Deputy President and spokesperson of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) Omer Celik said that the massacres and tragic events during the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina would not have happened if it had been present-day Turkey at the time and the current president, Recep Tayyip, had been at its head. Erdogan, Anatolia reports.
Celik stayed in the southern Turkish city of Adana, where he met with representatives of the Bosnia-Adana Association. Celik arrived at the meeting with the representatives of this association using the Turkish car Togg.
In a conversation with members of the association, Celik recalled the moments when he accompanied Turkish President Erdogan on his way back from a visit to one of the foreign countries, when they received information that the first president of RBiH Alija Izetbegović was hospitalized, and how they decided to land in Sarajevo.
“We landed urgently in Sarajevo. I was with our president when we went to the hospital. Then the president talked to Alija (Izetbeogvić, op.a.) and told him: ‘We want to transfer you to Turkiye for treatment,’ to which he Alija said: ‘I don’t want to leave here,'” Celik said.
He added that Erdogan repeatedly insisted, telling Izetbegović that he would return him to Bosnia after treatment, to which he said: “I want to die in my country, I don’t want to leave this place.”
Celik said that at that time, the late Alija Izetbegović bequeathed the care of Sultan Fatih’s inheritance in the Balkans.
“Since then, our president has carried that trust on his shoulders. Since then, they (Bosnia, op.a.) have never been left alone,” said Celik.
Stating that he had been in Bosnia and Herzegovina on several occasions, Celik drew a parallel between Bosnia and Azerbaijan. He said that during his stay in Bosnia, he saw bunkers built by Serbian snipers who killed Bosniaks there, and the same bunkers, he said, were built by Armenians during the war in Karabakh.
“That’s when I started thinking: ‘If today’s Turkey had existed at the time of the war in Bosnia, if Recep Tayyip Erdogan had been at the head of Turkey, none of those massacres would have happened,'” said Celik, adding:
“The power of Turkey means the preservation and protection of Islam in the Balkans. What is most needed today is peace. The will of our president to preserve peace is so strong and so accepted that even the Serbian leaders there make a statement saying that ‘Erdogan should be elected’ . Because nobody wants war anymore.”
At the end, Celik pointed out that the Balkans are always in the focus of President Erdogan.
On the Anadolu Agency (AA) website, only part of the news content is published, which is available to users through our News Flow System (HAS). Please contact us for subscription.
