Internatonal Affairs
Bosnian Envoy Bisera Turkovic
Looks to Overcome Scarred Past
What’s the best thing that could possibly happen to Bosnia at this moment, asks a popular refrain going around Sarajevo these days. “An American occupation,” answers Bisera Turkovic, “because then we’d become the next U.S. state.”
Turkovic — ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the United States — is only half-joking. Interviewed last month by phone from Sarajevo, she said her little Balkan country is deeply indebted to the American people for putting an end to ethnic fighting that killed an estimated 250,000 people between 1992 and 1995.
“Everybody here loves the United States. That’s the feeling among ordinary people,” she said. “We feel that Europe betrayed us, and the U.S. saved us. Whenever you talk about progress and stability, the general feeling is that we owe whatever has been achieved to the United States.”
She added: “There’s lots of sympathy for Bosnia and all that we went through. At the [Bush] administration level, there’s understanding. We feel we are somehow among friends. We enjoy support whenever we knock at their door.”
Bosnia, whose 19,741 square miles make it half the size of Kentucky, is a roughly triangular-shaped country that would be landlocked if not for a 13-mile strip of coastline along the Adriatic Sea. Its capital and largest city is Sarajevo, host of the 1984 Winter Olympics and scene of some of the bloodiest fighting Europe has seen since World War II.
The embassy Turkovic directs is relatively small—only 14 employees, including six diplomats—but it’s the largest Bosnia has anywhere in the world. That has a lot to do with the fact that 300,000 Bosnians live in the United States, many of them war refugees.
“In 1991, we had 4.3 million people. There’s been no recent census, but we calculate that the population is now just under 4 million because so many people were killed or left the country—all that in the heart of Europe,” she said, pointing out that Germany is home to half a million Bosnian war refugees. Australia, where Turkovic spent much of her life, is home to another 50,000 or so Bosnians.
Turkovic, who took up her post in Washington last October, holds a law degree from the University of Sarajevo and a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice administration from the Phillip Institute of Technology in Melbourne. She completed her post-graduate studies in criminology from Melbourne’s La Trobe University and has a doctorate in international relations from Pacific Western University in San Diego, Calif.
A career diplomat, Turkovic was appointed Bosnia’s ambassador to Croatia in 1993, only a year after Bosnia declared its independence. She’s also represented her country in Hungary (1994-96) and before the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (1996-2000) in Vienna.
Among other things, Turkovic has been Bosnia’s minister of European integration as well as executive director of Sarajevo’s Centre for Security Studies and a lecturer of criminal justice at the University of Sarajevo.
Having lived through the worst of times, Turkovic said it is essential to bring to justice such war criminals as Serbian nationalist Radovan Karadzic and Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic, who is accused of orchestrating the massacre of up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica back in 1995. Those war wounds remain fresh: In mid-August, the bodies of more than 1,000 victims of the massacre were exhumed from the largest mass grave found to date in Bosnia.
“We must put substantial effort into preventing another holocaust,” said Turkovic. “If we let Karadzic and Mladic—who are accused of the worst crimes—go free, then of course we can expect history to repeat itself. But if justice is going to prevail, then the war criminals must be punished.”
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