balkans in the hope that it will not reach them. Like once Mehmed II and Suleiman the Magnificent. Central European countries, which have experience with Ottoman campaigns, have already protected themselves with wire and the rejection of migrant quotas. They are focused on defending their own positions in the EU, not on the Balkans.
The third question of whether the unfinished and crumbling Balkan states can resist this contains a sub-question: Do they want to? In a large part of these states, Erdoğan has long created centers of his political support: mostly in the Bosniak political structures in BiH, which he was allegedly bequeathed by Alija (Izetbegović), but also in Kosovo, Macedonia, Albania…
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After the autumn elections in BiH, it is possible that Erdoğan will be the architect of a new state structure. The perspective is that after the elections, Croats will be politically completely suppressed in the Federation, and with several tens of thousands of Muslim migrants who will receive asylum and citizenship, the emigration of Croats from the Federation of BiH will be sealed.
What does this mean for Croatia? A permanent security threat from the Neretva valley to Dalmatia, from the Bihać and Cazin regions to the uninhabited ‘soft belly’ in Lika and Gorski Kotar… It means destabilization and even endangerment of the state. Croatia can survive as a European state only if it convinces the EU that Europe is defended in the Balkans. And not if our political representatives recite European clichés beautifully.
