Ottoman imperial history binds Turkey emotionally to Balkan Muslim causes

Evidence

While no other issue generated more unanimous support throughout Islam, the plight of the Bosnian Muslims had special resonance in Turkey. Bosnia had been part of the Ottoman Empire until 1878 in practice and 1908 in theory, and Bosnian immigrants and refugees make up roughly 5 percent of Turkey’s population. Sympathy for the Bosnian cause and outrage at the perceived failure of the West to protect the Bosnians were pervasive among the Turkish people, and the opposition Islamist Welfare Party exploited this issue against the government. Government officials, in turn, emphasized Turkey’s special responsibilities with respect to all Balkan Muslims, and the government regularly pushed for U.N. military intervention to safeguard the Bosnian Muslims. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 791

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader theme of Islam’s ummah solidarity discussed elsewhere in this chapter and to Huntington’s civilizational fault-line thesis.