Erdogan vows to help build Belgrade-Sarajevo highway

Turkish President Recep Tayip Erdogan has promised that he will help Bosnia and Serbia build a highway connecting Belgrade and Sarajevo, that is, after meeting Bosniak presidency member Bakir Izetbegovic and Serbian President Aleksandar Vuciq in Istanbul.

The “is a huge project, but Turkey is a big country, which does big things”, Izetbegovic told the regional television station N1 after the trilateral meeting.

Bosnia and Herzegovina's two entities -- the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska -- have remained blocked on the exact road where the highway will be built.

According to Turkish media, Turkish investments in the region, trilateral relations and a highway project between Novi Pazar and Priboj, in the southern coastal region of Sandzak, were also discussed in Istanbul.

Izetbegovic added that Serbian President Vuciq had assured Erdogan that Bosnia and Serbia “would not have problems again” and potentially called the meeting “prehistoric”.

Vuciq said after the meeting that Bosnia and Serbia will work harder to secure a permanent and secure <x0 peace “, adding that Belgrade continues to honour the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia.

The “everything we ask of Bosniaks is to make Serbs in Bosnia feel secure, and just as we don't question Bosnia's territorial integrity, we ask them to deal with the same Republika Srpska”, Vuciq said, according to Beta news agency, mainly Serb entities.

However, Republika Srpska Chairman Milorad Dodik criticised Izetbegovic's presence at the meeting because Izetbegovic is only a member and not the current chairman of Bosnia's tripartite presidency.

“As far as I understand, [his admission to the meeting] was not the Bosnia and Herzegovina Presidency's decision, but probably Izetbegovic's, probably Erdogan's”, Dodik told the press, calling Izetbegovic's visit a dangerous “precedent”.

Sarajevo political analyst Ivana Maric told BIRN that Izetbegovic's visit to Istanbul has indeed passed standard procedure, because he is not head of the state presidency.

The position of head of the presidency in Bosnia and Herzegovina is on wheels every six months among the three Bosniak, Serbian and Croat members.