Turkey's Evolving Approach to the Balkans

From the "Golden Age of Serbian-Turkish relations" to today's drone diplomacy in Kosovo, Turkey's approach to the Balkans has shape shifted over the past decade

Almost exactly 11 years ago, I was teargassed for the first time here in Istanbul. The occasion was the Gezi Park uprising, and if memory serves, we were not far from Taksim Square. My Serbian then-partner and I were in town from Belgrade, and he insisted on telling other protesters that he was from Bosnia rather than Serbia. He was genuinely worried that someone might discover his true nationality. In the summer of 2013, Serbian-Turkish relations were still largely defined by Ottoman-era enmity, which had been resurrected during the break-up of Yugoslavia. Through some sort of wartime nationalist alchemy, Bosniaks had been converted into Ottoman Turks in the Serbian imagination. These old animosities still seemed intractable at the time of the Gezi protests: Ahmet Davutoglu was foreign minister from 2009-2014, and his approach to the Balkans had been derided by many as neo-Ottomanism.