Hybrid art in a special war against Turkey: Why are we shooting ourselves in the foot by provoking our closest allies!

By: Rasim Belko @rasimbelko

Experts from the manuals of non-governmental organizations often dictate to us in the public space that freedom, whether of speech or anything else, is limited by the line that defines offending others. However, as strong as the scripts of these experts are, their story holds water.

For example, these same experts, while stumbling around Sarajevo streets half-naked to protect the supposedly endangered rights of LGBTQ persons, whistle and howl because of the adhan from Alipašina Mosque in Sarajevo. And so, while protecting supposedly endangered rights, they directly endanger the rights of Muslims to call for prayer.

But that is just one example. We also have the one where some fool in front of the National Theatre in Sarajevo called himself an artist and walked around naked, scaring passers-by. For days afterward, we listened to salvos of insults directed at those who opposed him and stopped him. The justification was "it is freedom of art" and similar phrases. As if our mothers, sisters, wives, and girlfriends do not have the right to walk freely through the city without being disturbed by some naked person.

These human rights experts are dangerous because they learned about rights in a mutilated form, written by someone according to their interests. I, like most others in this country, read about rights from the books of monotheistic religions; I even had such a subject at university, so I learned "do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you." That is not written in the NGO manual, because there, the most endangered are those determined by the author of the manual.

But these are all internal problems that we in this country must somehow solve. However, we often have examples where directors appointed by the Trojka government stage "free art" that shoots us in the foot by provoking even the few foreign policy allies and partners we have.

And Turkey, whatever anyone thinks of it, is among the top allies, further supported by the fact that in the current crisis, official Ankara was ready to invite and listen to most of the political representatives in positions within our country.

On the other hand, our artistic experts have managed to hit one of the neuralgic points of Turkey's foreign policy once again. Namely, as part of the "Regional Theatre" festival, the play "Six Against Turkey" is announced for April 14th on the stage of the National Theatre in Sarajevo.

Because of this play, Turkey sent an official note to Bosnia and Herzegovina expressing serious concern over the performance of a play whose theme is related to Fethullah Gülen's FETÖ, which Turkey considers a terrorist organization aimed against the state and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the key culprit for the coup attempt. The promotional photos of the play show masks with the faces of Erdoğan and Gülen, which is definitive proof for official Ankara that the play is connected to FETÖ.

Knowing the political pedigree of Edin Mustafić, the director of NPS - one of the first Našišts, now loyal to the SDP, it is clear even to laypeople that he has absolutely no problem with "art" in his institution undermining Bosnia and Herzegovina's relations with friends from the East, because he perceives that part of the world from which civilization originated and greatly advanced as barbaric.

There is no doubt that "Six Against Turkey" is a welcome theatrical piece for Mustafić, especially when encouraged by Western friends. True, the play's story is related to six FETÖ members expelled from Kosovo, but not so long ago, we also heard uproar in Sarajevo against the expulsion of Gülen-loyal cadres in our country. You guessed it, the Našišts were the loudest, although they were diligently followed by fake social democrats.

Without delving into the quality of the play, it is undoubtedly created with political premeditation against Erdoğan and Turkey's current policy, and given that the creators are from Turkey and the EU, this further confirms the fact that it is another hybrid artistic tool in the service of a special war against Turkey.

With the difference that this time, in the case of the performance, the effects could backfire on Bosnia and Herzegovina's interests, and Foreign Minister Elmedin Konaković will certainly blush at the Diplomatic Forum in Antalya and at dinner with Erdoğan when asked about the whole story.

It is no longer secret or public that the Trojka's policy continuously undermines Bosnia and Herzegovina's interests in preserving the few allies and friends it has in the world. Because, the Sarajevo Tricolors told us just yesterday that the USA is more important than God, and today we already see the almost complete absence of Washington during the biggest crisis in BiH.

At the same time, the Tricolors say that Brussels and EU institutions are with us, and there is no sign of these Europeans intending to activate their forces and arrest the man who threatens the stability, peace, and constitutional order of BiH.

Only Erdoğan was concrete and clearly stated at the beginning of the crisis his readiness to help Bosnia and Herzegovina in case of trouble, and invited the members of the BiH Presidency with whom he sought solutions for the crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

And we have allowed hybrid art to shoot us in the foot again because of the special war against Turkey. And to make matters worse, no one has yet reacted publicly, either out of fear of the Trojka regime and its media or out of helplessness, because our voice no longer reaches anywhere!