Bakir's battery operated terrorism

By: Amina CORBO - ZECO

Although labeled 'Fethullah's terrorist organization' by the Turkish government, the FETO movement is not on any list of terrorist organizations in BiH. However, this fact has not prevented the SDA's president Bakir Izetbegovic and some local media to openly refer to this movement as 'terrorist' without any institutional basis for doing so. That is their way, seemingly, to court the AK party in Turkey?    

It is unclear, however, why Izetbegovic, also the Chairman of the Presidency BiH, agrees to publicly speaks about the presence of a ‘terrorist cell’ in BiH thus linking the country with terrorism, if FETO does not carry any such institutional 'epithets' in that country?! Why does Izetbegovic link his own country to terrorism without having any hard evidence on hand?!

The security ministry BiH closely follows the UN and EU data of terrorist organizations and regularly posts updates on its website. Also, 'the approach of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the fight against terrorism is founded on BH legislation, that of the entities, the Brcko District and other positive legislation on BiH, based on which, with full respect for human rights, is acted on in every individual case of possible suspicion of terrorist activity'.

Unfortunately, there's no mechanism that could stop the Izetbegovic-style rhetoric. Neither the Regulatory Agency for Communications nor the Press Council have reacted accordingly. To tell the truth, there has been no complaints on such ‘talking’ at all.

The latest reference to FETO has come from some local media which started a story about two schools in Sarajevo allegedly 'linked to terrorist organization FETO'. The story sent a chill down my spine. According to those reports, not only that we have terrorism in BiH, but we also train new terrorists!?

Izetbegovic's inappropriate efforts to please Erdogan could inflict enormous damage on BiH’s tourism, education, economy and foreign investment. The same media report that the International High School and Turkish – Bosnian College Sarajevo have a tax debt, and that these schools lost their reputation and a large number of students in Bosnia and Herzegovina following the failed attempt of coup d’état in Turkey!

I can't see how the tax debt could have anything to do with terrorism? BiH's reputation and dignity suffer due to such statements of our politicians, while the students of these educational institutions are made targets. Nobody is held accountable for this kind of behavior. We can only keep complaining about absurd BH system established by those who only care about themselves. Not only that they have not rewarded the best students from those schools who brought medals from the world competitions, that they didn't help rescue BH students from Turkish prisons, now they put additional burden of terrorism onto those schools, without any evidence for it.

And while Izetbegovic and some of my colleagues journalists put terrorism in the same pot with BiH, we write good news about BH citizens not going to foreign wars over the past 18 months, about BiH determination to fight against terrorism as a part of the global network combating this biggest contemporary evil. The topic often spoken about by Izetbegovic's party colleague and the state prime minister Denis Zvizdic.

The public is still in the dark as to the sources of information and the evidence behind Izetbegovic's statements about the abovementioned schools as 'FETO's terrorist cells in BiH'. Other SDA officials have gone even further by saying that they plan to take over the power in BiH. We don't know if such statements are based on information and findings of the BH intelligence community or on information arrived from friends from Turkey.

When you are ready to link your country with terrorism without any evidence, the critiques about vassal relations between Bosniak politicians vis a vis the government of Turkey are in order. We have invested too much in the combat against terrorism to now become a terrorist country, only because Bakir's friends from Turkey would wish so.