Balkan Peninsula

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"The thing we call the Bosnia is not just a piece of land in the Balkans.For many of us, Bosnia is not just a homeland. Bosnia is an ideal. Different from Bosnia that people with religions, international and cultural traditions can live together A symbol of faith. If this ideal is forever buried and people in this region If the dream of tolerance between us is lifted forever, powerful people who refuse to do this are also the ones who have killed Bosna with their weapons for thirty months. people can be blamed. " Alija Izzetbegović

Throughout history, various civilizations have existed in different parts of the world, these civilizations have established social and cultural relations with each other and they were at "Civilization Exchange". Every race, every lineage and nation has a separate civilization. Every civilization has its own distinctive features and on the basis of mutual tolerance and compromise people get something from every civilization. The values, traditions and beliefs of people are made from country to country, even within a very large variability can show. Therefore, societies and it is inevitable that there are historical, cultural and ethnic differences among the nations. In some cases, these differences can turn into challenges. World history when we look at these fights at the state level, even sometimes we see it turned into war.

With the disintegration of the bipolar world order, how can the new world order explained in “Conflict of Civilizations”. The main theme of Huntington's famous "Conflict of Civilizations" thesis is: Huntington tells us that there is a constant conflict over the world, which distinguishes the world from certain parties. On the path to this identification, Huntington claims that future collisions will take place not among ideologies, but among "civilizations". Huntington also notes that "the defining feature of civilizations is religion". In his view, what happened in Bosnia and Herzegovina, or Kosovo is the same. Huntington, world politics is moving into a new channel, in this new world the main source of the struggle is not ideological or economic but based on culture. According to this theory, cultural conflict is inevitable and the most important bloody struggles of the future will take place along the cultural fault lines that divide the living space of these civilizations.

However, some nations could not have their own culture, norms because they had lived under control of other nations. Balkan Peninsula is an important region because it is bridge between Europe and Asia. That is why Balkan states or nations always lived under some other nations. These nations not just conquered the region also they bring or introduce their culture in this region. There were some nations who accept the coming cultures and implement these in their culture and live with it, such as Bosnia, Kosovo.

Bosnia does not have experience about how to rule a state, create a nation values and creation of a nation identity. Because they lived under Roman, Ottoman, Austria-Hungarian and they accepted their culture. We can see lots of structures, historical heritages from Roman Empire. Also, we can say they felt like they were part of the Roman, Ottoman empires. Still they are carrying the sign of these empires cultures and having conflict in their society. Maybe it is the biggest problem in Balkans, most of the states having problem with where they are belong to. That is why Yugoslavia was collapsed. But as I can say some citizens of Bosnia lives and make themselves Ottoman more that Turks, Roman more than Greeks. They are professional to adopt themselves in a culture.

The Bosnia and Herzegovina state that existed with the Dayton Treaty in 1995 was a new state possessed of. But, divided internally into two entities. At the moment, Bosnia and Herzegovina “jure is” divided into two, but the “de facto” party: Bosnian-Herzegovina State, the Bosnia-Herzegovina Federation and the Republika Srpska. The element that brings the Bosnia-Herzegovina state together is not the three nations living side by side in Bosnia. It is the international community. The Bosnia-Herzegovina state can sustain its existence if these three nations begin to see it as their own state. Multiethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina, with an ethnic and solid economic base the state is not an impossible because according to historical information, the state had existed for centuries. But it is hard because of cultural differences.

The Dayton Peace Treaty contained arrangements to prevent the reoccurrence of clashes in Bosnia. However, each community continues to see the other as a threat and the perception of the enemy continues. Although territorial division and homogeneity of each group in separate regions, the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina is not just about territorial division. Ethnic identity, religion and different culture are components of the conflict. The understanding of "us" and "them" is maintained especially by ethnic nationalist parties. Actually, when we see these terms first thing comes to my mind is “Post-Colonialism”. An unnecessary fight has started in the Balkans after the Cold War period as a result of ethnic fractions. The fact that the West was not caring about the Balkans only led to the growth of the incidents. Kosovo has always played a crucial part for the Bosnian crisis. The Balkans is referred to as uncivilized, irrational, barbarian and the other by the West. The kind of mechanism that refers to the process of giving a meaning to the concept is the same as that which Edward Said tried to define in his works as the process of the West making the east the other. Todorova seeks similarities between Orientalism and Balkanism at the same time as he underlines differences between the phenomena. The basic difference lays in the fact that in spite of the abstract structure of the east, the Balkans has got both geographically and historically concrete qualities. Another difference is the fact that while orientalism is referred to as otherness, balkanism is referred to as uncertainty; in other words, while orientalism is concerned with the different part between the referred types, balkanism tends to be focused on the differences within one type”

All in all, from history we can see these nations had lived together under some empires and states but it is not possible to see them under one umbrella. After the French revolution Balkan nations uprise to Ottoman and wanted to have their national states. This movement ignited by Wilson principles and imposed national self-determination in the Balkans. It created a big conflict in Balkan Peninsula. Still we see the effect of it. However, Bosnia and Kosovo was the unluckiest states in the Balkan Peninsula. They could not have their part from the big cake. Maybe these states could not take the part from the cake because lack of experience about governing the state. Bosnian citizens having trouble, are they Western or Eastern? Where are they belonging to? These are the important questions, which should be answered by citizens. Actually, government should be able to create the national identity but it is not possible with this Dayton Agreement and also with these Serbian people. I think Bosnia will not have any chance to have own culture. They will always accept other nation’s culture and live with that. Actually nowadays, there is no unique culture around the world because of Western culture. It effects directly thanks to Globalization and Tech. It makes it a lot easier and faster to effect other cultures directly .


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