That's fairly easy. The Turks hate the Russians Serbia was/is an ally of Russia So supporting the Croats was to them the way to go
but wouldn't the Bosniaks make more sense?
That's fairly easy. The Turks hate the Russians Serbia was/is an ally of Russia So supporting the Croats was to them the way to go
but wouldn't the Bosniaks make more sense?
Marco,
Can you or someone else explain Turkey's motives behind supporting the Croats?
As far as I got the political game of the time was that it was jousing for influence between the Saudis and Turkey (which was more secular back then than what is now).
So reasons were roughly like this
1. Support for Croats began before the Croat-Bosniak conflict
2. Croats were a more mayor player than the Bosniaks and it was only a matter of time before Croats and Bosniaks settle their differences and focus on the Serbs. Supporting Bosniaks exclusivly would just leave both sides exhausted and aliante the Croats with whom Turky wanted to have good relations.
3. The Bosniak leadership (from SDA) became very close to Saudis and Turks resented them for that. Even though Mujahedin weren't popular among Bosniaks SDA leadership picked Saudis over Turks as their main partner so Turks I guess decided to burn them for it.
4. Greece supported the Serbs and there was some negotiation at the time about creating a kind of "Orthodox union" (a loose form of Balkan EU) made out of Greece, SR Yugoslavia, Republic Srpska and Republic Srpska Kraina, that would in the future include Bulgaria and partition Macedonia.
5. Russia supported the Serbs.
6. Demirel and Tudjman were good firends.